Sanella Naumovski: Bikie-loving lawyer faces being struck off for ‘disgraceful’ use of client cashRebecca Le MayThe West AustralianThu, 6 November 2025 1:45PM
A Perth lawyer who infamously tattooed her bikie boyfriend’s name on her arm and was charged over a loaded handgun used in a brutal shooting now faces being struck off for “disgraceful” conduct.
Sanella Naumovski hit headlines in May 2017 after being dramatically targeted in a tactical response group “take-out” while driving in East Perth with Rebels nominee Brock Johnston — whose first name she’d had inked on herself.
Police said a Glock pistol loaded with eight bullets found in the footwell of the Mercedes Benz had been fired twice, hitting a man in a Butler home invasion that Johnston took part in.
Johnston was jailed in December 2017 for at least five years and three months while Ms Naumovski was charged with two firearm offences.
She was poised to go to trial before the charges were discontinued for lack of prosecution in June 2018.
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She’s now back in the firing line, however, with the State Administrative Tribunal recommending to the Supreme Court that she be struck off the roll of legal professionals.
The Legal Practice Board has sought the disciplinary action, after she withdrew more than $160,000 of her clients’ money from her firm’s general trust account.
She was not authorised to do so, was not owed the money at the time and didn’t send her clients any documentation about it.
Ms Naumovski did it 106 times over more than two years, from March 2015 to June 2017, SAT documents show.
She backdated invoices in a bid to mislead an external investigator to believe that all withdrawals from the trust account had an associated bill, created on or before the date it bore.
She hadn’t issued any of them to the relevant clients.
Ms Naumovski also failed to send trust account statements to her clients that the investigator repeatedly stressed she was required to issue and she had acknowledged as being necessary.
She also sought and received payments from the taxpayer-funded Legal Aid service for multiple clients, despite not being a member of a specified panel to be eligible.
The SAT documents show she agreed to all of these facts and concurred with the Legal Practice Board that there was proper cause for disciplinary action.
The tribunal found Ms Naumovski engaged in professional misconduct that “would be reasonably regarded as disgraceful or dishonourable to practitioners of good repute and competence”.
And in the course of the disciplinary proceedings, she made a statement that she knew was false.
The SAT ordered Ms Naumovski pay the board’s costs, fixed at $10,000.
Her former home in Yokine, where her ex-partner lived with their daughters, was sprayed with bullets in March 2017.
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