Adviser pleads guilty over Wattle scam
A former Canberra based investment adviser has pleaded guilty to 13 charges of knowingly acting in contravention of the Corporations Act by offering his clients interests in the failed Wattle Group investment schemes.
Marshall John Cobb, a director of Tax Invest Australia, now in liquidation, pleaded guilty in the Canberra Magistrates Court to being in breach of the fundraising provisions of the Corporations Act by making available prescribed interests in the Queensland investment schemes.
The 13 charges relate to investments totalling $197,000 by six people in Canberra and surrounding districts.
Cobb had been banned from acting as a representative of either a dealer in securities or an investment adviser for a period of one year in November 1999 as a result of his action.
The founder of the Wattle Group investment schemes, Geoffrey Robert Dexter, was sentenced to a 10 year jail term in May for his part in the investment scam.
Investors in the scheme were told their funds were on-loaned on a short-term basis to provide returns of up to 50 per cent. But the scheme were simply paying interest and refunds to investors entirely out of the incoming funds of new investors.
Cobb will be sentenced by the court on March 19, 2002.
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