Post by hi224 on Dec 15, 2020 23:22:13 GMT
Chris Robinson
Our main player is a British man named Chris Robinson, who emigrated to New Zealand with his wife Alison and two kids Alex (14) and Eleanor (12) in 2005. He'd previously worked as a physics teacher, then a computer businessman, though it's debatable how successful he was. Certainly they were able to purchase a very nice house in Kerikeri, in the northern part of the country, which they renovated into a luxury lodge. They would live there for the next six years. This time wasn't without incident - Chris was in the news in 2010 along with the rest of the family alleging that they were being sickened by dioxin which they say was dumped on the property some decades back. They claimed symptoms such as fatigue, trouble breathing, skin conditions, digestive issues, and link a case of glandular fever that Eleanor had. They also had three pets develop lumps and die, and also say that their symptoms reduced when they were away from the house and got worse when they started drinking more tap water to save money. Their health insurance company (note that I haven't seen any information about which company this was, but IAG, which will come up later, doesn't seem to directly offer health insurance and I think only one of their subsidiaries does) paid out NZ$30,000 in testing to determine the cause of their illnesses without reaching any conclusions, and dioxin testing would be another $2000.
Chris said they were stuck. They couldn't sell the house, nor could they run it as a lodge. Instead he created a publicity campaign, speaking to reporters from the UK press, and talked about suing the government for its "100% Pure" branding of the country. Previous owners of the land, as well as tradesmen who'd worked there, reported no problems.
This wasn't the first time Chris had made the news, either. Back in 1993, when he still lived in the UK, he was charged with blackmail for passing himself off as an Irish priest and approaching a dozen or so large businesses saying (in somewhat less blunt terms) that they needed to donate £1m to a charity that turned out not to exist to avoid being bombed by the IRA. This was, for those who aren't aware, shortly after the IRA had set off a truck-bomb in London's financial district that killed three people. Chris claims this was a set up, that he believed he was working as a typesetter with a real priest until his family was threatened and he realised he had inadvertantly gotten involved with a terrorist organisation, but was too scared to go to the police for help. News reports at the time say he was sentenced to four years prison.
The Fire
On September 9, 2011, Chris and Alison took a weekend trip to Hamilton, about 400km (260 miles) away. It seems like by this point the kids, now 18 and 20 or thereabouts, were no longer living with them as their departure in the morning left the house empty. It was shortly before midnight when neighbours spotted the flames and alerted emergency services, but by then the fire was already raging and the house couldn't be saved.
Five days later Russell Joseph, a fire investigator for IAG, took a look at the scene. He says he found burn marks characteristic of pools of accelerant, broken windows and stones that looked staged, as if to point towards intruders, things left behind that a thief would have taken but an absence of personal items that a truly unsuspecting resident would have left behind when leaving for such a short trip. He did find a home computer that he thought was in good enough shape to recover data from, which became very important in the coming months. Chris, on the other hand, says they lost everything - photos, jewellery, expensive watches, the far better of their two cars.
The Investigation
The forensic expert that Russell passed the computer on to, Martin Jorgensen, had more or less complete access to the data. He was able to go through search history and log files that he claims show suspicious research and evidence that the computer was active on the evening of September 9, having been accessed over the internet by a program called LogMeIn. Allegedly he also found "something" that made him believe a printer was involved, which they found remains of in the house, near where the computer had been recovered.
Chris had in fact had a computer with him, a MacBook. This was taken in December and the forensic expert says he found log files on that showing that the LogMeIn software had been installed, and was then removed in the morning of September 10. He also says that emails were permanently deleted from between February and September 11, two days after the fire.
Martin and Russell came up with a theory of events that they determined was plausible after a bit of testing. They believe that Chris logged on to his MacBook on the evening of September 9, used LogMeIn to access his home computer, and sent a command to the printer. The printer began to pull in the top sheet of paper, which was sellotaped to a piece of string and connected to a switch that was flipped when the string tugged at it. This completed a circuit involving a battery and a piece of wire filament wrapped around the heads of a few matches, which heated up until the matches caught alight. The flames landed on some kind of tinder and the fire spread, thanks to accelerant that had been poured around the house that morning before the couple left. They were able to take a video showing the system working.
On the basis of this, Chris was charged with arson.
Unfortunately for IAG a major flaw was found in their theory - even after months of searching Martin couldn't find any evidence that a command was actually sent from the computer to the printer, a vital piece of the chain of events. A year or so after the initial arrests Chris was acquitted of arson without trial. It didn't fix things for him, though, as not only was IAG still refusing to pay out his policy, but his house had been sold (it's unclear to me whether this is the same house or a different one, but I suspect different) and he owed his bank half a million dollars.
