Raymond Tweedly fronts court for duping friends of $1m

A con artist tricked his mates — including a man battling cancer — into giving him more than $1m to set up a garbage business that he instead used to splurge on property and luxury cars.

Con artist Raymond Tweedly has been jailed for the second time for fleecing his mates, this time obtaining more than $1m to invest in a waste management company in Altona.

A silver-tongued former property developer duped his mates, including a cancer patient, out of more than $1m to set up a waste management company with backing from the Victorian and federal governments.

Raymond Tweedly, who on Thursday was jailed for a minimum of five years, swindled $1m from a man undergoing chemotherapy who drained his superannuation to invest in a dodgy garbage business and $91,600 from another man on the pretext of investing in properties in Italy, using the money to purchase luxury cars and property.

The conman obtained a further $68,000 from a 71-year-old semi-retired accountant and even used her to register the bogus company No Waste and made her a shareholder.

Tweedly told her he had travelled to Canberra in a private jet with his lawyer Lachlan and a local engineer and that ExxonMobil would contribute $10m towards No Waste.

Raymond Tweedly convinced his mates to give him more than $1m on the pretext of setting up a waste management company in Altona.

Tweedly, who copped a maximum of seven years’ jail, had earlier pleaded guilty to charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The court heard Tweedly committed his latest crimes while on parole for similar offending.

In 2016, he went to jail for obtaining $579,500 from friends on the pretext of investing in real estate in Victoria and Tasmania.

During his latest offending in 2020 and 2021, he presented false engineering reports, bank statements and receipts and claimed No Waste, to be set up in Altona, had the support of shadow treasurer Angus Taylor.

Raymond Tweedly claimed his purported waste management company had the backing of shadow treasurer Angus Taylor.

After his arrest in August 2022, Tweedly plotted with two people from custody to convince his victims to retract their police statements.

He claimed there was an imminent deal for someone to buy No Waste for $5m and that he had something like $2m in assets “if it would help them”.

Judge Frances Dalziel said the semi-retired accountant only discovered that she had been tricked by a “smooth-talking con artist” when police contacted her.

“She thought she was contributing to an environmentally significant issue and that she’d receive a large financial return.

“As a result of your offending, she lost her deposit for an apartment in a living village.”

Judge Dalziel said the man who lost $1m began chemotherapy but due to Tweedly’s offending and the resulting compromise to his finances, he was consumed with attending to the legal and emotional impacts and had not been able to focus on his recovery.

“Your planned deceptions of multiple people demonstrated you had no concerns about the impact your offending has had on others,” she said.

“That you’d then go on to try and persuade the witnesses to retract their statements while on remand is a further indication of your focus on your own self-interest above all.”

Originally published as Raymond Tweedly fronts court for duping friends of $1m