The Vanishing of Melissa Caddick: A Stylish Sydney Life and a Multi-Million Dollar Ponzi Scheme

She was wealthy, stylish, and appeared to be living the dream life in Sydney, Australia. Then, without a trace, Melissa Caddick vanished. The mystery of her disappearance was only the beginning of a bizarre and captivating scandal that would unravel in the wake of her going missing. This episode dives into the life she projected, the multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme she was allegedly running, and the shocking discovery of a severed, decaying foot that washed up on a beach—which was later identified as belonging to Melissa. Join us as we explore the facts and fun facts of Australia, including the true fate of the con artist who disappeared into thin air.

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] She was wealthy, stylish, and living the dream life in Sydney, Australia. When Melissa Caddick vanished without a trace, what followed would unravel one of the most bizarre and captivating financial scandals the country had ever seen. Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa.

Hi Melissa. Hi Andy. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm not stressed out, uh, and doing my pre travel. Like freak out. Yeah, I'm not doing that. I, I swear the thing, like I will fight myself in those moments to be like, everyone just wants to have a good time. If you blow up now, everyone will remember this. It's the trip that mom blew up in.

Yes. So then like, but by the end I'm like. And I didn't wanna get mad, but you guys have pushed me to the limit. Why do you want, like why do you only listen when I scream? That's what I always say. You are teaching me bad behavior by teaching me. You will only listen if I'm yelling. Right. That's on you, [00:01:00] right?

Like I'm being conditioned. To do this because this is what I have learned. It's, it's how you parent, it's how I actually get a reaction and a response out of you. So yeah. So who is a follow here? Who's, who's training who here? Yeah. I'm sure there's not a, there's a lot of problems with our theory there.

I'm No, I'm sure, yes. I'm sure it's not the correct one and not, not a parenting theory that anyone else should follow. But yeah, we were talking a little bit before we started recording about how I'm going on my trip. We're leaving a little bit later today, so we're recording, uh, in the morning this time.

And I had set everybody in. My house on task. Right before I started recording. I was like, all right, here's a list of everything I want done when I get out of my room. So tdo. Yeah. Goodbye everyone. Melissa, are your bets on all these things will be done or do you think I will be doing a lot of these things when I finish recording today?

Yeah, I can already hear the Benny Hill music playing in the background as you're like running around. Saying bad words under your breath. Um, I mean, I hope for you, but I live in reality and yes, at my house, the reality [00:02:00] would be somebody, especially my oldest, would say, oh, oh, I thought you meant, and it'd be like nothing I ever said.

Right. And why would you ever think I would mean that? Right? Why would you think cleaning the kitchen means wiping off the counters and taking things off the oven? Like why would that be a thing that would be involved? So anyway, you know, Godspeed to you. 'cause Yeah. You know, whatever you get, if everybody's alive and not fighting at the end, I think that's a win.

That's all I care about. Truly. And like you said, and that nobody. Has like a major blowup and ruins the weekend before we even get out the door. And that, that no one is you. That's right. Absolutely. All right, so we'll get into the story this week. This one is actually really fascinating and interesting. I always enjoy stories about financial crimes mostly because it always makes me think that I am way too stupid to ever figure out how to scam people like this.

Mm-hmm. Um, and every time we have a story like this where it's like, uh, some kind of a financial crime or a scam, I, we always say that. I'm like, how do people even. Come up with these ideas. How do they know what to even do? Yeah. This is one of [00:03:00] those cases, especially in this one, I think. Yeah, for sure.

Melissa Louise Caddick was born on April 21st, 1971 in Australia to parents Ted and Barbara Grimley. Her father worked in reinsurance, which is a very niche corner of the insurance world. While her mom was a secretary at a local physiotherapy clinic, the family lived in a quiet, middle class suburb in Southern Sydney.

By all accounts, Melissa had a comfortable upbringing, but those who knew her said she always had her sight set even higher. One former classmate said that Melissa was driven by a desire to be better than she was, and she always aimed to be part of the coolest group. After high school, Melissa enrolled at Patrick's College Australia and specialized in business etiquette, professional polish, and grooming young women for corporate success.

There she studied secretarial business administration gaining the tools that would later help her break into the male dominated world of finance. Melissa's first [00:04:00] job was in administration in the investment division of the National Road and Motorist Association, better known as NRMA. And this wasn't really a glamorous job at all, but it did get her foot in the door.

In the early two thousands, she landed a role at Wise Financial Services as an office manager, but she quickly transitioned into financial planning, which is where her career really took off. Melissa was smart, ambitious, and knew how to present herself well. By 2003, she had made enough of an impression to land on the cover of Independent Financial Advisor magazine.

