A recommendation has been made to remove the name of a disgraced legal practitioner due to her conduct in a misleading creditor scheme, including the employment of her parents as lay associates despite both having been struck off the roll of solicitors.
Dominique Grubisa
The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal found Dominique Grubisa, solicitor and director behind dodgy educational company DG Institute, guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct and professional misconduct, and recommended her removal from the roll of solicitors.
Last July, Grubisa and DG Institute were ordered by the Federal Court to pay millions of dollars in penalties and redress for their promotion of two programs that made false or misleading promises. Grubisa was disqualified from managing corporations about two weeks later.
Master Wealth Control (MWC), the first of the two programs, was advertised as an “asset protection plan” that falsely claimed to provide customers with “watertight” protection of their assets.
It was to operate by the customer mortgaging all their equity in property to a trust that would register a caveat over the title of the property, with promises it would “sit there compounding and will soak up all remaining equity so that there is nothing else for others to take”.
The second program, known as the Real Estate Rescue, advised students to identify a third-party in financial distress and offer to enter into an arrangement in which the home owner assigns their equity and gives a power of attorney to the student in return for a cash payment.
The student would make mortgage payments with the intention of one day selling the property, discharging the mortgage and retaining residue.
In a judgment published on Wednesday (1 October), tribunal principal member Ann Ainslie-Wallace, together with members Michelle Sindler and Mary Bolt, found Grubisa was in a conflict of interest when she acted for both MWC and customers of the MWC package at the same time.
A number of other findings were made in respect of Grubisa’s role in the DG Institute programs, including the making of misleading and deceptive representations, failure to provide legal services competently, and a failure to issue clients with a bill that included or was accompanied by a written statement about the avenues for disputing legal costs.
Ainslie-Wallace, Sindler, and Bolt were also that satisfied Grubisa intentionally encouraged or advised clients to enter into voluntary transactions for the purpose of “delaying, hindering or defeating” claims that could be made by existing of future creditors, “and thereby engage in transactions which might constitute void or voidable transactions at law”.
“The tribunal has concluded that in this matter, no order short of a recommendation that the respondent’s name be removed from the roll of solicitors is appropriate,” Ainslie-Wallace, Sindler, and Bolt said.
“In coming to that conclusion, we take into account that the grounds establish conduct which represents a very serious and persistent departures from a reasonable standard of competence and diligence.”
Another complaint dealt with by the tribunal considered the appointment of Grubisa’s parents, Maria and Christopher Fitzsimmons, as lay associates despite both being disqualified persons.
According to the Office of the Legal Services Commissioner’s register of disciplinary action, Maria Fitzsimmons was removed from the roll in November 2012 for misappropriation, misleading or attempting to mislead the Law Society of NSW, and for making a false declaration.
Christopher Fitzsimmons was removed in September 2012 for misappropriation, trust account failures, a breach of Supreme Court orders, misleading courts, and swearing false affidavits.
The Council of the NSW Law Society argued both were working for the law practice by preparing legal documents and sending them to parties with instructions on how to complete them, as well as personally attending the Department of Natural Resources and Mining office.
The tribunal was comfortably satisfied that both were acting as consultants and was satisfied that Grubisa was aware of their disqualifications and knew she needed relevant consent if both were to be lay associates.
The last set of complaints concerned Grubisa’s engagement of a private investigator to investigate another lawyer and obtain information about potential litigation against herself and the DGI Group.
The solicitor said he was contacted by an investigator who used a false name and purported to have purchased a product from DGI. In doing so, the investigator was authorised to create a false and misleading narrative, and created a false invoice to further the deceit.
Grubisa denied engaging the investigator to obtain information about Baker’s clients, but the tribunal said documents made it “abundantly clear” she instigated the investigation to “obtain information about the potential class action and the identity of [the solicitor’s] clients”.
The evidence also established that Grubisa “knew of and authorised the methods used by the investigators to deceive the solicitor”.
“The respondent’s conduct demonstrates a want of honesty and integrity in her dealings with another solicitor, which, in the tribunal’s view of itself justifies a finding that the respondent is not a fit and proper person to engage in legal practice and amounts to professional misconduct,” the tribunal members said.
The case: The Council of the Law Society of NSW v Grubisa [2025] NSWCATOD 127.
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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