I’ve not been the best quoted here! 
Seems a commercial miner with two claims but only mining one actively was filing returns for both claims and reporting that gold recovered was across both claims. This was in order to minimise royalties he had to pay to Crown Minerals. Seems they send people out to check the commercial sites and noticed that he hadn’t been mining one of them via aerial / satellite imagery.
My gosh he must be a politician - deceitful!.
Thats the media for you Gavin. They won’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. 
Good luck out there
JW 
yup all those panners out there that pay zilch and dont file a return for fossicking area will be fuming.
And those panners get so little that it is not worth mentioning. A gram here and a gram there and a very few get a reasonable amount. Not like the big operators with claims who have machinery or dredges.
Personally I think that good Kiwis should be allowed to take out a claim and only be required to file a return if over a certain amount.
Well, we don’t have to pay royalties until we get over a certain amount. Only the commercial operators will be needing to pay royalties. I’d love to be finding enough to warrant having to pay royalties! 
my understanding is peanuts for gold but in oil a similar mistake is worth millions in oil. Same rules differnt scale. It’s a bit sneaky. What does this permit holder do to land owners?