It was a meeting cloaked in mystery: the patrons of the New York Patisserie in Earlwood, in Sydney's inner west, would have ignored the group sitting at the outside table – except for the distinctive pudgy face and animated manner of Adam Cranston.

Nine months earlier, Cranston had been a corporate high-flyer, only to see his world collapse as his company Plutus Payroll was hit by a storm of tax fraud charges. But according to his father, former deputy commissioner of taxation Michael Cranston, within weeks Adam had got back into business, working for accounting firm Wentworth Williams.