A Tasmanian real estate agent has been struck off after fabricating fake buyers and forging contracts for three separate property sales.
Thomas Ian Triffitt, a former property representative, was found guilty of professional misconduct in November by the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (TASCAT).
The tribunal heard Triffitt created fictitious purchasers – Sujata Pradhan, Community Ventures Discretionary Trust and Hamdy Azab – for properties in Hobart and Mount Nelson between March 2019 and May 2020.
He set up a fake email account to pose as the non-existent buyers and forged their signatures on sales contracts, which he then presented to vendors as genuine.
On one occasion, he even told a colleague that a $168,000 deposit had been transferred when no payment had been made.
Triffitt’s licence was cancelled and he was banned from the industry for five years, backdated to June 2021.
He was also fined $10,000 and ordered to pay up to $10,000 in legal costs.
The tribunal described his behaviour as “exceedingly foolish” and a “serious breach of trust”.
“His conduct also involved the intentional misleading of his colleagues to engender belief that the contracts for sale that he had falsified were real,” the tribunal said.
“This would have been serious enough in itself if he had engaged in the conduct just once.”
“Rather, he engaged in the same pattern of conduct three times over a period spanning some 15 months.”
The tribunal accepted that Triffitt had been dealing with significant work stress, anxiety, depression and problematic alcohol use at the time.
It also noted he did not financially benefit from the fraud.
“Rather, presumably his conduct, coloured by his vulnerabilities at that time, was intended to promote the appearance of him “performing” to his clients, employer and/or his peers,” the tribunal said.
Knight Frank directors reported Triffitt to the Property Agents Board in February 2021, shortly after he left the company.
His real estate licence was immediately suspended.
The case took nearly five years to resolve, with the tribunal acknowledging the drawn-out process would have caused Triffitt “significant stress, if not potentially distress”.
