Ex-Raine & Horne franchisee Alan Yin admits siphoning $1.2m from company trust accounts
Credit card debt and a penchant for online gambling saw a western Sydney real estate agent siphon more than a million dollars from his company’s trust fund.
Police & Courts
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A successful Sydney real estate agent has confessed to misappropriating $1.2 million from clients to fund personal expenses and a considerable gambling habit.
Documents tendered to Parramatta Local Court on Wednesday said Alan Yin, the director of now-defunct agency Raine & Horne Fairfield, transferred approximately $844,000 in client funds into his personal ANZ bank account between June 2014 and March 2017 while working as an agent in western Sydney.
During the same time period, he transferred a further $366,670 from the company’s trust accounts to online gambling sites including PT Entertainment, Redfinger, Skrill and Universe Entertainment.
Court documents said the money included payments received through the rent and sales of properties which were not passed on to clients.
The number of clients affected was not revealed in court documents, however NSW Fair Trading said it had received 50 applications so far for compensation, totalling $386,146.
Yin was initially charged in mid-2022 with more than a dozen offences, however, in a deal negotiated by lawyer Mohammed Algalele, the 51-year-old eventually pleaded guilty to a single charge of fraudulently omitting to account for more than $5000 in his role as a director of the company.
The remaining offences will be taken into account on sentencing.
Court documents said Yin set up Taral Investments Pty Ltd, the company behind Raine & Horne Fairfield, in May 2014, along with business partner Tarek Madani.
Mr Madani was a co-director of the agency from May 2014 to July 2015, when he withdrew from the company.
Mr Madani is not accused of any wrongdoing and it is not suggested he was involved in the misappropriation of any of the missing funds.
Meanwhile, Fair Trading officers attempted to audit Taral Investments twice in January 2017 but the real estate office was closed each time they turned up.
They eventually gained access to the business records the following month, however after encountering anomalies, assigned a professional accounting firm to conduct an audit.
The court heard the accounting firm detected dozens of fishy transactions and eventually determined Yin had misappropriated a total of $1,211,334 of client funds for his own use.
He initially denied taking the money when interviewed by Fair Trading investigators and blamed the missing money on his secretary, who he said liked to gamble.
But the court heard he later confessed to taking the money himself and using it to pay off his credit card bill and fund an online gambling habit.
In a statement provided to The Daily Telegraph on behalf of his client, Mr Algalele said Yin had been going through a difficult period in his life when he committed the offences.
“My client is sincerely apologetic for his actions and he hopes the community will forgive him,” Mr Algalele said.
“Since the time of being charged, Mr Yin has turned his life around and now dedicates himself to family and friends.”
Raine & Horne Fairfield’s opening in 2014 was met with much fanfare from its parent company, with a media release issued at the time saying Raine & Horne had opened its first franchised office in nearby Liverpool 40 years earlier.
“I’m proud of the fact that my firm recognised the massive potential in south western Sydney many decades ago and has maintained and grown our presence ever since,” Raine & Horne chairman Angus Raine said at the time.
“It’s a region where the population is generally younger than the Sydney average and it’s for this reason that I’m so pleased to be working with Tarek and Alan, who while young in years, have about 30 years of combined real estate sales and property management experience between them.”
Yin’s matter will return to court at a later date.
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