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Adelaide lawyer struck off for $67k theft from family member
In just the five years he was in legal practice, an Adelaide lawyer stole tens of thousands of dollars from a family member, engaged in conduct that enabled a fraudulent loan, and misappropriated $15,000 from a client.
Naomi Neilson
Justices Mark Livesey, Chris Bleby and Ben Doyle have struck off Mark Adam Freer from the Supreme Court of South Australia’s roll of legal practitioners, just over two years after he was found guilty by a jury on a charge of aggravated theft under the Criminal Law Consolidation Act.
According to the Full Court judgment, Freer then misappropriated this money until the account was overdrawn in January 2016.
“Where a client’s trust money is deliberately used by a legal practitioner for a purpose other than the purpose for which the client entrusted it to the legal practitioner, the legal practitioner is regarded as having acted dishonestly,” Justices Livesey, Bleby and Doyle determined.
“The court must, where possible, protect the public from legal practitioners who act without honesty and integrity.”
In addition to the theft from his cousin, Freer was found to have made a statutory declaration in July 2017 in which he admitted to witnessing signatures on a loan agreement without ever speaking to the declarant.
This led to a fraudulent loan transaction and a mortgage registered on the title of an innocent party. Proceedings in the Supreme Court of Queensland eventually voided all associated loan and security documents.
Earlier, in March 2016, Freer misappropriated $15,790 from a client who had meant it to be used for a prospective marriage or partnership visa.
“This conduct represents a course of dishonest dealings and professional misconduct over a lengthy period, incompatible with the high standards the law and the community rightly expect from legal practitioners.
“The practitioner’s professional misconduct, when viewed as a whole, represents a serious departure from the standards reasonably expected from members of the legal profession,” the Full Court bench found.
The case is Legal Profession Conduct Commissioner v Freer [2024] SASFC 5 (17 December 2024).
Naomi Neilson
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
You can email Naomi at:
