PHOTO: Huijuan ‘Jenny’ Zhou. Linkedin.
A Sydney real estate agency chief executive entrusted with hundreds of thousands of dollars in homebuyers’ deposits instead diverted $539,000 from her company’s trust account for her own benefit. The buyers eventually got their money back — but one waited 15 months. The agent pleaded guilty, yet avoided serving her 10-month prison term behind bars. For an industry built almost entirely on trust, this case should make every buyer and seller uncomfortable.
Buying a home requires an extraordinary amount of trust.
You trust your solicitor.
You trust your bank.
And when tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars are transferred into a real estate agency’s trust account, you trust that money is exactly where it says it is.
It isn’t the agent’s money.
It isn’t working capital.
It isn’t available to pay the agency’s bills.
And it certainly isn’t a convenient source of finance when somebody needs cash.
Yet that fundamental line was crossed spectacularly in Sydney.
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Huijuan “Jenny” Zhou, chief executive of EW Property Group, pleaded guilty to three offences after an NSW Fair Trading investigation found $539,000 had been fraudulently obtained from the company’s trust account over a period of less than three months.
And what makes this case particularly disturbing is what some of the money was used for.
According to NSW Fair Trading, housing deposits were diverted for Zhou’s own benefit, including repayments on loans over her home and the purchase of an office.
$539,000 in just 78 days
The offending occurred between 2 October and 19 December 2023.
That’s less than three months.
NSW Fair Trading says its investigation identified three instances of fraudulent conversion following a consumer complaint.
Zhou subsequently entered an early guilty plea.
On 17 June 2026, she appeared in Parramatta Local Court and was convicted over the three offences.
The court imposed a 10-month term of imprisonment, but rather than serving it inside prison, Zhou was ordered to serve the sentence by way of an Intensive Correction Order in the community.
She was also ordered to complete:
100 hours of community service.
Fair Trading has additionally said she was ordered to report to Community Corrections, pay $500 in professional costs and attend a police station to have identification particulars taken.
So while describing the outcome simply as “avoiding jail” captures the practical reality that she wasn’t sent to prison, there was nevertheless a custodial sentence imposed — it is being served in the community.
Then there’s the $190,000 deposit
One episode outlined by NSW Fair Trading is particularly extraordinary.
A purchaser paid:
$190,000
as a house deposit to EW Property Group.
That money was supposed to be protected.
Instead, NSW Fair Trading says Zhou misused it.
The property was subsequently sold to another purchaser.
The original buyer then sought answers.
According to the regulator, Zhou failed to respond.
Think about that situation from the buyer’s perspective.
You’ve transferred $190,000 in connection with buying a home.
The property ends up being sold elsewhere.
And now you’re trying to establish where your enormous deposit has gone.
The consumer ultimately engaged lawyers and complained to NSW Fair Trading.
Only after that intervention was the money repaid.
Another buyer waited FIFTEEN MONTHS
The $190,000 case wasn’t the only one.
Fair Trading revealed another consumer was owed:
$123,000.
Eventually they got it back.
But 15 months later.
All affected consumers were ultimately reimbursed before the court proceedings, according to the regulator.
That’s obviously important.
But returning money eventually doesn’t erase what happened to it in the first place.
For potentially more than a year, a buyer’s six-figure property money was somewhere it should never have been.
“Trust accounts are not a personal line of credit”
Acting NSW Fair Trading Commissioner Andrew Floro summed up the fundamental issue succinctly.
He said misuse of client money by an agent represented a serious breach of trust, particularly when consumers were trying to purchase homes.
And his message to the wider real estate industry couldn’t be much clearer:
“Trust accounts exist to protect consumers, not to be treated as a personal line of credit.”
That is precisely the point.
A real estate trust account isn’t simply another bank account carrying a special name.
The money belongs to other people.
The entire system depends upon that distinction being absolute.
From prestige property to criminal conviction
The contrast between Zhou’s public professional profile and the offending is striking.
EW Property Group describes itself as a full-service boutique agency operating particularly across Sydney’s North Shore, providing services spanning buying and selling, property management, financing and prestige property resales.
Zhou remains featured on the company’s website as its CEO.
Her company biography says she came from humble beginnings and has been involved in the sale of close to 900 project properties during a 13-year career.
It describes her as having worked alongside some of the industry’s finest and achieving considerable success for buyers and investors across both Chinese and local property markets.
