Is this the biggest property scam ever? | 60 Minutes Australia

it's the biggest property scam ever and you're about to see exactly how it works a con so clever yet so simple it trapped a quarter of a million australians average australians ordinary mums and dads for them there was no boom just the bust their only mistake they were too trusting and all along the line that trust was betrayed often by the very people who should have been on their side the home lenders the lawyers and the banks the appalling thing is they all kept quiet then simply pocketed their share of the proceeds hundreds of millions of dollars the capital growth has been 25 in one year it's a rare moment when you see a scam unfold before your eyes but you're watching one now and we're just going to check some property out of the past yeah all these people are being set up to be ripped off and do you know who's selling the property the seller is vic ollis a convicted felon now muscling in on australia's biggest real estate scam you're on frontline as his offsider rounds up the prey olas waits further down the line and today business is so good that two buses have been laid on they're all on the bus together yep all packing the people on and driving them off the edges of the financial cliffs yes and jumping out themselves before the passengers go off it's a fraud it's a robbery it's like it doesn't just rob you of assets rob you of money marie gleason and her husband stephen are victims of the same kind of sting one that's taken in a quarter of a million australians you know it robs you of your dignity your self-respect i know people who've paid for it with their lives people have suicided over it the gleason's real estate nightmare began when they were lured to the gold coast to look at investment properties we didn't want to go back again if we decided later to purchase so my husband took a video camera at this stage we had an agreement between us that we were not going to buy on the day we weren't going down there did you sign up on the day we did [Music] like so many others the gleasons were sucked in by a scam that was spawned on the gold coast a decade ago back then it was known as two-tiered marketing one price for the locals and another hugely inflated price for the out-of-towners all conned into buying property way beyond its real value at one point there were more than 30 major companies engaged in two-tier marketing here on the gold coast one notorious marketeer sold a thousand properties a year adding a hidden fee of at least thirty thousand dollars per unit good evening ladies and gentlemen thank you all for being here this is how it so often begins an invitation to a seminar about investing for your future we've used actors but the words are straight out of the scammers manual let me begin by asking you all a question how many people in this room tonight are feeling 100 confident financially for retirement no surprises there the next step making sure you own enough of your family home for the bank to lend you money and you purchased in 1988 so how much is outstanding on your loan i think there's about 30 000 in the bank then comes an offer for a free plane trip to look at possible investments so is this your first time up here where a runner makes sure you never see local real estate officers and never find out the real property price look i'm an independent solicitor finally a supposedly independent solicitor just happens to be there on the weekend for you to seal the deal so i'm working for you everybody's in on it except the victim it's like a sting it's like this whole stage show has been set up just to sting the victim neil genman used to sell real estate but now devotes his energy to exposing the industry's con men he lives inside a fortified house because of death threats he's received all these people are in collusion is that right oh the whole lot of them even the person even the motel that they ship you to um the person serving you breakfast in the morning it's like some strange movie the waitress smiling at you she knows you're about to get ripped off did they get away with it well because the buyers trusted the very people who should have been looking out for them they trusted the so-called qualified financial advisors they trusted the so-called independent lawyers but most of all they trusted the banks the con men say this the bank would not be lending you the money if it wasn't a good deal now that's not true because the banker lending on your own home to buy the bad deal and the banks know this so the bank's involvement gives the customer confidence that it's okay i would say that more than fifty percent of the people that i've spoken to have said such things to me i would not have gone ahead with this if it wasn't for the bank's involvement as soon as i heard the bank it made me feel safe did the bank do evaluation on the investment property well i just assume that they did a value and they wouldn't have lent us some money if it wasn't that badly in fact it appears bev chisholm's bank never even bothered with evaluation they let her and her husband borrow 91 000 to buy a brisbane investment unit worth less than forty thousand dollars and when the chisholms lost their tenants they were forced to sell we got a letter to say that they were actually going to take our house office they were going to foreclose in our house today bev and her husband live on a tiny boat oh we have to use the marina amenities the washing machines are up there the toilet showers and everything there so how do you emotionally cope living here i don't oh really why not i'm stressed out all the time i think about things as they used to be and i start crying i want to think about that [Music] every major bank in australia has lent money to these victims chief among them westpac and anc and why not the bigger the loan the bigger your repayments and their profit and the banks have been very deceitful even if their own valuation tells them that your property is overvalued and you're being ripped off they don't have to pass on that information does the bank have an obligation to tell the customer legally no ethically and morally of course if you're serving a uh a chico roll to somebody and you know when they eat it it's going to poison them you can't say well i didn't make the chico roll therefore it doesn't matter i'm making