The bankrupts and the love rat: Hurricane Tim’s circle of scoundrels

On paper, Warwick Kerridge’s “distinguished career” in Australian legal, banking, and corporate financial services rendered him eminently suitable to be chairman of several US companies.

“Over the last 30 years, Warwick has advised private and public sector organisations, including sovereign governments and ministries, in transactions valued at over $10 billion,” FDCTech told the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about its new chairman in June 2021.

However, Kerridge’s other “skills” were perhaps more appealing to alleged serial swindler Tim Alford.

A Herald and The Age investigation has revealed allegations that Alford, 41, is a serial con artist who is alleged to have manipulated stock markets, cheated business partners, failed to pay bills, forged documents and embezzled funds with impunity for more than a decade.

There is a warrant out for his arrest in Victoria and several US victims have made statements about Alford’s alleged criminal conduct to the FBI.

The company announcing Kerridge’s appointment also assured the SEC, the US agency meant to protect investors from fraud and misconduct in the securities market, that none of its executives had been bankrupt within the last 10 years or “convicted in a criminal proceeding”.

Newcastle-born Kerridge, 62, had twice been both.

In claiming to the SEC that he’d “left the law” in 1987 to concentrate on corporate advisory and investment banking, Kerridge failed to mention that he’d been struck off as a solicitor in Victoria in 1992 after he was placed on a five-year good behaviour bond for defrauding a client.

And it was his provision of “financial and corporate structure advice” to a criminal organisation involved in a $17 million duty-free fraud that led to him being sentenced to two years’ jail in Victoria in 2005.

That same year, he was bankrupted for the second time. His bankruptcy, which lasted for six years until 2011, was extended twice due to his failure to disclose his earnings to his bankruptcy trustee.

Warwick Kerridge, pictured recently in Leura, was jailed in 2014 for a maximum of one year following his conviction for using a false document, stealing property and obtaining a benefit by deception.Credit: Rhett Wyman

In 2007, when Kerridge moved to Sydney, he failed to mention to his new girlfriend Tracey that he was just out of jail and still bankrupt. Instead, he told her that he was a corporate lawyer specialising in mergers and acquisitions.

After moving into her Artarmon property, Kerridge convinced her to take out a drawdown facility with the bank to pay the legal bills from her divorce proceedings, using the house as security for the loan, court documents reveal.

He then forged Tracey’s signature on the chequebook that came with the account to make out cheques to himself and other individuals, including two cheques dated February 10, 2009, to a “Nicola Ciconte”.

Ciconte was a Calabrian mafia boss and international drug trafficker who’d settled on the Gold Coast and set up a profitable line in property scams and international money-laundering. Labelled “extremely dangerous” by Italian authorities, in 2012 Ciconte was sentenced in absentia to 25 years’ jail over a plot to smuggle up to 500 kilograms of cocaine into Australia.

Describing Ciconte as a friend he had formerly worked with in Melbourne, Kerridge told the Herald and The Age on Wednesday he’d “lent him quite a considerable amount of money… as he was doing it tough at the time”.

Police also alleged that Kerridge forged Tracey’s signature to lease a Mazda3 Maxx Sport, using his own signature as a witness, and then presented it as a gift to her children, without telling her that there was a lease agreement that would require her to make payments on it. Tracey was unaware of the loan because Kerridge forged her signature on a second letter asking the bank to send correspondence to his Kent Street office.

She only became aware of the car loan when she received calls from the lender asking her why the lease was not being paid. Kerridge feigned confusion and said he would take care of it. But trust was further eroded when she discovered two cheques made out to Ciconte in the scanner of her computer.

A few weeks after she kicked Kerridge out in 2010, the sheriff knocked on the door to tell her that her account was more than $165,000 in debit and the bank was repossessing her house. It was only as she was packing up her shed that she discovered a briefcase that contained numerous pieces of unopened mail addressed to her and Kerridge’s pawn slips for her missing jewellery.

