Money mystery deepens as shopkeeper Rosie discovers she’s boss of an airline

Sydney shop owner Rosie discovered she was director of a large aviation company in Broome. She’s never even been to WA. Then she started asking questions of her trusted ‘insolvency adviser’.

Jamyson Curthill. Picture: The Australian

Alarm bells were already ringing for Rosie, the owner of a small costume jewellery shop in a Sydney suburban shopping centre, when it finally clicked that the man she trusted as her financial adviser was not all he seemed.

Rosie had just discovered she had somehow become the director of a large aviation company in Western Australia. She googled it in disbelief: Broome Air Services, with 30 aircraft and 50 staff, specialising in the remote areas of the Kimberley and Pilbara. She’d never heard of the company. She’s never even been to Broome.

As that bewildering day wore on, Rosie realised she’d become the owner or director of more than a dozen companies she’d never heard of: marketing companies, a concreting outfit, ­administration services. “I owned a big construction company in Perth somewhere. I owned a sex shop, apparently, or a porn shop or something like that in Queensland, and I was like, what the hell is going on?” she said.

Confusion quickly turned to fear with the realisation she’d been conned into a scheme that could land her in deep water. “I’ve never been in trouble with the law for anything. I just got my first speeding fine ever in my life a couple of weeks ago so you couldn’t imagine how nervous I was thinking I’m going to get ­arrested, I’m going to go to jail.”

Broome Air Services, which once boasted 30 aircraft and 50 staff, before being deregistered in 2020. Picture: Facebook

Rosie has spent the last five years trying to escape the claws of Wayne Fraser, the Sydney ­accountant behind the phoenix-like scheme in which she became entangled.

Last month, The Australian revealed a scheme organised by Fraser in which a mystery caravan park resident with no assets became owner of more than 20 companies that went on to be ­liquidated, owing creditors money. But the 54-year-old ­Jamyson Taylor-Leigh Curthill – paid $5000 a time by Fraser to become a “shadow director” – was nowhere to be found.

Sydney boat distributor Neil Webster says he lost $800,000 when a company that owed him money was “sold” to Curthill, who could not repay the money and who had disappeared from the south coast caravan park he’d long given ASIC as his address.

Now new evidence has emerged of the industrial-scale of the labyrinth operation run by the South African-born Fraser, with fresh questions raised about why the corporate regulator has failed for years to take action.

And the mysterious Jamyson Curthill has finally surfaced – not in the NSW south coast caravan park where he claims to live, but in a central coast courtroom.

Not a happy man

Jamyson Taylor-Leigh Curthill is not happy about the exposure.

The 55-year-old did not take kindly to questions about his role in Fraser’s operation.

Curthill appeared in Wyong Court last week facing charges of larceny unrelated to his role in the scheme that has made him such a prolific director of companies that go into liquidation as soon as they are transferred to him, leaving creditors devastated.

Curthill is charged with larceny as bailee (property value $2000-$4000) and taking and driving a conveyance without consent of owner. He has pleaded not guilty to both charges.

The “professional director” unsuccessfully sought help from court staff to have The Australian removed from the courtroom and threatened to sue for defamation if the proceedings were reported.

Jamyson Curthill snatches phone from The Australian’s reporter, Stephen Rice. Picture: The Australian

Magistrate Robyn Richardson continued Curthill’s bail, with the case to return to the court on July 17. Outside court, Curthill reacted angrily to an approach by The Australian, snatching this reporter’s phone and running back into the courthouse, where a police officer forced him to return the stolen phone.

The man whose LinkedIn profile lists him as a “Bitcoin & Crypto Arbitrage Trader” would not ­answer questions about his relationship with Fraser – who calls him “a friend”, or how he came to have two birth dates listed in ASIC records, which makes it harder to follow company trails.

But another “professional ­director” used by Fraser has come forward to reveal how she was conned into taking part in the scheme.

Wrong birthday

In 2017 Rosie’s jewellery business, which sold inexpensive rings and bracelets, was running into difficulty after renovations at the shopping centre dramatically ­decreased foot traffic to her shop.

