A Canberra real estate agent who used a client’s money to pay his home loan and then lied to cover the con has been stripped of his licence and been banned for five years.
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Mark Blinksell was the director of Grapevine Real Estate and the holder of a real estate agent’s licence and a business agent’s licence.
A vendor hired Mr Blinksell to sell a property in October 2012 and received a $22,000 deposit from the buyers on January 7, 2013.
But instead of banking the cheque into a trust account as required by law, he put the cash into his business bank account the next day.
Mr Blinksell then transferred $15,000 from the account to a home loan in the name of Lennette Anne Blinksell and Ellen Patrice Blinksell.
The sale of the vendor's property settled in early February and the sellers received a Grapevine Real Estate document that indicated they would receive $21,850.
But the cheque bounced when they attempted to bank it in early March.
Mr Blinksell claimed the bank had made a mistake, and the vendors engaged lawyers when the payment was still not forthcoming.
The vendors also contacted Fair Trading and the Office of Regulatory Services, with Mr Blinksell telling the regulators he had deposited the cash in his business account by mistake.
He also claimed he had offered to repay the money in instalments but had not received a response.
Mr Blinksell finally repaid the cash on September 13.
The Commissioner for Fair Trading filed action in the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal the following month, claiming Mr Blinksell had contravened two sections of the laws governing real estate agents by dealing with trust money otherwise than as directed, and did not pay the trust money into a trust account.
Fair Trading requested the ACAT bring disciplinary action against Mr Blinksell over the incident.
The tribunal, in a judgment published on Wednesday, cancelled Mr Blinksell’s real estate agent and business agent licences.
He was also disqualified from applying for a real estate agent’s licence for five years, a real estate or business salesperson’s registration for three years, and a business agent licence for five years.
ACAT presidential member Elizabeth Symons said Mr Blinksell’s conduct amounted to a fundamental failure to properly carry out the functions of a licence holder.
Ms Symons repeated a statement of principle from an earlier case.
“The community entrusts real estate agents with substantial sums of money when making one of the most expensive and significant decisions of their life,” Ms Symons wrote.
“It is imperative that real estate agents can be trusted to protect the interests of the community.
“It is incumbent of each agent to uphold the standard expected of them and not to bring the industry into disrepute.”
The presidential member also noted Mr Blinksell had “engaged in abhorrent behaviour in obscuring what he had done, in lying and in misleading the vendor and the applicant”.