In February 2014, Kerridge, in relation to his dealings with Tracey, was jailed for a maximum of one year following his conviction for using a false document, stealing property and obtaining a benefit by deception.

“I truly believe that if you surround yourself with those who share the same vision as you, you can achieve anything,” said one of Kerridge’s more recent employers, Mohamed Kabbout, who is awaiting trial following charges relating to a sophisticated money-laundering scheme. Kabbout has denied the allegations.

Alford, too, has enjoyed a similar philosophy, with his vision enhanced by a carousel of controversial characters all of whom have shared the same misfortune: bankruptcy.

Take Mehmet “Michael” Erdogan, 50, a close associate of Alford’s and a one-time business partner of Kerridge’s and, like them, a former bankrupt.

Erdogan and Kerridge’s company JP Morgan Pacific Nominee attracted the ire of the real JP Morgan, the well-known international investment bank, as the pair had been using letterhead which read “JP Morgan Advisory” along with similar emails. They both titled themselves: “Executive Director, JP Morgan Pacific Nominee”.

Kerridge claimed that it was Erdogan’s company before he became a director. When it was pointed out that there was only an “Ali Erdogan” listed on the company’s corporate records, Kerridge was momentarily confused. He then recalled Ali was Michael’s father and “just a nominee” for his son, who couldn’t be a director because he was bankrupt at the time.

JP Morgan sent the pair a “cease and desist letter” to protect its intellectual property and commercial interests. A spokesman for JP Morgan said the company also alerted ASIC.

In Alford’s alleged fraudulent schemes, Erdogan and Kerridge were used to delay and divert debtors.

Alford’s modus operandi was to allegedly convince investors to tip funds into a company he claimed was about to list on a stock exchange. But the listing never happens and the money allegedly makes it no further than into his own coffers.

When angry investors demanded their money back, Alford would attempt to buy time by offering to convert their shares into yet another company which was also about to list. And so the pattern continued.

In 2015, Alford, who one of his alleged victims referred to as “Hurricane Tim”, was trying to stave off his second bankruptcy. A Florida-based businessman, Hugh Fuller Jnr, had obtained a judgment against Alford in the NSW District Court for $724,244. Like others, Fuller had been loaned money to an Alford company that had failed to list as promised.

Tim Alford in New York in 2022.

Fuller’s Sydney lawyers were surprised to receive an email which read, “I am Michael Erdogan. Timothy’s business partner. I will be appearing on behalf of Timothy at his request”.

However, when the matter came to court, there was no appearance by Erdogan.

Alford’s bankruptcy was annulled after a year when he paid his debt to Fuller, allegedly using money he defrauded from other investors over a different company which also failed to list.

A year later, London stock trader Mike Collett was persuaded by a friend in Singapore to loan $250,000 for a three-month period to Tim Alford for pre-financing for a company that was about to list on the Thai stock exchange. Collett’s friend gave him a guarantee that it would all be fine.

But it wasn’t. Collett said he should have heeded the first warning bell when, instead of his details, the loan document was made out to “XYZ Limited”.

“So I rang up Tim and said, ‘Tim, is this somebody else’s document? Shouldn’t it have been my name on it?’ And he went, ‘Oh, yeah, sorry, mate’.”

As the months went on and his loan was not repaid, Alford would send him screenshots indicating the repayment plus interest was about to come through. But it never arrived.

Collett spent $30,000 trying to recoup the debt. He reported the matter to London police and, when he moved to Hong Kong, he reported the alleged fraud to them. He hired lawyers in Sydney and London.

Then Erdogan took over the debt. “He sent me back $25,000 of what he claimed was his money – but really it was MY money,” said Collett. “I actually lost my rag at Erdogan and I said some things I probably shouldn’t have said.”

Mehmet “Michael” Erdogan, 50, a close associate of Alford’s and a one-time business partner of Kerridge.

Collett said Erdogan sent his angry letter to the bank where he was working and, even though it wasn’t on work stationery, Collett was dismissed.

“First my money was stolen and then I got fired,” complained Collett.

