Login
Jailed lawyer struck off roll for gambling client’s money
A principal lawyer jailed for his “weekly gambling trips” with more than $1.7 million in client funds has been struck off the roll, along with the solicitor who tried to help him get away with it.
Naomi Neilson
Dung Quoc Vo, principal lawyer of Vo Lawyers, was struck off the roll for gambling away $1,745,013 in money stolen from his trust account.
Vo was sentenced to an aggregate term of six years imprisonment, with a non-parole period of three years. Dinh received three years and two months, and a one year and seven months non-parole period.
The NSW Court of Appeal bench, made up of Justices Mark Leeming, Jeremy Kirk and Kristina Stern, found the misconduct from both legal practitioners to be “serious and self-serving”.
“It involved significant breaches of the trust reposed in Vo and Dinh by their clients. For many clients, the amounts of money involved meant that buying a home will be the largest transaction in their lives.
“While the clients have been fully reimbursed by the Fidelity Fund, it appears that neither Vo nor Dinh have made any reparations to that.
“It is also difficult to reduce to words the stress and distress that each client must have suffered when large amounts of money they had entrusted to their solicitors were stolen from them,” the bench said.
The first offence occurred in November 2019 when Vo took $22,117 transferred to the firm’s trust account for a stamp duty payment. Vo then gambled this away at an Adelaide casino.
Two months later, Vo took $1,572,896, and although it was not clear what this was spent on, the bench found that, “in line with his consistent pattern of conduct, it was likely spent on gambling”.
The last offence occurred in late 2020 when Vo took a further $150,000 that was “largely, if not exclusively,” spent on gambling.
To allay client concerns, false records were created and sent.
In particular, Dinh used the PEXA platform – which offers property settlement services – to create a fictitious entry that gave the impression that instructions were given to pay the client. When the client asked for more information, Dinh said it was “a PEXA problem”.
Dinh’s response to the client’s request to speak to PEXA directly was to inform them that PEXA would “only take calls/discuss with the authorised solicitor/account holder”. Once PEXA became aware of the fraud by the client, the firm’s system access was suspended.
Although Dinh did not gamble herself, the court noted she had cashed in gambling chips and spent money on food and expensive accommodation while she was in Adelaide.
The bench also referred to her “deluded idea that she could assist her co-offender to gamble and win back the money that had been taken”.
Vo pleaded guilty to three charges of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception, and Dinh pleaded guilty to one count of fraud and to being an accessory after the fact. Both practitioners received a 25 per cent sentencing discount for their pleas of guilty.
“When [the trust of clients] is abused by the commission of fraud, it is not only the client who suffers,” Justices Leeming, Kirk and Stern said in their written reasons for judgment.
“The integrity of the profession is called into question. Further, members of the legal profession are entitled to, and expect to, be able to trust other members.
“The scale and nature of the offending of both Vo and Dinh indicates that both are likely to be unfit to remain admitted lawyers in the indefinite future. Their conduct brought the legal profession into disrepute.”
The case is Council of the Law Society of New South Wales v Vo; Council of the Law Society of New South Wales v Dinh [2024] NSWCA 275.
Naomi Neilson
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
You can email Naomi at:
