Caddick’s victims to share initial $3 million payout

Melissa Caddick’s victims will receive their first repayment of funds the fraudster stole as $3 million is distributed among 55 investors.

“We have made a first and interim distribution to investors totaling $3 million,” said Bruce Gleeson, a principal at Jones Partners, the court-appointed receiver of Caddick’s property.

Fraudster Melissa Caddick with some of her jewellery she purchased using stolen funds.Credit: Fairfax Media

The interim distribution has come largely from the sale of Caddick’s share portfolio and the Dover Heights home she bought with funds stolen from her investors.

“In many Ponzi schemes, it is not unusual for investors to receive no return, so we are pleased to be able to make this distribution and anticipate further significant distributions in the future,” Gleeson said.

Caddick, 49, disappeared in November 2020. Hours before the disappearance, her Dover Heights home was raided by the Federal Police acting on behalf of the corporate regulator, ASIC, relating to a $23 million Ponzi scheme running since 2012.

Over those years Caddick’s friends and family thought they were investing in shares. They deposited funds into the bank account of Caddick’s personal company Maliver. She then created a bogus CommSec trading account for each new client. CommSec clients have an eight-digit account number. Caddick’s fakes had six digits.

Bruce Gleeson at Melissa Caddicks’s house in Wallangara Road, Dover Heights. Credit: Brook Mitchell

Using a cut-and-pasted CommSec logo, she emailed her clients a report at the end of each month. The shares in which she “invested” her clients’ funds never made a loss, instead showing remarkable returns.

“Unfortunately, Ms Caddick’s success was all a facade and the financial services business was an elaborate front for Ms Caddick’s Ponzi scheme,” counsel for ASIC, Farid Assaf SC, previously told the Federal Court.

One of the distinctive features of the case, said Assaf, was the “thorough and diligent” record-keeping by Caddick. This was “most uncommon” for frauds of this type, he told the court.

Caddick spent investors’ funds to maintain a lavish lifestyle as well as purchasing two properties in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, luxury motor vehicles, designer clothing, artwork and jewellery.

The three-bedroom penthouse in Eastpoint Tower is the last of the blue-chip assets to be sold from the estate of Melissa Caddick.Credit: Domain

Earlier this year Caddick’s Wallangara Road house was sold for $9.8 million. The con woman bought the house for $6.2 million in 2014 with the deposit and mortgage payments sourced from funds she stole from investors. However, at the time of the sale, the house still had a $4 million mortgage.

The spring sale of the last major asset in Caddick’s estate will result in a further dividend to be paid to out-of-pocket investors.

In 2016 Caddick spent $2.55 million on a three-bedroom penthouse in Edgecliff’s Eastpoint Tower. She persuaded her parents to pay $1 million for a third ownership and a life tenancy. However, instead of paying down the mortgage, she used her parents’ money to splurge on jewels and jets.

After a lengthy legal battle, Caddick’s parents Barb and Ted Grimley recently vacated the apartment after receiving $950,000 from their daughter’s estate.

One of the fake statements provided to Cheryl Kraft-Reid and her partner Faye Reid by Caddick.

Double Bay’s Richardson & Wrench has been given the listing, with the sale campaign due to commence in early September.

The receiver said the penthouse “is in a prime location” and its sale “will importantly enable us to make further significant distributions to investors”. It is hoped that investors may recover around 30 percent of the funds they invested with Caddick.

A running shoe containing Caddick’s partial remains washed up on a far South Coast beach three months after she vanished.

In May 2023, a coroner found that while the fraudster is dead, the cause and manner of her death are set to remain a mystery because of her husband Anthony Koletti’s failure to provide a “frank account” of what took place in the 30 hours before he reported her missing.

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