Bianca Cheah: Former Sydney lifestyle influencer, model faces court over alleged fraud

A Sydney influencer allegedly poured her modelling income into the bank account of her marketing company that was making “little to no money” to trick investors, a court has heard.

Bianca Cheah leaves Downing Centre Court on Monday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

A Sydney lifestyle influencer allegedly funnelled her personal modelling income into her marketing company’s bank account to paint a false picture of an attractive investment, duping several shareholders, a court has heard.

Bianca May Cheah is fighting two charges of publishing false or misleading material to obtain a financial advantage in the Downing Centre Local Court, where a PowerPoint presentation at the centre of the prosecution’s case was shown today.

The 41-year-old boasts more than a million social media followers but has not posted since before her arrest by NSW Police in December 2021.

Officers started investigating Cheah and her former husband, American man Simon Chalmers, after a group of investors who put more than $1m into the couple’s digital marketing business brought a civil action against them.

The NSW Supreme Court ruled in favour of the investors and found Cheah and Mr Chalmers had engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct.

Bianca Cheah is fighting the fraud charges. Picture: Instagram

Now, NSW Police is overseeing a criminal case against Cheah. No charges have been laid against Mr Chalmers, who does not live in Australia, the court heard.

In opening arguments of the hearing, Police Prosecutor Sergeant Matthew Liddle told the court his case relies on a key document called “the pitch deck,” which was a PowerPoint presentation shown to interested investors in 2017 that included the definition of the couple’s company, Sporteluxe, an explanation of what it did and a statement about the company’s revenue.

Mr Liddle told the court there was an accompanying Excel sheet detailing the company’s account figures.

“Figures in that document were significantly inflated,” Mr Liddle told the court.

“Without this defendant’s personal income, it would have in no way been an attractive investment opportunity as it made little to no money”.

The 41-year-old still has 1.2m followers on social media. Picture: Instagram

Mr Liddle told the court evidence would show Cheah played an “active role in the business” and “made admissions to creating the Pitch Deck, and has knowledge of how the business is run”.

But Cheah’s defence team argued Mr Liddle was seeking to “cherry pick” a small number of emails that involved Cheah and that the vast majority of correspondence about business operations was handled by Chalmers.

Cheah was supported in court by her mum, whose hand she held throughout the morning.

The Sporteluxe Instagram page, which is still active but is on private, describes the company as a “modern lifestyle destination dedicated to supporting your daily rituals via a contemporary and functional approach to your wellbeing”.

Cheah’s Facebook page, which has 1.2m followers, says the former wellness guru is “probably the best green juice drinker in the world”. The last status on the account was posted more than a year ago.

Chalmers, who is originally from the US, owned the Beach Haus nightclub in King’s Cross.

After the opening arguments, the court heard roughly 15 mins of evidence from a police officer who investigated the alleged fraud, in which he outlined key dates in Cheah’s arrest.

But after a short time, Magistrate Emma Manea asked the prosecution to provide a tender bundle with all the relevant documents for each witness it planned to call.

After hours of arguing between Mr Liddle and Ms Rogers about whether each party had provided the correct information to each other or communicated effectively in the lead up to the hearing, Mr Liddle told the court he could not guarantee to have the bundles of evidence for each witness prepared by the end of the day.

That caused Magistrate Manea to vacate the hearing until next year.

“I’m adjourning every five minutes,” she said.

“These matters could’ve been sorted out by both parties before today.”

Emma Manea set the case down for mentions on January 30, March 3 and May 12 to give the parties more to prepare their evidence. She adjourned the four-day hearing to August 16.