Darren Seals Jr

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When someone disappears, you have to look at who would benefit from their disappearance. What happened to Jennifer Harris and who is responsible for her death? Coming May 10th, Final Days on Earth Season two The Life and Death of Jennifer Harris available wherever you get your podcasts. How everyone and welcome to episode 270 of the True Crime All the Time Unsolved podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And with me, as always, is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. How are you? I'm doing good man about yourself. I'm doing very well. Yeah. I had my birthday this week birthday and it was a great birthday. Spend it with family. So very happy. Yeah, you look an older. I am older than when I saw you last time. That's true. I am older, but not as old as you, but I am older. That's true. Every time I see you, it is. I'm a little bit older, so let's go ahead and give our shout outs for patron. We had sandy love. Hey, Sandy ! Ashley Garwood What's up, Ashley? Ricky Mason, Mason Mackenzie, young young. Dana Smith. Well, thank you, Dana. Christine Brugge Well, thanks, Christine. Georgie Hackett jumped down to her highest level. It's up Hackett. Priya Patel. Hey, Patel, Joseph Mendoza. What's going on? Joseph Bill Radcliffe. Hey, Bill. Lilly Cash Bushnell jumped out the highest level. Thank you, Lily. Caitlin Taylor. What's going on, Taylor? Glorious short. Gloria Andrea Bona, Golf Ski Easy for you to say. Thanks, Andrea. Catarina Lindborg de Catarina. Becky Scovell. Thank you, Becky. Lori Pepper. Dominique Claire's. Lori Chon to. What's going on, John? Heather Taat Diaz. Hey, Heather Molly. Well, good ol Molly. And last but not least, Stephanie Poplars jumped out at our high slope, man. Thanks, Stephanie. And then if we go back into the fall? This week we selected Doreen Woods. Well, thank you, Doreen. Yeah, appreciate all that support. And we had a couple of great donations on PayPal from exquisite vintage jewels, kind of like vintage. Yeah, I like you trying to say the word exquisite or that it was very funny. And also Torin Rasmussen Well, thank you, Rasmussen. So we appreciate all that support Gibbs right now on true crime all the time. We have an episode out on Lawrence Dalton, you know, a lesser known serial killer, but very interesting in the fact that this is a guy who had a wife. Yeah. Had a couple of girlfriends and a lot of Kupe going on. They all knew each other. They all knew about each other, right? And kind of in the midst of all that, he was murdering women. Yeah. And this was basically a guy who treated women as kind of his personal sex objects and used them for his own pleasure. Not even women, children. Yeah, yeah. Actually, one was was not an adult, but a very, very bad guy. He was. All right, buddy, are you ready to get into this episode of True Crime all the time? And I'm ready. We are talking about the disappearance of Melissa Caddick, so we're headed to Australia, and this is a fairly recent case for us. It is as it pertains to unsolved. We normally don't do them this quickly or this early after they occur. It was in late 2020 that Melissa disappeared from the suburb of Dover Heights in Sydney, Australia. The highly successful financial adviser had left the luxury home she shared with her second husband and teenage son for an early morning run along the coast. But Melissa never made it back home. And then, as the hours and days passed with no sign of her, obviously then the concern for her continued to grow. Now what makes Melissa's case so intriguing is that at the time she disappeared, she was under investigation by both the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, or ASIC, for short. That is the regulatory authority for the Australian financial services industry. Melissa was suspected of defrauding over 70 clients of up to $30 million. That's a lot of change. If she would have been convicted, she would have faced, you know, a hefty jail sentence. I would think so. So to me, this is interesting on a number of levels. You know, normally when we're talking about an unsolved case and we're talking about somebody who has disappeared. Normally, people have nothing but glowing things to say about them. You know, this person was great. They were a wonderful person. They had their whole life ahead of them. That's what we hear in most of our unsolved episodes right now. I'm not saying that she was a bad person. What I'm saying is there was definitely a cloud of suspicion hanging over her head. Sure, when it came to being suspected of defrauding a bunch of people out of a lot of money. Yeah. So that adds a different type of element. Another layer, yeah. To to a case. Police spoke to everyone they could to try to figure out what happened, including Melissa's husband, who was the last person to have reportedly seen her. As time passed, her family and her financially devastated former clients wondered if they would ever receive the answers that they were looking for. Again, something different from most episodes. In every episode, you have family members who want answers, right? But here we have this added element, which is she had a bunch of clients and they're wanting to know where their money was. Yeah, and she was the person that would know that have that answer. And yeah, and until she was found, she couldn't get that answer, right? So they were wondering what happened to her. But then a gruesome discovery was made hundreds of kilometres from Melissa's home. But the discovery only intensified the mystery as to her whereabouts. Melissa has been declared dead by police, but a coroner's inquest is yet to be held to determine the manner of her death. Federal investigators are doing all they can to recover some of the millions of dollars Melissa allegedly swindled from her trusting clients. So that's kind of our overview of the case. You know, let's jump in to the particulars. Forty nine year old financial adviser Melissa Louise Caddick was ambitious, she was very charismatic and she was, said Gibbs, to be extremely assertive. I think you kind of have to be when you're in that line of business, well, you have to sell yourself along with, you know, whatever financial instruments you're trying to, you know, push on to clients. Maybe push is not the right word, but you do have to be charismatic. They have to believe in you and you have to be somewhat assertive. I think in any type of high pressure sales or where commissions are involved, because that's how you make money. ABC always be closing. Exactly. She was born in Sydney on April 21st, 1971, and was the youngest of two children. Melissa grew up with her parents, Ted and Barbara Grimley and her brother, Adam, in the suburb of Lugano in the south of Sydney. When Melissa graduated from Pekar's high school, she enrolled at Patrick's College in Secretarial and Business Administration after she graduated. Melissa got into office administration job working in the investment division of the Nkrumah's Australian member owned mutual company. She wasn't there very long before she moved on to a similar role with a boutique investment firm. But in 1998, only six months into that job, her employer found that 27 year old Melissa had forged her supervisor signature on a number of company checks, stealing almost $2000. So Melissa's boss told her that she had a choice she could leave and she wouldn't have to repay the money or they could call the police. Well, that's the easy decision. I think it's a very easy one. Lose your job, but face really no consequences or try to hold on to your job, which I don't know how she would have anyway, right? And face charges of what