Linden Toll was celebrated among the nation’s top 50 small business leaders and a well-known figure in the Southern Highlands town of Bowral.
He was involved with the local golf club and hosted the podcast We Are The
F---ing Crowd from the town’s Imperial Hotel.
Linden Toll was a lauded figure around Bowral.
Toll was lauded as a “strong advocate for the welfare of Australia’s small-business community” by Inside Small Business’ Top 50 small business leaders in 2022.
The good times, however, would not last. Corporate records show he declared bankruptcy eight months later.
Things would get worse. The Australian reported that a fiery creditors’ meeting in May 2023 was told Toll’s company was more than $50 million in debt.
“Our investigations … would suggest that the former director, for want of a better term, is a man of straw and holds no real property assets per se,” liquidator Darren Vardy told the meeting, according to The Australian.
Toll’s business, Apricity Finance, was put into liquidation mid-last year.
Toll, 55, in handcuffs at Kingsford Smith Airport on Thursday.
Last winter, police became involved when one of Apricity’s creditors made a report of a missing $1.9 million to The Rocks police station.
Following a long investigation involving two persons of interest, Toll, 55, was picked up at a home in the Brisbane suburb of Wynnum on Thursday and extradited to NSW.
He was charged with three counts of publishing false material to obtain advantage, three counts of publishing misleading statements to deceive, dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception, and knowingly dealing with proceeds of crime.
Police allege the fraud “[related] to loans and investment companies in the Southern Highlands” took place in the decade before last year.
“Police will allege in court the man was the director of a finance company that offered loans to small to medium businesses in exchange for purchasing their invoices for work that had been completed,” NSW Police said in a statement.
In addition to Apricity Finance, Toll has been the director of several Southern Highlands-based companies over the years, including local bone-broth business Bountiful Broth, SH Capital, and Third Avenue Capital.
All these directorships ceased on or before his declaration of bankruptcy.
Toll will appear in the Downing Centre Local Court in May to face the fraud charges.