Badly Handled
It would be fair to say Chris did not navigate the situation well. Remember those blackmail claims from 1993? Twenty years on he was arrested for blackmail a second time, this time for threatening IAG to tell his story to the world if they didn't drop their case against him. He claimed to have proof of their misdeeds that he said he would provide to a British reporter he was already in contact with. IAG got in touch with the police and he was back in court. He wasn't so lucky here, eventually being convicted of blackmail and receiving home detention.
Even then his troubles weren't over. It turns out that in 2004, when he was applying to come to New Zealand, he reported that he had a clean criminal history. Sometime around 2015 or 2016, the immigration department learned that this wasn't true. The news reports of his previous blackmail charges had come up in the new blackmail trial, and somewhere along the way they were made aware of the situation. Chris claims that his NIS report shows a clean criminal history, though apparently didn't give any explanation of how this could be considering the pretty solid proof that he was, in fact, arrested and convicted of a crime in the 90s.
So in 2016, a deportation case was brought against him and, by extension, the whole family. (You have to feel bad for the kids here, who by now were in their twenties and had spent half of their lives in New Zealand.) By 2018 they had left the country, though I can't tell whether it was by choice or if the deportation went through. The information comes from his own website, which is naturally filtered through his own perspective and choices of what information to present. For the most part the website is heavily purposed to attack IAG and is still active - the last update from Chris was posted on November 10 of this year.
Further Context
There are a few other things to note around the edges of this case that I'll include here.
First: IAG's involvement in the deportation. There doesn't seem to be evidence that they influenced it or anything, but they did use an OIA (Official Information Act) request to the immigration department to request information about Chris Robinson. A lot of it was redacted, but they got a copy of his NIS record as submitted in 2004. Why? Unclear. This seems to have been around 2015 or 2016, after the court cases had wound up.
Second: Another fire I stumbled across while researching this. On November 23, 2013 - two years after the fire at Chris Robinson's house - another house in the capital city of Wellington burned down. This property was also insured by IAG, and they also refused to pay out this claim, alleging an extremely similar scenario whereby the homeowner, Peter Allan Work, accessed a home computer remotely to send a command to a printer to set off the fire. They additionally claim he then logged into a home security camera to watch the fire until the blaze cut out the power. This only hit the news in August of this year, so I don't think the case has played out yet.
Third: Some historical context. On February 22 of 2011 an earthquake hit Christchurch, in the more southern of the two major islands. Nearly 200 people were killed, most of them in the collapse of a commercial building that hosted a news agency and an English language school, and the city is still now being rebuilt. The reason this is potentially relevant is because insurance claims in the years since have been a mess. Through EQC, the Earthquake Commission, residential property has public earthquake insurance of up to $100,000. Anything beyond that is the responsibility of the insurance company. This has led to huge fights between damage assessors on behalf of the government vs the insurance companies that have dragged out over years, leaving home owners without the funds needed to fix their properties and move on with their lives and insurance companies deep in the hole. One, Southern Response, went bankrupt and closed entirely. The fire at Chris Robinson's house occurred six months after the main earthquake and about a year after an earlier one that caused significant (though much less) damage with no loss of life. By then it would have been already clear to IAG what a mess the earthquake response was turning into.
Fourth: To be clear there is absolutely no reason to believe this is at all more than a vaguely interesting coincidence. Chris Robinson is a relatively common name and it's pretty unlikely that no one would have made the connection if they were the same person. But in mid 2016, another man named Chris Robinson experienced a house fire. This one was in Otago in the very southernmost part of the southern island and was determined to be an accident caused by someone leaning a mattress against a heater in a house that was used for guests of the owners, who lived in a separate building on the same property. Slightly confusing to come across in my research, but otherwise just a sad accident.