forgery and embezzlement, you name it. Yeah, that's not a tough one for me, and I don't think it would be for most people and it wasn't for her right? She chose the first option. Now, not long after that, Melissa started working as a financial advisor for Wise Financial Services. Her profile on their website claimed that she had undertaken graduate studies at the Securities Institute of Australia and was completing a Masters of Banking and Finance, as well as her Diploma of Financial Planning. She claimed to be a member of the Financial Planning Association of Australia and an authorised security dealer's representative. Well, definitely want your resume to reflect that you have all this knowledge, right? But do you really have it all? Well, that's the question. I think the other part of this is that she doesn't have the forgery slash and bafflement following her right because how there was no police right, no real incident. There was no charge. There was no conviction. And I don't know how it works in Australia, Gibbs. But you know, as well as I do that, that here in the U.S., there are certain things that you can't say about a past employee. Very true. Very true. Even if you wanted to, you're not supposed to know. You can just do that kind of a wink wink. How do you wink wink over the phone with the wink wink button? Oh, you got a special wink wink wink. In April 2000, twenty nine year old Melissa married Tony Caddick to those close to Melissa. Her career appeared to be going really well. In 2002, she borrowed $750000 to purchase a 25 percent share in wise financial services. So I just really want to hone in on this timeline, you know, in 1998. She has kind of an office administration type job, right? That's when she gets into trouble. Sure. But she's given a way out. Yes. Two years later, she marries. In two years after that, she borrowed $750000 doing something. Something is going very well for her. By 2003, she had developed a really good reputation, as you know, this savvy businesswoman. She was even featured on the cover of Australian industry magazine Independent Financial Adviser. I mean, you remember the first time I made my cover of Playgirl? Yeah, I do remember that you bought a bunch and held on to my house. Alice, which was a tough explanation to some of my family members, but it was my first cover. It was, yeah. Nobody else would buy them. So I mentioned it right. She's very ambitious. She wanted to expand her professional portfolio and her expertise by making property acquisitions and providing recommendations to clients. But in her current role, she couldn't do that. You know, had something to do with Australian financial compliance regulations. So my understanding, Gibbs was that she had all these ambitions, but she couldn't do everything that she wanted to do. She was being hindered by, you know, her role regulations. She couldn't grow the way she wanted to. Yeah. So she left wise financial services in late 2004, and they repaid her $750000 investment in return for signing a five year non-compete agreement. You know, which I read that and I thought, OK, it's great that she got her money back. But two years worth of $750000, you could have made some serious money. Yeah. And on top of that, you have to sign a five year non-compete right in the industry that you want to work in. Not sure that was a great deal for her? No, because you've got to pay that loan back. And then, you know, she, like you said, she can't dive back in that same field for five years. In June 2006, Melissa and Toni welcomed their only child, a son. She was working at a stockbroker firm at that time. Well, she's a go getter. She yeah, she's a go getter. I think it was thought by many that her motivation, her success, rubbed off on Tony. He ended up completing a law degree, began practising as a lawyer. You could do that. I could do that. Kim Kardashian did it. Thanks for that comparison. I'm just saying, you put your mind to it. You can achieve anything. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, in 2009, the couple bought a home in the suburb of Kensington for 1.5 six million dollars. All right. They got a good life doing something, or they borrowed a ton of money. Well, that's true. You know, one of the other I don't always look at, you know, how much somebody paid for a home or what kind of car they drive as really the end all be all for their status. Yeah, because we know sometimes people borrow a bunch of money to have those things. Exactly. Some of your bank accounts mean actually, you give me access to your bank accounts. But I think they were, you know, making some money. Tony was was a lawyer. The next year, Melissa, Tony and their son moved overseas, where Tony worked in London. Melissa was a stay at home mom, but she got bored of that. She wanted to, you know, kind of get back into that professional development mode. She wanted to re-enter the workforce, so she took a trip to Switzerland to attend a financial planning conference. Well, at least that's what she told Tony. Sure, I am going to Switzerland to look at some financial courses, but not long after she returned to London. A friend of the couple broke the news to Tony that Melissa had actually flown to Paris, and while she was there, she met up with her former hairdresser from Sydney, a guy by the name of Anthony Colletti. He was also 11 years younger than Melissa. I'm guessing she didn't meet up with him to do her hair. I'm thinking not. The pair began an affair, and so obviously this would be devastating for Tony, right? I think for any husband or for any wife to find out that your spouse's is cheating on you. On top of that, Tony discovered his wife had used their joint savings to pay for this guy's international travel expenses. It'll be additional knife in the back, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, he flew here on my dime. Yeah, he stayed at that hotel on my dime to your cheating on me, and you're using my money to finance the whole thing. Yeah. Knife in and then twist it. Exactly. So needless to say, the marriage is going to be over. Yeah, this signalled the end of the marriage. In January 2012, 40 year old Melissa packed up the house and her five year old son. She also cleaned out the joint bank accounts and returned to Sydney to basically start over. Now, despite what happened, she told everybody back home that Tony had been unfaithful. She also said that he had abused her and controlled everything about her life. Well, there's always two sides of the story there is. And again. I don't know what's true, what's not true. I think some of the reporting made it seem at least as though this was not true, but that she was saying this to, you know, kind of cover what she had done. I think what is definitely true is that Melissa was determined to get back on her feet. And I think pretty quickly began running her own financial advisory business named Malaba. It seemed to do pretty well. Yeah, and she seemed to be doing emotionally well, too. Well, I think in this situation, right where a marriage breaks down, it can go a couple of ways. People can wallow in despair and say, Oh, I can't believe my marriage ended or I can't believe I did this. That caused this. It didn't seem like she did any of that. No, she hit the ground running. Very ambitious. We mentioned that started this business and it took off. So as the business thrived, she began living a lavish lifestyle. It was, said Gibbs, and a number of different reports that in late 2012, she began spending a lot of money on designer clothes, jewelry, artwork, things like that. In 2013, after the divorce to Tony was finalized, 42 year old Melissa married her boyfriend, 31 year old Anthony