Gus Nosti: Moriah College employee ordered to pay back stolen $7m
Fast cars, speedboats and luxury holidays: it was the rags to riches story almost too good to be true. Why? Because the man at the centre of it all had secretly funnelled $7.3 million from a prestigious private school in Sydney’s east.
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When Augustine ‘Gus’ Nosti met his soon-to-be wife Melynda in 2002, he was broke.
He had recently seen his Italian restaurant go under, and was living in a unit paid for by his parents.
Melynda, who he met on an online dating site, was a hairdresser and single mother-of-two.
But everything changed when Gus landed a job as the head of Moriah College’s finances.
What followed were years of luxury holidays, fast cars, speed boats and multimillion-dollar binges on the pokies.
It was, of course, all too good to be true and Gus has now been ordered to pay back Moriah College more than $7m while Melynda must pay back $77,000.
The extraordinary details behind their rags to riches story have been laid bare for the first time in the Supreme Court.
Melynda began life as a promising swimmer with a sponsorship offer from Speedo, turning her hand to hairdressing in Willoughby before divorcing her first husband and meeting Gus through an online dating site in 2002.
Gus was broke at the time but their luck changed when he landed a job at financial heavyweight AMP with no tertiary qualifications.
“Perhaps the early warning signs were there,” Justice David Hammerschlag said.
In 2004 he started at Moriah, with court documents stating he began stealing from the Jewish Orthodox school soon after up until an audit uncovered the suspicious activity in 2019.
Justice Hammerschlag said: “He didn’t take long to start stealing from Moriah” and did so on an almost daily basis during his tenure.
He was the school’s head of finances for 15 years and has now been ordered to pay back the millions he funnelled away into he, his wife and his sister-in-law’s bank accounts by the Supreme Court.
Playing the pokie machines proved the major vice for Gus, the court was told, in particular the Greenfield Tavern was a favoured watering hole where “a lot” of the $7.3 million was washed away.
Moriah College has been locked in an almost year-long legal battle to recover the funds from the pair and Gus is also facing criminal charges over his alleged actions.
Most of the funds Mr Nosti could get his hands on came from the school’s tax refunds, according to court documents, which he diverted to bank accounts across 218 transfers.
Life was good in the early days, Gus was earning $91,000 at Moriah and the couple had just moved into Melynda’s home, tired of the early sleepovers at the Nosti family property.
They would entertain at home but did not travel overseas, though Melynda enjoyed trips to Bali and Thailand early on in the relationship according to court documents.
By the time of their marriage in 2009 Gus had stolen $600,000 from Moriah.
Melynda told the court she had “no reason to doubt him” and that Gus “was her best friend”.
“He told her that he was smarter than her whole family put together and she believed him,” Justice Hammerschlag said.
“She still thinks that he is the smartest person she has ever met.”
While Gus wasn’t one for travel, Melynda’s nine trips to Indonesia with a friend between 2010 to 2019 racked up a total travel bill for the couple in that period of $366,993 court records state.
She gave evidence at the mammoth civil trial that she thought Gus was using credit cards to pay for the couple’s trips or that his gambling winnings were funding the luxurious adventures.
But that was not the case, he wasn’t “a lucky gambler” as she told the court.
According to court documents Gus had a penchant for luxury cars and boats, though he never really used the latter.
His fleet of cars included two BMW convertibles, a Porsche Cayenne and an Audi Q7 as well as a couple of speedboats, just to name a few on the lot.
But Gus was a heavy gambler and a heavy drinker, Justice Hammerschlag said, and would keep on taking more money to try and win what he had lost at the Tavern.
In one text exchange between the couple, Gus told his wife after a stint on the pokies her “stash is going up” to which Melynda replied “how is my ac looking?”.
When questions arose about how much money was left on the couple’s mortgage Gus got “angry” leading to false accusations from his wife of his involvement in an extra-marital affair, court documents show.
Justice Hammerschlag was satisfied Melynda had “no inkling that any of the money coming in was stolen. Let alone from Moriah”.
He ordered Gus to pay Moriah restitution of $7,337,282 while Melynda was ordered to pay back $77,905.
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