Financial adviser Gavin Fineff jailed for defrauding clients out of $3.35m to fund his gambling

A ‘prosperous’ financial adviser has been jailed after defrauding clients out of $3.35million to fund his gambling addiction. 

Gavin Fineff was married with two children and earning around $160,000 a year with Sydney company Sentinel Management when his gambling got out of control.

He borrowed $90,000 from his mother to buy a share in Sentinel, but started gambling, losing and then gambling more to try to recover his losses. 

Fineff, 44, swindled sums ranging between $60,000 to $745,000 from a dozen victims who trusted him to look after their savings and increase it.

He was sentenced in the NSW District Court to at least five years and four months in jail after pleading guilty to 12 charges of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception. 

‘I am satisfied his decision to gamble the substantial sum given to him by his mother and his subsequent “chasing” of those funds was the start of his slide into the serious criminal conduct,’ Judge Christopher O’Brien said in sentencing Fineff.

‘It saw the unravelling of what would likely have been a promising and prosperous future.’

Between October 2016 and March 2020, Fineff stole millions from clients who, Judge O’Brien said, trusted him to act in their best interest.

Before being arrested and charged, Fineff admitted in a letter to the owner and managing director of Sentinel that he got money from family, friends and clients and lost it gambling. 

He was fired from his job and Sentinel Wealth used forensic accountants to figure out the extent of his fraud.

He had proposed to his clients that they give him a loan so he could buy shares in either Sentinel, Surf Lakes Holdings Ltd or QBiotics Group Ltd.

But rather than investing the money he got and investing it, he gambled it, 7 News reported.

He told his boss: ‘I’m sorry. I borrowed money from people to buy shares in QBiotics but the disease got me and I gambled their money away.

‘So I borrowed more to win it back and I won some and then lost it again.

‘Some people bought shares in QBiotics, they all wanted to help me buy some shares too so they lent me money but I lost it all and now I am in huge debt,’ he said.

Fineff stopped gambling when he saw that he had lost $3.1million on just one betting app.

‘How am I going to fix that,’ he told the court during his trail. ‘There was no way to justify it … I stopped because I realised I couldn’t fix it.’

Judge O’Brien said Fineff’s crimes were not done on impulse, but were ‘well-planned, deliberate and sophisticated’ and that in some case he had become close friends with his victims and their families over years.

‘His victims let him into their lives, and he seriously abused their generosity, hospitality and trust,’ he said.

Gavin Fineff stole sums ranging between $60,000 to $745,000 from a dozen victims. Pictured is a stock image of a man in handcuffs

Fineff stopped gambling when he saw that he had lost $3.1million on just one betting app. Pictured is an image of Australian $100 notes

Joyce Williams, 85, who had $325,000 stolen from her, got an email from Fineff in March 2020 apologising and admitting he used her money to gamble.

Ms Williams told the police, but the theft left with limited funds and she was issued an eviction notice because she couldn’t pay her rent.

The NSW police and her local MP helped her stay in the house, but she died from breast cancer later that year.

Her daughter Sharon wrote in her victim impact statement that her mum worked hard to be able to live independently, then Fineff took her life savings.

The judge said other victim impact statements spoke of the stress, anxiety, embarrassment, betrayal and loss of security the victims felt.

Most of the victims have not got any of their money back. 

The police investigation found that Fineff had accounts with several betting agencies and in total lost more than $4.4million.

‘The age of these victims … means that it is virtually impossible to envisage them ever recovering the loss they sustained,’ judge O’Brien said.

Since being arrested in May 2021, Fineff has helped to recover an estimated $1.3million that will be paid to the victims.

Judge O’Brien said while this was nowhere near the amount of money he stole, Fineff had not just ‘walked away from his victims without any effort to reimburse them’.

Fineff has spent a period in a psychiatric hospital being treated for his addiction and has also attended Gamblers Anonymous meetings. 

The court heard he’d become a ‘crusader’ for gambling reform, and worked with MPs seeking to make betting companies liable if a gambler uses stolen money to bet. 

He got a 30 per cent discount on his sentence for pleading guilty and for helping the police in their investigation.

He was sentenced to nine years behind bars, with a non-parole period of five years and four months.