Dishonest adviser sent to prison
Dishonestly using his position to gain benefits in the amount of $800,000 has seen former Gold Coast financial adviser, Satvir Singh Birk, sentenced to two-and-a-half years imprisonment by the Southport District Court.
Earlier this year Birk pleaded guilty to five counts of dishonestly using his position as a director of the Carter Group to gain the above financial advantage, for himself or others, between September 2010 and October 2011.
At the time, Birk was an authorised representative of Professional Investment Services (PIS) and a director of the Carter Group, which was a corporate authorised representative of PIS and was now in external administration.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) alleged that Birk caused cheques to be drawn on a client’s super account without authorisation, deceived some clients as to the use of funds withdrawn from their super funds, and misled clients in relation to the value and other details of units they had purchased in an unlisted registered managed investment scheme.
In one specific example, the regulator alleged that Birk had deceived a client as to the price at which units in an unlisted registered managed investment scheme had been sold for and used a portion of the proceeds for the benefit of his father.
The sentence, which followed a prosecution by the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions and investigation by ASIC, included a condition that Birk could be released after serving four months upon entering a recognisance order of $10,000 that he be of good behaviour for a period of two and a half years.
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