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A former property manager from Mount Lawley has been ordered to pay over $10,500 for illegally diverting agency trust funds into her own company’s bank account.
The Perth Magistrates Court has criminally convicted Gina Michelle Church and handed her a $5,000 fine after she pleaded guilty to breaching the Real Estate and Business Agents Act for trust fund misuse.
Through this decision, Church was fined $5,000 for unlawfully withdrawing funds from her former agency’s trust account seven times between February 2021 and March 2022, and was also ordered to pay $4,550.67 in compensation and $1,026.67 in costs.
The court heard that Church inserted her own company’s bank account details into transactions from the trust account that were supposed to pay for rent refunds, pest removal, carpentry work, and an insurance excess, with the bank statements revealing the money was then primarily spent on “leisure” and “eating out”.
Three of the charges against Church related to:
- A $318.25 rent overpayment on a Maylands property intended for a former tenant’s mother.
- A $660 refund on a Riverdale property intended for the former tenants.
- A $350 payment intended to reimburse a tenant in Mount Lawley for bee removal costs.
Church was also found to have targeted payments related to the removal and rebuilding of a storm-damaged pergola at one of her employing agency’s managed properties, including a $500 insurance excess intended for the building’s insurer and a $2,581.86 payment to the carpentry business that completed the work.
The former property manager also targeted payments for home maintenance work carried out by the same carpentry business at a Yokine property, resulting in a $365.89 transfer to Church’s company bank account.
While Church’s company eventually repaid part of the money owed to the carpentry business, this only occurred after the former property manager created a false transaction of $1,174.34 to withdraw further funds from the agency trust account.
In sentencing, Magistrate Sarah Wisbey described Church’s “deliberate, repeated actions as ‘serious misconduct’ and a breach of trust, requiring specific and general deterrence”.
Commissioner for Consumer Protection, Trish Blake, commented that the “misuse of agency trust funds was one of the most serious offences under the act”.
Blake emphasised that “as a licensed sales representative, Ms Church would have known about her obligations to protect trust funds”, and stated she instead “repeatedly misused this money and attempted to conceal her actions by doctoring payment details”.
“It’s a profound betrayal on multiple levels – to the clients, who entrust agencies to look after their money, and to the community, which expects the industry to do the right thing,” Blake said.
“This type of offending erodes public confidence in the real estate industry and brings the whole profession into disrepute.”
Highlighting that “tenants and property owners have the right to expect their money will be handled in the correct way”, Blake said the Western Australian government would “continue taking action to protect these interests”.
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