NSW Trustee and Guardian Client Abuse - Role of the Ombudsman

The concern from Marilyn’s Story is that Marilyn only received compensation and had NSWTG made answerable for the wrong done to her because she knew somebody who was prepared to put up the money and take the matter to court on her behalf. If this had not been the case, there is no doubt she would have received nothing at all for the losses she sustained.

For two years I had taken my complaint to NSWTG, the Ombudsman and the Attorney General, and for two years the response had always been that NSWTG had done nothing wrong and had no case to answer. They said this had been confirmed by a thorough and exhaustive investigation by the Ombudsman, who had found there was insufficient evidence of unreasonable or wrong conduct by NSWTG, whether committed wilfully or through negligence or incompetence, to warrant further investigation. It left me with no choice but to commence legal proceedings as the evidence I had was so strong and compelling.

1. NSWTG claimed Marilyn’s personal effects and furniture had been stolen but refused to report the alleged thefts to the police and their insurance company when instructed to do so. This should have have been just standard procedure and for NSWTG not to do so should have raised the Ombudsman’s suspicions.

2. NSWTG paid an invoice for $2,950.00 out of Marilyn’s trust account to an unidentifiable business without an ABN, which included charges totalling $1,100.00 to transport Marilyn’s personal effects and furniture to the local waste management and local charity, while at the same time telling Marilyn her belongings had been stolen. The Ombudsman saw no reason to question the payment or ask why the payment for the removal of her belongings was concealed on Marilyn’s trust account by describing it as a property expense charge instead.

3. NSWTG did not prepare an inventory of what was supposedly removed from Marilyn’s property by the bogus business, something which it is required to do under its procedures for clearing properties policy.

4. NSWTG disregarded Marilyn’s instructions that her belongings were to be held with arrangements made for them to be sent to the home of her brother.

5. NSWTG had always told Marilyn that the contents of her home were insured in accordance with her instructions when in fact NSWTG had never insured them. This was not known to Marilyn at the time her belongings disappeared and was only discovered when I replaced NSWTG as Marilyn’s financial manager.

6. NSWTG claimed that the purchaser’s offer to buy Marilyn’s home had been made ahead of my offer to provide the funds needed to make the sale unnecessary, and that NSWTG had become contractually obligated to the sale as a deposit had already been put down. The Ombudsman supported NSWTG’s account as to the timing of the purchaser’s offer and of the legal obligations this had placed on them.

7. However, after subpoenaing the files of both NSWTG and the purchaser’s conveyancer, I was able to establish that my offer to provide the funds needed had been made six days prior to the purchaser making her offer. Further, and much more importantly, a letter sent by NSWTG’s solicitors to the purchaser’s conveyancer at the time of the purchaser’s offer made the legal situation very clear. The letter stated that no binding legal relationship would come into existence unless and until contracts were exchanged. The contracts were not exchanged until 12/3/14, more than a month after my offer to provide the outstanding funds needed to stop the sale. Prior to then the purchaser had not even put a holding deposit down to have an interest of any sort in Marilyn’s property. The letter therefore became very important in claiming damages over the sale.

8. It was also only after having NSWTG’s files subpoenaed that I was able to obtain a copy of the bogus business’s invoice. This in turn enabled me to find out the true identity of the invoice’s author, even though names and details given on the invoice were all false.

9. Enquiries with Marilyn’s neighbours, to find out more about the clearance by the bogus business, instead revealed that a very large amount of personal belongings and furniture had been seen stacked out on the kerbside in front of Marilyn’s home. My suspicions were confirmed when Council records revealed they had carried out a massive clearance from Marilyn’s address on 6/2/14. The clearance had been requested by the real estate agent and already paid for out of Marilyn’s council rates. Council provided me with documentary evidence and details of the clearance, which was of such a magnitude that Marilyn would have been left with very little else for the bogus business to take away.

For the record, the real estate agent who was involved in all this was Debbie Albert who had the franchise for the Elders Real Estate business at Killarney Vale at the time. The address of the bogus business turned out to be the home of her daughter and son-in-law, while the property itself is owned by her husband, Donald Albert. The bogus business, using the name Inside Out Home Services, and its fictitious owners, Glenn and Kerry Law, have never existed at this address or any other address. A legitimate business of the same name, and operating out of Mudgee in NSW, has no connection with the bogus business.

Likewise, the bank advised that the account holder for the bank account number, which was shown on the invoice to facilitate direct payments, was not Willis & Law as the invoice was showing. Further investigations revealed that the bank account was in fact held in the name of Christmas Cove Caravan Park located in Laurieton NSW. Debbie Ellen Albert is the party associated with that business. This was the critical evidence that established she was the beneficiary of the fraud perpetrated on Marilyn.

Michael Gill, a senior property manager with NSWTG at the time, was the officer who authorized payment of the invoice. The invoice also included charges of $900.00 for professional cleaning of the interior of the property, including carpets, and $150 for replacing a broken window in the lounge room. The cleaning was of such a poor standard that the new owner could not be sure if the rooms and carpets had even been cleaned while there were no broken windows on the premises to replace. At the very least, Michael Gill was negligent or incompetent in authorizing the payment. However, he has also authorized payments from other clients’ accounts where the property clearances were arranged through Debbie Albert using the same bogus business, so it was not just a one off occurrence.

There can be absolutely no doubt as to the gravity of what Michael Gill did. The fact is he authorized payments for services which were never provided to a business which did not even exist. Michael Gill was a senior official with NSWTG and should have known better. The Ombudsman needed to fully investigate what took place and sought an explanation as to why it was allowed to occur. For the Ombudsman to say there was a lack of evidence to justify him doing so is just sheer nonsense. It does not augur well for the future for the elderly and vulnerable clients of NSWTG when this is the sort of response they can expect to get from the Ombudsman when public officials seek to exploit their vulnerability or cause them loss through acts of negligence or incompetence. Who will protect them if the Ombudsman won’t?

Debbie Albert’s fraudulent scheme was much the same as the one that took place in the A.C.T. recently and which has been reported on this website’s Abuse Around Australia page. The big difference was that the A.C.T. Public Trustee and Guardian reported the fraudulent payments to the police and refunded the moneys to their clients accounts. NSWTG did not do this. Those responsible for the fraud in the A.C.T., including the Public Trustee officials involved, have been prosecuted and gaoled. Debbie Albert has not had to answer for her dishonest conduct to date. NSWTG advised that Michael Gill was asked to leave the service because of his negligence and no longer works for NSWTG. However, no other action was taken.