It’s now official: a coroner ruled that notorious Sydney woman Melissa Caddick is dead. Precisely how, where, and when she died remains a mystery. What also remained was the misery of those who were duped out of millions of dollars of their savings by the Caddick Simple Scheme.
She claimed to be a financial wizard, promising huge returns to investors; instead, she spent their money on herself, enjoying the high life in the famed Bournda Beach mansion.
With the exception of the police raid on her house, we have never seen any video or pictures of Melissa Caddick at home before, but here she is reveling in her apparent business success.
The conwoman scheme started in 2016 when Melissa, her second husband Anthony Koletti, and her brother Adam Grimley 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 business Melissa has been running for the last three years has been a ranging success, and didn’t she look damn happy with life?
Her handbag was only a hint of the millions she was swimming in; the only problem was that the whole setup was only a Ponzi scheme, and she raped dozens of victims, including her family and friends, out of close to thirty million dollars.
It wasn’t until 2020 that the world discovered what was really going on when Melissa Caddick sprang into the headline as a missing person case, but it quickly became apparent that there is much more than just a woman who disappeared on her morning walk. She had actually fled after her 10-million-dollar mansion was raided by the federal police and accused of a major fraud.
She had taken our money and never invested it anywhere, and she had been sending us completely forged documents.
Melissa Caddick, before she was caught for her infamous spending on millions of dollars worth of custom-made jewelry, several sports cars, and benches on designer labels, dropped nearly a quarter of a million dollars at a loan one year, and the jewel crown was a priced castle overlooking Sydney Harbour. This apparent success is one of the reasons why the victims believed that investing with Melissa Caddick was a wise financial decision.
It was like meeting someone in your orbit who you would never meet in regular life. This is why some of the victims handed her their life savings and their inheritance because they assumed she was someone they could trust.
Naturally, when Melissa mysteriously disappeared, they were concerned for a loved one, not their nest egg. People later learned many things about what Melissa did from the news, which was very difficult to deal with, and that she was missing.
Nearly 60 investors soon came to the realization that their life savings were gone, left to rule the duplicity of this woman who they thought they knew and loved, who had plundered their money. They hit an unexpected roadblock where, if they decided to sell Melissa’s mansion, Melissa’s parents would set up a dispute since they claimed controversially that they were entitled to stay in that mansion for the rest of their lives.
Seven years ago, Melissa’s parents, Ted and Barbara Grimley, gave Melissa a million dollars for a share of the property. Little did they realize at the time that they too were to become victims of their daughter’s scheme.
But the case of Melissa might be heading to court soon for a different reason; lawyers for the majority of victims are now considering sueing the auditors that Melissa hired during her high-flying business days. They had been tasked with casting over all the fraudster’s finances and never once raised a red flag.
Lawyers would be seeking 15 million dollars from the auditor’s if there were any potential court cases, and if they had success, it would mean victims would finally get close to getting back all the money they thought they would never see again. It could be a silver lining.