Featured photos of the magazine showed Melissa wearing a bold red jacket and her signature fire engine red Chanel lipstick. The headline, read a Wise Choice. Australia's best Planning practice. However, behind this confident image and all the praise, there were some cracks. In 2004, Melissa left Wise financial services after clashing with company policies, one former [00:05:00] colleague described it as Melissa, just simply not enjoying following the rules.

It's not me, you know, it's not me. It's definitely not this. Melissa. Somewhere along the way, she also dipped her toe into the world of pageantry and started working as a fundraiser for the Miss Australia competition. By 2013, she launched a company called Malor. On the Surface, she appeared to be a very accomplished financial advisor running her own firm, but what nobody knew was that Malor was about to become ground zero for one of the most insanely audacious scams in Australian history.

Melissa's first experience with love wasn't exactly a fairytale in the 1990s. She fell for a man who turned out to be a thief, and it wasn't just her heart. He was stealing. He was actually stealing from Melissa and her parents. And when Melissa was confronted about it. She denied the accusations and actually ran off with this man, but eventually she returned home and admitted that he had maxed out her credit [00:06:00] cards and left her behind in the year 2000, Melissa married a British builder's laborer named Tony Caddick.

Unlike her first relationship, this one seemed much more grounded. Tony had a political degree from England, and with Melissa's encouragement, he went on to complete a law degree in 2006. That same year, the couple welcomed his son. Sometime during that period they moved to the uk, but Melissa had a hard time settling in there.

She told her friends that Tony was unfaithful. He was also controlling and narcissistic. However, Melissa wasn't exactly innocent either. In late 2011 or 2012, she was caught having an affair with her Australian hairdresser, Anthony Colletti, who she actually met in 2005 when she became his client. Years later, that relationship turned sexual, and by 2012, Melissa had taken her son and moved back to Australia without Tony.

She cleared out their shared bank account and packed up their belongings and [00:07:00] left. Melissa claimed that she fled the UK to escape Tony's abuse, and when she arrived back in Australia, she started sending scathing messages about him to their mutual friends. Eventually though, Tony moved back to Australia to be closer to their son, but the divorce was bitter and painful, especially for Tony, Melissa, though.

Wasted no time moving on. And in 2013, she married Anthony Colletti. Anthony was working as a DJ and running a small music company called Paws Off Production. Is it a music company for dogs? What if it's just like, oh, you know what? That's a, the like top scam if you made dog music and it's just really high pitched so humans can't hear it.

So you could just give them blank CDs. Genius. So much money. Maybe I am an evil genius, so, but Anthony was from Riverwood New South Wales and according to one acquaintance, Melissa was a breadwinner who called all the shots. And Anthony was just [00:08:00] her boy toy. Melissa and Anthony moved into a $6.2 million mansion and one of Sydney's most exclusive coastal suburbs.

They were living large. Melissa had also bought a $2.25 million penthouse apartment in Edgecliff for her parents. I guess that makes up for her first boyfriend stealing all of their money. Yeah, she kinda owed them that she did. Her brother Adam though also lived there with their parents. From the outside, it seemed like Melissa had built a life most people could only dream of, and many of her friends were shocked by all the things Melissa could afford.

But what her friends and family didn't know was that the money behind this luxury lifestyle didn't come from savvy investments or smart planning. It was all a lie. By the end of 2020, Melissa's company came under fire when the Australian Securities and Investments Commission filed civil proceedings against her.

They had been tipped off in 2019 when someone reported that Melissa was offering financial advice [00:09:00] without a license, but at that point, they weren't aware that Melissa was actually stealing money. By the time ASIC took formal action, the accusations were serious. Melissa was suspected of running an unlicensed investment scheme through her company while using another company's financial services license without their permission.

So that's very bold. Move. Oh, it's incredibly bold and very, very stupid. Yes, very stupid. On paper, it looked like Melissa's clients were making excellent returns. Some even as high as 30%, but in reality, this was just your classic textbook Ponzi scheme. I. Many of her clients were close friends, colleagues, and even family members who would transfer their money into a bank account linked to Melissa's company, me and then Melissa would create these fake trading accounts using six digit numbers, even though real trading platforms typically use eight digit numbers.

But to make everything look really legit, she copied the logo from a real trading company and [00:10:00] pasted it onto the documents that she sent her clients. So on the surface, everything looks very polished and professional. The numbers made sense and the returns were really impressive, so nobody suspected that anything was ais.

