ASIC has confirmed that Western Australian-based Chris Marco has been charged with 50 counts of fraud.
It’s alleged that between July 2013 and October 2018 Mr Marco defrauded $36.5 million from nine investors, one of which was defrauded $10 million.
The corporate regulator originally took civil action against Mr Marco in 2020 to wind up the scheme. In December that year, the Federal Court found that Mr Marco had operated an unregistered managed investment scheme and appointed Rob Brauer and Rob Kirman of McGrathNicol as liquidators for related company AMS Holdings.
The court restrained Mr Marco from carrying on a financial services business or a managed investment scheme and ordered Mr Marco and other defendants to pay ASIC’s costs in the case.
In June 2021, Justice McKerracher found it was necessary to permanently wind up the scheme because of the “persistence and seriousness of the contraventions at issue; evident shortfall in investor funds; absence of any reasonably foreseeable prospect of a significant return to investors; evidence of related party and personal expenditure from investor funds; and deficiencies in record keeping as to investor entitlements”.
“Mr Marco’s unlawful conduct and attitude to financial affairs have apparently caused financial loss and no doubt related hardship to investors on a scale rarely seen,” Justice McKerracher said.
Mr Marco is due to appear in Perth Magistrates Court on Friday, 22 July.
The maximum penalty for each offence of fraud under the Criminal Code WA is seven years’ imprisonment, or 10 years if the person deceived is 60 years or older.
Can’t believe the attitude here. Nine investors have lost significant amounts of money and yet, all you can focus and comment on is ASIC and regulations – and then ponder ASIC’s aggressive investigation into our industry and FASEA ethics? Absolutely pathetic.
Hope ASIC can retrieve and return as much as possible to these investors.
I think his point is the fact that ASIC put all of their effort into pinging Advisers trying to do the right thing, but having a different (perhaps more experienced) opinion as to what clients need than a pen-pushing public servant working for ASIC; AND the fact that ASIC didn’t do anything to protect consumers for years while this bloke was well known to so many in and out of the industry given the number of complaints that had been made against him to ASIC. It took an investigative journalist to publish a story before ASIC stepped in and actually did their job.
So you think ASIC is doing a good job? I bet the nine investors who lost significant amounts of money would agree with the majority of comments here! I also find it sad that you think ASIC has any ability, competency or desire to do anything about retrieving funds for these investors.
I love the fact that with all of ASIC’s resourcing the best they can do is extort corporates/banks and let them completely off the hook for any wrongdoing as long as they pay the ransom asked of them; crucify small individual Advisers who’ve done nothing actually wrong by their clients, but the incompetent staff of ASIC make baseless allegations against them and the system is rigged against from the start anyway so that a few lawyers can leech off society and the taxpayer making money off the proceedings and appeals; and then occasionally make claims they’ve got a major player and scalp in the form of the Marcos – who Four Corners did all the actual investigating and legwork on anyway. Public service incompetence at its finest. 5 years of criminal behaviour ignored despite countless complaints to the regulator by the public. Meanwhile Johnny Adviser from down the road gets his *** handed to him with a lifetime ban for sending an FDS a week late. Bravo ASIC!
I’ve been in this industry for 25 years and while I have seen the banks get away with ridiculous advice and service unscathed, I’ve never seen a single ‘Johnny Adviser’ bothered by ASIC or fined or banned for anything that didn’t warrant it. Have you any actual provable examples?
There are a lot of examples I know of – there’s an Adviser who was banned for having had a different opinion to ASIC as to how best to calculate sums insured for insurances for higher income earners who spend all of those incomes. ASIC believed Super balances should be deducted, while the Adviser felt differently (as did the client it should be mentioned – the client was definitely not complaining either). ASIC claimed it was for the personal financial benefit of the Adviser as commissions would be higher. Commissions were higher, by around $100 per YEAR before taxes and work. At the same time the Adviser was able to demonstrate that as as a servicing Adviser there was no financial benefit to him as he didn’t receive commissions, bonuses and didn’t own a piece of the advice business either. The ASIC delegate stated that he knew more about insurance advice and sums insured given his lifetime in public service vs the Adviser who only had 20+ years as an Adviser. The Adviser had written statements from senior insurance executives & educators confirming the Adviser’s way of calculating was in this case industry best standards for such a client especially as you can’t treat every client equally as this would be cookie-cutter advice rather than personalised which is what this Adviser did.
Example 2: An Adviser was banned for sending FDSes and Opt-Ins in a format checked and approved by his Dealer Group’s Head of Compliance and also their CEO who was an Adviser in their own right AND who used the exact same wording and format. ASIC felt that including these documents with a short general market update was an attempt to hide the content and therefore mislead the clients despite the fact that the FDSes and Opt-Ins were in huge bold letters and tables in completely different sections to the rest of the enclosed materials. No complaints from clients.
Example 3: An Adviser was banned for recommending a Balanced (high balanced – borderline) client invest their Super into a portfolio that was I believe 80% growth assets but reducing annually over time. The client didn’t complain, though eventually for cost purposes decided to invest their Super into an industry fund’s Balanced option which had 93% growth assets with no reductions over time. ASIC felt 80% growth was too high despite the industry fund’s 93% growth and put it down to the fact that the one called “Balanced” was more appropriate because of its name, completely disregarding the actual underlying figures.
There are a lot of examples – you just have to look.
Do the punters (they aren’t investors) who have given him money have any recourse to getting it back other than through the court system? July 2013 to July 2022, ASIC are on the ball.
If he did take the ethics exam, he would have passed.
If only he had done the ethics course, he would have realised this was not in the best interest of his clients.
#redtapedoesnotstopdishonesty
Correct. I have just completed some mandatory CPD on Ethics. An hour’s worth regarding the corporate culture at Crown. Yet, I am a self employed financial adviser. What in the world wide of sports is going on here……