In a statement, ASIC said it had enacted the ban, the first under the new Stronger Regulators Act, allowing a permanent disqualification from involvement in all financial services or credit businesses rather than engaging in financial services or credit activities, on James Gibbs, who was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for fraud offences last year.
Gibbs had been an authorised representative of Madison Financial Group, and the director of James Gibbs Investments. ASIC had become aware of Gibbs’ misconduct through a breach report by Madison.
The District Court of South Australia found he had conducted unauthorised transactions on client SMSF accounts between 2009 and 2016, and had used almost $5 million of client funds for his own benefit, including by propping up his own business, paying himself and staff a salary and for gambling.
Between 25 June 2012 and 30 July 2016, Gibbs also created and used false documents, including bank documents and member statements in which he lied to his clients about the value of their investment portfolios to cover up his thefts.
At the time of Gibbs’ sentence in July 2019, ASIC commissioner Danielle Press said he had deliberately withheld information from clients to avoid detection.
“Financial advisers should always allow clients to access information about their own investments, and clients should be concerned if this is not occurring,” Ms Press said.
It must be great to just sit back like ASIC can and have matters reported to them and claim glory.
ASIC needs to be more proactive and find these matters with a better audit process – early detection reduces these frauds and send a message to the every small % that do these things.
It is not just in the Financial Planning industry fraud occurs in every sector of society where other people’s money is involved – the financial industry just being the flavour of the month.
how long did it take Madison to report/detect the problem and how long did it take ASIC to act?
He had a lavish lifestyle too but this was not mentioned at sentencing. Expensive holidays and an expensive car. Grub is a bit generous as a description in my opinion.
Another Adelaide professional strikes again.
Oh yes. This guy is a grub and deserves jail time. But 10 years is a bit stiff when bank staff can lie, cheat, steal, launder money for terrorists and none of their management staff ever get in any trouble whatsoever. Im pretty sure that if a senior banker murdered his family and a bunch of his clients ASIC would find a way to blame it on an independent adviser.
Plus, people can kill someone and get away with 2-3 years jail. Id much rather be broke and alive than rich and dead.
So he had to be gaoled for 10 years before getting a permanent ban – that’s fantastic! It’s a shame I can’t insert a gif into this comment of a slow hand clap.
they wanted to stop him giving advice in the showers in prison – hence the ban…