Melissa told her early investors that she had once left a job at Wise Financial Services with $86 million after developing and selling a financial program for them. Of course, this is a lie, but it was a very convincing one, and over time people put their trust in her and her scheme grew. As word about Melissa's success started to spread, business began to boom.

Clients were swarming in ready to hand over their life savings and thinking. They had found themselves a trusted advisor who could deliver some really great returns, and Melissa played the part very well. She claimed to have a master's degree in business, and she said she was a member of the Financial Planning Association.

She even told clients that she graduated from the University of Technology, Sydney. None [00:11:00] of that was true and Elias didn't stop at her resume. It was later learned that Melissa produced thousands of fake documents to keep this Ponzi scheme alive. She forged client signatures, sometimes even faking her own father-in-law's signature, which is especially a bold crime because he was a justice of the peace, which is the equivalent of a notary public.

So not sure about. Australian law, I'm sure it is the same, but in the US it's like an extra serious crime to impersonate a public servant or to pass yourself off as a police officer, a notary, anything like that, right? Like you definitely can't be doing that. Asic later confirmed that there were 61 known victims with a total loss estimated at around $23 million.

Though most of the investors were people, Melissa actually knew the biggest victims in terms of investments was a group of surgeons in Perth. We have so much more to get into after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. And now back to the episode. So before the break, we were talking [00:12:00] about the straight up crimes that Melissa Caddick was committing.

While pretending to be this great financial advisor, scheming basically everyone she knew, including her own father-in-law, her parents, I mean, she, she goes all in. She says, I refuse to have one friend at the end of this. There's no limit. There is no limit. No one is off limits for her. I mean, if she had a priest, I guarantee she did that to him too.

There's just no end. So Melissa's schema might have gone on longer if not for an anonymous financial advisor who had known Melissa since the early two thousands who actually sounded the alarm. They had crossed paths with Melissa when she was working with Wise Financial Services. These two weren't close, but over the years, the woman helped Melissa and her family with insurance.

In 2013, the woman emailed Melissa to let her know that she was going to be operating under a new financial services license, and she shared the new number with her, which is like. The right thing to do. Right, right. Like you're doing all the right things. And Melissa was [00:13:00] like, oh, perfect, great. Can I actually operate under this license as well?

And which immediately though, I'm like, huh, like the boldness. And if someone ever asked me that, like honestly, I would be like, what are you talking about? Like, I would immediately, I would be like, I'm calling the police right now because I What you're doing, you're, yeah, you're on my radar. There's not like a.

Good reason for you to have ever done this. So the woman was very kind, but she said no. And she explained that allowing someone to operate independently under her license would be a major risk, and Melissa seemed to accept that answer. But behind the scenes she was like, whatever yolo, I'm using this lady's license.

Anyway, I did ask for permission, Chris. It doesn't matter what the answer was. So crazy. So in Australia, it is a criminal offense to operate a financial business without a license, and the punishment is up to $22,000 in fines and two years in jail. But that wasn't even the entirety of [00:14:00] the crime Melissa was committing.

The money she took from her clients was used to fund her own extravagant lifestyle. One that actually looked like it came straight out of a travel magazine. Melissa took ski trips to Aspen vacation to Bora Bora Fiji, New York. She wore designer clothes, shoes, and jewelry, including a necklace worth in estimated $60,000.

No thank you. Uh, her husband Anthony, drove a $300,000 sports car. Melissa was faking an entire identity. She projected this image of wealth, sophistication, and credibility that convinced so many people to put their trust in her. Honestly, if I would've been involved in this, it would've fallen apart way sooner.

Not as the Melissa in the story, but as somebody else, because as soon as I saw that my investments made a little bit of money, I'd have been like cashing out, cashing out, giving my money. Me too. Right. And so by late 2020 though, the authorities were closing in on Melissa at 6:00 [00:15:00] AM on November 11th, 2020, ASIC agents arrived at Melissa's Dover Heights mansion for 13 hours straight.

They combed through every room, and by 7:00 PM they had ceased boxes of documents. Designer handbags, expensive clothing and high-end jewelry. I hope that necklace made it into this box. Just two days later On November 13th, Melissa was supposed to appear for a court hearing where she was to surrender her passport and provide detailed information about each of her clients, but she didn't show up, and her disappearance quickly turned into one of the most baffling cases in recent Australian history.