a profit on it for marie gleason it was blind faith in her bank that led her to buy her investment unit how much did you pay for the property we paid 165 000 for the property when marie and stephen asked the bank for a loan to buy their unit here on chevron island the bank did its own valuation and discovered it was worth not one hundred and sixty five thousand dollars but just one hundred thousand dollars so did the bank warn its customers they were being fleeced did it advise them to seek an independent valuation no they made sure they had security over the gleason's own home and gave them the loan which bank we banked all our lives with the commonwealth bank we felt i didn't realize but whether i didn't know how much they went into our own details but we knew that they had access to all our accounts they knew what we were worth they came around and did evaluation on the house why do you think the banks participate if they know the properties are overpriced well it would seem that the banks don't care it would seem that the banks are not interested in anything except the fact that they're able to recover their losses the whole lot of the banks from what we've seen certainly took advantage of the fact that these people had reasonable assets so they weren't worried in lending money and i'd like to say stealing some of the equity in our own home here do you see it as theft yes i do john and rosemary pollock borrowed from westpac to buy an investment unit on the gold coast several years later they applied for another loan and were refused it's only then that they discovered the unit they'd paid two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars for had been valued at one hundred and fifty five thousand dollars westpac had known all along they said that they would do the valuation and they wouldn't lend the money to us if the valuation wasn't correct did you seek out that valuation no they said that that didn't get given to us as a client that was for the bank's use did the bank ever intimate that the valuation didn't add up no never i'd have more respect sometimes if if these bank managers just pulled the stocking masks over and held the customers up themselves because that's kind of what's going on you go to used to go to the bank and be able to trust your bank manager you'd be able to go to the bank manager for advice now you go to your bank manager and he holds you up and robs you when you need friendly personal attention to your problems you need the bank of new south wales the good old days we now know are gone forever i hate to say good luck to people getting on the bus but i think that's what you might need we'll see okay and still the scams continue well you'll see um big fat fella up here he's the owner okay his name's pete but what these potential buyers don't know is that vigorous has done time among his convictions 12 years for making false promises in a real estate scheme in this latest venture alice's salesman claim he's making no more than ten thousand dollars on every deal all aboard so what we've got here ollis is buying a property neil genman has been keeping tabs on what alice is really making from these deals and there's a profit same day eighty thousand dollars as we trawl through the property records it becomes clear that there are hundreds of these extraordinary profits buys for 400 000 and sells it on the same day for 730. so wow there's a tidy little profit i've got a rule if anyone wants to fly you anywhere to look at a property don't get on the plane john simon began aussie home loans 12 years ago and has since handed out some 20 billion dollars the further you get away from the area of local where you live the more dangerous it is because you don't know the territory and these people play on that but it seems even john simon is being taken for a ride for behind every dubious property deal there's a source of finance we're going to also pick up a mortgage broker his name is lloyd shearer he works for aussie home loans do you know vic ollis no because vic olas is a man who's been in jail he got a 12 year sentence for being involved in fraudulent real estate schemes i don't think you're aware of this clearly but your company is doing business with him no i don't know that where is this on this trip lloyd shearer the man from aussie was very much part of the operation so you you basically work out of their offices the broker who was on the particular bus trip that we took saying he represented your company said he was even moving into an office with vic dollars is that appropriate no i would i would say absolutely not if we found that people got stitched up we'll head would roll because that's the opposite to what we stand for john simon later told us that his man on the bus hadn't actually written any loans for alice's customers and wouldn't be riding along with honest again we should point out that john simon was the only leading financier willing to be interviewed for this story also approached for comment commonwealth bank boss david murray he said no westpac's david morgan he too said no and the anz's john mcfarlane also a no our arrival did stop at least one potential customer signing up for the honest tour i'm glad you're here because i had my suspicions when i first met the man you okay but across australia property scams are still destroying people's lives how do you feel about the banks and they didn't care no one cared no one can bev chisholm it's meant losing the house that was once her home i'm getting better i don't seem to come down too often well you used to come a lot he used to come nearly every week and stand out the front no no just go drive past it just to have a look at it how do you feel when you come here careful do you why why do you feel tearful hello i'm liz hayes thanks for watching 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 and full episodes of 60 minutes on nine now dot com dot iu and the nine now app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 2,510,794

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, karl stefanovic, 60Mins, #60Mins, scam, property, real estate, bank, investment, invest, loan, lender, con artist, con, heartless, grifter, house, warning, true story, finance, home loan, fraud, robbery, victim, australia

Id: bZj8luy0KTI

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 01 2021