Sources
www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/83868063/the-curious-incident-of-the-fire-in-the-nighttime The main article that I originally read, which I pulled the bulk of the information from
www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/84195020/man-acquitted-of-bizarre-remotecontrol-arson-now-faces-deportation?rm=a Covering the deportation
www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/northland/bay-chronicle/4329458/Family-believe-home-is-killing-them Earlier news report about the allegations of dioxin poisoning
www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/northland/bay-chronicle/4381235/Tourists-told-to-steer-clear-of-NZ A follow up on that discussing his publicity campaign against the government
www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/business/residential-property/122400793/insurance-company-alleges-remotely-triggered-arson-of-wellington-house The 2013 fire at Peter Allan Work's home in Wellington
100-nz.com/IAG/ Chris Robinson's website
Our main player is a British man named Chris Robinson, who emigrated to New Zealand with his wife Alison and two kids Alex (14) and Eleanor (12) in 2005. He'd previously worked as a physics teacher, then a computer businessman, though it's debatable how successful he was. Certainly they were able to purchase a very nice house in Kerikeri, in the northern part of the country, which they renovated into a luxury lodge. They would live there for the next six years. This time wasn't without incident - Chris was in the news in 2010 along with the rest of the family alleging that they were being sickened by dioxin which they say was dumped on the property some decades back. They claimed symptoms such as fatigue, trouble breathing, skin conditions, digestive issues, and link a case of glandular fever that Eleanor had. They also had three pets develop lumps and die, and also say that their symptoms reduced when they were away from the house and got worse when they started drinking more tap water to save money. Their health insurance company (note that I haven't seen any information about which company this was, but IAG, which will come up later, doesn't seem to directly offer health insurance and I think only one of their subsidiaries does) paid out NZ$30,000 in testing to determine the cause of their illnesses without reaching any conclusions, and dioxin testing would be another $2000.
Chris said they were stuck. They couldn't sell the house, nor could they run it as a lodge. Instead he created a publicity campaign, speaking to reporters from the UK press, and talked about suing the government for its "100% Pure" branding of the country. Previous owners of the land, as well as tradesmen who'd worked there, reported no problems.
This wasn't the first time Chris had made the news, either. Back in 1993, when he still lived in the UK, he was charged with blackmail for passing himself off as an Irish priest and approaching a dozen or so large businesses saying (in somewhat less blunt terms) that they needed to donate £1m to a charity that turned out not to exist to avoid being bombed by the IRA. This was, for those who aren't aware, shortly after the IRA had set off a truck-bomb in London's financial district that killed three people. Chris claims this was a set up, that he believed he was working as a typesetter with a real priest until his family was threatened and he realised he had inadvertantly gotten involved with a terrorist organisation, but was too scared to go to the police for help. News reports at the time say he was sentenced to four years prison.
The Fire
On September 9, 2011, Chris and Alison took a weekend trip to Hamilton, about 400km (260 miles) away. It seems like by this point the kids, now 18 and 20 or thereabouts, were no longer living with them as their departure in the morning left the house empty. It was shortly before midnight when neighbours spotted the flames and alerted emergency services, but by then the fire was already raging and the house couldn't be saved.
Five days later Russell Joseph, a fire investigator for IAG, took a look at the scene. He says he found burn marks characteristic of pools of accelerant, broken windows and stones that looked staged, as if to point towards intruders, things left behind that a thief would have taken but an absence of personal items that a truly unsuspecting resident would have left behind when leaving for such a short trip. He did find a home computer that he thought was in good enough shape to recover data from, which became very important in the coming months. Chris, on the other hand, says they lost everything - photos, jewellery, expensive watches, the far better of their two cars.
The Investigation
The forensic expert that Russell passed the computer on to, Martin Jorgensen, had more or less complete access to the data. He was able to go through search history and log files that he claims show suspicious research and evidence that the computer was active on the evening of September 9, having been accessed over the internet by a program called LogMeIn. Allegedly he also found "something" that made him believe a printer was involved, which they found remains of in the house, near where the computer had been recovered.
Chris had in fact had a computer with him, a MacBook. This was taken in December and the forensic expert says he found log files on that showing that the LogMeIn software had been installed, and was then removed in the morning of September 10. He also says that emails were permanently deleted from between February and September 11, two days after the fire.
Martin and Russell came up with a theory of events that they determined was plausible after a bit of testing. They believe that Chris logged on to his MacBook on the evening of September 9, used LogMeIn to access his home computer, and sent a command to the printer. The printer began to pull in the top sheet of paper, which was sellotaped to a piece of string and connected to a switch that was flipped when the string tugged at it. This completed a circuit involving a battery and a piece of wire filament wrapped around the heads of a few matches, which heated up until the matches caught alight. The flames landed on some kind of tinder and the fire spread, thanks to accelerant that had been poured around the house that morning before the couple left. They were able to take a video showing the system working.
On the basis of this, Chris was charged with arson.
Unfortunately for IAG a major flaw was found in their theory - even after months of searching Martin couldn't find any evidence that a command was actually sent from the computer to the printer, a vital piece of the chain of events. A year or so after the initial arrests Chris was acquitted of arson without trial. It didn't fix things for him, though, as not only was IAG still refusing to pay out his policy, but his house had been sold (it's unclear to me whether this is the same house or a different one, but I suspect different) and he owed his bank half a million dollars.