Up until the point when Melissa skipped out on this court hearing most of her friends, family, and even her husband Anthony, had no idea she was at the center of this multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme. Those closest to her believed that she was just a financial success story, but instead they learned that she had actually stolen millions of dollars from them collectively.[00:16:00] 

Her loved ones were stunned. It was, of course, such a betrayal to learn that someone they trusted so much had deceived them this way. And the trail of wreckage was just as much about the emotional toll as it was about the missing money. And while the fraud linked to Melissa's company was shocking enough, it wasn't the only red flag in her past.

Earlier in 1998, Melissa had been quietly fired from a job as an office manager at an investment house after she forged her boss's signature to steal $2,000. No charges were ever filed. She was just simply let go and the matter was swept under the rug. In addition to Melissa's financial scheme, she and her husband, along with her brother Adam, were also involved in promoting a United States based MLM, which a lot of people probably have heard of Isogenics.

They saw protein shakes and weight loss products. Mm-hmm. I guess they're still around. I remember they were really big for a few years. I'm not sure if they're actually as big anymore, but this is of course, ironic. Because [00:17:00] Melissa being a financial advisor and planner and supposed to have all this financial knowledge and success, she was actually quoted in a magazine in 2004 where she was warning people not to fall for pyramid schemes, but then she was actually involved in like this huge MLM, right?

She's like, not, not the ones I'm talking about, right? I've got something else going on if you look over here, right? But now of course, the question is where is she? She skipped out on this court hearing and nobody knows where she is. According to her husband, Anthony, on the morning of November 12th, 2020, Melissa went for a run around 5:30 AM which was something that was part of her routine that she always did, but this time something about it was off.

She actually left behind her phone, wallet and all of her personal belongings, and that was extremely out of character. She was somebody who just always had her phone with her. Anthony said he saw her early that morning and their teenage son remembered hearing what he thought was the sound of Melissa leaving the house that morning.

She was last seen wearing a black [00:18:00] top leggings and silver running shoes as the hours passed and Melissa did not come back home, Anthony started to become concerned and he then spent the day driving around the area looking for his wife. But by nightfall, there was still no sign of Melissa anywhere.

Anthony did not report her missing that day. He actually waited until about 30 hours had passed, and then it wasn't until the middle of the day, the next day that he showed up at the courthouse because he knew she had this scheduled court hearing. And then when she didn't show up to that either, he finally alerted officials at the courthouse that she was missing.

He had not seen her in over a day, and the officials at the courthouse are who advised him to contact the police. Melissa's brother was furious that Anthony had waited over a day to tell anyone. He hadn't even informed her family at all, and her parents had no idea that their daughter had been missing for over 24 hours.

As news of Melissa's disappearance broke, her husband made a public plea. He described his wife [00:19:00] as a quote, beautiful daughter, sister, and loved wife, and he begged for her safe return. He spoke directly to Melissa and said, quote, you know how much we love you? Just come home. Everything's taken care of.

You're not in trouble. End quote, which is like. Says who? Right. Who says she's not in trouble. You Right. And I know, yeah, very. It seems like a lot of strange thing to say in your plea to have her return like it seems. Yeah. It's weird. Based on what, so her brother Adam also spoke to the media and said that Melissa was a loving person and a great sister.

As a search for Melissa Intensified, though her husband became a central figure. He wasn't just a grieving spouse. He was the last person to have seen Melissa alive in a 2022 Warner's inquest. Anthony took the stand and shared his version of what happened on November 11th and 12th. He said that after the ASIC raid on their home, both he and Melissa were exhausted and they went to bed around nine 30, but Anthony's sleep was interrupted by his [00:20:00] sleep apnea.

He got out of bed, went downstairs around midnight and returned to bed around 4:00 AM which is when he claimed to have seen Melissa for the last time at 7:15 AM Anthony said his wife a text that said, you okay? Have you got your key? Anthony said he assumed that Melissa had gone out for her morning run.

After sending the message, Anthony took his stepson to school and on the way the boy mentioned that Melissa's phone was still on the charger in her wardrobe. When Anthony got home from dropping the kid off, he went to the room and found Melissa's phone. He put a pair of earrings on top of the phone and a handwritten note next to it, the note read quote.

Our love is deeper than possessions. Thought you might like one of your Christmas presents. Early quote. I don't even get that note because if your love is deeper than possessions, why are you giving her diamond earrings or whatever earrings they were? That makes no sense. Like why would, why would you give more possessions?

I guess because the house had been raided and they, I don't know, maybe he was maybe better. Better. Like the police are gonna come take all your stuff. So here's [00:21:00] a pair of earrings that I bought that they can't take from you. But where was he hiding though, is the question I, that's super weird and it reminds me of like, I'm not saying he killed Melissa.

