Melissa Caddick’s parents ask for her jewellery to be returned

The grieving parents of Melissa Caddick have revealed there is jewellery which has been seized to repay investors, that they bought their missing daughter, and want it back for sentimental reasons.

The grieving parents of conwoman Melissa Caddick have revealed there is jewellery which has been seized to repay investors, that they bought their missing daughter, and want back for sentimental reasons.

The items are in storage along with the rest of Caddick’s expensive jewellery, lavish designer clothing, expensive artwork and her two cars for which she paid cash including her husband’s $450,000 Audi R8 and her $80,000 Mercedes, the Federal Court was told on Thursday.

The items were seized from her multimillion-dollar Dover Heights mansion, on which she had a $3.8 million mortgage, after she went missing in November last year.

Caddick’s parents, Edward and Barbara Grimley, have accused the corporate regulator ASIC of doing everything for the benefit of the 72 investors who were scammed of $30.2 million by Caddick who was never a licensed financial adviser.

Missing conwoman Melissa Caddick. Picture: Andy Baker.

The jewellery was not identified in court but the couple’s counsel, Sera Mirzabegian, said they had bought the items in 1983 and wanted them for sentimental reasons given that they had lost their daughter. Caddick did not set up her fraudulent financial business until 2012.

As well as the jewellery, the Grimleys are fighting to keep their Edgecliff penthouse, which was bought in their daughter’s name for $2.55 million in 2016 and on which there is a $1.8 million mortgage. The couple has told the court they paid $1 million towards the purchase.

Melissa Caddick’s parents Barbara and Ted Grimley.

Their son, Caddick’s brother Adam Grimley, had also given her $200,000 to help her buy her ex-husband out of their Kensington home for $402,000 after their 2012 divorce.

“(The case) has been proceeding on the basis that every item … seems to be treated as if it can be realised by the receivers for the benefit of the investors,” Ms Mirzavegian said.

The Grimleys are opposing the application by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission that all the assets owned by their daughter and her company Maliver, through which she conducted her business, should be pooled and sold to get back what they can of the millions she stole over eight years.

Counsel for ASIC Farid Assaf SC warned that if the court did not appoint receivers to the affairs of Caddick and Maliver but waited until after any inquest was held into her disappearance, it was inevitable there would be a flood of individual litigation from the investors.

Adam Grimley (in the blue shirt and sunglass at the front of the frame) attendeds a memorial for Melissa Caddick. Picture: John Grainger

But he said they were proceeding on the basis there remained “some uncertainty” about whether she was dead or alive despite her foot being found on a south coast beach in February, three months after she disappeared following a raid on her home by investigators.

Mr Assaf said Caddick had no income since October 2012 other than the money from investors so everything acquired since then had been bought with investor money.

Justice Brigette Markovic reserved her judgment.