Colletti. After they got married. They took a month long honeymoon in Aspen, Colorado. You got to do a little skiing. Hey, great place to take a honeymoon. I've never actually been there. What's getting me is the month long honeymoon. Yeah, it's a it's a long time. Well, it's a long time. It's also a lot of money. Yeah. Now, most of us are accustomed to taking a week or so. Maybe it's a little different in other countries, I don't know. In the U.S., here we usually take a week, right? That's it. Go on your honeymoon. Come back. But you know, she was refreshed after the honeymoon and she was raring to go to get her business going and going strong when she had an idea. And that idea was to approach a business associate and ask if she could operate under their financial services license, which in Australia apparently is legal as long as you get the consent of the licence holder. Not a bad deal. No, this person said no. Though, saying it was too big of a business risk, they didn't want to take that and they thought Melissa was fine with that answer. So because she said, OK, I'll go, I'll I'll figure out how to get my own license. But she didn't do that. She used their name and license anyway. She just didn't tell them about it. Well, that's what we call that here in the states. Fraud and illegal fraud, deception, a bunch of different things. And it was after this Gibbs that her business took off even more. Sure, she was making a ton of money, and her friends would later say, OK, they were happy that she was, you know, achieving all this success. But it did seem as though it kind of happened very, very quickly. I won't say overnight, but now, when friends asked her how she could afford, you know, all the things she was buying, we mentioned it right. Just tons of money on clothes, artwork, jewelry. She explained it by saying that she'd got a big lump sum payment from wise financial services and friends gave differing accounts, so it seems like she gave a different story to a bunch of different people. She either said she'd received $86 million in severance from wise to some. She said she got a generous payout for settling a sexual harassment claim, or that she devised a program to manage funds, and she sold it to some major financial institutions. So like 401K type story, so she's told different stories to fit the agenda. Who's asking? But either way, she's not telling the truth. Yeah, I think that's the key. Now you and I always try to be very careful. Sure. And what we say about, you know, people who disappear or who are considered victims, but you have to tell some of these things. It's part of the story. Sure, it is. It's part of her life story. It's part of what she did. Obviously, she did some things that were not above board. You know, at the very least, you'd have to say that, yeah, true crime all the time unsolved is brought to you by progressive insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep. While you're listening to. Give me an I talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising or maybe even grocery shopping, but if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you can be doing right now getting an auto quote from progressive insurance. It's easy, and you could save money by doing it right from your phone. Drivers who saved by switching to progressive save over $700 on average and auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy. 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Every week, Nikki dives into all the things you've heard about, but don't really know much about. So that means no more nodding along at parties or running to the bathroom to Google. What is cryptocurrency? You'll learn and laugh along the way as she explores life's little mysteries and the internet's hottest topics. Things like does intermittent fasting work, or is it true you can't die in your dreams? You'll find out with Nikki and some of her hilarious friends on her podcast. Call Me Curious. Listen to Call Me Curious on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts or listen. Add Free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. She wasn't always honest with people, even her friends. She did things behind people's backs that she knew she she shouldn't have done, but it seemed to work for her. You know, she amassed quite a bit of wealth pretty quickly. In 2014, she took out a $4 million mortgage to purchase a $6.2 million five bedroom, three story mansion, which overlooks Sydney Harbour in the city's affluent eastern suburbs. Sounds like a nice crib? Well, it does, but it also shows you that she's making some money. She sure is right. She bought a $6.2 million house, only took out a $4 million mortgage. Seems like she's doing something right right now. Whether she's doing it correctly is another story. That's another story. And I do think you see what happened next quite a bit. She's making money. Yeah, people around her see that she's making money. She's living in this mansion. What are you doing to make that type of money, right? Do it for me. Yeah, make me some of that money. And that's basically what she did, right? She went to, you know, friends, family, people that she knew and encouraged them to let her invest their money for them. She said she wanted those people that she loved those people around her, that she knew and liked and whatever to benefit from her business acumen. Yeah. And why wouldn't you want that for people you care about and love? You want to help them. You would. If you're on the up and up, you would want that. If you're not on the up and up, you just tell them you want that. Yeah. Now, she claimed that because of that non-compete agreement with Wyze, she was limited in her capacity to help as many people as she wanted. So she had to prioritize people like family and friends. You know, again, that's that's part of it. It is. You're been selective. I can only help so many people. You better jump in right now. I'm prioritizing you first. You don't do. I not to go to somebody else. Yes, and you'll miss out. Let's not forget one of the adjectives that we used about her, which was charismatic. Yes. Now I'm telling you, man, charisma goes a long way. It really does. It can get you really far in life. It can also help you do some really bad things. You can and hurt people. Yeah. So basically, she's trying to get all these people to invest their money with her. She's talking to them about their personal financial position, their goals and kind of tailoring an investment strategy around them. OK, that sounds good, right? That's what you want. Sure. In someone like a financial advisor, she even included her personal trainer. Why not? Let's get that. Money rolling away, see, I pay you to train me, but then you're going to run to give me that money back to invest for you. And the thing she did, which so many people and I don't want to call her a con artist because I'm just so leery about, you know, speaking ill of of people in an unsolved case. But she did what a lot of those type of people do. She created urgency. She made it sound exclusive, right? These supposed investment opportunities. Only a handful of people got to do it. Right now it's in, you know, I'm saying there's a short window. You can just kind of imagine how people work, those angles. Well, people also work those angles and they're doing it, but not bilking people out of their money. They just want to get them to invest. They're not trying to steal anything. So once you got people on board, they would deposit money into Melissa's company account and then she would invest that money for them. She had one client, Gibbs, that invested $5 million out of the gate. That's a lot of money. It's a big client. It