WA former financial adviser pleads guilty to unauthorised transactions

Oksana Patron

20 September 2022

Western Australia-based former financial adviser, John Wertheimer, has pleaded guilty to providing a financial services on behalf of a person who carried on a financial business while unauthorised to do so.

Wertheimer, who was a financial adviser under his own company, John Wertheimer & Associates Pty Ltd, before appointing Picture Wealth Advisory Pty Ltd to service a group of clients to provide licenced financial advisory services, also pleaded guilty to one charge of engaging in dishonest conduct in relation to a financial service.

According to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), between in May 2020, Wertheimer made 48 unauthorised transactions on the Netwealth trading accounts belonging to 36 clients of Picture Wealth and those transactions were made without the knowledge or authorisation of either the clients or Picture Wealth.

On top of that, between May 2020 and July 2020, Wertheimer lodged five investment instruction documents with Netwealth that purported to relay instructions to deal with financial products on behalf of clients of Picture Wealth.

The instruction documents contained forged signatures and were prepared and lodged without the knowledge or authorisation of four of the clients or Picture Wealth.

ASIC said that at the time of offending Wertheimer was not authorised by Picture Wealth or any other Australian Financial Services (AFS) licensee to provide financial services to clients.

The matter is being prosecuted by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions after a referral from ASIC, with the maximum indictable penalty for breaching s911B of the Corporations Act being five years imprisonment and the maximum indictable penalty for breaching s1041G of the Corporations Act being 15 years imprisonment.