Former Sunshine Coast financial adviser Brett Gordon has been sentenced to six years imprisonment for illegally withdrawing funds from his clients’ SMSF accounts.
In a statement on Tuesday, the corporate regulator said that Mr Gordon pleaded guilty to nine counts of fraud totalling $652,500 before the Maroochydore District Court.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) explained that Mr Gordon was a director and financial adviser of his financial planning business, Refocus Financial Group, and that between 2015 and 2018, he withdrew funds without authorisation from his clients’ SMSF accounts and from Diverse Capital Management, which held funds deposited by his SMSF clients for property development purposes.
He dishonestly used those funds for personal debts and expenses, as well as for Refocus’ business expenses.
In sentencing Mr Gordon, Judge Barlow KC described his conduct as “deliberate, fraudulent and unforgivable given his position of trust” and noted that his conduct involved people’s livelihood and occurred over a number of years. Judge Barlow KC also observed that Mr Gordon did not attempt to repay his victims.
On 11 July 2018, the Supreme Court of Queensland made final orders by consent, on the application of ASIC, winding up entities operated by Mr Gordon, Refocus and Consultia Super, and restraining Mr Gordon from carrying on a financial services business without holding an Australian Financial Services (AFS) licence or being an authorised representative of an AFS licensee.
Late last week, senior financial planner Gavin Fineff was sentenced by the Downing Centre District Court in Sydney after he pleaded guilty last year to deceiving 12 victims out of a total of $3.4 million over a period of three and a half years.
According to court documents, Mr Fineff, a former employer at Sentinel Wealth, offended against 12 individual victims who had trusted him with their savings and investments.
His crimes involved fraud of significant sums of money ranging between $60,000 and $745,000 and occurred in the period from October 2016 to March 2020.
Fantastic news that the checks and balances that licensed advisers operator within caught this guy. Unlike scammers that ripped off $3.1 billion last year. So why does ASIC seem intent on pushing out Advisers into the hands of unlicensed scammers.
$3.1 billion lost last year alone, and ASIC are coming after me because I left out a Jetski in my clients SOA. If we doubled the number of Advisers and had 10,000 more than yes you’ll get 1% or 100 poor advisers, but surely those other 9,900 advisers could save so many Australians from scams and deliver so much. Even better still if the honest advisers now left could double there client numbers it does so much too.
Facts and Logic… you know ASIC and government bureaucracy cannot handle that.
You see, if this clown did the full ethics course offered thru Kaplan then this would not have happened!!!
Have you done it yet? I am a very ethical adviser, and still learned a LOT from the course. Glad that after 20 years of practice, I still had to do it. Keeps me fresh and avoids me getting stale and bitter like some.
no matter how many hoops and exams and requirements the “Gubment” wants you to jump through, there will always be dishonest
True, but that doesn’t mean the course is a waste of time for the rest of us who don’t steal.
First of all, what a scumbag but…what idiot thinks in 2023 that they can get away with doing something like this with the electronic trails in everything we do!!
Good question. For the answer, refer to above….
Sadly, its usually some form of addiction that is more powerful that reason which drives the behaviour. Delusions of winning the money back and replacing it before anyone is the wiser.