Conwoman still ripping off people from her grave | 60 Minutes Australia

well it's Now official a coroner has Ruled The Notorious Sydney con woman Melissa caddock is dead precisely how where and when she died though remains a mystery and what also remains is the misery of those who are duped out of millions of dollars of their savings by caddock's simple scam she claimed to be a financial whiz promising huge returns to investors instead she spent their money on herself tonight in New Vision we've obtained you'll see Melissa caddock enjoying the high life but two and a half years on from her con being exposed there's now also a glimmer of hope for her many victims action yeah cool sit on it yeah welcome it to movie night or more specifically the open air cinema at the famed Bondi Beach I want you to lift them up and hand them over with a big laughing smile with the exception of the police raid on her house we've never seen any video footage of Melissa caddock before that's awesome but here she is reveling in her apparent business success it's 2016 and Melissa along with her second husband Anthony Coletti and brother Adam Grimley has scored VIP tickets for a fun night out and the trio agreed to be filmed for a TV commercial as far as everyone knows at this point the Biz been running for the last three years is a raging success and doesn't she look damn happy with life the designer handbag is only a hint of the millions of dollars she's swimming in at this point only problem is it's all a Ponzi scheme and she'd rorted dozens of victims many of them her family and friends out of close to 30 million dollars we are asking the community to help bring Melissa home that is all it wasn't until November 2020 that the world discovered what was really going on when this initially sprung into the headlines as a missing person's case particularly high value items here but it quickly became apparent that there was much more to this than just a woman who disappeared on her morning walk she'd actually flee it after her 10 million dollar mansion was raided by the federal police accused of a major fraud are there any items listed on there that are on the premises yes yes what items are they phones jewelry computers storage devices records she had taken our money and she had never invested it anywhere and she had been sending us completely forged documents from day dot Sarah Steele is one of the many investors cleaned out by Melissa caddock and tonight is speaking publicly for the very first time so your investment she blew the lot I mean I yes I assume I assume so I assume it went straight into well who knows who knows dresses and tools and Aspen and I don't know when she talks about the dresses jewels and Aspen she's referring to the now Infamous obscene spending by the fraudster in the years before she was caught millions of dollars worth of custom-made jewelry several high-powered sports cars shopping binges on designer labels she dropped nearly a quarter of a million dollars at Christian Dior alone one year and the Jewel in the crown her prized Castle in Dover Heights overlooking Sydney Harbor this apparent success was part of the reason Sarah believed that investing with Melissa caddock would be a wise financial decision it was meeting someone who I would never have been in the orbit of someone like this in my regular life I don't go to many mansions with Harbor views and I don't really have many friends in that kind of tier of wealth so it was this interesting insight into How the Other Half Lives sometimes I suppose yeah it'd be good for it to finally come to a close I think Sarah came to know Melissa caddock because her partner Joe was Melissa's cousin they assumed she was someone they could trust and handed over Sarah's life savings as well as Joe's inheritance from his grandmother that's what had happened and naturally when Melissa mysteriously disappeared they were concerned for a loved one not their nest egg after seven days with no answers Melissa caddick's family is desperate a lot of what we learned we ended up learning from the media when it was very apparent that other people knew many other things before we did which was also really difficult to deal with to be honest and yeah we got this news that she was missing and it was just oh it was so shocking I was just so shocked and really worried like so worried about her and so you know I'm not worried about your investment of course not I was just she was missing this was Joe's cousin she was missing it was just terrible news and yeah just incredibly worried about what had happened to her and then over time it was like oh goodness okay okay she's done something she's done something a bit Shifty here but she's not she's not gonna have messed around with her family's money like she's not gonna have done that but she had nearly 60 other investors as soon came to the realization that their life savings were gone as well Left To Rule The duplicity of this woman that they thought they knew and loved for the last two and a half years they've been fighting to salvage whatever they can of the nearly 30 million dollars Melissa caddock plundered but now they've hit an unexpected roadblock Melissa's own parents there's a bitter dispute about the penthouse apartment that Melissa's mom and dad live in here at Edgecliff in Sydney's affluent Eastern suburbs the property was owned by Melissa yet her parents 10 Bob Grimley claimed controversially that they're entitled to stay