The 49-year-old and his wife Karen Ailsa Bainbridge (47) would not tell police the answer to that question when they were arrested.
They would not tell Probation when they were interviewed before yesterday’s Dunedin District Court sentencing.
And they would not tell awaiting media as they left the courthouse for their home, where they will spend the next 10 months on detention.
Judge Michael Turner, who sentenced the couple yesterday, was baffled by the crime, which began the year after Gavin Bainbridge was employed as the university’s head of information systems.
His wife played a vital role, setting up a fake IT company and posing as a contractor through which they siphoned the funds.
The judge said such fraud was normally committed to sustain a lavish lifestyle or to support an addiction, neither of which appeared to be the case here.
Regardless of the motive, University of Otago chief operating officer Stephen Willis said staff had been rocked by the revelations.
One said the aftermath felt like a “tsunami” sweeping through campus, others felt complicit, some believed their hard work had been tainted by any association with Gavin Bainbridge.
While he was described as having “vision and energy”, those who worked closest with him began to see a pattern of manipulative behaviour emerge.
Gavin Bainbridge would hand employees projects they were under-qualified to manage, he would praise them and promise to mentor them.
But there was a darker side to his persona, Mr Willis said workers had reported.
“Bainbridge was antagonising a lot of people by combatively ramming his ideas through ... He was brutal in his quick assessments of people, rating some as morons and muppets to their faces or in meetings behind their back,” they said.
“It was obvious which side of Gavin you had to be on and, once again, this felt systematically and intentionally done to groom a team and create a work environment that would enable him to conduct his fraud.”
In October 2018, Karen Bain-bridge set up a company called “Studio-Us” in her maiden name Morton, to appear as an agency designing online software, court documents said.
Three months later, Gavin Bainbridge established the firm as a new creditor and supplier to the university.
No conflict of interest was raised.
Over the next six months, invoices were filed with the university’s crediting department.
In total, $227,700 was paid to Studio-Us.
No work was ever done.
An investigation found the money paid to the Studio-Us account was transferred to five joint accounts operated by the Bainbridges.
In an old CV, viewed by the Otago Daily Times, Gavin Bainbridge writes of his “strong commitment and values reflecting the importance of family”.
His interests included attending church, playing guitar in a band and volunteering as a Scout leader, for which he won a Special Service Award while living in Australia in 2016.
The court yesterday heard the couple had repaid $80,000 but were now living in rented accommodation and each was on a benefit.
It was revealed they had nearly $150,000 in superannuation accounts in Australia but that money could not legally be transferred to New Zealand and withdrawn to satisfy the debt.
The judge said it was a moderately sophisticated scam which represented a “gross breach of trust”.
Alongside home detention, the defendants were each sentenced to 400 hours' community work (the maximum such sentence) and ordered to repay a further $2800.
The full debt may be pursued civilly by the university, Judge Turner said.
