Fallen property buyers' agent Cameron Deal jailed for fraud
The property expert Cameron Deal, 46, has been sentenced to six months prison after pleading guilty to scamming the Geelong footballer Stewart Crameri in a hoax real estate venture.
The former real estate agent and buyer's advocate blamed alcohol and drug abuse for his circumstances, claiming he had been threatened by an armed drug dealer over a $114,000 cocaine debt.
The 46 year old Deal (below) wept as the custodial sentence was handed down in the Melbourne Magistrates Court pre-Christmas.
His lawyer has indicated an appeal would be lodged, Fairfax Media reported.
With over 2,500 purchases, Deal very successfully promoted himself as "a respected media authority on all property matters" regularly offering himself to Melbourne media.
The court was told Deal, who spent over 20 years as an agent and buyers advocate, enticed Crameri to invest in a St Kilda property in 2016.
He instructed the then Western Bulldogs footballer to deposit $96,250 into a trust account to which he was a signatory.
Crameri was provided with falsified documents for the Crimea Street property which was not on the market.
The deposit was then taken by the former regular property seminar speaker.
Deal also pleaded guilty to unauthorised transactions on a credit card he stole from a buyer's advocacy firm that employed him briefly in 2016.
Another former business associate said he lost about $300,000 in a failed venture with Deal, which involved fraudulent sale contracts for three inner-city properties.
The money was only repaid after the dispute reached the "steps of court."
Over the past two years, Deal has been evicted from two apartments in Black Rock and Elwood over failure to pay his rent, while a Mercedes SL 500 was also repossessed.
It is understood several complaints about Deal's conduct have been forwarded to Consumer Affairs Victoria.
In 2010 the Melbourne Magistrate’s Court granted final orders against the South Melbourne real estate agency Infolio Corp Pty Ltd and its former director Cameron Deal briefly restraining them from operating as a real estate business without a licence.
The court found that the company had breached the Real Estate Agents Act 1980 by operating without a licence between September 2009 and 11 August 2010.
Consumer Affairs Victoria took out a temporary injunction against Infolio Corp Pty Ltd.
The company, which subsequently received its real estate licence, was ordered to pay $2500 costs.
In 2012 The Australian Financial Review cited Deal as an expert on property matters.
In 2012 he wrote on the rules and regulations regarding cooling off rights, then in 2013 Property Observer wrote of his weekend auction tactics. He was a big advocate of his local suburbs. He featured in numerous seminars.
"The lies and misconceptions that I saw as a real estate agent to buyers really shocked me," he once advised on the reason he became a buyers' advocate.
In 2014 still at Infolio Property Advisors, which he was a co-founder in 2008, Deal was in the media after seminars billing himself as an "expert across the breadth of the home market – from million dollar plus properties to $400,000 investments."
One of his earliest mentions was on Melbourne radio station Joy.