ASIC's Chairman Joe Longo said, ‘Fraud controls are increasingly important and this case sends an important message to financial institutions and other financial service licensees that they must have appropriate controls in place.’

‘While Macquarie implemented effective controls from January 2020, its earlier failures meant that financial adviser Ross Hopkins was able to fraudulently withdraw around AUD2.9 million from his customers’ accounts without being detected by Macquarie."

Between October 2016 and October 2019, Hopkins made 167 unauthorised transactions on 13 of his client’s cash management accounts via Macquarie’s bulk transaction system, totalling AUD2.9 million.

Macquarie admitted that it failed to do all things necessary between October 2016 and 15 January 2020 to ensure that the financial services covered by its financial services licence were provided efficiently, honestly and fairly by failing to implement effective controls to prevent or detect transactions conducted by third parties through its bulk transacting system that were outside the scope of the fee authority conferred on them, including those carried out by Hopkins.

Hopkins was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment after an investigation and referral of a prosecution brief from ASIC (21-114MR) and has been permanently banned from providing financial services or from controlling an entity carrying on a financial services business (21-242MR).