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

Well, now it's official, a coroner has ruled that notorious Sydney scammer Melissa Caddock is dead. Precisely how and where she died though remains a mystery and what also remains is the misery of those who are cheated out of millions of dollars of her savings by Caddock. simple scam, she claimed to be a financial genius promising big profits to investors, instead she spent their money on herself tonight in New Vision we have obtained, you will see Melissa Caddock enjoying the good life, but two years and half after his scam. exposed, now there is also a ray of hope for the many victims of it, action, yes, great, sit down, yes, welcome to movie night or, more specifically, the open-air cinema on the famous Bondi Beach.

I want you to pick them up and hand them over with a big smiling smile with the exception of the police raid on her house, we've never seen any video of Melissa Caddock before, that's amazing, but here she is enjoying her apparent commercial success, we're in 2016 and Melissa along with her second husband, Anthony Coletti, and her brother Adam. Grimley got VIP tickets for a fun night out and the trio agreed to be filmed for a television commercial. As far as everyone knows, at this point, Biz has been running for the last three years and is a huge success and doesn't he look very happy?

With life, the designer bag is just a sample of the millions of dollars she's swimming in right now, the only problem is that it's all a Ponzi scheme and she had scammed dozens of victims, many of them her relatives. and friends, with nearly 30 million dollars. We're asking the community to help bring Melissa home, that's all. It wasn't until November 2020 that the world found out what was really going on when this initially made headlines as a missing person case. Items of particularly high value here, but it quickly became evident that there was much more to this than just a woman who disappeared on her morning walk;

In reality, she fled after federal police raided her $10 million mansion on charges of major fraud. Are there any items listed there that are on the premises yes yes what items are phones jewelry computers storage devices records she had taken our money and had never invested it anywhere and had been sending us completely falsified documents since day point Sarah Steele He is one of the many investors eliminated by Melissa Caddock and speaks publicly for the first time tonight, so your investment wasted everything. I mean, yeah, I guess, I guess, so I guess it went straight to well, who knows, who knows, dresses and tools, and Aspen and I don't know. when she talks about the jewelry on the dresses and Aspen, she is referring to the scammer's now infamous obscene spending in the years before she was caught spending millions of dollars in custom-made jewelry, several high-powered sports cars, and binge-shopping designer brands. that he almost dropped. a quarter of a million dollars in Christian Dior alone one year and the jewel in the crown, his prized castle in Dover Heights overlooking Sydney Harbour, this apparent success was part of the reason Sarah believed that investing with Melissa Caddock It would be a wise financial decision. meeting someone who would never have been in the orbit of someone like that in my normal life.

I don't go to many mansions with harbor views and I don't really have many friends at that kind of wealth level, so it was this. An interesting insight into how the other half lives sometimes I guess so, it would be nice if it finally came to an end. I think Sarah met Melissa Caddock because her partner Joe was Melissa's cousin. They assumed she was someone they could trust and handed her over. about Sarah's life savings as well as Joe's inheritance from his grandmother, that's what happened and naturally, when Melissa mysteriously disappeared, they were worried about a loved one, not their savings after seven days no answers.

Melissa Caddick's family is desperate. Much of what we learned. We ended up learning from the media when it was very evident that other

people

knew a lot of other things before us, which was also very difficult to deal with to be honest and yes, we got the news that she was missing and it was just oh, that's it. so shocking, I was so shocked and really worried, so worried about her, so you know, I'm not worried about your investment, of course not, there was just her missing, this was Joe's cousin that I was missing, it was a Terrible news and yes.

She was incredibly worried about what had happened to her and then over time it was like, oh my God, okay, he's done something, he's done something a bit sneaky here, but no, he won't have messed with her money. family as if he hadn't done that. but nearly 60 other investors soon realized that her life savings were gone too. Left To Rule The duplicity of this woman they thought they knew and loved for the last two and a half years they have been fighting for. rescue whatever they can of the nearly $30 million Melissa Caddock looted, but now they've hit an unexpected roadblock.

