A ketamine addict who committed armed robberies at two banks in the span of a week while suffering drug-induced psychosis has been sentenced to home detention.
“Sorry to be intrusive but this is a bank robbery,” Man Taek Lim, 35, told a teller at a crowded Glenfield Mall ASB branch on Auckland’s North Shore in July 2022. Lim was disguised with a bandanna, a black face mask and black tinted glasses that looked like ski goggles.
He targeted a Kāpiti Coast bank six days later, fleeing with about $1100 after each heist.
Auckland District Court Judge Belinda Sellars acknowledged during today’s sentencing hearing that a non-custodial sentence is rare for a person who admits to two armed bank robberies. But Lim was “an exceptional case”, she said, that “requires an exceptional outcome”.
The judge referred to a psychological report indicating childhood abuse and trauma, including being bullied upon moving to New Zealand from Korea, which contributed to addiction and mental health issues as he got older.
“Mr Lim was acutely unwell,” defence lawyer Emma Priest said of the robberies, noting that her client had been hospitalised under a compulsory order before the heists. “It is not offending driven by greed. It is directly ... linked to his mental health.”
But since then he has achieved “huge rehabilitative efforts”, Priest added, pointing to an overflow crowd of supporters in the small courtroom - including family and people he had met through a live-in drug and alcohol programme. Lim also attended two restorative justice conferences with victims, including one so successful that the victim is now “supportive of a rehabilitative pathway”, she said.
But Crown prosecutor Kate Haszard opposed a non-custodial sentence.
Police released a CCTV still of Man Lim robbing an ASB bank branch at knifepoint inside Glenfield Mall in July 2022.
“This was very serious offending,” she told the judge. “We think prison is the appropriate outcome here.”
The Glenfield Mall robbery took place around 11.15am on July 16, 2022, after he waited in line to see a teller while dressed, as one witness would later describe it to the media, “like a ninja”. He later pulled a knife on a male teller while apologising for the hassle, prompting a female teller to push the bank’s panic button and leave in search of mall security.
“I want money .... quickly!” Lim told the male teller and a bank manager after ordering them into a back office.
“Once it was clear there was no money in the back office, the male teller went back into the main banking reception area at which point a third bank teller emptied the tills, handing Mr Lim the money,” the agreed summary of facts for the case state. “Mr Lim told those present that no one would get hurt and to get on the ground. Another female bank teller released the cash drawers to Mr Lim.”
The robber’s clothes were later found in a nearby park and all the other banks in the mall were temporarily closed, a mall worker told the Herald at the time.
Just days later, on July 22, Lim showed up at another ASB branch 600 kilometres away in Paraparaumu’s Coastlands shopping centre. He went to the bank five times that day attempting to withdraw cash, including a time he wrote down the name “Eli Chester CATCH” on a piece of paper in an attempt to help tellers find his details.
On his fifth visit, at 4.21pm, he presented a “time zone” card as identification then pointed a pistol at the tellers after the only other customer left. It’s now believed to have been a starter pistol, the judge noted today.
“The defendant told them no one would get hurt and to get on the ground,” court documents state. “The female teller pushed the panic button and released the cash drawers for the defendant. The defendant took a mixture of ‘bait cash’ and banking float from the drawers.”
In addition to the recent mental health issues, Lim had recently relapsed with his drug addiction, using an amount of ketamine “so high it could have been fatal”, the judge noted today. He was “seriously distressed” as he ran out of money to feed the addiction, fearing withdrawal and suffering paranoia spurred in part by threats from his drug supplier, Sellars said. The psychological report described the robberies as “acts of desperation and impulsiveness” and the judge agreed.
After settling on a starting point of seven years’ imprisonment, the judge then allowed discounts of 65 per cent for his guilty pleas, mental health issues, his personal background, remorse and the steps he has taken towards rehabilitation. He was given an additional discount for the 63 days he spent in custody, nearly a year spent on electronically monitored bail and time at the Higher Ground rehab facility that his lawyer equated to 24-hour house arrest.
As is often the case with end sentences of under two years imprisonment, the judge converted it to 12 months’ home detention. Lim was also ordered to engage in community work for 250 hours and to pay $2320 back to ASB.
“I wish you well,” the judge told Lim before he left the courtroom with supporters, commending him for his rehabilitative efforts so far. “You clearly have many more steps to make.”
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.