is big fish. Call that a well. According to The Australian Financial Review, in 2016, Melissa made a two hundred and fifty five thousand dollars down payment on a $2.5 million penthouse apartment in nearby Edge Cliff as an investment not to live in as an investment. When her parents sold their home a year later, she convinced them to contribute over a million dollars to become part owners in this edge cliff property. And throughout all of this, yeah, she is spending money like it's going out of style. No, I mean, her and Anthony took regular trips to Aspen. They drove luxury cars, which wouldn't be out of the ordinary for some type of financial whiz, right? Who's making other people a bunch of money? Well, when you do that, you're going to make a ton of money as well. Sure. And they'll spend that money. Yeah. According to the Daily Telegraph, on two trips to Fiji alone, Bliss has spent a total of $63000. It's a lot. I mean, that's I mean, that's like giving type spending right there. I don't even trust my wallet off, man. They also reported that trips to New York and Hong Kong totalled $56000. So we mentioned Anthony. He was younger. They're now married. He decided to try his hand at becoming a deejay while he worked part time as a hairdresser. Why not? I'm thinking with the amount of money she's making, he can dabble in whatever he wants to dabble in. Try whatever. Yeah, I'm trying something different every week, so I think the thing gives is that, you know, everybody from the outside looking in. And Melissa thought, Wow, she has this remarkable life. She's a huge success. But in reality, she was living a complete lie. It's been stated by a number of outlets that there's no paper trail to suggest Melissa ever obtained any qualifications in finance and instead of legitimately investing her clients money. It was alleged that she was basically running a Ponzi scheme, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, when Melissa received money from her clients. She created fake portfolio statements with account numbers. The documents showed that the funds were invested in shares, with CommSec short for Commonwealth securities and investment subsidiary of one of Australia's biggest financial institutions. The Commonwealth Bank. So she sent these statements out monthly, and she also sent out more comprehensive annual reports on the performance of her clients portfolios. So her clients were like, Man. Things are looking good. She's making a s**t ton of money. This piece of paper says so. Exactly. So maybe should I give her more money? And that's usually how it works. Yeah. Or you end up telling a friend how much money she's making for you and they want to get it right. She took my 500000 to 700000, and that's how people get kind of wrapped up in some of these Ponzi schemes. We've seen it over and over. But really, if you think about it, Gibbs, it's hard to turn down something like that. When somebody shows you what appears to be proof right of somebody doing a Warren Buffett with your money. Yeah, you want in on that. Everybody wants to make money. Yeah, and you see them living the good life. Yeah. And let's not forget a lot of her clients. She was sort of close to friends, family. You don't think those are the people who are going to rip you off. Exactly. So I think even on top of this. Ruse, these statements and all that, there's that factor. All right, so you're more trusting because this is someone you know, Melissa required all her clients to use her account to make everything more streamlined. I think the strange thing Gibbs was that her accounting wasn't, you know, from some big time firm in Sydney, as you might expect. Instead, he worked out of a small accounting practice in Brisbane. I think if you knew that, you would find that odd, you know, she's this kind of high-flying financial wizard. You're right. But yet she's using an accountant who doesn't even have their own firm. They're just working out of a small accounting office. Right? Red flag. I think so. Now this accounting is not believed to have had any knowledge of what Melissa was up to, but maybe a larger firm or more prestigious firm might have dug in to some of that stuff and maybe found something. Yeah, you think that's maybe why she didn't use a high profile firm? I'm thinking, I think so too, and I'm not badmouthing. This guy probably didn't have the resources or he just thought everything was on the up and up, and I get paid and I'll do my work, according to The Sydney Morning Herald in August 2019. Melissa updated her well to include the apartment where she stayed every year in Aspen. The problem, Gibbs, was that she didn't own it. It's hard to fill something when you don't own it. It is kind of like the the London Bridge or the Golden Gate Bridge. Yeah. So she's living the high life. I mean, there's no doubt about that, but everything's about ready to come crashing down in November 2019. ASIC received an anonymous tip that Melissa was illegally running her business using the license of the business associate she'd approached back in 2013. It seems as though they didn't do anything about it, even though this was a fairly serious offense. I mean, it could carry a two year jail sentence and a $22000 fine. You would think the filing would be much bigger than that. Now, the two years in jail, nobody wants to do no. But if you're making millions and millions of dollars, who cares about a $22000 fine? I mean, her attorney fees are going to be more than that. Sure. The thing that kind of gets me is if you look at the timeline 2013 to 2019, she got away with that part of it she did for, you know, a number of years. Seven months later, in June 2020, ASIC received another complaint. This time it was from someone doing their due diligence after Melissa approached them with a proposal for investing with her company without her knowledge. The complaint triggered a large scale investigation into her personal and company financial affairs, so she didn't know about this big time investigation. But apparently she felt as though something was happening like a sixth sense. Maybe because, according to the Daily Telegraph, she began shredding hundreds of documents in her home office in September. Well, why would you do that unless you at least felt as though maybe the walls were closing in, something was about to happen. Or maybe she couldn't feed the Ponzi scheme the way it needs to be fed, right? When that's usually how people get caught, right? Eventually, it dries up. If you can't continually get new investors, then you can't pay the other people, their dividends or the money that they believe they've made off of this money. Yeah, off your fake accounts and all of that. And that's when everything usually crumbles. On Nov. 11, 2020, Melissa got a knock on the door. When she opened it, she was greeted by the Australian Federal Police and investigators from ASIC. The officers had a warrant to search the property on suspicion that Melissa had been stealing from her clients. They investigators took hard drives from the home security cameras. They also took her passport. They seized her designer clothes, handbags, shoes and jewelry. So I'm picturing like the first episode of Schitt's Creek here. Oh yeah, you remember that when they come in and they basically take everything they own? Yeah, yeah. According to the Australian ABC, authorities froze Melissa's assets and alerted immigration so she would be stopped if she tried to flee the country. So this was big. I mean, obviously, if you're saying surrender your passport, you can't leave. We've got something against you, right? We just make sure you don't leave the country until we wrap it all up and put a bow on it. But on