Melissa's own parents are in a bitter dispute over the penthouse Melissa's parents live in here in Edgecliff, in Sydney's affluent eastern suburbs. It was owned by Melissa, but her parents 10 Bob Grimley controversially claimed they have the right to stay here for the rest of their lives, but other victims insist that, like the rest of the scammer's assets, it should be sold and The profits would be shared equally. Among all those who were scammed I feel very bad about what they have gone through I think it is horrible but it seems to me that they don't feel the same about the rest of us who are going through the same thing seven years ago ten Bob Grimley gave Melissa a million of dollars for a portion of the property.

Did they realize at that moment that they, too, were about to become victims of their daughter's scam? She put her entire apartment in her own name and instead used her money to pay the debt. mortgage as agreed the scammer spent her parents cash on jewelry none of the properties in her name is the name of Melissa Caddick Michael Chapman he is the lawyer who represents the vast majority of Melissa Caddick's victims his clients say that her parents are not entitled to what they claim They claim two things: firstly, they say that Melissa gave them a life interest, so there are certain emails that were sent by Melissa saying that she may have a life interest in the property and They also paid a million dollars for the sale of their other property. their old house to pay the mortgage on that property, so they say, well, we contributed a million dollars to the property after refusing to vacate the property, the gremlies finally made an offer to the other victims in a recent mediation, they would move out, but only if they were paid 950,000 and got practically all their money back, they will get 95 of their money back, so if we subtract 950 from the sale amount of this apartment in Edgecliff, yes, the rest of the profits will be will be divided among 56 investors. right, that's right, some idea of ​​what that would actually mean financially for them.

Yes, once the recipients have completed the entire process, including the sale of the educational property, it appears they will recover approximately 40 to 45 percent of what they lost. that purely from the Edgecliff property or what you're talking about when we take everything, you know, includes the Dover Heights property, all of that except the 40 to 45 figure that comes from the estimates that have been published by the trustees and that It's all for Includes the sale of the Edgecliffe property and Melissa's parents get 95 and then other investors get 45. That's right. Do you think it's fair? It's not about what's fair.

Tom. Investors mainly want this to end. That is the strong response we are receiving. going into litigation is difficult, it's exhausting, it's expensive, they just want to let it go and they want to see a resolution to this, effectively reduce their losses, is to sign the agreement, get it over with and get some money back instead of continuing to fight this for the whole process. in court for months and years, swallowing the pill and moving on, we are faced with a situation where other

people

are presenting themselves as a priority over other investors who were deceived and it is difficult for me to talk about this because I really feel that have happened, but to see that the funds that are even now available to those who were scammed by Melissa continue to decrease because legal fights have to occur and that is why the money goes to the lawyers instead of going back into people's pockets.

It's very difficult, you know, what strikes me is that a lot of people in this group of victims that you're a part of are

still

members of Melissa's family, but again, Ted and Bob Grimley say okay, yeah, They will take care of you in the second week. After the first division like this within the family, it is horrible, yes, yes, it really is, yes, it is very difficult to understand, there is a definitive fracture in our relationships. I haven't heard from them since this happened. You know we sent flowers when Melissa's remains were discovered and you know we did.

I am truly sorry for what you have been through, but you have never returned the favor or contacted me to tell me how the situation affected me, but no. could be a breakthrough for victims

still

so drastically out of pocket, one last legal roll of the dice that could save the day when they could be in a position to recover most of their money on Thursday, 925 days after Melissa Haddock disappeared from his Sydney Mansion, his family arrived at the New South Wales coroner's court hoping for answers. Inside there was a concrete finding: the court declared the conman was definitely dead, but when the cause of death arrived, deputy coroner Elizabeth Ryan announced suspicions that Melissa had taken her own.

