Brokers made millions referring investors to now collapsed NDIS housing developments

James Gardner of Mountain Asset Partners.

Dodgy NDIS housing developers might have blown millions of dollars on living the high life before running afoul of regulators. But who else made money along the way?

McLaren sports cars, signed basketball shirts, country pubs, crypto, dubious investments in Fijian resort developments and Cambodian dairy farms – just some of the ways dodgy NDIS housing developers have blown the hard-earned money of their investors.

But plenty of other people made money out of companies such as Saorsa Health and David McWilliams’ ALAMMC, both of which raised tens of millions to build housing for NDIS recipients with specialised needs before going bust having built almost nothing.

Take the brokers who raised an estimated $92m for ALAMMC, and around $45m for Saorsa – through two companies, Mountain Asset Partners and Armada Assets.

They took a 15 per cent clip of all the money coming in through the door – a fact that investors in Saorsa and ALAMMC were never told, according to the receivers and liquidators of both NDIS housing groups.

That’s more than $20m. Here’s how it worked.

The Brisbane office of David McWilliams’ NDIS housing developer, ALAMMC.

Mountain Asset Partners owned a website, and bought plenty of ads on Google and Facebook promoting “NDIS Investment Opportunities. Fixed Income Property Projects with Returns of 10 per cent”, as one example.

Click the link, fill in a form, someone will be in touch.

Meanwhile, according to documents filed with the federal court by ALAMMC receivers BDO, the developers would identify a property, prepare an information memorandum for investors, and send it through to Mountain Assets who would “contact their investor funnel” and sort the incoming cash.

Mountain didn’t even have a bank account.

The money flowed through to Armada, ultimately owned by Sydney businessman James Gardner, according to ASIC records, which sent mug punters to Saorsa and ALAMMC and then collected a 15 per cent clip if they signed up.

It’s not entirely clear where that money went, but Margin Call understands that it was Armada that paid commissions to staff that talked punters into investing.

David McWilliams of ALAMMC.

Here’s the thing – there’s no evidence that Mountain and Armada broke the law.

They put would-be investors in touch with developers that, according to the available evidence, spent that money on sports cars, crypto currency and a plethora of dodgy downstream investments that were never part of the original investment deal.

When Margin Call first contacted Gardner about his relationship with Saorsa last year, he blamed “operational issues” at the company for the collapse, saying he had been repeatedly deceived by Saorsa boss Aiden Garrison.

He told us this week the broking firm was co-operating with investigations into both NDIS housing groups, and was “incredibly shocked and appalled by the allegations and actions of both Saorsa and ALAMMC and the findings in BDO’s report”.

If you’re raising money for an investment, what’s your responsibility to make sure the money is being spent where it is supposed to be?

Hopefully we’ll find out.

ALAMMC receivers at BDO have lodged a claim against Armada for the $14m or so in commissions paid out to the brokers in undisclosed fees.

And the regulators are investigating, according to Armada liquidator Roland Robson.

But will the investors who lost around $140m on these boondoggles ever get their money back? Good luck.