Melissa Caddick

Melissa Louise Caddick (née Grimley; born 21 April 1971^[1]) was an Australian financial advisor who disappeared on 12 November 2020 amid an investigation by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme.

Caddick vanished the day after ASIC agents and officers of the Australian Federal Police raided her home in Dover Heights, Sydney, New South Wales, on the suspicion that she had stolen approximately $30 million from investors, including her own friends and family. After months of speculation as to her whereabouts, partial human remains discovered on the south coast of New South Wales in February 2021 were confirmed to be Caddick's through DNA testing.^[2]

Early life[]

Melissa Caddick was born Melissa Louise Grimley on 21 April 1971, and grew up in Lugarno, a southern suburb of Sydney. After graduating from high school, Caddick enrolled in a secretarial and business administration course at Patrick's College Australia in Sydney.^[1]

Career[]

After initially working in NRMA's investment division, Caddick joined the Sydney branch of a boutique investment bank as an office administrator. In 1998, six months after taking the job, she was discovered to have stolen less than $2,000 from the company by forging her boss's signature on several cheques. Rather than pursue prosecution, the company gave Caddick the option of leaving the office without the police being summoned or the money being returned.^[1]

Shortly afterwards, Caddick was hired as a financial advisor for Wise Financial Services, a subsidiary of ING, and eventually purchased a 25% stake in the business after borrowing $750,000. By 2003 she had become so well-regarded in her field that she was featured on a cover of the trade magazine IFA (Independent Financial Advisor). However, Caddick fell out with Wise when the company refused to allow her to recommend property and shares to her clients due to compliance rules.

In later years, Caddick would become an extravagant spender, drawing suspicion among her acquaintances. When questioned about how she could financially support such a lifestyle, she concocted differing stories about a windfall payment she had received from Wise. Caddick variously claimed to have departed with either an $86 million severance package or a similarly large payout from a sexual harassment claim. In reality, the only money she received in the separation from Wise was a return of her original $750,000 investment consequent to signing a five-year non-compete agreement.^[1]

Personal life[]

Caddick's first husband, Tony Caddick, was a builder's labourer originally from England. They married in a ceremony at the Garrison Church in Millers Point, Sydney, on 20 April 2000. Their son, born in 2006, was aged 14 at the time of Caddick's death in 2020. At his wife's urging, Tony, who had studied political science back in England, completed his law degree and was admitted as a solicitor. In 2010 the family moved abroad to Essex to live closer to Tony's family while he commuted daily to his job in London.^[1]

Caddick did not work when she lived in England and quickly found herself bored with her surroundings. Claiming that she needed to brush up on her financial skills, she persuaded her husband to agree to letting her travel to Switzerland for a conference. Tony later learned from a mutual friend that Caddick had actually travelled to Paris to meet with Anthony Koletti, her hairdresser from Sydney, and discovered that she had paid for his international travel expenses to continue their affair. Upon being confronted by Tony, Caddick cleaned out their home in Essex, emptied their joint bank accounts, and moved back to Sydney with their son in January 2012. Upon returning to Australia, she falsely claimed to family and friends that Tony had been a controlling and abusive spouse. The couple divorced in 2013, and Caddick married Koletti later that year.^[1]

Ponzi scheme[]

During an eight-year period, from October 2012 until 2019, Caddick allegedly stole A$30 million from her clients, primarily her family and friends, which she deposited in thirty-seven bank accounts. The Federal Court of Australia discovered that her offences intensified each year, with her most profitable year being in 2019. Caddick had spent investors’ finances on two homes in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and as well as luxury cars, designer clothing, artwork and jewelry.

As clients invested money, Caddick allegedly created fabricated CommSec portfolio statements and fake account numbers to show her investors what return they had achieved, making them falsely believe they had invested in shares. Counsel for Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC), Farid Assad SC, stated that “as befitting a successful businesswoman,” Caddick exploited the incomes of her crimes to acquire “all the trappings of wealth” and that her “success was all a facade and the financial services business was an elaborate front for Ms Caddick’s Ponzi scheme.”^[3]

In April 2021, after Caddick's presumed death, ASIC dropped thirty-eight criminal charges against her.^[4] In November 2021, the court discovered that Caddick and her company Maliver, which bargained with tens of millions of investor's money, was operating without the proper financial license between October 2012 and November 2020. Her possessions, including her $6 million home, will be sold in an effort to repay the 72 clients who claim that they are owed more than A$23 million.^[5]

Disappearance and presumed death[]

Caddick vanished on 12 November 2020, the morning after ASIC agents and the Australian Federal Police raided her home in Dover Heights. She was last heard by her son, who detected a door shutting at around 5:00 am and presumed it was Caddick going for her daily exercise. Caddick left behind all of her possessions. Michael Willing, assistant commissioner of the New South Wales Police Force, said that Caddick’s family were informed about her DNA match after her decomposed foot washed up on Bournda Beach on the state’s south coast, just south of Tathra, on 21 February 2021. The foot's southern location matched the tidal and drift pattern modelling undertaken by the marine police.^[2]

According to Willing, Caddick's disappearance was distressing for many people, including her alleged victims and her family and friends. Although there was an extensive review of CCTV footage, her exact whereabouts after leaving her house were unknown as the footage did not cover the entire area from where she disappeared. How she ended up in the ocean is still subject to ongoing investigations as of late 2021. Willing also described the case as one of the most high profile missing person cases he had seen in thirty years.^[6]

Theories[]

NSW police have always kept an open mind in regards to the circumstances of Caddick's disappearance, and included factors such as suicide, murder and some theories that she may have faked her death.^[2] University of Newcastle Associate Professor of Criminology Dr Xanthe Mallett, who spoke to Seven Network's Weekend Sunrise, pointed out that losing a foot should not immediately mean Caddick is deceased, saying, “When it was just a foot I would caution against the possibility that somebody is deceased. You can survive without your foot.”^{[citation needed]} In an October 2021 interview, Anthony Koletti claimed that Caddick never stole any money and that someone killed his wife.^[7] Other theories suggested by criminologists include Caddick going into hiding or even cutting off her own foot as a red herring.^{[citation needed]}

In popular culture[]

Caddick's life is to be dramatised in the Nine Network's television miniseries Underbelly: Vanishing Act in 2022 with Caddick to be played by Kate Atkinson.^[8][9]

See also[]

• List of solved missing person cases
• List of unsolved deaths

References[]