Former real estate agent Daniel Dona successfully appeals conviction for fraud offences

A former real estate agent who fleeced almost $3000 off customers has successfully appealed his conviction after he argued it was too severe.

Former real estate agent Daniel Dona, who fleeced almost $3000 off customers so he could transfer them into his own account, has successfully appealed his conviction after he deemed it too severe.

The 36-year-old North Parramatta man’s severity appeal was mentioned briefly at Parramatta District Court in February, three months after he was sentenced to a nine-month conditional release order, with a 15 per cent discount for pleading guilty to two counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception.

Later that month, the sentence was varied to a 12-month conditional release order but the conviction was withdrawn when the matter returned to the same court before Judge Stephen Hanley.

He was ordered to pay the Fair Trading Department $4250 in professional costs and $2921 to the NSW Property Services Compensation Fund.

Daniel Dona.

During last year’s sentencing, Dona’s lawyer Daniel Pace requested a conviction or a fine not be imposed on his client because of the “unfortunate positions he’s in” but the magistrate convicted him following “a great deal of anxiety and angst” he caused customers.

Dona transferred $2921 of tenants’ rental bonds into his own account in an “unsophisticated” fashion while he was an agent at Trinity Realty Holdings in Harris Park.

The court heard the stress of selling a business and planning to get married drove him to swindle the funds in December 2019.

Mr Pace told the court it led Dona – “an anxious man dealing with financial stress’’ – to pocket the funds: one $2000.90 from Glenmore Park house tenants and $920.38 from an Auburn apartment tenant into his own account.

In March 2020, Rental Bonds reported suspicious claims made using Dona’s agent identification and the NSW Fair Trading Department prosecuted the case and fined him more than $7000.