{"id":11518,"date":"2026-05-14T21:40:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T21:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/11518\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T21:40:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T21:40:28","slug":"melbourne-individual-jailed-over-1-9m-dishonest-conduct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/11518\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne individual jailed over $1.9m dishonest conduct"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Melbourne individual will serve at least three years in prison after obtaining almost $2 million from investors via unlicensed financial advice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ashley Arandez of Hoppers Crossing,\u00a0Victoria\u00a0was sentenced to five years and six months in the County Court of Victoria and will be eligible for parole after serving three years and six months.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As well as this, he is automatically disqualified from managing corporations which will last until five years after his prison release.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.moneymanagement.com.au\/director-pleads-guilty-unlicensed-product-advice\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">He had\u00a0pleaded guilty in Victoria County Court on 1 August<\/a>\u00a0to dishonest conduct in relation to a financial product or financial service, carrying on a financial services business without a licence, and recklessly dealing with proceeds of crime between September 2017 and April 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This related to $1.9 million that\u00a0Arandez\u00a0obtained from investors while providing them with financial advice, while he was unlicensed and unauthorised to do so\u00a0and had been so since June 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>During the relevant period,\u00a0Arandez\u00a0recommended clients\u00a0invest funds from their self-managed superannuation fund\u00a0(SMSFs)\u00a0into investment products which he controlled, and promised fixed interest returns of 8-12\u00a0per cent\u00a0per annum or up to 300\u00a0per cent\u00a0payable on maturity after three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Arandez\u00a0used some of the investor funds for his own personal use, including purchasing property in his own name and a motorhome, and the promised investments to clients were \u201cmostly unfulfilled\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>ASIC\u00a0deputy\u00a0chair Sarah Court said,\u00a0\u201cArandez\u00a0betrayed the trust of his clients, misappropriated investors\u2019 funds and used the money for his own benefit.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cASIC took this action to protect consumers from harm caused by dishonest and unlicensed conduct. The Court\u2019s sentence reflects the seriousness of\u00a0Arandez\u2019s\u00a0misconduct and sends a strong signal to deter others from similar conduct.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The matter was prosecuted by the Office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions following an investigation and referral by ASIC.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Melbourne individual will serve at least three years in prison after obtaining almost $2 million from investors&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12363,260,12364,12365,12366,68],"class_list":["post-11518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-asic","tag-melbourne","tag-sentence","tag-smsf","tag-unlicensed-advice","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}