She worked a full month, earned nothing, then got fired for asking
She worked for a month. She was never paid a cent.
A Melbourne finance company and its sole director have been ordered to pay nearly $200,000 in penalties after a court found they refused to pay a visa-holder worker any wages - then sacked her when she asked where her money was.
The Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia handed down the penalty decision on October 7, ordering AFSL Group Pty Ltd to pay $173,160 and the company's director to pay $26,000 for breaching workplace laws.
The worker, an Indian national on a temporary visa, started with AFSL Group in May 2022. She was covered by the Banking, Finance and Insurance Award 2020. English was not her first language. By her own account, she had no real understanding of her entitlements under Australian employment law.
She was not paid at all. Not a reduced rate, not a late instalment - nothing. The entire $6,884.10 she was owed in wages, leave, public holiday pay, notice pay and contractual entitlements went unpaid.
After a month of working for free, the worker sent two messages to the director and an email to a manager asking when she would be paid.
The response came the next day. The company told her that her "resignation is accepted" and that the money owed "will be paid to you at the earliest possible moment."
She had not resigned. She told the company so. It did not matter. AFSL Group informed her she was "no longer an employee of AFSL Group effective yesterday."
The court declared this amounted to taking adverse action against the worker - in plain terms, sacking her because she exercised her right to ask about her pay. It treated the conduct as an aggravating factor when setting the penalty.
The fallout was severe. The worker told the court she was unemployed for six months after being dismissed, was in "significant financial difficulty," and had to rely on her parents in India sending money and friends and family in Australia lending her money to survive. She found the experience so distressing that she left the finance industry altogether and retrained in early childhood education.
As of the penalty hearing in August 2026 - more than four years after she stopped working for AFSL Group - she still had not received a cent of what she was owed.
Then there was the director's track record.
This was the third time the Fair Work Ombudsman had taken the director to court over workplace breaches. He had previously been found liable twice through a related company, ANSA Finance Pty Ltd, in proceedings that resulted in personal penalties totalling $16,650. Those penalties remained unpaid.
But it went further than wage disputes. In 2018, the Federal Court had restrained the director for ten years from carrying on a financial services business. In 2023, ASIC banned him from engaging in credit activities. And in July 2025, the Federal Court convicted him of 18 charges of contempt of court for running a financial services business through AFSL Group in what the court called "deliberate defiance" of that restraint order. He was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, wholly suspended for two years.
Even with a suspended jail sentence over his head, the director did not show up to the penalty hearing. The day before, he emailed the court to say he "may not attend." Neither he nor the company filed any material, offered any explanation, or took any corrective action throughout the entire proceedings.
The court found every contravention was deliberate. The director knew the award set minimum pay rates. He managed the worker's duties. He ran payroll for other staff and knew she was not being paid. He received the Fair Work Ombudsman's formal notice to produce employment records and largely ignored it, handing over a single document listing start dates for five employees and nothing else.
On the question of future risk, the court noted the director was currently listed as an officeholder in four other corporations - three of which he joined after these proceedings were filed. Over the past 28 years, he had held officeholder roles in 27 ASIC-registered corporations. The court accepted there was "a real likelihood" he would employ staff again.
The company's penalty of $173,160 represented roughly 37% of the maximum available. The director's personal penalty of $26,000, after a 20% reduction to account for the fact he was paying in a personal capacity, came to about 28% of his maximum exposure.
For HR teams, the case is a pointed reminder that courts do not treat each proceeding in isolation - a director's record across every entity they run goes into the penalty calculation, and patterns of non-compliance carry compounding consequences.
The contraventions in this matter were established by way of default judgment entered on May 27, 2026, after neither respondent participated in the proceedings. No response has been filed. ASIC cancelled AFSL Group's financial services licence in November 2022.