Rosie admits she is not a sophisticated business person. When her accountant referred her to Wayne Fraser, she thought her problems had been solved. The smooth-talking “financial ­adviser” seemed the real deal.

Wayne Fraser of Maxum International in Double Bay, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, in March. Picture: Liam Mendes

Fraser has all the trappings of success. He owns a lavish seven-bedroom property in Dural currently valued at around $5m, drives a late-model black Mercedes and has a 15.8m British-built motor yacht worth about $500,000 berthed at a Sydney marina.

So when Fraser advised her to liquidate the company – a service he would provide for $25,000 – she felt she had no choice but to agree. Rosie ceased her directorship of the company, the details handled by Fraser.

Her birth date is recorded ­incorrectly on the ASIC file, a ­mistake she says she wouldn’t have made.

A new director, Elaine Ayoub, was installed just before the company was liquidated. Fraser explained Ayoub would receive $5000 for becoming a “shadow ­director”.

She says Fraser told her the “stand in” directors he used were “the type of person who is at the pub, playing the pokies and someone who didn’t care about how their credit rating would be affected, as this person was near bankruptcy or already a bankrupt”.

ASIC records show that Elaine Ayoub was a director or shareholder of at least 20 companies that have been deregistered or gone into administration.

In 2019 ASIC banned Ayoub from managing companies for five years, having been director of seven companies that failed while owing the Australian Taxation Office at least $1.3m, and others owing employee entitlements.

ASIC found she had allowed companies to trade while insolvent, failed to assist liquidators and, most serious of all, “failed to participate in the management of the companies at all”.

Innocent small business owners, employees and sub-contractors are often the victims of these schemes, in which the new director is usually able to walk away without penalty by the corporate watchdog.

Another director, Bonita Dawes, of Belfield in western Sydney, crops up in multiple companies that have been referred to liquidators by Fraser.

In 2018 two building companies in the NSW Hunter Valley, Blissful Development and Blissful Building Procurements, were placed in liquidation, leaving ­dozens of subcontractors out of pocket.

Sirocco Marine owner Neil Webster. Picture: Jane Dempster

More than 35 unsecured subcontractors and suppliers were owed more than $500,000, with the sole director of both companies, Bonita Dawes, declaring the companies had no assets.

Many directors had resigned just weeks before the company crashed. The accountant who referred the job to the liquidator? Wayne Fraser.

No action was taken by ASIC against Dawes. Or Fraser.

Insolvency expert and lawyer Jeremy Noonan, from Benjafield & Associates, says the Fraser schemes appear to be similar to a phoenixing operation, where people are staring down the barrel of financial difficulties in their companies and there’s an offer to restructure them in a way that is designed to defeat creditors.

“The end result is pretty similar to phoenixing, where the original company, or rather the people behind it, get to keep the company’s assets and leave behind all the ­liabilities, but it’s more of a civil matter rather than a criminal one, because the original company with its debts is put into the hands of a liquidator,” Mr Noonan said.

“But the liquidator usually has limited funds to work with – which is by design.”

‘Not my signature’

In 2018, Fraser suggested Rosie enter bankruptcy at a cost of $30,000. She says he told her that if she did so, she’d still be able to run a business and travel overseas, as he had a good friend who was a bankruptcy trustee and would “be more lenient and allow you to travel”.

It was only much later she learnt that anyone can bankrupt themself at little or no cost.

When Rosie told Fraser she didn’t have that kind of money, she says, he told her: “If you sign your name on some paperwork, I will pay you $5000 for each document you sign.”

The paperwork involved her becoming a “shadow director”. But he would give the $5000 ­directly to his friend, the bankruptcy trustee.

Fraser assured her it was all legal. Rosie was confused but felt she had no choice and agreed.

In the meantime Fraser offered to help update Rosie’s website, through a Maroochydore digital marketing and social media company he’d bought. Her old website was taken down but the new website was never built.

“We had no website for five months. And at the time, our website was doing really well, it was No.1 on Google. We never got our website back.”

Rosie lost her search engine rankings and customers couldn’t find her. She was losing money hand over fist. But Fraser was withdrawing $2200 from her ­account each week – for “marketing fees”.

