Auckland businessman Jinsheng ‘Jackson’ Rao has lost a bid for the Crown to pay $60,000 in legal costs after a criminal case against him and three others over almost $200,000 of community grants was abandoned. In a decision reported by Stuff on 30 October 2026, Judge Simon Lance refused the application. Rao administers grants for four major pokies trusts which handle millions of dollars of community funding each year.
Rao was charged in June 2021 with aiding or abetting theft by a person in a special relationship alongside professional pool players Matt Edwards and Molrudee Kaisemchaiyanan, and a sports official who has name suppression. The charges related to grants made to the pair by a trust that Rao worked for to fund travel to pool tournaments. All four had pleaded not guilty and elected jury trials, and the charges were dropped seven months after Kaisemchaiyanan died, aged 43, in September 2022.
Text messages at the centre of the Crown case
The Crown case was based on text messages recovered from a computer found when the Department of Internal Affairs executed a search warrant on a house in Glenfield, Auckland, as reported by Stuff. The Crown said the messages showed a “clear understanding” the grants were a favour granted only because of Rao’s influence. One message from Edwards read: “The funding is as a favour to Andy… there would be no funding at all if it wasn’t for this connection”.
The texts discussed Rao’s associate Jingjing ‘Andy’ Tong, who went on 10 of the 18 overseas trips with the players as manager. Tong was never charged and denied receiving favours from Rao or influencing grants. Judge Lance said a jury had an “available inference that Tong helped and [the money] was granted by Rao as a favour”.
Rules on pokie money for professional sport
Edwards and Kaisemchaiyanan were New Zealand’s best pool players; the grants let them travel to elite tournaments in places such as Shanghai and Las Vegas. Crown lawyer Danielle Houghton said the DIA was clear the travel breached strict rules on pokie money going to professional sport.
Rao applied for $56,620 in defence costs and $4393 for the costs application, arguing the case should never have been brought. He said the case severely damaged his reputation and livelihood and cost him more than $80,000 in fees. His lawyer, Honor Lanham, told a hearing the DIA case was “negligent or incompetent”. The Crown opposed the bid, saying it had an arguable case based on available inferences and discontinued only on public interest grounds following Kaisemchaiyanan’s death.
Judge Lance said a jury could “properly be invited to draw the inference that Mr Rao knowingly assisted the codefendants in their offending” and ruled that costs should lie where they fell. Rao has always maintained his innocence, and Lanham said he intended to appeal.