‘Final act of cruelty’ as conman sends wife fake SMS saying he’s fled

Emergency legal action has been taken to stop conman and disgraced financial adviser Kris Ridgway from fleeing the country in the same week he taunted his wife with a text message saying he had “Gone”.

The corporate regulator ASIC rushed to the Federal Court to obtain travel restraint orders against Ridgway after receiving multiple tip-offs last week, including from this masthead, that Ridgway had sold his furniture and was planning to depart for Sweden this week, indefinitely.

Hours after the orders were made on an ex parte basis without Ridgway’s presence following the ASIC application, Ridgway fired off a dishonest SMS to his estranged wife Kerrilyn to dupe her into believing the regulator’s attempts to prevent him leaving the country had failed and he had fled.

The SMS, sent on Monday morning, included an image of Brisbane airport and the message: “Boarding my plane. Don’t ever contact me again. Phone about to be thrown in the bin. Gone.”

Kerrilyn said when she received the SMS she believed it to be true and was shaking and upset that he hadn’t bothered to speak to his three children. “It was a display of utter contempt. His final act of cruelty to myself and his children.”

Text message sent by Kris Ridgway.

She said it wasn’t until later that day she became aware he had been stopped from leaving the country and that he had downloaded the image of the airport from a Facebook page.

The move by ASIC to apply for an interim travel constraint, which was then ordered by consent between ASIC and Ridgway, that until December 16, he is unable to leave the country and all passports and air tickets needed to be handed over.

It comes weeks after Ridgway made a gobsmacking confession to this masthead and 60 Minutes about how he had forged his wife’s signature hundreds of times on loan documents and share transfers and put her on boards without her knowledge or consent.

In the interview he also confirmed he had sent her a series of texts asking her to lie to the regulator if she was questioned about the forged signatures.

“You don’t have to lie you just gotta say I don’t know and be vague and confuse them. You are a smart girl,” he told her in one SMS.

He later said he sent the messages because of “fear of the regulator finding out who I really was”.

Ridgway was sacked by his employer Shaw and Partners in February 2022 after being caught using his position as a senior financial adviser to become a middleman in a global investment scheme to lure unsophisticated investors into products that left them financially devastated.

He was paid secret commissions of more than 17 per cent to sell products which he now says are “100 per cent a scam”.

“I figured, ‘Well bugger it, I’m going to do something for myself’, and it was a wrong decision to make,” Ridgway said.

Clients were misled into believing the global investment schemes were endorsed and backed by Shaw and Partners, which made them easier to sell.

The schemes are supposedly backed by billions of dollars in assets and are still in play.

One of the key players in the global scheme, Australian businessman David Sutton, who paid the secret commissions to Ridgway, has been on ASIC’s radar for years, including entering two court-enforceable undertakings, which are agreements entered into with the regulator to make a series of changes following alleged contraventions of the law.

ASIC has been investigating Sutton for almost 18 months, and in a statement says the investigation is ongoing.

Ridgway also misled his family, who he walked out on after he was sacked, leaving them high and dry, having to resort to selling furniture, clothes and living on food vouchers until his stay-at-home wife Kerrilyn could find a job.

“We just did what we could to survive in the early months,” Kerrilyn recalls.

Ridgway is believed to be staying in an apartment on the northern beaches of NSW as ASIC continues its investigation into him and the schemes. He failed to respond to questions.

In a media statement released on Friday, ASIC said it is “concerned Mr Ridgway may have contravened financial services laws and requires Mr Ridgway to remain in Australia while it investigates his conduct”.

Ridgway was sacked from Shaw and Partners after one of his clients, Jason Hermann, wrote an email to head office about an investment he had signed up for that failed to deliver on any of its promises.

Jason Hermann and the email he sent about Kris Ridgway.Credit: SMH

Hermann, a father of two young children, lost his home and savings of more than $200,000 and is saddled with hundreds of thousands in debt.

“The emotion, the stress, ripped our family apart,” he said.

The products Hermann referred to weren’t authorised by Shaw and Partners and an internal investigation found Ridgway had systematically breached compliance rules over eight years, including trading in unauthorised products and taking secret commissions of up to 17 per cent, well above the usual rates of between 0.05 per cent and 1 per cent.

The unauthorised products include Marshall Islands company Trinus Impact Capital, British Columbia company ASAF Critical Metals and the British Virgin Islands-based Steppes Alternative Asset Management, which claims to have almost $4 billion in assets under management. It was last audited five years ago.

Other investors include Leith Reynolds, who lost her super and life savings, and is now forced to work rather than enjoying retirement.

Leith Reynolds was conned by her financial adviser. Credit: Paul Harris

“For me, it was a lot of money. But the betrayal is very difficult to process,” she said.

ASIC banned Ridgway for life as an adviser in April – more than a year after this masthead first exposed his misconduct. ASIC found he wasn’t a fit and proper person to provide financial services and wasn’t adequately trained or competent to provide financial services.

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