Badly Handled
It would be fair to say Chris did not navigate the situation well. Remember those blackmail claims from 1993? Twenty years on he was arrested for blackmail a second time, this time for threatening IAG to tell his story to the world if they didn't drop their case against him. He claimed to have proof of their misdeeds that he said he would provide to a British reporter he was already in contact with. IAG got in touch with the police and he was back in court. He wasn't so lucky here, eventually being convicted of blackmail and receiving home detention.
Even then his troubles weren't over. It turns out that in 2004, when he was applying to come to New Zealand, he reported that he had a clean criminal history. Sometime around 2015 or 2016, the immigration department learned that this wasn't true. The news reports of his previous blackmail charges had come up in the new blackmail trial, and somewhere along the way they were made aware of the situation. Chris claims that his NIS report shows a clean criminal history, though apparently didn't give any explanation of how this could be considering the pretty solid proof that he was, in fact, arrested and convicted of a crime in the 90s.
So in 2016, a deportation case was brought against him and, by extension, the whole family. (You have to feel bad for the kids here, who by now were in their twenties and had spent half of their lives in New Zealand.) By 2018 they had left the country, though I can't tell whether it was by choice or if the deportation went through. The information comes from his own website, which is naturally filtered through his own perspective and choices of what information to present. For the most part the website is heavily purposed to attack IAG and is still active - the last update from Chris was posted on November 10 of this year.
Further Context
There are a few other things to note around the edges of this case that I'll include here.
First: IAG's involvement in the deportation. There doesn't seem to be evidence that they influenced it or anything, but they did use an OIA (Official Information Act) request to the immigration department to request information about Chris Robinson. A lot of it was redacted, but they got a copy of his NIS record as submitted in 2004. Why? Unclear. This seems to have been around 2015 or 2016, after the court cases had wound up.
Second: Another fire I stumbled across while researching this. On November 23, 2013 - two years after the fire at Chris Robinson's house - another house in the capital city of Wellington burned down. This property was also insured by IAG, and they also refused to pay out this claim, alleging an extremely similar scenario whereby the homeowner, Peter Allan Work, accessed a home computer remotely to send a command to a printer to set off the fire. They additionally claim he then logged into a home security camera to watch the fire until the blaze cut out the power. This only hit the news in August of this year, so I don't think the case has played out yet.
Third: Some historical context. On February 22 of 2011 an earthquake hit Christchurch, in the more southern of the two major islands. Nearly 200 people were killed, most of them in the collapse of a commercial building that hosted a news agency and an English language school, and the city is still now being rebuilt. The reason this is potentially relevant is because insurance claims in the years since have been a mess. Through EQC, the Earthquake Commission, residential property has public earthquake insurance of up to $100,000. Anything beyond that is the responsibility of the insurance company. This has led to huge fights between damage assessors on behalf of the government vs the insurance companies that have dragged out over years, leaving home owners without the funds needed to fix their properties and move on with their lives and insurance companies deep in the hole. One, Southern Response, went bankrupt and closed entirely. The fire at Chris Robinson's house occurred six months after the main earthquake and about a year after an earlier one that caused significant (though much less) damage with no loss of life. By then it would have been already clear to IAG what a mess the earthquake response was turning into.
Fourth: To be clear there is absolutely no reason to believe this is at all more than a vaguely interesting coincidence. Chris Robinson is a relatively common name and it's pretty unlikely that no one would have made the connection if they were the same person. But in mid 2016, another man named Chris Robinson experienced a house fire. This one was in Otago in the very southernmost part of the southern island and was determined to be an accident caused by someone leaning a mattress against a heater in a house that was used for guests of the owners, who lived in a separate building on the same property. Slightly confusing to come across in my research, but otherwise just a sad accident.
Sources
www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/83868063/the-curious-incident-of-the-fire-in-the-nighttime The main article that I originally read, which I pulled the bulk of the information from
www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/84195020/man-acquitted-of-bizarre-remotecontrol-arson-now-faces-deportation?rm=a Covering the deportation
www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/northland/bay-chronicle/4329458/Family-believe-home-is-killing-them Earlier news report about the allegations of dioxin poisoning
www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/northland/bay-chronicle/4381235/Tourists-told-to-steer-clear-of-NZ A follow up on that discussing his publicity campaign against the government
www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/business/residential-property/122400793/insurance-company-alleges-remotely-triggered-arson-of-wellington-house The 2013 fire at Peter Allan Work's home in Wellington
100-nz.com/IAG/ Chris Robinson's website