Migration agents disciplined in 2026: what the OMARA register shows, and what to do if it was your agent

Most people never find out that their migration agent was disciplined. They find out that emails stopped being answered, or that a deadline passed, or that the Department wrote to them directly for the first time in a year. The regulator's decision was published weeks earlier, on a public page, free to search, and nobody told them it was there.

The page is the OMARA disciplinary decisions register. As at 11 September 2026 it holds 121 decisions. Fifteen of them were made since the end of April.

The decisions since April 2026#

These are the fifteen most recent entries on the register, as the register lists them: family name, given name, the primary outcome, and the date of the decision.

Six cancellations, four suspensions, three cautions and two bars in a little over four months. Each entry on the register links to a decision summary and, usually, a PDF of the decision itself, so you can read what was actually found rather than relying on somebody's summary of it, including this one.

Across the whole of 2026 so far there have been 24 decisions: ten cancellations, seven suspensions, four cautions and three bars.

We keep a directory of these decisions covering 120 decisions from October 2016 to September 2026 — 65 cancellations, 30 bars, 20 suspensions and 5 cautions — each with the Authority's own account of what it found and what that outcome means for anyone whose case that agent was handling.

One thing that directory does and the register does not: where a decision stated a period, it works out when that period ended. 23 of the 120 have already run their course. A five-year bar imposed in 2018 expired in 2023, and the person may be registered and practising perfectly lawfully today — so an old entry is a record of a past decision, not a statement about anybody's current standing.

What each outcome means for you#

This is the part the register does not explain, and it is the part that decides what you should do next. The Authority's powers come from section 303 of the Migration Act 1958, which lets it cancel, suspend or caution a registered agent where it is satisfied the agent is not a person of integrity, is otherwise not a fit and proper person, or has not complied with the Code of Conduct.

Cautioned#

A formal warning. The registration continues. The agent may keep working and may keep acting for you, and many agents who have been cautioned go on practising for years without further incident.

What it changes for you is information, not status: you now know something about your agent that you did not know when you engaged them. Read the decision summary, see whether the conduct described is anything like your own experience, and decide from there. A caution about advertising is a different thing from a caution about client money.

Suspended#

The registration is suspended for a set period. During that period the agent may not lawfully give immigration assistance — not to you, not to anyone. Section 280 of the Migration Act makes paid immigration assistance by an unregistered person a criminal offence, and a suspended agent is unregistered for the duration.

This is the outcome that most often catches clients mid-matter, because the agent is still there, still contactable, and the suspension has an end date. If your matter can wait, it may be able to wait. If you have a response deadline from the Department inside the suspension period, it cannot.

Cancelled#

The registration is removed. The agent's name comes off the Register of Migration Agents and they may not give immigration assistance. A cancellation is usually accompanied by a period during which the person may not be registered again — five years is common.

If your agent's registration was cancelled, nobody is acting on your matter right now. That is the situation to treat as urgent.

Barred#

A bar is made under section 311A, and it applies to a former registered agent — someone whose registration had already ceased, so there was nothing left to cancel. The Authority may bar them from being registered again for up to five years.

The 9 September cancellation, in the Authority's own words#

The most recent decision on the register shows the kind of conduct that produces a cancellation rather than a caution. On 9 September 2026 the Authority cancelled the registration of Mr Mohammed Ismail Saud (MARN 1909826) following an investigation into his conduct, and decided he must not be registered for five years from the date of the decision.

The Authority was satisfied he had breached clauses 2.1, 2.1A(d), 2.9, 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3 of the former Code of Conduct for Registered Migration Agents, and sections 13, 15, 17, 18(1)(a), 18(1)(b), 20, 23, 24, 34, 49, 55 and 56 of the Migration (Migration Agents Code of Conduct) Regulations 2021. Its published findings include that the agent:

• Failed to act in accordance with section 312A of the Act, by not declaring to the Department the immigration assistance he gave to clients
• Made statements to the Department in support of applications that he knew to be false and misleading
• Failed to keep proper client records, and failed to give clients service agreements, invoices and receipts
• Failed to act professionally, competently, diligently, ethically and honestly
• Failed to tell clients about conflicts of interest and about commissions he received for referrals to an education provider where his spouse was a director
• Failed to supervise his staff, and facilitated members of his business giving unlawful immigration assistance
• Acted in a way intended to undermine the purpose of the student visa program to obtain a benefit for himself and his clients

The Authority was also satisfied that he was not a person of integrity, or otherwise not a fit and proper person.