November 12, the morning after the raid, Melissa woke up early and put on her. Workout clothes to go for a run. Police later interviewed Anthony, as well as Melissa's son, her son, who was a teenager, said he didn't see his motherly but assumed that it was sometime around 5:30 a.m. when he heard the front door closed. I'm wondering what teenager is up at 5:30 a.m. to hear the front door close? None of my teenagers would ever hear a front door close before about nine or 10 at the earliest. Maybe a teenager just coming home? Maybe, but I don't think he was old enough to be out that way. Now it was said that Anthony wasn't concerned because a daily morning run was part of Melissa's regular routine. He told police he had no idea where she was or why she hadn't come home. He said he last saw his wife in bed the night before. Following the raid, but he couldn't explain why he'd taken more than 30 hours to report her missing. Well, 30 hours is a long time to report somebody missing, I think. But if it was typical for her to go out jogging and then head off to the office, that's not 30 hours for now. It's hard to explain. It is because at some point you would expect that person to come home on that day. Yeah, or at least that night sometime that night and only hours before police found out that she hadn't returned home. Melissa had been due to appear before an online ASIC hearing regarding these allegations against her. So all of this is kind of, you know, kind of melding together, it seems like, yeah, probably some suspicions there, right? But I do know right off the bat, police had concerns that something had happened to her because she hadn't taken any of her personal belongings. She left her cell phone keys and credit cards at home. New South Wales police established Strike Force Cordillera to investigate the disappearance. Anthony and Melissa's brother, Adam, made a public plea for help in finding Melissa. Yeah, because at the end of the day, this was somebody's wife and sister. Yeah, I think it's a great point, right? Regardless of what she may have done illegally, right? If these allegations against her were true, she's still a human being sure, and she's missing, so there should be concern. Police reviewed CCTV footage from the room. Melissa usually took on her runs, but a large part of her role was through residential areas, so it's unknown exactly where she went after walking out the front door. My assumption is, Gabe, you're not going to find a lot of CCTV cameras in residential areas. At least we don't have them here in the in the U.S.. Yeah, I mean, what you do have is those doorknob cameras. You have a door knob camera, you know, there's cameras on your you mean a doorbell camera. Those things OK. Yes, OK. I didn't know if maybe you had something special that nobody else had where it's actually the cameras actually mounted on your door knob. I do, because I want to see the the key is the key in the palm coming out the door. But so, you know, I do have a doorbell camera. It's not going to pick somebody up running down the street. Yeah, I have the sensitivity sat a little lower. I don't want it going off every time somebody is walking their dog on the sidewalk. So, you know, some people set them differently because I know they have picked up killers walking down the sidewalk in other stories. Well, that kind of explains why cameras at the surrounding property show no sign of Melissa jogging along the footpath in either direction. Right? Because they maybe they had the same setting. You have low sensitivity. Yeah, and I don't know. It just said cameras in the research. So I don't know if those are specifically the doorbell type or if those are more you know, of like the mounted on your house security type of cameras, which would pick a lot more up, especially if they're not motion activated. And a lot of those just run all the time. Don't stop. And that's what all the time media and they're saying. The footage is saved to a hard drive to shake. The other thing was that all the vehicles were still in the garage. They know that she didn't drive one of her vehicles away. I mean, you can make the case. Maybe somebody came along. She knew she jumped in the vehicle. Maybe, oh, you could make a lot of different cases of how she got away from that house if nothing bad happened to her? Sure. Obviously, detectives looked at the activity on Melissa's bank accounts to try to trace her movements, and when they did, they were kind of shocked at what they found. Her mortgage was paid three months in advance, but the money that she'd been stashing away in her own personal accounts for years had vanished. OK. I mean, that means something to investigators. You know, if they're seeing a pattern of large amounts of money being funneled in over time and then all of a sudden it's gone. At the same time that a person disappeared. Suspicious? Well, it's suspicious. Or it's leading you down the path of, OK, this was being stashed because at some point maybe this person knew they were going to need to take off. Yeah, they had to flee and they were going to need that money. Right? But I do think what's interesting Gibbs in this story is that at this point in time, after Melissa disappeared her clients. I mean, obviously, they were concerned for her safety. They were worried about her. But they had no clue what she had been doing with their money. And that really their world were going to come crashing down, too. As federal authorities continued searching through her financial records, everything started to come out. Right? The deception, the kind of Ponzi scheme, if you want to call it that. And the news of the raid all broke in the media, and that's when her clients started checking the status of their own financial records. And one by one, they started making the discovery that not only was Melissa gone, but so is their money. There was no record of the shares that Melissa said she'd purchased for all of these clients. So you've got friends and family who are very worried about this woman. And then all of a sudden, you're going to have a lot of angry people. Yeah. Once they realized that she had duped them and basically a lot of them lost everything. So I think when you lay a lot of these facts out, it's easy to understand why police initially believed Melissa had gone on the run. She's being investigated. She was due to appear before this investigative body. A large amount of money is gone from her personal accounts. What else could you think? She didn't want to face the music, so she ran off. Some people believe she'd left the country. Others thought she was hiding in plain sight. Maybe still in Sydney. Tip started flooding in from the public and sightings stretched from Melbourne up to Darwin in the far north of the country. Now, another interesting thing was that it was well reported that this area where Melissa lived, the eastern coastal suburbs, is known as a place in Sydney where a lot of people in their life. There have been a number of suspicious deaths that have occurred in that area over the years. A lot of people have plunged on to the rocks below. Many of them are thought to have been swept out to sea. So there's a lot of questions, right? I'm sure that authorities and other people were asking, Was it possible that Melissa had left the house with the intention of taking her own life? Maybe just making it look as though she had gone on the run, but actually jumped off onto the rocks and into the ocean? I could see where you could take a look at both things, right? Took off on the run or possibly ended her life. Both of those would kind of dovetail in to. She's feeling the pressure. Sure, she knows she's about ready to be exposed. She's