{"id":26244,"date":"2014-05-16T18:49:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T08:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=26244"},"modified":"2024-05-15T08:35:30","modified_gmt":"2024-05-14T22:35:30","slug":"ex-adviser-jailed-for-13-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2014\/05\/16\/ex-adviser-jailed-for-13-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Adviser Jailed for 13 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former financial adviser has been jailed for 13 years for stealing more than $4 million from her clients.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tina McPhee<\/strong>, an adviser-turned-entrepreneur from Adelaide, was sentenced in a South Australian court this week, after previously pleading guilty to 181 separate counts of theft. There were six victims named in the case, all clients of Ms McPhee who, in her capacity as a financial adviser licensed by AMP, acted as their trustee.<\/p>\n

The first client, Melanie McGuire<\/strong>, suffered a serious brain injury whilst a patient at the Whyalla Hospital, leaving her permanently incapacitated. She was awarded a settlement of $1.1 million for her injury and incapacity in late 2005, and in February 2006, appointed Ms McPhee as her trustee.<\/p>\n

Another client, Kevin Trahar<\/strong>, appointed Ms McPhee as his trustee after he was seriously injured in a car accident in August 2009. Mr Trahar received $1,941,235 compensation for his injury and incapacity.<\/p>\n

The remaining four victims were children, whose mother died in a car accident. Ms McPhee acted as trustee for the children, who received nearly $500,000 in compensation for the accident.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to conceive of a worse or more serious breach of trust<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Between 14 August 2006 and 16 October 2012, Ms McPhee was found to have committed a range of continuous offences with the intention of depriving these clients of the settlements entrusted to her. Instead of fulfilling her duties as trustee and distributing the money as requested and required, a forensic accounting report showed Ms McPhee spent just 5% of the $4,358,263 she was entrusted with on the victims or their family members.<\/p>\n

A court psychologist\u2019s report, along with filed evidence and the forensic accounting report, all of which were submitted as evidence during the hearing, showed that Ms McPhee in fact went on numerous shopping sprees, and took holidays to Italy, Europe and America. It was the last of these trips that Ms McPhee became interested in a New York-based juice franchise, opening her own Juice Revolution business in South Australia in 2012.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for AMP confirmed that Ms McPhee ceased working for the license in 2009. Ms McPhee told the court psychologist that she left the company because she did not enjoy being with AMP.<\/p>\n

AMP has expressed sympathy for the victims of Ms McPhee. \u201cIt is a very unfortunate situation and we really feel for the people involved,\u201d a spokesperson told riskinfo. \u201cOur priority is to work with the people impacted. We\u2019ve been communicating with those involved and we\u2019re confident that we\u2019ll reach a suitable resolution soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Handing down his sentence, Judge Stretton<\/strong> described Ms McPhee\u2019s actions as appalling, premeditated, calculated and prolonged.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat you would spend six years stealing their money, spending it, by and large, extravagantly on yourself, whilst they suffered and went without, and that they are now left with the prospect of living their lives without the money that was there to help them with their injuries and difficulties, is simply outrageous. It is difficult to conceive of a worse or more serious breach of trust than you\u2019ve committed,\u201d Judge Stretton said.<\/p>\n

The victims and the community expect that the law will do all it can to deter this kind of outrageously dishonest and amoral conduct<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cYour breaches of trust in the particular circumstances of this case were extreme. The victims and the community expect that the law will do all it can to deter this kind of outrageously dishonest and amoral conduct, particularly where the victims are injured and defenceless people left without resources as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the hearing, Ms McPhee read out an apology to the victims. The Judge said that it was hard to accept the sincerity of the comments, because the offending was \u201c\u2026so callous, so persistent and so relentless over such an extended period in relation to six helpless and trusting victims\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Judge also noted that AMP has, to date, provided none of the victims with compensation for the actions of Ms McPhee. However, both AMP and the solicitors who appointed Ms McPhee as trustee, are currently being sued by each of the victims, in three separate Supreme Court civil actions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can only assume that the formal commencement of proceedings means that the likely pre-action attempts by the plaintiffs to be compensated by the financial licence holder and the solicitors have proved unsuccessful,\u201d Judge Stretton said.<\/p>\n

Ms McPhee will serve a minimum of 10 years without parole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former financial adviser has been jailed for 13 years for stealing more than $4 million from her clients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-compliance-regulation","headers-new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}