Read that list as a checklist rather than as a story about one person. Undisclosed commissions, no written service agreement, no receipts, and work done by unregistered staff are not exotic. They are the ordinary shape of the complaints this regulator receives, and every one of them is something you can check in your own file this afternoon.

If your agent is on the register: the first week#

1. Find out where your application actually is. If you have an ImmiAccount, log in. If your agent created it and holds the login, the Department can confirm the status of an application to the applicant. Do not assume a lapse in representation is a lapse in the application — the clock keeps running.

2. Check who the Department is writing to. A Form 956 makes your agent the authorised recipient, which means correspondence goes to them and is taken to have been given to you. A deadline sent to an inbox nobody is reading is still a deadline. Lodging a new Form 956, or withdrawing the old one, is how this gets fixed.

3. Get your file. Your documents are yours, and the Code requires them back. Originals — passports, police certificates, translations — matter most. See getting your file back.

4. Work out what was paid and what was done. Ask for the itemised invoices and receipts the Code requires. Where money was taken for work that was never done, there are routes to recover it, and they are better routes when you start them early.

5. Complain, if there is something to complain about. A published decision does not close your own file. How to complain about a migration agent sets out which body handles what, and what OMARA can and cannot do is worth reading first so you aim the complaint at somebody who can act on it.

6. Only then, find someone else. A new agent needs the file, the dates and a clear picture of what has been lodged. Points one to five are what make the first conversation with them useful instead of exploratory.

What a decision on this register does not mean#

Fairness matters here, and so does accuracy.

A caution is not a cancellation. An agent who was cautioned in 2019 and has practised without incident since is in good standing, and treating the register as a blacklist misreads it.

A decision can be reviewed. Disciplinary decisions of this kind are reviewable, and an agent who has applied for review is entitled to the outcome of that review. The register, not this article, is where the current position lives.

A sanction against one agent says nothing about a firm. Only an individual can be a registered migration agent; a company cannot. If the person who was sanctioned worked at a practice alongside other registered agents, those agents are unaffected by a decision about a colleague.

And a decision that is old is old. The register goes back years. Look at the date before you draw a conclusion.

Checking any agent yourself, before you engage them#

Two registers, ninety seconds:

1. The Register of Migration Agents tells you whether a MARN is current and who it belongs to.
2. The disciplinary decisions register tells you whether that person has been cautioned, suspended, cancelled or barred. You can search it by family name, given name or MARN.

Australian legal practitioners with an unrestricted practising certificate may also give immigration assistance and do not hold a MARN. Check them on their state or territory legal services register instead. There is no third category — see how to check a migration agent is real and the warning signs of an unregistered operator.

Questions people ask#

Does my visa application get cancelled if my migration agent is deregistered?#

No. Your application is yours and it continues. What ends is the agent's authority to act for you and to receive correspondence about it. The practical risk is not cancellation, it is a missed deadline while nobody is reading the Department's mail.

Can I get my money back from an agent whose registration was cancelled?#

Sometimes, and it depends where the money went and what was done for it. OMARA is not a refund body; it regulates conduct. Consumer protection routes, professional indemnity insurance and the small claims jurisdiction of a state tribunal are the more realistic paths, and they work better the earlier you start. See getting your money back.

My agent was suspended, not cancelled. Do I have to leave?#

You do not have to, and you may not want to. But during the suspension they cannot lawfully give you immigration assistance, so the question is whether your matter can wait until it ends. If there is a Department deadline inside that window, it cannot.

Is the OMARA disciplinary register free to search?#

Yes. It is public, free and requires no account. You can search it by family name, given name, MARN, decision type or date.

How do I know if a decision is still current?#

Read the decision summary on the register. It states the date of the decision and the period of any suspension or bar. Where an agent has sought review, the register is the place that reflects the current position.

Finding a replacement#

If you are reading this because the register named the person handling your case, you are probably deciding two things at once: what to do about the last agent, and who to use next. They are separate problems, and the first one is more urgent — the checklist above is the order that keeps your application intact.

When you get to the second, VisaBid is one way to do it. You post what you need, and registered migration agents and Australian legal practitioners quote you for it in writing, with fees itemised the way the Code requires: a fixed fee, or an hourly rate with an hours estimate, GST included, and government charges listed separately so that a cheap-looking quote cannot quietly leave out an $11,710 visa application charge. Applicants pay nothing to use it. Every quote carries the individual's MARN or practising certificate details, so the ninety-second check above is one click rather than a research project.

VisaBid does not give immigration assistance, is not a migration agent, and takes no percentage of anybody's fee. It is a place to compare people who are permitted to do this work, with the paperwork the last one may not have given you built into the process from the start.

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