Sydney woman opens up about financial meeting with Melissa Caddick
A woman who met with Sydney fraudster Melissa Caddick to discuss investing money with her has revealed how she didn’t go ahead with it because “something felt a little off”.
NSW
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A Sydney woman says she feels like she “dodged a bullet” when she agreed to chat with Melissa Caddick over finances but stopped short of handing over any money.
“We went to lunch, we got a very odd response when we asked about her trading strategy. We understand trading,” the woman, who asked not to be named said, adding “something felt a little off”.
She told The Saturday Telegraph she believed Caddick may have been “influenced by a larger criminal cartel that operated and perhaps they silenced her” when ASIC came knocking.
“It’s just a theory, hopefully it will come out in the ASIC investigation when they follow the money,” she said.
“She didn’t spend all the money, so where did it go? It is just an opinion based on knowing her.”
The woman said she believed “people that may have abducted and done her harm” would not be her investors.
“It would be those that she may have had ties to through larger criminal activity,” she said.
“She is not the type to suicide and she is not that mischievous or particularly ingenious to come up with the financial scheme idea on her own.”
Ms Caddick’s badly decomposed foot in a running shoe was found at Bournda Beach on the south coast on February 21.
The 49-year-old disappeared from her Dover Heights home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in mid-November.
Police divers spent Friday searching thousands of square metres off Dover Heights in a bid to narrow down what may have happened to the businesswoman.
Caddick’s former business partner has spoken of her professionalism and “meticulous” work as a Sydney financial adviser.
In 2003, the then Melissa Grimley bought a stake in a financial planning firm in Sydney called Wise Financial Services, a firm that no longer exists in NSW.
She featured on the front cover of the Independent Financial Adviser magazine in the September October issue in 2003 under the headline “A Wise choice”.
The company had won best financial practice of the year in 2003.
The former co-owner of Wise, who asked not to be named, said at the time Melissa Grimley held a legitimate licence she obtained through Tandem Financial Services that was a wholly owned subsidiary of ING.
“She was an authorised representative of their licence and the significance of that was it was a wholly compliant financial services company,” the partner told The Saturday Telegraph.
“She was very meticulous, and very compliant and we worked in such a compliant world that you could not send an email or do anything without being authorised.
“She had a background in share trading before she worked for us. She joined Wise and I worked with her for three years.”
That meticulous planning would lead to a financial fraud that allegedly lured friends and family into what was an elaborate Ponzi scheme.
Originally published as Sydney woman opens up about financial meeting with Melissa Caddick
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