Two Toorak companies and the man who runs them have been hit with almost half a million dollars in penalties after a court found they deliberately exploited young and migrant staff, then fired two of them for chasing the money they were owed.
The Federal Circuit and Family Court ordered Ansa Finance Pty Ltd to pay $233,100, its sister business AFSL Group Pty Ltd to pay $173,160, and manager Joshua Fuoco to pay $72,620 personally. Together the penalties come to $478,880.
It is the third time the Fair Work Ombudsman has won penalties against Ansa Finance and Fuoco in court. AFSL Group had not been penalised by the regulator before.
The four workers at the centre of the case were hired into insurance, broking and customer relationship management jobs at various points across 2021 and 2022. Three were visa holders from India and Nepal. The fourth was an Australian university student who was 20 at the time.
Their written contracts promised rates above the Banking, Finance and Insurance Award 2020. The companies then failed to pay them for some or all of the hours they worked. Between them, the four were short-changed $30,817, which the court had already ordered the businesses to repay with interest and super.
The student was owed the most, at $14,336. The sole AFSL Group employee, a visa holder, worked four months without receiving a cent, despite being entitled to $6,884.
When two of the workers asked for their money, they were sacked. The court found that was unlawful adverse action under the Fair Work Act.
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In her penalty judgment, Judge Janine Young recorded that the AFSL Group worker spent six months unemployed after her dismissal, survived on money sent by her parents in India and loans from friends, and has since walked away from the finance sector altogether.
Judge Young found the breaches amounted to deliberate exploitation of vulnerable people. She singled out what she called the "habitual non-compliance" of Fuoco and Ansa Finance, and said their penalties reflected conduct that was serious, repeated, systematic and exploitative.
She also accepted the regulator's argument that, given Fuoco's history and his continuing role across several companies, there was a real chance he would hire staff again. She said the penalty therefore needed to deter him personally.
The court found the companies also underpaid public holiday, annual leave, personal leave and notice entitlements, failed to pay staff often enough, did not issue payslips, and ignored Fair Work inspectors' notices to produce records. Fuoco was found to have been involved as an accessory in most of it.
Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth described the conduct as extremely serious. "There is no place in Australian workplaces for exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers," she said.
Booth called the sackings appalling and stressed that visa holders have the same workplace rights as everyone else, with protections in place for their visa status if they come forward. All four workers in this case first approached the regulator for help.
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In March 2024, the Ombudsman secured $99,900 in penalties against Ansa Finance and Fuoco across two cases, after the business ignored compliance notices ordering it to back-pay five finance brokers. The company was hit with $83,250 of that and Fuoco with $16,650.
The regulator launched the latest action in December 2025, warning at the time that the companies faced up to $66,600 per breach and Fuoco up to $13,320.
ASIC has also pursued Fuoco. In February 2018, the Federal Court barred Fuoco from running or being involved in a financial services business for 10 years, after finding he was knowingly involved in unconscionable and misleading conduct by his Wealth & Risk Management group. He was ordered to pay $650,000 personally, and his businesses $7.15m.
ASIC went back to court alleging he had breached that ban between March 2019 and April 2023 through five companies, including Ansa Finance and AFSL Group. In July 2025, he admitted all 18 contempt charges and was sentenced to 12 months' jail, wholly suspended for two years. Justice Horan described it as the "most serious incident of contempt of court in recent years" (judgment).
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Brokers, agencies and insurers cannot rely on an above-award contract if staff are not actually paid for the hours they work. Award entitlements under the Banking, Finance and Insurance Award still apply, and managers who are involved in breaches can be pursued personally, as Fuoco was.
The Ombudsman says it filed 171 cases involving visa-holder workers in the eight financial years to June 2025, securing $39m in penalties. Over the two years to June 2025, it filed 88 cases naming an alleged accessory and won $5,143,749 in penalties against those individuals.