going to be publicly humiliated and there are going to be some pretty big consequences. And she has to answer to friends and family, and that's not going to be an easy thing to do. No, you're going to be despised by a lot of people. Well, it's a sign was also a victim in all of this. I mean, he was only 14 years old when his mother disappeared and he was broke. She didn't leave him any money. No, she took it all. And her husband, Anthony, was broke. That's true. It's kind of rough when you go from living in that posh lifestyle to being broke. Yeah, yeah. In January 2021, ASIC held a preliminary hearing to consider the evidence against Melissa, who at that point was still missing from early 2018 until late 2020 alone. Melissa had deposited $20 million of her clients money into her own account, and Gibbs, she spent almost all of it, except for about $700000. She's been over $21 million in a little over two years, according to 60 Minutes Australia. Melissa spent $230000 at Christian Dior, almost $50000 at Chanel and $25000 on supplements. Because you get to have your diet supplements, that's a lot of diet supplements. Is she even implicated her father in law, who was a justice of the peace by forging his signature on legal documents so that they could be legally witness? Melissa used the money to pay off her credit cards and the mortgage on the edge cliff property that she'd purchased with her parents. She even spent the $1.1 million that she got her parents to invest in that property, and she basically just blew it. She bought an expensive diamond ring. Just a bunch of stuff. I get it. We love stuff. I like stuff. You know what? I'm not going to do is defraud my parents in order to buy stuff. No. The other thing that I found extremely interesting you could even call it ironic is that, you know, one of the things Melissa did to help cover her tracks was make genuine investments, so she did invest money. The problem is, she wasn't good at it. No, she lost a million dollars on real investment, right? So she was good at telling people that they were making a lot of money. Yeah, she just wasn't really good at actually making money off of investments. She was a good front person. Yeah. Please check out every possible way Melissa could have left the country. You know, maybe with some type of fake passport, but they didn't find anything to suggest that she'd pass through the Australian immigration or even escaped by boat. And there were a lot of marinas close to where she lived. Detectives were confident, number one, that she was still alive and I think number two, that she was hiding out somewhere in Australia. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on February 21st, 2021, federal warrants were issued for her arrest, so they're coming after her and rightfully so. I mean, I think they've got a ton of evidence. But the very next day, there was a McJob twist in this case. Police were alerted after a gruesome discovery was made on borned a beach near Tathra on the New South Wales far south coast, about 400 kilometres from Sydney. Some teen boys found a lone woman's A6 brand running shoe on the sand, but when they look closer, they were shocked. Inside the shoe was a decomposed human foot. We're going to see that every day. No, and it was pretty evident that it had been in the water for some time. My thought is Gibbs, when you find a severed foot. Yeah, the first thing you need to do is try to figure out who that belongs to. Sure. I mean, at this point, Melissa's disappearance was still news. It was still in the headlines. So police closed off the beach and they searched in the vicinity to see whether, you know, other body parts had washed up on shore. Do you think there would be? Possibly, yeah. Unless you just had an accident where your foot was severed, right? The decomposed foot was sent for testing when investigators reviewed footage filmed during the raid of her home just about three months earlier. They saw that Melissa was wearing the same exact type of shoe when tissue from the severed foot was tested against DNA recovered from her toothbrush. It was a match, so in March 2021, she was officially declared dead by New South Wales police. But back to your question, Gibbs No other body parts belonging to Melissa were found on the beach, and the post-mortem didn't reveal many clues. Now they only had a foot, so I don't know how much you could actually gain. Or what type of insight you're going to get from that? According to the Guardian, police divers searched 6000 square kilometres of waters off Dover Heights, where Melissa lived, but they didn't find any sign of her remains. Her family attended a private memorial service in April 2021. Police consulted with oceanographers and meteorologists to try to develop a model to determine how Melissa's foot had traveled so far south in the months since she'd gone missing. So my thought is their theory was that she must have went in the water close to home, right? And the foot traveled south. Or maybe she had traveled part of the way south and something had happened. Or, you know, she decided to to take her life. And then the foot traveled a little further south. But when the ocean currents and tides were analyzed for the period after she disappeared, it was revealed that Melissa had most likely entered the water near her home on November 12. So this is pretty fascinating stuff. It really is. When you're looking at tides and ocean currents and trying to figure out how long would it take for something to travel from this point to this point? I mean, basically what they came up with was that it was entirely possible her body or any part of it would have drifted or could have drifted that far south in that amount of time. So my thought is they probably ruled out her going into the water further south because the foot then would have washed up or gone further south is probably what they're thinking was even though Melissa has officially been declared dead. Her manner of death remains undetermined, with the matter yet to be heard by the New South Wales coroner once federal investigators have finalized their case against Melissa. The state coroner will make a formal finding. One of the things that is not in question in this case is that there were a lot of people who had a motive sure to take some form of revenge on Melissa. So, you know, is it possible that she was murdered? I don't know how. You can't at least keep that on the table. Yeah, I think it has to be on the table when you've heard that many people and in some cases ruin their lives. I mean, if you lost everything right and you had millions of dollars and you lost it all, you're going to be mighty upset. Yeah, at the person that caused that and who knows what you would do in October 2021? Anthony Coletti claimed someone killed his wife. He told the Daily Mail Australia Melissa would never have taken her own life. Looking at the facts, the first any of Melissa's clients knew about her to see was when they saw the news stories about her disappearance and the raid on her home. And really, it was only then that, you know, most of them contacted their institutions and found out that there were no funds or there wasn't even an account, right? So basically, at the time, she went missing. Really, none of her clients would have had a motive because they didn't know what she had done to them by that point, unless maybe a few of them might have known. Yeah, I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think that was an interesting piece of the puzzle that, you know, much different if everybody knew about it and then she went missing. Well, then you have a very large pool of people sure who had a motive, maybe to see harm