That’s what makes cases like this so confronting.
This wasn’t someone with no apparent property experience accidentally mishandling a deposit.
This was the chief executive of an established real estate business who subsequently pleaded guilty to criminal offences involving trust money.
And the company is still operating online
As of August 2026, EW Property Group’s website remains live.
It promotes property sales, management, finance and investment services and continues to list Zhou as CEO.
That fact alone will undoubtedly raise questions among consumers.
NSW Fair Trading has confirmed Zhou’s conviction will appear on its Name and Shame Register, which was created to make disciplinary and regulatory action involving property industry licence holders more transparent to consumers.
And perhaps that’s one of the most important lessons from this case.
Before handing an agent the keys to your property — let alone allowing an agency to hold substantial amounts of money — consumers should increasingly be checking the person as well as the brand.
But here’s the uncomfortable question: was the punishment tough enough?
This is where opinions will divide.
The court had the full facts and sentencing material before it, whereas the public only has what has been released and reported.
Zhou also pleaded guilty early and the affected consumers had been repaid before the proceedings.
Those factors matter.
But from the outside, the numbers remain confronting:
$539,000.
Three offences.
Client house deposits.
Money used for personal benefit.
One consumer waiting 15 months for $123,000 to be returned.
And the ultimate sentence is being served in the community, alongside 100 hours of community service.
Many ordinary consumers will inevitably ask:
How serious does misuse of a real estate trust account have to become before somebody actually goes to prison?
That’s a legitimate question.
Because $539,000 isn’t loose change
Imagine the same behaviour outside real estate.
Imagine somebody entrusted with $539,000 belonging to other people diverting it to help meet their own financial obligations.
Most people wouldn’t describe that as an accounting irregularity.
Nor should the real estate industry.
Trust-account offending strikes at one of the most sensitive parts of the entire property system.
The sums held can be enormous.
A 10% deposit on a $2 million Sydney home is $200,000.
For the purchaser, that money may represent years of saving, accumulated equity, family assistance or the proceeds of another property sale.
Losing access to it can potentially derail another purchase, create legal costs and cause enormous stress.
The damage isn’t limited to the victims
Cases like this damage every honest real estate agent.
The overwhelming majority of agents will never touch money that isn’t theirs.
Most agency principals understand the seriousness of trust-account obligations.
But consumers don’t necessarily distinguish between one agency and the wider profession.
They see:
REAL ESTATE AGENT TAKES $539,000 FROM CLIENT TRUST ACCOUNT.
And confidence drops another notch.
That’s why the industry itself should demand serious consequences when trust money is abused.
It’s not about protecting the reputation of the offender.
It’s about protecting the reputation of the thousands of agents who actually follow the rules.
Trust is the product real estate really sells
Real estate agencies like talking about:
results,
marketing,
databases,
technology,
negotiation,
social media,
local expertise,
and record prices.
All important.
But underneath everything sits one much more valuable commodity:
TRUST.
A vendor trusts an agent with the keys to a million-dollar property.
A buyer trusts representations made during a transaction.
Landlords trust property managers to handle rent.
Tenants trust agencies with personal information.
And consumers trust agencies with enormous sums of money.
Break that trust and all the glossy marketing in the world becomes irrelevant.
One sentence should terrify the industry
Forget the prestige listings.
Forget 900 property sales.
Forget the corporate biography.
The most important sentence in this entire case came from NSW Fair Trading:
“Trust accounts exist to protect consumers.”
Exactly.
Not agents.
Not agency cash flow.
Not mortgages.
Not office purchases.
Consumers.
The moment an agency starts looking at money sitting in a trust account as money it might temporarily “borrow”, the system has fundamentally broken down.
And that’s why the Zhou case deserves attention far beyond one Sydney agency.
It is a reminder to every real estate principal in Australia and New Zealand:
The money in your trust account isn’t almost yours.
It isn’t temporarily yours.
It isn’t yours if you intend to put it back later.
It isn’t yours at all.
Zhou’s clients eventually recovered their money.
Her reputation and criminal record are another matter.
And after fraudulently obtaining $539,000 from money entrusted to her agency, she now has the distinction no real estate professional wants:
a place on NSW Fair Trading’s Name and Shame Register.
Perhaps the bigger question is whether consumers looking at the scale of the offending will think that was punishment enough.
SOURCE: THE DAILY MAIL