Melissa Caddick: Police receive 50 tip-offs about missing woman’s whereabouts

Sightings of Melissa Caddick in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia have been followed up and ruled out by police since the financial planner disappeared in November.

Police have chased down 50 tip-offs regarding the whereabouts of missing woman Melissa Caddick, with the search stretching to Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. 

The tips have ranged from sightings in the street to information from the public about where she might be. 

For a fleeting moment, detectives even turned their sights to the Northern Territory after noticing Mrs Caddick’s husband, Anthony Koletti, had received phone calls from a landline in the Top End before she vanished. 

“Every lead has been followed and nothing has come out of it,” a police source said.

Ms Caddick’s disappearance has become one of the most baffling cases in Sydney, after it emerged the mother-of-one allegedly fleeced her clients out of millions of dollars. 

The 49-year-old hasn’t been seen since Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) investigators raided her Wallangra Rd mansion in Dover Heights for several hours on November 11. 

Sydney businesswoman Melissa Caddick went missing in November 2020. Picture: Andy Baker

After ASIC left about 7pm, Ms Caddick went to bed about midnight, according to her husband. 

The following morning, her teenage son heard the front door open and close about 5.30am. 

The teenager assumed his mother had gone for a run, he told police. 

But, after reviewing hours of CCTV from around the exclusive suburb and finding no sign of Ms Caddick, police widened the net.

There is no suggestion either her son or husband Anthony Koletti have anything to do with her disappearance.

Investigators are now treating her last confirmed sighting as when ASIC investigators walked out of her house with armfuls of seized luxury jewellery, designer handbags and laptop computers. 

Melissa Caddick with her husband Anthony Koletti before her disappearance. Picture: Facebook

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller told 2GB radio last week that police were treating the case as if Ms Caddick was still alive. 

Privately, however, police are not ruling out self-harm. 

One police source pointed out that while CCTV has been collected across the suburb, some cameras on Ms Caddick’s running route were either fake or didn’t capture the street. 

But, even if police did find Ms Caddick — and despite the allegations of fraud that have emerged — she would not be arrested as, technically, a crime hasn’t been committed. 

The investigation is being run as a missing person’s case.

As a result, investigators don’t have the same powers to tap phones or carry out search warrants as they would if they were investigating a crime. 

ASIC is heading the probe into how Ms Caddick ran her financial planning firm, Maliver, and was granted freezing orders over her assets in the Federal Court.