Shock price being sought for Caddick engagement ring
Fraudster Melissa Caddick’s engagement ring is being sold by a Blue Mountains antique shop for a whopping 10 times the price it was bought for just over a year ago.
Fraudster Melissa Caddick’s engagement ring is being sold by a Blue Mountains antique shop for a whopping 10 times the price it was bought for at a receivership auction just over a year ago.
The solitaire diamond ring, custom made by Sydney-based jeweller Stefano Canturi, was given to Ms Caddick by her second husband, hairdresser and DJ Anthony Koletti.
It is now being sold by Jewellery Library, a second-hand dealer based at the Victory Theatre Antiques Centre in Blackheath, NSW with a price tag of $70,200.
The ring was last traded for $7,000 at an auction of Ms Caddick’s high-end jewellery and other designer items, held by auction house Smith & Singer in December 2022 as receivers sought to recover some of the $23 million she’s alleged to have stolen from her victims.
The engagement ring features a large 1.83 carat white diamond surrounded by side diamonds weighing a combined 1.2 carats and two brilliant cut black sapphires weighing 0.04 carats.
It was worth $39,200 new, and was listed for auction with a price estimate of between $7,000 and $10,000.
Johnathon James, who runs Jewellery Library, told Daily Mail Australia the ring was bought at the auction by “a Sydney barrister who is good friends with the Packer family”.
Mr James said the high price tag was due to Ms Caddick’s notoriety, “though we would be willing to negotiate and significantly lower the price if there was a genuine buyer”.
He added that the ring was a talking point that “draws the attention of everyone who visits” the store.
“A lot of people who visit the store make comments about why she wasn’t wearing the ring when she vanished,” Mr James said.
“The whole saga is controversial but, in my opinion, if she did indeed run off and disappear and did not met her demise, then wouldn’t she have taken the ring?
“It’s very valuable and has sentimental value on top of that. I would assume it would be one of the few things she would take with her.”
It is believed Ms Caddick defrauded about 74 victims of at least $23 million through an investment Ponzi scheme, over which she was set to face a string of charges.
Ms Caddick disappeared in November 2020, hours after the Australian Federal Police and Australian Securities and Investments Commission raided her Dover Heights home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
Three months later the 49-year-old’s decomposing foot, still in a running shoe, was found on Bournda Beach on the NSW South Coast.
The collection of extensive high-end items auctioned by Smith & Singer in December 2022 recouped $884,618, while in January 2023 Ms Caddick’s Dover Heights mansion in Sydney’s eastern suburbs was sold for $9.8 million.
A penthouse apartment she owned in Edgecliff, also in Sydney’s east, remains for sale, with expressions of interest being sought after she paid $2.55 million for it in 2016.
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