ASIC ready to drop criminal charges against Melissa Caddick
ASIC are dropping charges against conwoman Melissa Caddick but will not say whether this confirms she is dead despite her foot being found washed up on a beach in February.
Police & Courts
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Dozens of criminal charges laid against high-flying fraudster Melissa Caddick will be dropped on Tuesday by the corporate watchdog.
It follows the Australian and Securities and Investment Commission last week withdrawing the arrest warrant issued after the Dover Heights businesswoman vanished owing around $13 million the day after ASIC raids on November 11 last year.
But ASIC will not say whether this confirms the conwoman is dead despite a foot found washed up in February on a south coast beach being confirmed as hers through a DNA match.
“It is not for ASIC to determine if, or speculate on whether, Ms Caddick is alive. That is a matter for the NSW Police and – should it come to that – a coroner,” an ASIC spokeswoman said today.
She had been charged with not holding a financial services licence, 19 counts of falsely holding out that she had a financial services licence and 18 counts of dishonest conduct in relation to providing financial services. They are listed for Downing Centre Local Court tomorrow.
The hunt for the millions Caddick, 49, conned out of devastated investors will continue in the Federal Court with a two-day hearing scheduled for next week to appoint liquidators to her affairs and those of her company Maliver.
Police believed for months that she may be in hiding after she fled the $8 million mansion she shared with her husband Anthony Koletti and her teenage son. She was not captured on any CCTV footage.
Campers then found the decomposed foot in a distinctive training shoe on isolated Bournda Beach.
Provisional liquidators Jones Partners has already revealed how she set up a complex web of lies and false documents to rip off investors, many of them her friends.
She set up false bank statements, share contracts, share trading statements and documents using the letterhead of CommSec and the Commonwealth Bank.
But the money was never invested. It was used to fund Caddick’s extravagant lifestyle including buying her Dover Heights home, a penthouse apartment at Edgecliff where her parents Barbara and Ted live, and a ski lodge in Aspen.
The family home, which was 99 per cent in her name and 1 per cent in her brother’s, looks likely to be sold to pay creditors while her parents are fighting to keep the penthouse roof over their heads.
Caddick also splurged on high end travel, luxury shoes and clothes and lavish jewellery.
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