Solicitor defrauded friends, clients, associates of $12.5 million

A former Gold Coast solicitor has been jailed for $12.5 million worth of fraud that ripped off life savings of friends, clients and even a dying man.

Paul Griffin outside court yesterday. Picture: Dan Peled/NCA NewsWire

A former Gold Coast solicitor swindled over $12 million from loved ones and clients – including a friend of 41 years whose wedding he attended, and their elderly parents who lost almost $500,000.

Anthony David Gray, 57, will be eligible for parole in July after just three years behind bars for defrauding 46 people of $12.5 million through an investment scheme over eight years.

Brisbane District Court Judge Michael Byrne told Gray, who pleaded guilty on Friday to two fraud charges, that his criminality was at a high level.

He said Gray had hurt those who had trusted him professionally and personally.

Alwyn Griffin, the father of Gray’s close friend Paul Griffin, invested half of a $550,000 compensation payout he received for asbestos-related cancer.

He died, aged 78, without getting a cent back.

“Four days before Dad passed away Tony turned up at the hospital, sat on Dad’s bed, put his arm around him and guaranteed him my mum would get the money back within the next couple of weeks,’’ said Paul Griffin, 62.

Anthony David Gray

Alwyn and Audrey Griffin

He said his parents had earlier also invested $100,000 and then $80,000, but none of the money was recovered before his mother died 18 months after his father.

“My dad was a very strong person. It took a lot for him to cry, but I would go over to see him and he would be bawling, saying, ‘I can’t get on to Tony.’ ’’

Mr Griffin, a builder who had known Gray for 41 years, with the friends even at each other’s weddings, said he also lost $15,000 he had invested, when Tony Gray left Australia in 2017.

Crown prosecutor Steve Dickson said a total of $42.45 million had been put into accounts Gray controlled, through Synergy Gray Professional Services, including $18.3 million by the 46 complainants.

None of the $12.5 million has been recovered.

Mr Dickson said Gray had produced certificates of investment and monthly investment statements to keep the deception going.

Judge Byrne told the former solicitor and barrister he had brought disgrace to the legal profession and investment advisers.

The court heard $1.9 million went into Gray’s own accounts.

One woman who invested $1 million lost $70,000, and another man who invested $45,000 of an inheritance only got $15,400 back, while others lost everything.

Mr Dickson said Gray’s eight-year fraud started to unravel when a woman who had invested $2 million in the Ponzi scheme asked to withdraw $100,000.

When his company went into liquidation in late 2016, others tried to withdraw their money, but Gray left the country in February 2017.

His barrister Anthony Collins said Gray went to Fiji and then New Zealand to work, knowing investors were owed money but not knowing he was to be charged.

He was arrested in New Zealand in 2019 and extradited to Queensland.

Gray also pleaded guilty to defrauding a client of $150,000, taking the money for a court-ordered settlement that was never made, while he was working as a barrister.

Mr Collins said Gray’s parents had also lost money and his wife, who had breast cancer, and his three children had been left impoverished.

Judge Byrne reduced Gray’s sentence because of his guilty pleas and his extra co-operation in revealing 14 names of potential victims unknown to police, after his arrest.

He ordered Gray be eligible to apply for parole on July 22 and declared the three years and three months he had already spent in custody as time served on the sentence.