In the end, his friend who had guaranteed the loan, paid Collett the money, but by then their friendship had been shattered.

Other Alford alleged debtors reported threatening calls from Erdogan.

Erdogan was allegedly not a man to be messed with. In 2006, the Herald reported that an associate, who was in a contractual dispute with Erdogan, had two bullets left on his desk in the city and received a visit from several Bandidos wearing full club colours.

At the time, Erdogan told the Herald he knew nothing about bullets or Bandidos, but that he had paid $5000, with a 25 per cent success fee, to a “contract negotiator” from a debt recovery company, and “maybe he has friends in the Bandidos”.

In recent weeks, several of Alford’s creditors said they were surprised to be contacted by Erdogan, offering to repay Alford’s debts. One person went as far as setting up a meeting, but Erdogan didn’t show.

Numerous attempts by the Herald to contact Erdogan by phone and email were unsuccessful.

Erdogan and Kerridge are only two in a slew of unsavoury characters surrounding Alford, whose disinclination to pay off his debts is an occupational hazard in the company he keeps.

Former boxer and convicted accessory to murder Lucky Gattellari told a court in 2013 that property developer Ron Medich had asked him to “give that little bastard a slap in the face and get my money back for me” over a $300,000 loan that Alford had allegedly failed to repay, in what would have amounted to a light escape if Gattellari had followed through. Months later, Medich would commission Gattellari to organise the murder of his business rival Michael McGurk. Both Medich and Gattallari were jailed over the murder.

Ron Medich and Lucky Gattellari were both jailed for murder.Credit: Louie Douvis, Daniel Munoz

Alford denies this incident occurred or that he ever owed Medich money.

But in 2020, Alford’s alleged debts caught up with him again when Sean Lander, the lying philanderer and former bankrupt who inspired the acclaimed book and television series Fake, alleged in a court case that Alford conned him out of $6 million for a Queanbeyan land deal that never eventuated.

Lander alleged that Alford provided him with a copy of the $6 million transfer from the Bank of Singapore, which Lander claimed was a forgery.

In February 2020, the pair exchanged a series of vitriolic texts. In one Alford tells Lander: “You will end up like McGurk, dead, the way you do business”.

Only days later, Lander escalated hostilities by sending a photograph of a large man in a hoodie standing outside the harbourside apartment of Alford’s mother, Kerrie. The accompanying message read: “last chance”.

In April 2021, Lander was sentenced to a two-year community corrections order for using his phone to send the menacing image. Six months later, Lander and Alford settled their dispute, with Lander withdrawing the allegations he had made about Alford and agreeing to return to Alford and Kerridge documents related to their conduct, and Alford paying an ex-gratia settlement into Lander’s account.

Sean Lander outside Sydney’s Downing Centre Court in October 2020. Credit: James Brickwood

“As you are no doubt aware, I have made a number of false statements about you,” Lander wrote in a letter signed under the deed.

“After further investigation and assessment it appears that these statements … were false and based on information supplied to me which was erroneous or incomplete.”

Alford later told the Herald and The Age he had never met Lander.

“This guy is a foul person,” Alford said of Lander.

“He’s a mentally unstable, homeless vagabond who’s trying to extort me and has been for over five years over something I was never involved in.

“I paid him a settlement agreement because I just wanted to get him out of my life.”

Kerridge told the Herald and The Age on Wednesday that he had cut Erdogan and Alford from his life even though he, too, is one of Alford and Erdogan’s creditors, having lent them more than $1 million to float their company Genesis in 2020.

Kerridge is currently chairman of the investment committee at Central Real Capital, a private lending business based in Double Bay. It is run by richlister Tony Denny, who made his fortune selling used cars in Europe. But on Wednesday Kerridge was “disappeared” from the website.

Kerridge said that he doubted anyone would believe he was a victim given his previous association with Alford and Erdogan.

“Alford was continually asking me for $1000 here and $2000 there… I literally woke up one morning and realised … that it was all a myth.”