Staff reporters
Bankrupt former Byron Bay real estate agent Sarah Dougan has begun trading again – this time in Los Angeles – according to a report on last night’s A Current Affair program.
On 18 November 2011, Dougan’s real estate licence was rescinded by Fair Trading NSW and she was disqualified for 15 years from being involved in the industry.
Dougan’s dodgy dealings around the Byron shire were exposed following the collapse of her upmarket Belle real estate franchise earlier that year.
Dougan declared herself bankrupt for nearly $30 million, including the proceeds of sales that the vendors never saw and income from property rentals not paid to owners.
She subsequently fled the country without the approval of her bankruptcy trustee, an offence that is punishable by a jail term. Despite numerous emails from bankruptcy trustee Andrew Wylie, Dougan has refused to return to Australia.
Although she is banned from operating in Australia, ACA revealed that Dougan has since migrated to the US, managed to acquire a green card (work permit) and has opened a real estate business operating out of serviced offices on upmarket Wilshire Boulevard under the name Simsara Property Group.
The fraud squad is still investigating what happened to the money and her former boss, Peter Hanscombe, told ACA that with all of her financial services experience Dougan could well have hidden much of it.
The program alleges that one Sydney client of Dougan’s, Nick Verykios, had his signature forged on documents for loans for millions of dollars that he wasn’t aware of – including one alone worth $1.7 million with NAB.
When Dougan set up the Belle franchise in Byron in 2010, she came with what people saw as impeccable credentials – a successful background in financing real estate deals and a reference from within a leading investment bank.
By the end of the year the plan seemed to be working, with luxury properties ‘selling like hot cakes’. But by mid 2011 several multimillion dollar deals failed to finalise, state authorities were investigating $600,000 missing from her trust account, and a series of court cases were commenced against and some of her associates.
Several vendors complained of cheques to the value of a hundred thousand dollars or more bouncing. Most of them never got their money back.
The Belle franchisor moved in to close down the office and terminate Dougan’s services. And a Fair Trading investigation quickly followed.
In one case, three exclusive properties in Massinger, Carlyle and Childe streets were being sold through Belle to a single buyer for well over $2,000,000 each, prices believed by some local agents to be far in excess of market value.
In another case, Belle’s Byron office was helping to arrange the sale of the Broken Head property belonging to former barrister Tim Gotterson. At one point in negotiations the deal involved a complex financial arrangement that appeared to potentially inflate the real price of the transaction.
Documents and emails exchanged between Tim Gotterson and Sarah Dougan, and provided by Mr Gotterson to The Echo at the time, suggested the arrangement involved the seller lending $500,000 to a potential buyer to help him make the purchase.
If the first two repayments of $100,000 each were made ahead of schedule, the rest of the repayments would not be required.
Though the deal ultimately failed, if successful it could have resulted in the sale price being as much as $300,000 more than what the seller would actually have received from the buyer.
Extradite her and throw her in jail.
People like this need to be neutralised. Greedy, unscrupulous, manipulative and sociopathic people like this should not be allowed to cause more pain in our society.
With a CV like that can’t this woman be extradited to face the courts here? A US green card is not easy to obtain and I’m assuming that she could prove she had enough money to become a business migrant. So much for bankruptcy!
Sarah Dougan is on two year probation in America they have taken her passport which is more then they did here it has been 6 years since this women ruined a lot of people’s lives but our justice system has let us all down. What a joke her father Stewart Dougan who was a director was not even questioned and he was sending $10,000 at a time to her that’s how she got the money out but set her company up in America 6 years before she fled and our justice system says it needs more evidence to convict her.
We need to get this Bankrupsy law changed we as victims owe it to the children to have this law changed to stop people like Sarah Dougan doing this to hard working Australians.
Help me change this Law.
I am trying to find information on this case for a presentation. How did you know she was put on probation and lost her passport? I called the Sheriff investigator and he just said he didn’t remember after he testified against her years ago. Thank you.
Not sure if you’re still interested, but I could possibly answer questions in regards to her losing her US passport.
I am interested. Please contact me.
I am with Mel, How do you know she was on probation and how do you know they took her passport? And how do you know her father sent her money? What is the name of her company in the U.S. that she set up 6 years before she fled Australia?
Did anyone ever file charges on her (Sarah Dougan) in Australia or US? She is now in Orange County CA
yes. my family filed charges on her in the US. she had to pay us back.
Can you tell us more?
Can’t they extract her kidneys, lungs, ear and eye fir a nominal value and get her to pay back that money to victims