Brisbane

PHOTO: Brisbane

A Brisbane real estate agent has been ordered to pay $80,000 and banned from the industry for life after a consumer protection agency investigation found he had been operating without a business licence and mismanaged trust money.

The ban came as Queensland’s Office of Fair Trading revealed it had returned more than $8 million to consumers in 2019 after almost 16,000 complaints were received – nearly 10,000 of which came from the Brisbane area.

Martin David Moala Jones and his company Diligent Property Management were jointly fined $15,000 after Fair Trading took disciplinary action against him in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

The Gordon Park real estate agent was ordered to pay $18,087 in compensation and $47,767 in costs, permanently disqualified from the industry and banned from being an executive officer of any company under the Property Occupations Act.

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