Brendan Gunn was sentenced by the Local Court of New South Wales for dealing with over AU$180,000 that he had reasonable grounds to suspect were proceeds of crime. The court handed him 12 months' imprisonment, but he was released immediately after entering a AU$3,000 recognizance requiring good behaviour for the same period. That sentence matches the maximum penalty available under a summary prosecution for this offence.
22 Bank Accounts, Six Institutions, Repeated Warnings
From December 2018, Gunn served as a director of Mormarkets, a company that traded under the name Coinshype and collected deposits from Australians for cryptocurrency and other purported investments. Between January 2019 and May 2020, the company opened 22 separate bank accounts across six financial institutions. Multiple banks contacted Gunn directly to tell him they had received complaints linking funds credited to those Mormarkets accounts to fraud or suspicious activity. Every account tied to the company was eventually closed by the banks.
When two of those accounts were shut, Gunn received bank cheques covering investment amounts totalling AU$181,000 and then forwarded the cheques to an associate. He pleaded guilty in January 2026 to dealing with money reasonably suspected of being proceeds of crime.
As ASIC Chair Sarah Court put it, Gunn ignored clear warnings, including customer complaints passed on by the banks themselves, and by continuing to move those funds he helped shift money taken from ordinary Australians.
Before Mormarkets, Gunn spent six years at GAIN Capital's Forex.com brand, where he served as Director of Global Client Services for Asia-Pacific from 2006 to 2013, and later held a director role at Invast.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or legal advice.
