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Joel Steinberg: Pensioner victim laments lack of accountability for white collar criminals

“Meet our director Joel . . . it’s safe to say you’re in good hands.” This Instagram post by Growth Advisory and Capital is a sick joke for former clients and business associates of Joel Alexander Steinberg who are still nursing their financial wounds from his “good hands”. To their dismay, he’s still operating unimpeded in the financial services sector with the seeming acquiescence of regulators. Steinberg’s dishonesty helped bring down a WA law firm in 2021. He was accused of stealing $220,719 from Symons & Co Legal’s Trust Account. WA Police were called in and he was charged with 19 counts of stealing as a servant and one count of engaging in a transaction that involved the proceeds of an offence. In November 2024, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions discontinued 19 charges in the Perth District Court. The remaining charge was remitted to the Perth Magistrates’ Court, and after pleading guilty Steinberg, 48, was convicted on March 25 last year. He received a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months. Magistrate Dianne Scaddan was scathing of Steinberg’s conduct in using $40,000 of trust funds from a client’s deceased estate to pay off his Amex card. According to the client’s will, the money was to be donated. “This was a clear instruction for money, a substantial amount of money to be dispersed to a donation, not to an American Express card in your name,” she told him.” Magistrate Scaddan acknowledged Steinberg had appreciated his wrongdoing at the time. “You wrote a note to your employer,” she said. “The seriousness of the offence, in my view, both with respect to personal and general deterrence, is a term of imprisonment with a 20 per cent discount for your plea of guilty and a five per cent discount for the remorse that you have expressed and your personal circumstances. “I impose a 10-month term of imprisonment. The question is whether I ought to suspend that term of imprisonment. That turns on, most tellingly, the fact that I’m told the debt has been repaid, and there’s nothing before the court that challenges that. “In all the circumstances, I’m satisfied there is a sufficient basis upon which it is open to the court to suspend that term, and I do so for a period of 12 months. I’ve sentenced you to jail. You will serve your term of imprisonment in the community.” Mum’s the word Just 15 months before his sentencing, Steinberg emerged from a period of personal bankruptcy — his second in 12 years. Steinberg was set to remain bankrupt for an extended period, but for the intervention of his mother, Janet, who put up $200,000 to settle her son’s debts. Unsecured creditors were owed $3.45 million. They were given the choice of recovering about five per cent of that versus the likelihood of getting less or nothing down the track. Steinberg was half way through his three-year bankruptcy. Bankruptcy Trustee Helen Joyce had been intending to push it out to five years because of his non-cooperation in her investigations. She reported he’d failed to deliver up books and records relating to his examinable affairs. He was in arrears on income repayments and also failed to give up his passport, as requested. After the majority of creditors voted to accept his mother’s offer, Steinberg’s bankruptcy was duly annulled. From bankrupt to mega lender Steinberg eagerly made up for lost time. Post-bankruptcy he’s registered three new companies, four new business names, and was made a director of another five companies. One of his new entities, Steinberg Capital Investments Pty Ltd, registered in July 2024, was capitalised with $75,000 in shareholdings. Three months later he acquired Voltaic Capital Pty Ltd, which had an Australian Financial Services licence. An AFS license is required by law to provide financial services, advice, or deal in financial products. The licence is cited by Steinberg’s Growth Advisory and Capital, which claimed in a Facebook post that it provided a $5.2m loan to a property developer to get them out of a bind. Its website boasts it has funded more than $250m in loans across Australian businesses. More recently, Steinberg has been engaged in other roles which seem anomalous with his criminal record. For example, he is business growth and compliance adviser for electric aviation company FlyOnE, which has plans to be listed on the ASX. In Australia, individuals can’t be company office-holders if they’ve been convicted of fraud or other offences involving dishonesty or acting against the interests of a company. Asked about Steinberg, the corporate regulator said it “cannot comment on the affairs of specific individuals or entities”. “We will consider the information you have shared with us and assess it in line with our usual processes,” a spokesperson for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said. “ASIC expects all Australian financial service licensees and their authorised representatives to meet the fit and proper person obligations set out in the law, and to comply with their obligations at all times.” Where’s the justice? Pensioner Eric Huttlestone, 80, believed he was meeting with a lawyer when he sat down with Steinberg at the West Perth offices of Symons & Co Legal in 2017. “He gave me the impression that he was a senior lawyer and a partner in the law firm,” he said. “’It’s my law firm’ he said. And I was sitting in its boardroom. Nothing gave me the impression it was anything other than a law firm.“ Mr Huttlestone, then a single father-of-two teenage boys, had inherited $300,000 from his late mother. His Centrelink disability pension was cut off and he needed advice on how to safely invest the money so he could provide for his sons. Steinberg was recommended to him as the lawyer to talk to. “He was advertised as an expert on all affairs of business.,” Mr Huttlestone said. “(He said) his investments were with secured borrowers and he put his personal assets at about $4m.” At Steinberg’s direction, Mr Huttlestone transferred the $300,000 into a “Trust Fund” of Instant Cash Flow Financial Solutions Pty Ltd, of which Mr Steinberg was the managing director. He said he was also offered shares and a directorship in the company for $50,000, which he thought was a great opportunity. But unhappy with irregularities in the documentation he received, Mr Huttlestone quickly got cold feet. “Within seven days (of the deal), I requested cancellation and a refund on the investment to which Joel agreed,” he said. He got the $50,000 back, but not the $300,000. “I did my research and became aware that Joel was in fact not a lawyer,” he said. “(When I asked him about this) he said he would be admitted to the bar probably in about