Victorian couple charged with $1.5 million fraud (ASIC, 2014)

Judgment entered

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In November 2014 ASIC announced that Maureen and Douglas Johnston of Carrum Downs, Victoria, had been charged with more than 70 offences over about $1.5 million raised for property developments. Maureen Johnston pleaded guilty and was sentenced on December 20, 2018 to 5 years 6 months; Douglas Johnston was convicted after trial and sentenced to 6 years in June 2019, but ASIC records that part of his conviction was later overturned on appeal and a retrial ordered.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The charges, brought under Victorian law and prosecuted by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, include fraud, obtaining a financial advantage by deception and attempting to pervert the course of justice: 52 counts against Mrs Johnston and 25 against Mr Johnston. ASIC alleges that investors in property developments in the United States and Australia, run through Investman Nominees (USA) and Small Business Management, were misled and that the money was not used for development.

An editor's note records that after a committal hearing in December 2015 both were committed for trial in the Victorian County Court. The original release shows no outcome beyond that.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because ASIC or the sentencing court describes new investors' money being used to pay earlier investors. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

Outcome. ASIC's release 18-391MR reports that Maureen Johnston pleaded guilty to three counts of obtaining a financial advantage by deception totalling $1,027,000 and was sentenced in the County Court of Victoria on December 20, 2018 to five years and six months, with a two-year minimum before parole; this is the outcome stored here (66 months). Douglas Johnston was found guilty after trial on nine dishonesty charges involving about $815,000 (release 19-107MR, May 2019) and was sentenced on June 4, 2019 to six years with a three-year non-parole period (release 19-128MR). An editor's note on 19-107MR says he successfully appealed three of the nine counts, a retrial was ordered on those counts, and he would be resentenced on the other six later; the note gives the date as 10 February 2020, which looks inconsistent with the hearing date of 28 January 2021 in 19-128MR, so the year may be a typo. We did not find or open the later outcome of that retrial, so Douglas Johnston's matter should be treated as not fully resolved. The convictions were criminal prosecutions by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, and the releases state no regulator penalty.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Ponzi schemes — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2014-11-11 ASIC media release
2. 2018-12-20 Maureen Johnston sentenced to 5 years 6 months (ASIC release 18-391MR)
3. 2019-06-04 Douglas Johnston sentenced to 6 years (ASIC release 19-128MR)

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• ASIC media release
• ASIC release 18-391MR (Maureen Johnston sentenced)
• ASIC release 19-107MR (Douglas Johnston guilty)
• ASIC release 19-128MR (Douglas Johnston sentenced)

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.