Financial planner jailed for 9 years over $3.4m fraud

Mr Fineff was sentenced by the Downing Centre District Court in Sydney on Friday after he pleaded guilty last year to deceiving 12 victims out of a total of $3.4 million over a period of three and a half years.

According to court documents, Mr Fineff, a former employer at Sentinel Wealth, offended against 12 individual victims who had trusted him with their savings and investments.

His crimes involved fraud of significant sums of money ranging between $60,000 and $745,000 and occurred in the period from October 2016 to March 2020.

Court documents explain that Mr Fineff approached the victims via email, text message or phone, proposing that they advance him a personal loan to purchase shares in Sentinel, Surf Lakes Holdings or QBiotics Group, promising high interest rates and claiming that bank loans would take too long to clear.

“He would often indicate that the share and loan transactions were a good deal which promised strong monetary return at a high interest rate. He told them bank loans would take too long to clear,” Judge Christopher O’Brien said.

These funds, the judge noted, were then predominantly used by the offender for gambling, without the knowledge of the victims.

“The offender’s dealings with each of the victims was outside his usual role as a financial adviser. The offender told the victims that the loans were offered outside his role at Sentinel, and he was dealing with them in a personal capacity. The victims dealt with the offender because he was their financial adviser and they trusted him to act in their best interest,” the judge said.

“In respect of most of these victims, the offender had established personal bonds over many years. In some instances, he had become close friends with them and their families. His victims let him into their lives, and he seriously abused their generosity, hospitality, and trust,” he continued.

The court heard that Mr Fineff was first employed by Sentinel in 2010 as a para-planner before advancing up the ranks.

In early 2020, Sentinel’s managing director, Justin Hooper, questioned Mr Fineff after receiving concerns raised by clients of the offender in an email. A month later, Mr Hooper received a five-page handwritten letter from Mr Fineff, confessing to having a gambling addiction and being in debt.

“Mr Hooper and each of the victims had no prior knowledge of the offender’s gambling and debts until the offender came forward in March 2020,” the judge said, and added that Sentinel then commissioned forensic accountant Gary Gill to investigate the activities of the offender.

In arriving at his decision, the judge said he was satisfied the motive for the crimes was the offender’s addiction to gambling but noted that it generally would not be considered a mitigating circumstance and would not reduce his moral culpability, especially for offenses committed over an extended period.

He, however, added that the offender’s “excellent” prospects of rehabilitation, the fact that this was his first custodial sentence, and his need for post-release intervention and ongoing assistance with mental health conditions, along with completing gambling rehabilitation, have led to a finding of special circumstances, resulting in a minimum sentence of 5 years and 4 months imprisonment.

Mr Fineff was permanently banned by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in 2021. At the time, the corporate regulator said that Mr Fineff’s permanent ban was “necessary to prevent future harm to clients of financial services businesses”.