Melissa Caddick told one of the many clients she’s accused of duping that she was wealthy in her own right and was only providing financial services “to help people”.
“I don’t need to do this,” she told Cheryl Olga Kraft-Reid whose redacted affidavit was one of 11 released by the Federal Court yesterday, Wednesday 7 July.
“I’m doing it to help people and it’s very much restricted to family and friends.”
Ms Kraft-Reid, the third member of her family to invest in Ms Caddick’s company Maliver, is now at least $366,800 out of pocket and facing a more distant, poorer retirement.
“I set up myself physically, emotionally, mentally, professionally to work for seven more years – everything was in place – and now I anticipate having to work for another 15 years,” she said.
Ms Kraft-Reid’s family are among 72 clients who parted with more than $30 million between 2012 and 2020, expecting Ms Caddick or her company Maliver would invest it on their behalf.
Instead, it paid for her lavish lifestyle and has resulted in liabilities outstripping assets by between $15 and $23.7 million, the Federal Court has been told.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has taken Ms Caddick and her company to court trying to recover some of the misappropriated funds.
The Wilson family are another with multiple casualties, expecting to see little of the $4 million they put in Ms Caddick’s care over eight years.
David Wilson invested “basically every cent I had” over five years, totalling $1.3 million, and laments his plans of a seaside retirement are over.
But the “biggest blow” was his family’s level of exposure, including that of his widowed mother.
“To see my mother at Service NSW applying for the pension – and the worry in her eyes – was very upsetting to me,” Mr Wilson said in an affidavit.
The Wilsons had known Ms Caddick since the 1970s when each family lived on the same street in southern Sydney.
Mr Wilson’s sister Kate Horn invested in 2012 after her lifelong friend and fellow single mother mentioned she was “starting up a business for people in similar positions to you and me”, her affidavit states.
“It’s all very low risk and simple,” Ms Caddick told her friend during a conversation about managing Ms Horn’s superannuation.
“I trusted she had my best interests at heart and I understood she had experience in investing,” Ms Horn said in her affidavit.
“My goal was to build up enough money to help my children pay for a house deposit when they were older and I believed that Melissa may be able to help me do that.”
Soon, Ms Horn’s brother was involved and suggesting Mr Wilson relieve himself of the “headache” of managing their mother’s retirement savings.
Mr Wilson said it was difficult to accept that “while I was working hard, saving hard and making sacrifices”, Ms Caddick was reportedly enjoying a lavish lifestyle.
Ms Horn feels emotionally betrayed and pain as well as guilt for being the link between Ms Caddick and her family’s fortunes.
Ms Caddick is likely deceased after the remains of her foot washed up on a NSW beach in February.
Shortly before her disappearance in November 2020, the corporate regulator ASIC raided her home.
It has since accused her of masterminding a Ponzi scheme, using Maliver as a facade.
Over that time, she handled almost $30.2 million in investor funds, paying back $8.5 million, a receivers’ report before the court states.
Ms Caddick’s income also included $71,393 in child support, $35,195.50 from luxury good reseller Hock Your Frocks and regular dividends from a $4.8 million share portfolio in her name.
ASIC seized a significant jewellery collection, which had a cost value of $2.5 million.
It has asked the court to permit Maliver’s liquidators to start processing claims.
Justice Brigitte Markovic has reserved her decision.
AAP
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