Banned director sentenced for running financial services firm

A former company director has received a prison sentence after he was found to have continued to run a financial services business despite having been banned from doing so.

In 2018, Joshua Fuoco was found to have engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct and unconscionable conduct, and to have broken financial services laws. His business was offering cash to vulnerable clients in exchange for sizeable commissions from insurance policies the clients did not want or need but that he forced them to take out in order to access the cash. Those policies were funded via their superannuation accounts, significantly eroding their balances.

He was banned for 10 years from being involved in the running of a financial services business. However, in 2020 he was found to be continuing to run one firm, Financial Circle.

At the time, he was charged with four offences, but in October 2022 pleaded guilty to one rolled-up count of managing a corporation while disqualified. He was convicted in 2023 and fined $6000. He was permanently banned the following year, and ASIC then filed a contempt application in the Federal Court.

Now, Fuoco has been convicted on 18 charges of contempt and sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, with Justice Horan saying it was "the most serious incident of contempt of court in recent years." His sentence is to be suspended for two years, with the judge saying he wanted to give Fuoco "one last chance."

Between March 2019 and April 2023, he was found to have been involved in five companies: State Advice, Ansa Finance, AFSL Group, About Advice, and Advice Now. All the companies were operating a similar model to that of the business Fuoco was running when banned.

The businesses generated some $2.2 million.

The judge said Fuoco's conduct "amounted to a premediated, persistent and wilful defiance" and "constitutes an extremely serious contempt with a clear tendency to interfere with the administration of justice and the authority of the Court."

"Mr Fuoco continued to run a financial business over a prolonged period in deliberate contempt of Federal Court orders. Today's judgment demonstrates such brazen and intentional disregard of the law will be strongly punished. ASIC will continue to take action to ensure court orders are complied with," ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court said.