Real estate couple cop fines, bans
A FORMER Gold Coast real estate agent took more than $290,000 of her clients’ money to help pay the living expenses of a friend and keep the business afloat, a court has been told.
Her real estate agent husband, who was fighting prostate cancer, failed to have the Maudsland-based company’s trust account audited after Helen Elizabeth White took the money.
About 54 people made claims to get money back and more than $236,000 is outstanding.
Mrs White, 66, pleaded guilty in the Southport Magistrates Court to 13 charges, including acting as a property agent without a licence, failing to pay money into a trust account and operating a trust account without approval.
Her husband Graham John White, 69, pleaded guilty to two counts of failing to have the trust account audited.
Magistrate Mark Howden yesterday sentenced Mrs White to nine months jail, wholly suspended. He also fined her $10,000.
Mr White was sentenced to a three-year, $5000 good behaviour bond.
He ordered both be banned from holding a real estate licence again.
Mr Howden said Mrs White, a former teacher, had been trying to run the real estate business while her husband battled prostate cancer.
She struck up a close friendship with another woman.
“She was duped into believing that she had this increasingly intimate relationship with this other woman and agreed to pay her expenses,” Mr Howden said.
Mr Howden said he accepted Mr White was unaware of what was going on in the business because he was so unwell. The court was told Mrs White used the money to pay the friend’s expenses and also pay to help keep the business afloat, by using it to pay expenses such as wages and rent.
Mrs White would take small amounts out of the trust account, starting in mid-2015 and ending in 2016.
She continued to take money out of the trust account after the Office of Fair Trading froze the trust account.
It took about a year to determine how much money had been taken and the real estate business was put into receivership. Mrs White also placed a listing for a Coomera home after her licence was suspended towards the end of 2016 while investigations were taking place.