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A 363K Scandal: Swindling Financial Advisor Gets What He Deserves
A $363,000 Scandal: Swindling Financial Advisor Gets What He Deserves
Scams are frequent nowadays, although they happen mostly online. Australians are no strangers to scams as this current scandal reveals. A certain financial adviser scammed 363,000 Australian dollars out of a client to fuel his alcoholic urges and various other needs.
Luckily the law caught up with him and he got what he deserved. The thing about Australian casino players is that they have been swarmed with scams recently. The Australian Communications and Media Community has covered around 6,000 emails and SMS reports of scams that come from a variety of online casinos and slot sites. But the scams don’t just happen online, they happen offline as well.
Back in August 2020 a baccarat dealer was caught and sentenced for such a scam. The man in question was a regular dealer and he managed to peak at cards and memorize them before passing them on to his partner. The Sydney duo managed to snag an amazing sum of 467,700 Australian dollars in a little over a month. The Star Casino employee was sacked and sentenced to 2 years of jail as well as 250 hours of community service work. But the recent scam is a much more terrible one.
The Woman in Need and the Overly Indulgent Advisor
Scott Hines was a regular financial adviser for ANZ and he seemed like a good match for a single mother in need. The woman had a daughter with cerebral palsy and she needed to focus on her while someone managed her finances. The treatments were expensive, but she was lucky because she earned a $1 million inheritance as well as property. After she confided that fact to Hines, it didn’t take long for him to sink his claws into her account.
The 2 met in 2010 and he drafted a financial plan to help her out, but his attitude towards the plan changed in July 2011. He left her account $100,000 short when he decided to purchase a cheque in Swan Hill and buy some shares. During that year, Scott also got $230,000 from her account and lent it to another client, and charged that client $37,000 in interest.
It seems he had a swindling nature as he was sacked by the company because of customer complaints. But the poor woman remained in his clutches and in April he seized her entire account. Also, he managed to convince her not to inform anyone in ANZ about this.
Then he continued using her money to pay his bills, and council rates and also stole from the client’s pension. His audacity went so far that he established an account in the name of the Department of Defense and spent a bit over $10,000 in that name. Shopping sprees and alcoholic urges also sucked the account dry. Scott’s gambling and carefree lifestyle had caught up with him.
But his spending spree came to an end after he stole $363,581 between 2011 and 2018. He pleads guilty to three charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception. He was sentenced to 3 years and 5 months and will be eligible for parole after serving 2 years of his sentence.
Conclusion
It seems that scammers are everywhere and poor people like the woman mentioned before are prone to financial threats. The Sydney incident doesn’t bode any better, but there are steps you can take to keep yourself safe when playing your favorite casino games online.
Make sure the site is legal by checking out the license. Go for a site with SSL encryption and make sure there are other security measures. Additionally, don’t forget the customer reviews as they will show you how well a site treats its players.
