Delusional Grubisa won’t stop misleading her “students”

Dominique Grubisa is utterly delusional. There are no other words to describe her, as IA reports.

BARELY TWO DAYS after the judgment of Justice Jackman in the Federal Court case brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Grubisa was back misleading her students, claiming to be “right” about her discredited asset protection product.

In a session with her students on 11 April [at around 59 minutes in], Grubisa spoke about persuasion techniques, reciting a story she had told many of her students before. How when she started speaking at multi-speaker events, she used to watch other speakers who had the audience in the palm of their hand.

Grubisa is talking about seminars that were promoted by Stuart Zadel through his company, TGR Seminars (now called Zadel Property Education). In marketing for seminars run by Zadel’s company, Grubisa described herself as ‘Australia’s #1 Debt Specialist Barrister’ and ‘Australia’s number one debt expert’. In contrast, Justice Jackman said he had not formed a high opinion of Grubisa’s legal competence.

ACCC ends Grubisa's fraud and deceptions — and vindicates IA's long investigations

The Federal Court says two programs sold by Dominique Grubisa’s company involved false claims and she was knowingly involved.

In her recent session, Grubisa said that people might think it is dishonest to persuade people and she used to think in those terms.

She went on to say [IA emphasis]:

And I would get up and I'd say, well, I don't care because, I'm fact. And I'm a lawyer. And what I'm going to tell them, you know, about debt and asset protection and everything I do. I'm right. And I know I am because it's black and white and people are intelligent. They can make their own decisions. I'll just tell them. I'll play it with a flat bat and then they can decide.

Unfortunately, we don't work that way. As humans, we're wired for emotion, and we work off emotion and we make decisions from emotion.

Grubisa wasn’t right. Indeed, in the ACCC proceedings, Grubisa’s senior counsel submitted that she prepared the asset protection documents ‘incompetently despite her best intentions’ and that she ‘fundamentally failed to understand the structure at its most basic level’.

Justice Jackman didn’t accept that it was as simple as that and said he was ‘comfortably satisfied’ that Grubisa had actual knowledge of the false and misleading nature of the representations that were made.

Grubisa playing a “flat bat” (albeit now established to be based on false and misleading claims) didn’t seem to work for her in the early days, so she had to turn to persuasion techniques to have people buy her asset protection product. Grubisa’s persuasion techniques for years have involved putting fear into people but then telling them that her asset protection system was the solution.

Hopeless regulators allowing deception to continue

A law firm half-owned by a company controlled by Dominique Grubisa's husband seems still to be flogging the nonsense.

Whether it was seven years ago, predicting an impending economic crisis bigger than the Global Financial Crisis, the suggestion that the Government might take people’s superannuation, fears of job losses and business failures from the economic fallout from COVID-19, or rising interest rates and the ‘day of reckoning’, there was always some fear-mongering behind her sales pitch.

Seven years ago, Grubisa was telling her viewers that: “It is really, really troubled times, desperate times, desperate measures ahead”; that it was “each man for himself when the plane goes down”; and “There's a limited window of opportunity for you to get your house in order, and your ducks in a row”.

In that same video, Grubisa claimed that the information she was sharing was something that “very, very few other lawyers would know”.

In relation to Grubisa’s claims about her somewhat exclusive knowledge, in his judgment, Justice Jackman (referring to one of Grubisa’s Real Estate Rescue videos) said [IA emphasis]:

‘Ms Grubisa again referred to her legal qualifications and experience and said that she had “pulled a magnifying glass over a very, very narrow, but deep area of the law and that was debt law”. Ms Grubisa then said rather surprisingly: “no-one at my level of expertise as a lawyer had ever really looked in detail at that area of law before”.’

‘Rather surprisingly’ seems a very polite comment.

Grubisa’s recent education on persuasion techniques was based on the principles from a book by Blair Warren, The One Sentence Persuasion Course, based on a concept that:

‘...people will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies.’