When her husband demanded their money back, Fraser told Rosie he was being “too aggressive”, she says, and stopped taking his calls. “That was his way of trying to dodge me.”

In 2018 a company called Konstruct Administration was registered in Brisbane with Rosie as director. A CBA bank account was set up but Rosie says she did not operate the account and was unaware of what was paid and withdrawn from the account.

“The bank manager came to see me and told me that a bank account had just been opened in my name. All of a sudden I had a new account with $16,000 in it. I was too scared to touch it. So I had to then go sit down with the bank manager and say: I don’t know where this money is coming from. It’s not my money.

“Then a couple of weeks later, the account just disappeared.”

When ASIC officials later showed her the paperwork for the account she did not recognise her signature on it.

A week after the account was opened her own CBA bank manager visited her at the shop and told her it was “strange” that Fraser’s employees appeared to be ­removing funds from the Konstruct account, and that she was not the person depositing funds into the account.

“That’s when we started getting really suspicious and we were like – what the hell is going on?”

She was now starting to get letters from ASIC about companies she’d never heard of.

Knock on the door

In June 2019 Rosie was relaxing in front of the television and idly scrolling through the news on her phone when a headline leapt out at her: over an article about the tax office cracking down on phoenix operations.

Rosie had never heard the term before, but the more she read, the more alarmed she became.

She handed the phone to her husband and asked: “Is this what Fraser has done with us?”

Her husband read the article and said: “What the f..k?”

A friend advised them to go to ASIC and offered to make contact.

A week later Rosie heard a knock at her door and found two people, formally dressed, who introduced themselves as ASIC investigators. Rosie panicked. She told the officers: “Rosie’s not home” and closed the door.

“I was very scared and worried about my situation,” she says now. “I didn’t want to put my family in a vulnerable situation. I was confused and didn’t know what to do next.”

Fraser started ringing repeatedly. The stress was becoming ­intolerable. “All I wanted to do was clear my name and walk away from this nightmare” she says.

Rosie decided she needed to speak to ASIC. She compiled a 56-page dossier on her dealings with Fraser and handed it to the regulator.

In February and March 2019, Rosie was interviewed by ASIC senior investigators. They took her computers and phones for three days.

They showed her documents showing she was the director, secretary or shareholder of more than a dozen companies she’d never heard of. That was when the penny dropped. They showed her documents with her signature on them. Some were hers, she says; others not.

“It was quite obvious that it wasn’t my signature. It was my name and my details – but my signature was forged.”

Wayne Fraser. Picture: Maxum International

From the guarded conversations she had with the investigators, Rosie came away with the impression the people Fraser used as dummy directors weren’t just “bums from the pub who spent all their money on poker machines”, as Fraser had told her, but clients of his.

Fraser told The Australian he would need a week to address questions put to him about Rosie, Ayoub and Dawes.

He said he was “unaware” Rosie was bankrupt and “it has absolutely nothing to do with me”.

“The suggestion I impersonated (Rosie) is ludicrous and offensive to myself, (Rosie) and the CBA. I would not do such a thing and you would understand bank protocols. You have seen my photo, I may not be attractive but I don’t look like a woman, it’s a crazy ­implication.”

The Australian is not suggesting Fraser opened the account, only that Rosie says she did not.

Fraser has previously denied that companies were sold to Jamyson Curthill to defeat creditors, saying those who sold the companies did so simply to protect their credit rating.

He said often people “don’t want to be a director of a company that goes into liquidation because it will mean that they can’t get ­financed for the bank, so they will then ask if there’s anyone else to appoint as their director”.

“The sole purpose of changing the director is because it affects their ability to get bank finance and being a director of a company that goes into liquidation can also affect your ability to get ­insurance,” he said.

The Australian has established that ASIC is investigating Fraser, but more than five years after her meeting with ASIC investigators, Rosie is yet to hear what action is being taken in her case.

“It’s very disappointing – you don’t know who else has been hurt since then,” she says.

In the meantime, her shop is long gone. The business exists now only online.

“I can’t even begin to tell you what it’s done to us, like he caused so much stress within our family,” she says. “I feel stupid but he was our financial adviser and I thought he was someone you could trust.”

Additional reporting: Liam Mendes

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