come to her, right? Well, we know someone tipped off the feds and we know the feds investigate it for a while. It's always possible for something to leak. Yeah, I'm sure somebody knew. But then, you know, you kind of have to ask the question if you were a client and you knew, wouldn't you have done something more than just maybe an anonymous tip or and maybe somebody did, and we just don't know. Yeah. Maybe somebody confronted her. Try to get her to talk. Yeah, I don't know. It's been widely alleged that Melissa's husband, Anthony, knows more about her disappearance than he has said. And I think a lot of that probably stems from, you know, him waiting more than 30 hours to report Melissa missing. That's a long time. It's a long time when somebody has a routine, right? They get up and run. They go to work. But they always, you know, they come home around this time or they come home every night, at least, right? They're not out all night, but by waiting 30 hours, that's a long time for Melissa. Be anywhere. Well, give somebody a really big head start. Yeah, if that's the purpose of waiting. Sure. You wait 30 hours to tell somebody I'm missing. I'm already across the world. I'm on the other side of the world in 30 hours. I'm Jason Bourne in it. Yes, you are probably on foot because I can run in 30 a flat five miles per hour on foot, somehow across the ocean at five miles. No, it's not very five miles per hour. That's probably about how fast you can actually run, probably. Now, the one thing that was reported was that detectives don't really have any reason to believe that Anthony or Melissa's son knows anything about her disappearance. Nor is there any suggestion Anthony knew about Melissa defrauding her clients. The official police position as of now, is that Anthony is cooperating as much as he can, although he has stated publicly that he believes the authorities have set Melissa up. So did he know? I don't think he had to necessarily know. No, I think he just thought she was successful. I think she could have easily snowed him, just as she did. You know, all of her clients? Yeah. And you're not going to tell your 14 year old son, 12, 13, 14 year old son, that mommy's stealing everybody's money. You're not going to do that. There's no reason to oh, a Ponzi scheme works best if nobody knows. Yeah. According to the Australian ABC, police believe Melissa took her own life in the waters near Dover Heights, but they're not exactly sure where or when. Melissa's foot is the only evidence that she may have died by suicide. One of the odd things about this theory is that if she did take her own life, it's apparently rare that the body of anyone doing so in this way in this part of Sydney wouldn't have been found. I think the big question for me, Gibbs, is if she took her life, how did she lose her foot? How did her foot get severed, right? I mean, it could have been a shark attack, but wouldn't they be able to tell? I would think they would be able to based on bite marks incision. You know, people are investigators are usually pretty good at determining what made a cut right down to, you know, the type of blade, the type of knife. But it's possible that she could have taken her life and then later been, you know, eaten by a shark. I think the other big question is if she did die by suicide, where's all the money? Yeah, that apparently was taken out of her bank account. If she was planning on ending her life, why wouldn't she have just left the money there for maybe her husband, her son? So you have to ask that question. You wouldn't think that someone would withdraw, you know, or transferred that big of an amount unless they were planning on using it in this case, maybe to build a new life, to go on the run, whatever. So I think this brings us to the next question of whether or not Melissa's really dead. There are some theories that delve into, you know, this extensive planning in advance for probably what she knew was going to happen, right? The police were going to come knocking on her door at some point. We mentioned that she paid her mortgage three months in advance. It was around $19000. Yeah. Strange thing to do. Yeah, I don't think most people pay their mortgage months and months and months in advance. Most of us are just happy if we can pay it by the the deadline now. She did have quite a bit of money, but there definitely is a theory that she severed her foot, fled Sydney, discarded the foot knowing it would be found, and that would lead to everyone thinking she was dead. They'd stop looking for her with her type of money. Maybe she hired a surgeon and doctor somebody to do that. Somebody with the knowledge. I think that's the question, right? If that theory is correct or if you want to even entertain that theory, you have to ask the question would she have been able to sever her own foot? I don't think most people would. Now, James Franco played that guy that was able to. Oh yeah, sever his arm because it was stuck in the rocks or whatever. You could do it. They did. You know what's his name from Princess Bride? Did it and saw? But it can't be an easy thing to do. No, I don't think everybody could do that, but I think some extraordinary people can do that. And what happens if you are able to do it? You got a serious situation, you do that you need help with right away, so you know, back to your point. Isn't it more likely that maybe a professional did it and then was there to do whatever was needed to save her life? Now the problem with that is now you have somebody else who knows what you did, right? And so how do you guarantee that they're just not going to go to the cops other than you paid them a boatload of money and they will get in trouble as well, right? I mean, there is the desperation factor that you have to take into account. When people get desperate enough, they're willing to go to some really great lengths that most people wouldn't go to because they're just that desperate. Now, according to the Guardian, police have dismissed this theory, saying it's too far fetched. Anthony told the Daily Telegraph that he believes it's unlikely Melissa is alive. Around the same time that Melissa's foot was discovered, investigators made a breakthrough. It didn't have anything to do with Melissa's whereabouts, but it was something that instead offered some hope to the many people whose money she had taken of the $30 million that police ultimately figured out. Melissa transferred from her clients. Only about seven million was returned as clients closed their portfolios and new clients came on board. So this means that the clients that Melissa had at the time she disappeared are still out about $23 million. So I think in 2021, they thought it was $20 million. Obviously, they updated that to be 30 million. They combed through thousands of pages of financial statements, and in doing so, they found a significant amount of money. Melissa had invested in her own share portfolio, which remained untouched in April 2021, a month after Melissa was declared dead. ASIC dropped 38 criminal charges against her. The civil case would still proceed in the hands of court appointed liquidators. The court ordered Melissa's assets to be seized, including her multimillion dollar home and vehicles. These would be sold to recoup money for the clients she defrauded, according to the Australian ABC, in February 2022. Melissa's 2016 Audi R8 convertible and 2016 Mercedes Benz Clay 45 AMG, were sold at auction for around $360000. Nice vehicles? Yeah, considering they were about six years old at that point, yeah, that's a boatload of money. Now, wonder if any of that came from the case. The headlines, the notoriety, the infamy could have been. Maybe, yeah, maybe