Sonray director pleads guilty to criminal charges

Russell Andrew Johnson, the sole director of Sonray – which went into liquidation in 2010 – has pleaded guilty to three charges of false accounting, one charge of submitting a false document to ASIC, two charges of theft and one charge of obtaining a financial advantage by deception.

According to an ASIC statement, “The charges relate to the use of various Sonray client's trading accounts to create numerous unfunded deposits for which no physical cash was involved. This was done to either obtain funds for use by himself or Sonray, or to hedge the trading book against margin calls.

“The effect of withdrawing funds from client accounts from unfunded deposit entries caused an actual deficiency in the segregated client account funds.”

Mr Johnson was granted bail will appear at the Supreme Court on 11 November 2013 for a sentence hearing.