‘Now I need your help’: Texts expose stockbroker telling ex to lie to regulators

A former stockbroker who put millions of dollars of client money into unauthorised investments and pocketed more than $1.5 million in secret commissions told his estranged wife via a series of text messages to lie to regulators if questioned about signatures he allegedly forged.

The broker, Kristofer Ridgway, who was sacked by one of the country’s biggest broking houses, Shaw and Partners in Brisbane, is still being investigated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission even though the matter was first exposed almost a year ago.

Kristofer Ridgway in the town of Alstonville in northern NSW this week.Credit: Natalie Grono

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age can reveal that shortly after the scandal went public, ASIC spent three hours interviewing Ridgway but took another nine months to send him a transcript of the interview to review.

Since the April interview with ASIC, Ridgway has transferred at least 10 parcels of the same unauthorised investment products he was secretly selling to clients during his eight-year stint at Shaw and Partners.

As recently as November, he was promoting himself on LinkedIn as a financial adviser, a term that can be used only if authorised under an Australian Financial Services Licence and if a person is listed on the Financial Advisers Register, which he is not. The post was taken down in December but only after the regulator was informed of its existence.

In a statement, ASIC confirmed it was investigating Ridgway but refused to make any further comment.

The Herald and The Age can reveal Ridgway put his wife Kerrilyn Ridgway, a stay-at-home mum based in Queensland with no detailed understanding of the financial system, on company boards and forged her signature dozens of times on financial and company documents as well as share transfers, all without her consent or knowledge.

Emails, financial records and text messages reveal a complex web of companies and financial records dating to 2008 including directorships, loan documents and share transfers with her signature, which isn’t actually hers.

As the ASIC investigation dragged into 2023, Ridgway texted Kerrilyn in February to encourage her to mislead authorities. In one of several texts obtained by the Herald and The Age, he tells her: “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.”

It is unclear whether Ridgway, who worked in Shaw and Partners’ Brisbane office, profited from any forged documents.

The new details in the Ridgway case can be revealed as ASIC faces a parliamentary inquiry into long-running concerns that it is a slow, timid and ineffective regulator.

Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, who spearheaded the inquiry, said ASIC was too slow to respond to warnings and didn’t secure enough prosecutions.

Ridgway’s unauthorised trading came to light in January 2022 when a client complained to Shaw and Partners’ head office about an investment he had signed up for that had failed to deliver on any of its promises. It raised red flags as the product wasn’t on the group’s approved product list.

An internal investigation found Ridgway had systematically breached compliance rules outside of the Shaw and Partners systems over an eight-year period, including engaging in trading in unauthorised products and taking secret commissions of up to 17 per cent, well above the usual commission charged of 0.05 per cent and 1 per cent. The commissions were paid directly to Ridgway. All up, he collected secret commissions of more than $1.5 million, which weren’t disclosed to Shaw and Partners or the clients, according to bank deposit confirmations and internal documents.

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 in 2018.

Ridgway introduced more than 90 families to financial services firm McFaddens Securities, which then put them into the unlisted products.

Shaw and Partners said in a statement it was planning to remediate the families that had been put into these products. The remediation costs will be an estimated $9 million and the firm said it was happy that the process was well under way.

Shaw and Partners chief executive officer Earl Evans said the scandal had had devastating consequences for the clients. He said: “They were unsuspecting of Ridgway’s behaviour and a year on from his dismissal, we would like to think the regulator is getting close to dealing with this individual and more light will come on these questionable products.”

Ridgway was sacked in February 2022 and days later walked out on his wife and three children, leaving them with a credit card bill of $40,000 and rent they couldn’t afford to pay.

A year on, Kerrilyn is still grappling with the emotional and financial deception. “It will be a year on Monday he walked out on someone who gave his whole life to. I was a sitting duck who he kept in the dark,” she said.

“I’m heartbroken and the kids are heartbroken. We feel like he threw us out with the trash, while he is off surfing, taking women to dinner at French restaurants, and we aren’t even allowed to know where he lives.”

Company records list Kerrilyn as a director for short periods, while other records list her as a director for longer durations with other directors that she said she had never had anything to do with. She said there were also minutes with her signature relating to meetings she claims she never attended.

Kerrilyn told the Herald and The Age it was confronting to see so many documents with her forged signature.

One was a loan agreement between Ridgy Enterprises and KKR Holdings as Trustee for Ridgway Family Trust. It includes her signature, which she says she didn’t sign. Another is a deed of assignment of debt and release, which includes her signature and her mother’s signature as a witness, both of which she says were forged. “It isn’t my signature and it’s not my mum’s,” she said. “I know what my mum’s signature looks like and my mum has been in high-level care for many years.”

She said she met Ridgway 35 years ago when she was 18. She said she never got involved in his business affairs. “He left us in a bad place financially and struggling emotionally,” she said.

She declined to comment on a series of text messages obtained by this masthead between herself and Ridgway relating to the alleged forged signatures and directorships and what she will tell the authorities.

In one text, sent on February 22 this year, Ridgway tells her: “Just remember I have looked after you and protected the kids all my life. Now I need your help to protect me from my evil boss and the shit he has stirred up.”

In other texts, Kerrilyn tells her estranged husband: “I knew nothing of these companies and directorships. I don’t want to lie and get in trouble. That’s not my mum’s signature.” He replied: “Say you can’t remember as it was a long time ago and you signed a lot of papers over the years.”

In a text on February 26, Kerrilyn returns to the use of her mother’s signature. “You have clearly signed for mum. Do you want me to say you had her authority? Even though we know she didn’t.” He replies: “They can’t check on her signature; just say it is hers.”

Ridgway was sent a series of questions but didn’t respond.

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