that caused somebody to want it because it was connected with this case. I don't know. So Gibbs, as we wrap up this case, it's a very strange one. You know, obviously, Melissa Caddick did some really bad things. She hurt people, not physically, but she ruined a lot of people's lives. Yeah, by defrauding them, spending their money, making them think they were making a bunch of money when in reality, she took it all. But then you have this big question what happened to her? Was she a victim? Because you could be both. You could be you could be an alleged criminal who would have been charged and most likely convicted and also a victim at the same time. If somebody you know, did you harm before you had your your day in court or was she a person that knew that, you know, the authorities were closing in on her and she chose to end her life? Or the third scenario, in my view, is she really did arrange to have her own foot cut off to throw the authorities offered trail to make them believe that she was dead and she's hiding out somewhere, living, you know, a new life. Obviously, she doesn't have the money that we know of. Doesn't mean she doesn't have some type of money. Well, could she have stashed some in, you know, some offshore bank account that she was able to access in a different name? I mean, there's so many possibilities in this case. I think police are pretty much settled on the she chose to to take her life, right? But I don't think the foot alone is enough evidence to conclusively say that. You might say that's the most likely scenario. But can you rule everything else out? I don't think you can. And what if the foot was never found changes? It changes everything, but it's. Also, an argument against it, because how could she have known for sure that the foot would be found? Yeah, in the water all that time? How did she know that a shark wasn't going to come and devour it or some other kind of, you know, sea creature? Right? I don't know. I think it's what draws a lot of people to this case because there are definitely some strange elements to it. You could soak that foot in a saltwater bucket for three months and then have that doctor or somebody walk it down on that beach and dump it out and looks like it's been sitting in water for three months when it really been sitting in somebody's bucket for tea, you just add another layer to it. You know, that would almost be like the serial killers who confuse authorities on time of death by, you know, keeping a body in a freezer for years, letting it thaw out and then dumping it somewhere. And as long as they let it fall out properly and there's no crystals inside the body, then police might believe this person was killed very recently. But is this exactly why cases like this are fascinating to me, to you, to a lot of people? We don't know exactly what happened. The police don't even know. I don't know if you would ever know unless she shows up someplace or she's found. Right? So if you have any information on the disappearance and death of Melissa Caddick, you can contact Australian Crime Stoppers at one 800 three three three zero zero zero or visit NSW Dot Crime Stoppers dot com dot a U to submit an anonymous tip. So that's it for our episode on the disappearance of Melissa Caddick. Definitely a different type of episode for us, Gibbs, you know, on Unsolved. We're not normally having to talk about the person who has disappeared, who is thought to be dead is doing so many bad things. Yeah, but that's what happened. The facts are the facts. We got some voicemails. You can check those out. It's your. My and give her give. Hey, this is great new listening start from the reset going down the list to the beginning. Very interesting essay. I cannot describe how good you two guys work together. Amazing, amazing descriptions of these unsolved mystery murders and situations. Now you guys break down every day anyway. Located in Manhattan, Kansas. And again, I'm a new listener. It is a case in the state of Georgia where the young kid named Kendrick Johnson. Look into that plea and maybe we can hear about it from you too, Mike and give keep it real people. So, first of all, love the enthusiasm. Yeah, he's all hopped up on Mountain Dew. Love in the show. Like it, it's infectious. Like it makes me feel better. More more gives me more energy than some do I want. Some do too. But we did do that case. Did do we did do did do so. If we're talking about do it in sound right? But we did an episode on Kendrick Johnson. It is episode 169, so he probably just hasn't gotten there yet. You'll find it. Yeah, but it's definitely out there. Hi, Mike. Hi, Debbie. It's less than five days away from for you. Nice birthday. I wanted to call in and say how much I just love your guys and showing you guys are so that hashtag for you. Remind me so much of my dad. He's at around. He was around your age. I have recently lost him in 2020, but you are just like him, your mannerisms and your jokes. It's it's fantastic. You gave me a piece of him that I was pretty sure I lost forever, but you fill that hole and it's better than it being empty. So thank you, guys. I just wanted to let you guys know how much I appreciate you and what you guys do and all the hard work. So keep your own chain checking guys that Fergie is special. So there's a lot there. I mean, it is sharing a birthday. Very cool. Obviously, we're very sorry that that you lost your father. We are, but gives that touch me. I see you and I don't even look at you right now because you're tearing up. Yeah, it touched me just to to be able to to do that, that she feels that way. Yeah. It means a lot. It does. How are you doing, Mike? Do I know that there are intimate video calling because I absolutely love you guys. Podcast I listen to it every day. While that word is really amazing listening to all the crimes that happened over time and in different days. I'm gonna keep my guard up a little bit as well making reference, but I can say I love you guys. As far as I know, Gibbs is a really funny guy, but I listen to both of you guys, keep it out and see good and good words. And just. All right, thanks to Isaiah for the voicemail. So we each got a little good kudos, which is nice. Yeah, we appreciate that. I feel good. You feel good. We all feel good. Well, we all scream for ice cream. Yeah. Or some Barney song. No, I don't do Barney. I've told you I didn't do Barney when the kids were little. No, Barney is not around anymore. I don't think. I don't know, thankfully. All right, buddy. That is it for another episode of True Crime all the time unsolved. So for Mike and me, stay safe and keep your own time ticking. All this month, stream the funniest films for free on Pluto TV. Watch comedy classics like Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Mean Girls, or Drop In for a Tyler Perry marathon with a Madea Family Funeral and Madea's Witness Protection. Pluto TV also had hundreds of channels and thousands of movies and TV shows like Get Shorty Because Key and Peele, Comedy In Color and more. And no contracts, no subscriptions, no fees, no joke. So download the Pluto TV app on your favorite streaming device and start laughing today. Pluto TV drop in. Watch Free ! What if your daughter disappeared? Your mother, your son? What if years have passed and you're no closer to finding them? When a person goes missing, their story doesn't stop there. Each week, missing brings you stories of missing persons and justice sourced from the case file of the non-profit private investigations for the missing. Listeners say missing is the most binge worthy podcast of all time. Search missing wherever you listen to podcasts missing where mysteries have a mission.