two, three months.” Instead of getting his money back, Mr Huttlestone said he got endless excuses. In 2018, Mr Steinberg asked if the debt could be converted into a loan in which Mr Huttlestone would be repaid in instalments with interest. He consented, but it wasn’t long before Steinberg defaulted on the repayments. “All correspondence and contact with Joel was through the Symons & Co Legal office,” he said. He said the law practice was a great front for Steinberg’s business activities, providing him the perfect cloak of respectability. According to ASIC documents, Steinberg was a shareholder in the firm. Mr Huttlestone recalled a meeting with the principal lawyer and practice director, Virma Symons, at which he explained his unfortunate predicament and that he’d been tricked by Steinberg. “She said, ‘well, we’ve got our own problems with him’,” he said. He said his jaw dropped when she said he’d never been a client of Symons & Co Legal. Steinberg was initially described on the law firm’s website as “Legal Executive and Office Manager”. This later changed to “Law Graduate and Office Manager”. It also stated he graduated with a Bachelor of Law at Murdoch University in 2015. In 2019, the website was amended again to state he was undertaking a Graduate Diploma in Finance and assisted clients with “all non-legal work, as well as general management of the firm under the guidance of the practice director.” “Although Joel isn’t a practicing solicitor, his presence within the firm is vital due to his vast knowledge of all things business,” it said. Steinberg had sought to become a lawyer in 2015 but his application was rejected by the Legal Practice Board because “he lacked the necessary character and integrity”. As well as complaining to police, Mr Huttlestone took civil action in the District Court to recover his money and secured a judgment in his favour in 2020. Steinberg was ordered to pay him $300,000 plus 25.9 per cent interest from 2019 onwards. The money wasn’t forthcoming and Mr Huttlestone, a devout Christian, could have forced his bankruptcy at that point. “I didn’t want to hurt him that way,” he said. “But I was too naive, and he was just using that to make excuses and keep me hanging on.” In April 2022, another creditor successfully petitioned his bankruptcy. Mr Huttlestone was the only creditor who objected to the bankruptcy annulment 18 months later. Under the settlement, he got $28,000 back from his initial investment. “I haven’t had holidays . . . I still wear 10-year-old clothes,” he said. “If my children needed anything, I saved from my pension for it. I’m not pleading poverty and I’m not looking for sympathy in any way. I made a terrible mistake trusting Joel.” He expressed frustration with the justice system. After years of dialogue, WA Police ended up referring him to ASIC. “When I contacted ASIC, they said, ‘Oh, we’re not debt collectors,” he said. He sat at the back of courtrooms for 14 hearings as the wheels of justice grinded at a snail’s pace in Steinberg’s criminal case and was present on the day Steinberg was given a suspended jail sentence. “It was the first time I did feel angry,” he said. “Angry with the system, angry with the Bankruptcy Trustee, angry with the police.” Mr Huttlestone said he didn’t want anyone to be harmed by any of Steinberg’s new business ventures. “That’s the reason why I’m talking now, because it’s not going to do me any good,” he said. “I don’t believe a word he’s ever said, but I’ve put it all together afterwards . . . initially, I just walked in like a rather naive lamb to the slaughter. And he just took me for everything.” The West Australian has spoken other people who were scarred from their business dealings with Steinberg. Ms Symons, who became the Philippine Honorary Consul to Perth for four years following the collapse of her firm, declined to comment. Symons & Co liquidator Mathieu Tribut reported that Steinberg, who he considered to be a defacto director, had lodged a claim against the company “in excess of $280,000” and had threatened legal action. But his claims weren’t substantiated and he was a debtor, not a creditor. “Based on the information available to me, which includes a copy of a trust account investigations report undertaken by the Legal Profession Complaints Committee, I understand that a misappropriation of funds held in the Trust Account occurred as a result of Mr Steinberg drawing funds from the Trust Account into the general practice bank account and then withdrawing those funds. This resulted in a misappropriation of $220,719,” Mr Tribut reported. More promises and some regrets Joel Steinberg insists he has every intention of repaying Mr Huttlestone his $300,000. “The other people involved in my bankruptcy were mostly corporates and sophisticated wholesale investors. He wasn’t, and I probably shouldn’t have accepted his money,” he told The West Australian on Thursday. “I’ve got three kids. I feel terrible (this has) happened and ... providing my business survives, which is in your hands, he’ll get his money back . . . I was just about to give him another $50(000).” He said that Mr Huttlestone’s funds were lost in an investment that went awry. “I lost a heap of money as well,” he said. “I tried my hardest to pay him back out of other sources. But then I had all these other issues going on, and I just couldn’t . . . I’ve given him $10,000 since the (bankruptcy) annulment.” He said he pleaded guilty in his criminal case on the advice of his lawyer. “The only funds that were misappropriated by me was what I pleaded guilty to and there was no intent to actually take the money,” he said. “And that money was repaid.” He said the truth was he’d used his own money at times to pay the law firm’s bills and wages. He said he’d informed ASIC and the Australian Financial Complaints Authority about his conviction. He said he didn’t need an AFS license for his work, but he chose to get one “so there was no question about anything that I did”. “It’s not my money (that Growth Advisory and Capital is lending). (I’m) connecting people that want to invest in private mortgages and people that need private lending,” he said. “I still live in my same apartment in Claremont,” he said. “I’m basically full-time carer for my very elderly and not very well parents . . . I’m trying to get my life back together. “Yes, I went to a friend’s birthday in Europe last year for a holiday, and I go to Rotto on a boat, but I’m not out there with Lamborghinis and Porsches and $6m houses. If I was doing that, then write your article.”

The West Australian exclusiveJoel Steinberg: Pensioner victim laments lack of accountability for white collar criminals

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Joel Steinberg: Pensioner victim laments lack of accountability for white collar criminals