Appearing in the NSW District Court today, Melinda Scott was convicted and handed a prison sentence of six years and three months for defrauding more than 150 clients, with a non-parole period of three years and 10 months.
In December 2013, Ms Scott pleaded guilty to three charges of dishonest conduct and four charges of “making and use of false documents”.
“Ms Scott’s misconduct continued over 20 years and largely involved superannuation and annuities products that were invested for the longer term,” said a statement from ASIC following the court decision today.
At the time of Ms Scott’s plea, ASIC revealed details of Ms Scott’s licensing arrangements.
“Following an investigation by ASIC, Ms Scott admitted to misconduct that occurred between 2 August 1989 and about 27 April 2012. On 9 February 2004, Ms Scott became an authorised representative of Millennium3,” said a statement on the ASIC website.
“Millennium3 is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ). Prior to Millennium3, Ms Scott was employed in various positions in the financial services industry including at Roach Graham Scott, FPI Pty Ltd and Financial Wisdom Ltd.”
Millenium3 and parent company ANZ were co-operative during the investigation process, ASIC said.
And some of us wonder why our PI premiums go up
There are fundamental problems with the auditing process .
ASIC is more interested in FSG, fees etc when to do a proper audit the Statemment of Advise needs to be pulled apart to ensure it suits the clients. part of the process has to be to check the copy of the SOA that the selected clients for audit have to ensure they are the same.. The money trail has also to be followed showing applications and funds have been received by the fund managers etc. Checking with fund managers payments to clients is also an easy process and helps elimate fraud.
Ian, if they had nothing to do with it why did they foot the bill? maybe because m3 is a “wholly owned subsidiary” of anz.
Folks,
terrible bit of reporting here – this adviser is not an ANZ adviser. Ms Scott was acting totally independently of ANZ.
you serve no good purpose in being lazy with your headlines- other than bank bashing
No wonder the term “financial adviser” is on the nose.
Why would anyone with any integrity want the public to perceive them to have even the most remote connection to the financial planning industry and thence be lumped in with people of this ilk.
But then I’m sure you can come up with another label to limit the damage similar to the morph from “financial planners” to “financial advisers”.
I know.
How about “financial destroyers”.
Youre Kidding right? Blaming the banks and larger dealers for this criminals work is nasty and proves you have an agenda to push. How petty. This pathetic person stole monies over many years. Her files passed muster due to deliberate manipulation and no one complained as they had no idea of the lengths this criminal took to rip off her clients. The DPP should immediately appeal 25% discount on sentence for early guilty plea. What crap. 25% should be re added min 5 years should stand. Lifetime ban.
Chris B, m3 profitable are you kidding me? propped up by onepath product sales by its adviser salesforce more like
May be all you saints should find out how much of the fraud was committed before she joined M3. At least the bank was prepared to carry the whole liability not like most unprofitable licensees out there in the marketplace.
My understanding is audits were done but the paperwork looked correct. Good news is ANZ reimbursed all clients for loss of funds and interest on those funds, so no clients were out of pocket. One of the benefits of a licensee with deep pockets. I wonder if a small licensee could have made good on that amount of money? And regarding the bank making money ANZ would have been massively out of pocket.
Yep again the big banks just walk away! what crap,the regulators are and always have been too afraid to tackle the big boys.
This is a perfect case to prove that all the current talk about improving the business is nothing but hot air and will never stop crime in the industry. While ASIC lays around and gets its belly rubbed from all the big 4 banks nothing will change. The head of ASIC should resign immediately.
“Conflicted remuneration” Jim Kargas…what has that got to do with this story? Sending out an invoiced for a crap job is conflicted remuneration. It’s everywhere, some handle it better than others.
It must have been easy getting away with it, especially if your compliance auditor was too busy making sure an FSG was provided, a TFN deleted and ensuring the legal ripoff off commissions were all disclosed correctly!
Merv Gay,
Auditing advisers once a year is well and good but who are the auditors? What calibre of auditor is working there where this can go on for 20 years. Where what was management doing? This story wreaks of coverup!!
Amazing that the compliance/auditors and her managers at ANZ get off scot free!!
Why aren’t more people being jailed at ANZ who either turned a blind eye or helped cover up/facilitate her crimes?
Shame on ANZ and especially shame on CBA!! they should all share her jail cell.
3 yrs 10 mths is a joke and she’ll probably be out in 18 months on good behaviour or some crap.
Just makes life so hard for the rest of us who try to improve our clients’ lives.
Put her in a dark room for 20.
The financial planning industry continues to talk about raising educational standards to weed out inappropriate advice and rogue advisors. What the industry is not willing to address is conflicted remuneration.
Did we stop storm? No, we have just destroyed an industry, but fraud will still go on.
Once again we get a BS “i love you ANZ” message from ASIC, same as through the whole CBA scandal. Why is Scott the only one going to JAIL? dont tell me the bank didnt profit at all.
Good.
Maybe some bright spark could come up with the idea of auditing advisors maybe once a year.