Bankwest made Melville Ruddy sell one of his cattle farms to get out of a mess caused by its own banker's inflated property valuation.
Already struggling because of the drought and a slump in cattle prices after the 2011 ban on the live export of cattle to Indonesia, the Queensland farmer felt backed into a corner by the bank's 2013 demands.
As the banking royal commission discovered, Bankwest knew a year earlier that a former banking manager had inflated valuations, among other conduct issues.
But the Commonwealth Bank subsidiary did not tell Mr Ruddy and four other customers for whom the banker was the sole valuer.
The manager valued Mr Ruddy and his wife's 72-hectare 'Sunrise' farm near Toowoomba at $1.2 million in 2011 - on the basis that it was 896 hectares in size.
A May 2013 revaluation wiped more than a third off Sunrise's value, taking it to $750,000, while the Ruddys' Arranfield property 110km west of Charleville went from $1.1 million to $900,000.
That meant the Ruddys were outside the limits for the amount of their loan to the value of their properties, and in default.
They were told to sell a property.
Senior Bankwest executive Sinead Taylor agreed it was not fair for Bankwest to rely on a revision to its own erroneous valuation to trigger a non-monetary default.
Nor was it fair that the bank did not tell the Ruddys about the wrong valuation.
"All of the customers should have been told that there was an issue," the Bankwest executive general manager of personal and business banking told the inquiry.
The bank also charged the Ruddys $6600 for the 2013 valuation, taking money they needed to feed their cattle.
"I couldn't pay my bills," Mr Ruddy told the Brisbane hearing, adding they lost about 80 head of cattle.
"It was a struggle."
The Ruddys took their case to the financial ombudsman, who found the banker overvalued Sunrise but concluded it did not render the lending inappropriate.
Bankwest did not tell the ombudsman it knew the original valuations were done in error by its own bank manager who was inflating valuations and engaging in other forms of misconduct, the inquiry heard.
Ms Taylor did not believe it was a deliberate omission.
"There would be no benefit for the bank in doing that," she said on Thursday.
The banker involved was named one of Bankwest's "rural and regional champions" in 2011 after exceeding his sales targets and given a trip to Hayman Island.
The inquiry heard he resigned in March 2012, at a time when the bank became aware of conduct issues including that he overstated valuations.
Ms Taylor said the banker also told one customer he was putting money into a term deposit but actually put it into another customer's account and separate "risk incidents" that lost the bank $374,000.
After farm debt mediation, the Ruddys were made to sell Sunrise and give Bankwest 75 per cent of the $750,000 proceeds plus an additional $410,000 to discharge the Arranfield mortgage.
Mr Ruddy, now 68, had to borrow $160,000 from his mum and sell a bulldozer to make up the shortfall and get free of the bank.
"She's my mum. I'm her son. We stick together."
