Melissa Caddick: Missing millionaire sold shares before ASIC investigation

Police are still treating the disappearance of Dover Heights businesswoman Melissa Caddick as missing person case.

Missing millionaire Melissa Caddick sold over $3 million in shares in the weeks before the corporate regulator ASIC launched its investigation into her business dealings, leaving her trading account in debit, it has been alleged.

At the same time, she owed $5,605,553 on her two home loans.

The money included $3,879,553 which she noted was for ”MC and AG Home” and $1,726,000 which she noted was for “MC Home”, according to her banking records which have been tendered to the Federal Court.

Melissa Caddick. Picture: NSW Police

Melissa Caddick. Picture: Andy Baker.

Her clifftop home in Wallangra Road, Dover Heights, where she lives with husband Anthony Koletti and her teenage son, is jointly owned by Ms Caddick and her older brother, Adam Grimley. Records show Mr Grimley has a 1/100 share.

Mr Grimley is representing her in the case brought by ASIC after she went missing on November 12. The court has been told that Ms Caddick granted him an enduring power of attorney in September.

The validity of that power of attorney is due to be heard in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal on December 21.

Ms Caddick also owns a penthouse in Edgecliff and a condominium in the rich list ski resort of Aspen.

Her share trading account with CommSec was left $20,418 in debit as at September 25, according to the ASIC documents.

Between August 13 and August 24, she sold shares worth $3,052,145.

ASIC on Wednesday said that the first Ms Caddick knew of their investigation was on November 10 when they raided her home at 6am, armed with a court order that had frozen her assets including 29 bank accounts.

The court orders were made without Ms Caddick being informed when ASIC told the court that if she learned of the investigation “there may be further appropriation and dissipation of Australian consumer’s funds”.

They said she was an overseas flight risk.

Missing Dover Heights woman Melissa Caddick (centre) with Craig Foster and Anthony Koletti. Picture Facebook.

Police yesterday said they were still investigating her disappearance as a missing person case.

ASIC has alleged that Ms Caddick was mixing clients’ funds with her own and it is not known if she was spooked when one of her newer investors, a woman she met in Aspen in January this year, suddenly asked for her $2.5 million back with interest in August.

The Watson’s Bay woman, called Witness C in the court proceedings, is the mother of a boy who goes to school with Ms Caddick’s 15-year-old son. She had given Ms Caddick the money to invest in April.

Then she learned in a casual chat in a dental surgery that Ms Caddick did not hold her own Australian financial advisers licence, the court has been told.

By August 24, Ms Caddick had given her back $2,800,000 and the woman told ASIC that she had “acted in a professional way”.

By August 21, a US dollar account held by Ms Caddick had a zero balance. There had been $339,359 transferred into the account between August 15, 2018, and that date, the court heard.

They are just a few of the hundreds of money transactions Ms Caddick made between her accounts and the accounts of her company, Maliver, of which she was the sole director. They include a total of $20,079,000 from one of her bank accounts between January 1, 2018, and September 18, 2020.

A Federal Court judge will on Thursday decide how much her son and husband will be receiving in living expenses from the frozen accounts. Mr Koletti has said that the current $800 a week is not enough while dozens of “deeply aggrieved” investors do not want the family to get any more of their money.