Grubisa, drawing upon the inspiration of Warren’s book, showed a slide saying these insights are not only the tools for madmen, but for (amongst others) seducers and evangelists. Clearly also for those who engage in misleading and deceptive conduct.

Grubisa’s fearmongering to potential “clients” had to be backed up by other claims to “allay people’s fears”. The very fears she was good at creating. No good in putting fear into people unless you can cash in on that fear. And that’s where the false claims about the efficacy of her system came in.

In his decision, Justice Jackman referred to a statement from one of Grubisa’s videos [IA emphasis]:

‘You have the knowledge and the understanding, you’re empowered now to build a force field around everything that you have so that you can’t ever lose it.’

In her sales pitch from seven years ago, Grubisa was telling people [IA emphasis]:

“I'm going to show you how you can protect everything you have. Imagine where you are today is rock bottom. You can't ever lose what you've got. And the only way from here is exponential growth. And whatever you earn, you'll never, ever lose.”

Indeed, if you falsely tell people that they can protect everything they have and that they can’t ever lose what they earn, then no doubt people might do anything such as paying large sums of money to Grubisa or her company. A company selling a legal service despite not being a law firm. Perhaps they might engage in transactions with the false understanding that there was no risk to them.

EXCLUSIVE: Dominique Grubisa offers 'protecction' amid scathing criticism

Dominique Grubisa is continuing to spruik her services despite criticism from legal professionals and scathing client reviews.

If persuading people didn’t work for Grubisa, then there was a more aggressive option. Namely, shaming people into buying. An example of this strategy played out at a seminar for the Flipping Houses Australia program held in February 2020. The section on asset protection starts around 43 minutes and 40 seconds into the video.

In the seminar, Grubisa said [IA emphasis]:

“I know a lot of people in this room already are protected. And you’ve got our asset protection in place. Who’s that again? Who’s already got it? [Hands went up.] Fantastic. So, if you hit a Porsche 911, we don’t have to worry about anything. However, many of you haven’t set it up. Who’s that again? I am shaming. I will.”

What’s the reference to the Porsche you might ask? Well, at 41 minutes and 10 seconds in, Grubisa spoke of a client who had apparently had a motor vehicle accident and was uninsured.

About her, Grubisa said:

“She just called and in said, I just hit a Porsche 911, 20 minutes ago and I’m not insured so where do I sign [the asset protection documents]? And it’s kind of too late when the bad stuff has happened. You have to do it before.”

ACCC ends Grubisa's fraud and deceptions — and vindicates IA's long investigations

The Federal Court says two programs sold by Dominique Grubisa’s company involved false claims and she was knowingly involved.

Grubisa went on to say [IA emphasis]:

‘‘For those of you who have got it sorted – and I know there’s a few of you that are already set and forget – that’s a massive relief for me.”

Putting fear into people and then making false claims that they would have nothing to worry about if they had a motor vehicle accident and had no insurance is disgraceful.

Grubisa’s continued claims she was right are scandalous, or to adopt terms used by Grubisa’s barrister in the heating of the ACCC case: perverse, outrageous and brazen. Especially when she seems to be getting assets out of her name.

Grubisa clearly doesn’t care about those she has misled. The ACCC claimed she wasn’t right. Her barrister agreed her company made false and misleading claims. Justice Jackman concluded not only was she not right but also that she knew that to be the case.

The ACCC case only dealt with people who bought into her false claims from April 2017 to November 2022. Grubisa has, however, been at it since 2011. Assure Lawyers seems to be still at it.

In her video seven years ago, Grubisa said:

“I don't know how long I will run these webinars, but the time is now. The window of opportunity to act is now and that's why I'm running them now. And once it's over, they’re over.”

False scarcity is another persuasion technique that Grubisa has used for years. It’s a shame this nonsense wasn’t over seven years ago, for the thousands who have been misled since.