A protégé of get-rich-quick property spruiker Rick Otton has been jailed for three-and-a-half years for taking out fraudulent loans against the ANZ Bank on behalf of low-income customers who could not afford them.

Sheree Becker was sentenced on Tuesday with a minimum 15 months to be served before being eligible for parole after Victoria’s County Court found her guilty of seven counts of fraud against ANZ. Becker had signed up people on low incomes, including one on Centrelink benefits, to her vendor finance scheme.

Tania Clarke from the Consumer Action Law Centre said Becker was a student of Otton, who was fined a record $18 million after an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission prosecution in 2018 for misleading people who attended his seminars. Otton taught students how to put together deals between financially desperate homeowners and hopeful buyers who could not qualify for a mortgage.

“In reality, these schemes preyed upon vulnerable owners and buyers but probably weren’t that profitable for the operators like Becker.  Stuck with many deals she couldn’t finalise, she colluded with others to falsify bank applications and payslips in order to profit from often inflated sales prices,” Clarke said.

“Many buyers had little English and didn’t understand what they were agreeing to, which is another rotten aspect of this scheme.”

Otton’s We Buy Houses scheme involved buyers paying above-market rent for several years in the hope of securing mainstream funding to purchase the property. But the plan often failed because home ownership was beyond the reach of the low-income earners who participated.

Becker was found to have signed up clients to “rent now, buy later” contracts they could not afford to fulfil.

When Otton was fined $6 million and his We Buy Houses scheme was fined $12 million, former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims said Otton had “peddled false hope to people simply looking to get a foothold in the housing market or invest money in real estate for their future”.