After decades of breaking the law, former ANZ financial planner Melinda Scott has pleaded guilty to seven charges of fraudulent behaviour including falsifying documents and illegally accessing clients’ funds.
The former Millennium 3 adviser admitted in Downing Centre Local Court to fraudulently obtaining $5.9 million worth of clients’ money for her own purposes without her clients’ knowledge or consent.
Scott, who joined Millennium 3 in 2004, was also previously an authorised representative of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s Financial Wisdom. She admitted that between August 1989 and April 2012 she falsified documents by forging clients’ signatures on redemption requests, altering payee details on client cheques and providing clients with falsified bank statements to hide her misconduct.
Scott also made regular payments to some clients who were expecting an allocated pension payment, but from whom she had fraudulently obtained their money. The net benefit derived by Scott was approximately $2.9 million.
Scott was granted conditional bail and the matter will return to the NSW District Court on January 24.
In a separate matter, former Storm Financial adviser and Queensland rugby league player Walter John Fullerton-Smith has faced court charged with making a false or misleading statement to obtain financial advantage.
It is alleged that Fullerton-Smith of Canberra misled an elderly couple from NSW in 2007 with the intent to obtain financial advantage for himself and his wife, Kim Michelle Fullerton-Smith.
The conduct allegedly occurred when Mr Fullerton-Smith was procuring the couple’s units, valued at approximately $706,000, in an MLC MasterKey Unit Trust as security for the trust margin loan account.
Specifically, it is alleged it was implied the investment would be safe if the couple signed documents authorising a third party mortgage over it as security for a proposed loan to either Fullerton-Smith and his wife or The Young Trust, of which he was the trustee and he and his wife were primary beneficiaries, while omitting to inform them of the true nature and effect of the documents.
Fullerton-Smith did not enter a plea when appearing in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday.
He was granted conditional bail and has surrendered his passport to ASIC.
The matter was adjourned for further mention to February 11, 2014.