here for the rest of their lives but other victims are adamant that just like the rest of the fraudster's assets this should be sold off and the proceeds shed evenly amongst everyone that was ripped off I feel really terrible for what they've been through I think it's awful but it feels to me that they aren't feeling the same for the rest of us who are going through this same thing seven years ago ten Bob Grimley gave Melissa a million dollars for a share of the property did they realize at the time that they too were about to become victims of their daughter's scam she put the entire apartment in her own name and instead of using their money to pay down the mortgage as agreed the fraudster blew her parents cash on jewelry none of the properties in their name it's a Melissa caddick's name Michael Chapman he's the lawyer representing the vast majority of Melissa caddick's victims his clients say her parents are not entitled to what they're claiming they claim two things firstly they say that they were given a life interest by Melissa so there's certain emails that were that were sent by Melissa saying you can have a life interest in the property and also they paid a million dollars from the sale of their other their old house to pay down the mortgage on that property so they say well we've contributed a million dollars to the property after refusing to vacate the property the gremlies finally made an offer to the other victims at recent mediation they would move out but only if they were paid 950 000 effectively getting just about all their money returned they're getting 95 of their money back so if we take 950 off the sale amount for this Edgecliff apartment yes the rest of the proceeds then will be divided up between 56 investors correct that's right any idea on what that would actually mean financially for them yeah once the receivers have finished the whole process including the sale of the educative property it looks like they're going to get back approximately 40 to 45 percent of what they lost is that purely from the Edgecliff property or are you talking about when we take the whole you know include the Dover Heights property everything like that but the 40 to 45 figure that comes from the the estimates that have been released by The receivers and that's everything so that includes the the sale of the edgecliffe property as well Melissa parents get 95 and then other investors get 45 that's correct do they think that's fair it's not about what's fair Tom the investors primarily want this to be over that's that's the strong feedback that we're getting litigation is hard it's tiring it's expensive they they just want to wing it out and they want they want to see resolution to this effectively cut out losses it's sign the deal get it over with get some money back rather than just keep fighting this through the courts for months years to come swallow the bit of pill and get on with it we're facing a situation where other people are putting themselves forward as a priority to the other investors who were duped and it's it's difficult for me to talk about this because I really feel for what they've been through but watching the funds that are even available now to those who were ripped off by Melissa continue to dwindle because legal fights have to happen and so the money goes to lawyers instead of back into people's pockets that's very difficult you know what jumps out at me is that so many people in this group of victims that you're part of are still family members of Melissa yet once again Ted and Bob Grimley are saying okay yeah you get looked after second week it looked after first like this division within the family it's it's awful yeah yeah it really is yeah it's very difficult to get your head around there's a definite fracture in our relationships I I haven't I haven't heard from them at all since this happened we um you know we sent flowers when Melissa's remains were discovered and um you know I do I do really feel for what they've been through but they have never returned the favor or been in touch with me about how I was impacted by the situation but there might be a breakthrough for the victims who are still so drastically out of pocket one last legal role of the dice that could save the day they could be in a position to get most of their money back on Thursday 925 days after Melissa haddock vanished from her Sydney Mansion her family arrived at the coroners Court of New South Wales hoping for answers inside there was one concrete finding the court declaring the fraudster is definitely dead but when it came to the cause of death deputy coroner Elizabeth Ryan announced suspicions Melissa had taken her own life on the cliffs near her Dover Heights Home were not able to be verified and instead she could not rule out Foul Play being to blame for the 49 year old's body ending up in the ocean the medical evidence can neither confirm nor exclude the possibility that kadik's death was a result of another person harming her I'm not able to make a positive finding that Miss caddick's starting point was Dover Heights Cliff line it was equally plausible that a point of entry into the ocean was as far north as Brisbane and as far south as Hobart so she didn't say anything to you at all not a thing not a thing perhaps the strongest finding of all was that Melissa's husband Anthony Coletti had repeatedly lied to investigators in an attempt to cover up what happened when his wife first went missing