Canberra agent’s license cancelled after taking trust money to fund home loan

Jennifer DukeDecember 7, 2020

ACT real estate agent Mark Blinksell has had his license cancelled for five years, and has been disqualified from applying for a real estate of business salesperson’s registration for three years after being found guilty of engaging in dishonest conduct by misapplying deposit monies received last year.

The deposit funds, that had been received around January 7, 2013, in his role as vendor’s agent, were effectively stolen. He subsequently misrepresented and lied about where the funds were. He had been engaged by the vendor in October 2012, and received $22,000 in a deposit cheque from the buyers in the January.

He put the cash into his business account, rather than into a trust account before transferring funds into a home loan in the name of two other people, notes the court transcript. A Commonwealth Bank home loan account in Lennette Anne Blinksell and Ellen Patrice Blinksell’s names saw a credit transfer from a GRE business account and a credit transfer of $10,000 on 11 January 2013, before a $5,000 transfer to the same account on 14 January.

When a cheque bounced in March, the vendors and buyers were alerted to the issue. The vendors brought in their lawyers, and contacted Fair Trading. Blinksell said that it had been mistakenly put into the business account.

The cash was repaid in September. You can read the full court proceedings online. 

Blinksell was director of Grapevine Real Estate Pty Ltd, also called “Grapevine Property” and “Grapevine Property & Business”. He engages in business and property selling activities, with his current LinkedIn bio saying that he has been focusing on emerging business brokering opportunities arising out of the GFC. He has been operating in the real estate, building and construction industries for 30 years.

His online bio says that the company’s ethos is “to deliver smart property investment outcomes to the residential and commercial sectors, through sound and honest practices in sales, leasing, property management and business development solutions.”

It also notes that Blinksell is a “keen participant in various property and business related lobby groups, and demonstrates a significant interest in the overall development and prosperity of the Canberra property market.”

This is one is a string of trust account-related misuse cases from a number of agents across the country.

jduke@propertyobserver.com.au

Jennifer Duke

Jennifer Duke was a property writer at Property Observer

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