A rogue Westpac banker who fraudulently loaned millions of dollars to elderly pensioners, including a 98-year-old nursing home resident with advanced dementia, has been sentenced to three years’ jail. But he will be released in six months on a good behaviour bond. Westpac’s former Pacific Fair home lending manager David St Pierre faced a sentencing hearing in Southport District Court today after pleading guilty to the ‘calculated’ dishonesty. The court heard he arranged about $4 million in loans to mainly elderly customers to invest in a Ponzi scheme called Capital Growth International Club which later collapsed. The victims, including aged and disability pensioners, were loaned up to $565,000 each by Westpac after St Pierre, now 46, falsely inflated their incomes and/or assets. Customers were promised returns of up to 20 per cent a year to invest in CGIC and were told by St Pierre their money was ‘safe’. But they lost between $78,000 and $540,000 each after CGIC went into liquidation in 2011. The 98-year-old lost $440,000 while a 74-year-old male pensioner lost $448,000. Crown prosecutor Bruce Mumford told the court that St Pierre’s dishonesty was ‘calculated, elaborate and determined’. Judge David Kent QC said St Pierre had been either dishonest or ‘extremely reckless’. Defence barrister Chris Wilson said St Pierre, a father-of-four, had been sacked by Westpac, banned for life from the finance industry, gone bankrupt, publicly shamed and was now working as a car salesman. St Pierre was sentenced today after pleading guilty to the massive scam in November last year. He was originally charged with seven counts of fraud and was expected to face an eight-day trial but confessed to his crimes before he was to face a jury.