two and a half years ago I'm concerned where she is I want to find where she is good so I need you to tell me everything and I need you to tell me the truth it's everything I 20. he had some awareness of Miss caddick's movements over the previous two days but he chose not to disclose it the inescapable conclusion I have reached is that throughout the investigation and the inquest Mr Coletti has chosen at times to make statements that are simply untrue this invites the question why Mr Coletti has been unwilling to provide a Frank account of what took place outside the court Anthony Coletti was stony-faced after his addressing down what are you hiding out after pushing his way through the waiting media Scrump he jumped in a getaway vehicle being driven by Melissa's brother Adam Grimley who just to add to the bizareness of the courtroom drama held down the Horn of his car before racing away [Music] thank you [Music] for the motorcycle case might be heading back to court again soon for a very different reason lawyers for the majority of the victims are now considering suing the Auditors that Melissa hired during her high-flying business days they had been tasked with casting a critical eye over all of the fraudster's finances and never once raised a red flag it's one of the longest running frauds in Australian history over that whole period of time not one auditor of the accounts and they're required to be audited annually ever picked up a problem Michael Chapman is the lawyer who'll be leading the case he is completely dumbfounded how the Auditors couldn't have noticed that something was up here Melissa prepares the documents that relate to how the funds are being invested what the returns are Etc and an auditor is required to look at those documents annually and determine that everything's ship shape and so in order to did look at those documents in order to certainly charge the clients for looking at those documents but never picked up anything never picked up a problem never picked up any issues and so this is someone whose job is purely to make sure that these Investments are legit clearly we now know they were totally bogus you feel like they've dropped the ball we feel like they've dropped the ball we feel as though there is a good claim that could be brought against the Auditors lawyers will be seeking 15 million dollars from the Auditors in any potential court case and if they have success it'll mean victims finally go close to getting back all of the money they thought paid never see again this combined with the money they've already received back or they will receive back from the good work the receivers have done to date means they could be in a position to get most of their money back pretty extraordinary when you think of the Heartbreak that was there in those first few months for people when they realized what they'd lost it is extraordinary and I don't discount the pain and the suffering that these these people have been through to this point but for them this would be a silver lining for the cloud it would be a silver lining before we get into this episode a Content warning ballistic haddock victim Sarah Steele has written a book and hosts a podcast about the Mind Games used by people who run Cults she started asking herself some bigger questions about control but even she couldn't have foreseen the dark manipulation her relative would use on loved ones for her own financial gain Everyone likes to think that it wouldn't happen to them because it's a self-protection mechanism to think I would never end up in that situation but it's actually unfathomable what she was capable of doing because she was doing it I mean she was even doing it to her parents like she was taking money from people who she had known since she was born so I think our brains don't really work in a way if we're not that type of person to even be able to imagine that that is possible and that's why it took such a long time to realize what had happened as well because it's like outside of the Realms of your possibilities [Music] Financial settlements being made after two and a half years perhaps the curtains are finally closing on the Melissa caddock melodrama and that's very welcome news for the unwitting players in this Horror Story like there are so many elements to it you're figuring out if you're mourning someone and then you're actually mourning the fact that you never really knew that person and I still believe that most people in the world are good I was just really unlucky to have come across the path of someone who I guess she wasn't good hello I'm Tom Steinfeld thank you for watching it's 60 Minutes Australia subscribe to our Channel now for brand new stories and exclusive Clips every week and don't miss out on our extra minute segments in full episodes of 60 minutes which are on nine now.com and the nine Now app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 1,354,413

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Tom Steinfort, 60Mins, Amelia Adams, news, world news, news australia, investigative journalism, 60 minutes australia youtube, 60 minutes youtube, 60 minutes episodes, 60 minutes australia episodes, 60 minutes australia, 60 minutes, caddick, missing persons, missing person, melissa caddick, conwoman, con woman, con, fraudster, dover heights, foot found, lavish lifestyle, lifestyle of the rich, investment, fraud

Id: gJMnFnpCAKE

Length: 18min 5sec (1085 seconds)

Published: Sun May 28 2023