Living on the cliffs near her home in Dover Heights could not be verified, and instead she could not rule out foul play as being to blame for the 49-year-old woman's body ending up in the ocean. Medical evidence cannot confirm or exclude the possibility of Kadik. The death was the result of another person harming her. I cannot come to a positive conclusion that Miss Caddick's starting point was the Dover Heights cliff line. It was equally plausible that an entry point to the ocean was as far north as Brisbane and as far away. south like Hobart, so he didn't tell her anything at all, nothing, nothing, 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 went for the first time. missing two and a half years ago I'm worried about where she is I want to find where she's good so I need you to tell me everything and I need you to tell me the truth it's all I'm 20. he had some awareness of Miss Caddick's movements during the two previous days, but decided not to reveal them, the inescapable conclusion I have reached is that throughout the investigation Mr.

Coletti has occasionally chosen to make statements that are simply false, which invites the question why Mr. Coletti has been unwilling to provide a frank account of what happened outside of court, Anthony Coletti remained impassive after addressing What Are You Hiding? After fighting his way through the waiting media, Scrump, boarded a getaway vehicle driven by Melissa's brother, Adam Grimley. who just to add to the strangeness of the courtroom drama honked his car horn before speeding off thanks for the motorcycle case could soon return to court for a very different reason than the one lawyers for most of the victims are now considering Al sue the auditors Melissa hired during her high-flying days in the business had been tasked with critically examining all of the scammer's finances and never raised a red flag - it's one of the longest-running frauds in Australian history throughout that period of This time not a single auditor of the accounts and must be audited annually ever detected a problem.

Michael Chapman is the lawyer who will lead the case and he is completely flabbergasted as to how the auditors could not have realized that something was up here. Melissa prepares documents that relate to how the funds are invested, what the returns are, etc., and an auditor is required to review those documents annually and determine that everything is in good order, so she reviewed those documents in order to collect Safely. clients for looking at those documents but they never detected anything, they never detected a problem, they never detected any problem, so this is someone whose job is simply to make sure that these investments are legitimate.

Clearly, we now know that they were totally false. they have dropped the ball, we feel that they have dropped the ball, we feel that there is a good claim that couldappear against the Auditors, the lawyers will ask for $15 million from the Auditors in any potential court case and, if they have done so, success will mean that the victims will finally be close to recovering all the money they thought they had paid. They will never see this again, combined with the money they have already received or will receive for the good work the receivers have done to date, it means that they could be in a position to recover most of their money, something quite extraordinary when you think about it. in the anguish that there was in those first months for people when they realized what they had lost, it is extraordinary and I do not discount the pain and suffering that these people have gone through up to this point, but for them this would be a ray of light for the cloud it would be a ray of light before we get into this episode a content warning ballistic haddockVictim Sarah Steele has written a book and hosts a podcast about the mind games used by the people who run Cults.

She began to ask herself some bigger questions about control, but not even she could have foreseen the dark manipulation her relative would use on her loved ones. own financial benefit Everyone likes to think that that wouldn't happen to them because it's a self-protection mechanism to think that I would never end up in that situation but in reality it's unfathomable what she was capable of doing because she was doing it, I mean, she . She was even doing it to her parents like she was taking money from people she knew since she was born, so I think our brains don't really work a certain way if we're not that kind of people that we can't even imagine. that's possible and that's why it took so long to realize what had happened also because it's like it's out of the realm of possibility Financial agreements are made after two and a half years, maybe the curtains are finally coming down closing on Melissa Caddock. melodrama and that is very good news for the unwitting players of this Horror Story as there are so many elements that you are finding out if you are mourning someone and then you are 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 very unlucky to have come across someone who I guess was no good. Hi, I'm Tom Steinfeld, thanks for watching 60 Minutes Australia. Subscribe to our channel. now for new stories and exclusive clips every week and don't miss our bonus minute segments in full 60-minute episodes found on nine now.com and the nine Now app.