No, I'm, but the whole, uh, Scott Peterson thing, when he leaves that voicemail for Lacey and he's like, Hey hun, I'm leaving here. It's this time and this, and blah, blah, blah. And like setting up an alibi, like to randomly leave this note to your wife on her phone with her earrings is like. Everyone look at this.

Look at what this is. Right? It's really weird. So throughout the day, Anthony said he drove around Dover Heights looking for Melissa, and he made calls to friends and family casually asking if anyone had seen her, but he didn't actually say that she was missing. He later said that he didn't want to alarm anyone and he believed he had to wait 24 hours to report her missing.

It's 2022 at this point. No, you didn't. Right? We know at this point you can do it. Before then, but he saw an entry in Melissa's calendar that suggested that she had made an appointment with her lawyers at [00:22:00] 10:00 AM So he thought maybe she's just in meetings all day, but as time passed and Melissa never returned, his concern grew yet, he still didn't contact the police until the following day.

So when he showed up at her court appointment and realized she didn't show up for that. That's when he reported her disappearance to some Anthony's actions, raised questions, but to others they seemed like reasonable actions of a confused and overwhelmed husband trying to make sense of a rapidly unraveling situation.

But regardless of the reasoning, the delay in reporting, Melissa missing meant that valuable time had already been lost in the effort to find her. From the start, the police treated Melissa's disappearance as suspicious. She hadn't contacted her family, she'd missed appointments, and the most telling sign of all was that she left behind her phone and all of her personal belongings with no sign of Melissa and no real trail to follow.

Investigators started working through three possible scenarios. Number one, [00:23:00] Melissa had gone into hiding. Number two, she fell or jumped into the sea, and three, she had been murdered. Investigators combed through the couple's house and searched their vehicles, but there was no sign of a struggle. There was no blood, and they didn't find any evidence that there was any type of a cleanup.

There was absolutely nothing to indicate that any violence had occurred inside the couple's home. Police clarified that Melissa's husband was not a suspect, but two weeks later in federal court, Melissa's barrister stated that the missing persons case had officially become a homicide investigation. But then things got even more confusing when the New South Wales police insisted that it was not a homicide investigation.

The case was still being handled as a missing person. So with little in the way of any physical evidence, the police tried to obtain surveillance footage from security cameras that were directly outside the couple's home, but unfortunately, they weren't able to access the footage, so they turned to the public for help.

The police asked for [00:24:00] anyone with dash cam footage from Dover Heights between 6:30 PM on November 11th and 8:00 AM on November 12th to come forward. They focused their search on several streets that Melissa might have passed through on her morning run, but they weren't specifically sure what route she actually took when she left by December.

Many of Melissa's friends were skeptical about the story that she had gone out for a run on the morning. She vanished. They said Melissa recently injured her ankle and she had been using a treadmill at home instead of taking her morning run outside. Meanwhile, Anthony was in court asking for access to Melissa's frozen bank accounts, which he said he needed to support himself.

And Melissa's teenage son, remember as we said, he was a dj, she was the breadwinner, and they have a lot of, uh, big home to maintain. They have the car payments, they have things that he needs to pay for, and he has no access. He doesn't have the funds. To pay for that on his own. His wife was paying for everything, so he requested, this was the part that blew my mind.

He requested [00:25:00] $4,880 per week for living expenses. Ooh. Which, that's a lot, but I guess that speaks to how. Lavish of a lifestyle they were living, if that's their living expenses. Right. Um, but of course, many of Melissa's victims, the people she'd stolen this money from, were absolutely outraged by Adam requesting this amount of money to them.

You know, he's not asking for access to Melissa's money, he's asking for access to their money. Right. And, you know, they believe that he just had been living off of Melissa's fraud and enjoying this extravagant lifestyle with stolen money. And now he had the audacity to ask for even more. So initially the court approved just $800 a week, but Anthony pushed back.

He said that, you know, Melissa was the primary earner in the family. He has no income, no assets of his own. To prove this, he submitted a bank statement showing a balance of less than $2 from the beginning of December, 2020. So eventually the court did agree to increase the payments to $1,700 per week, but they set a [00:26:00] deadline for these payments to stop in February of 2021.

I'm surprised honestly, that he was able to get $1,700 a week. That still is a lot of money to me. I'm surprised he asked for it. Like I, I don't know. I just feel like the guilt behind all of that, like even knowing even if, if he knew nothing about it and knows that that's where the money was coming from, like, I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. It just feels really icky. And we have more to get into after one last break to hear a word from this week's sponsors, and now back to the episode. So before the break we were discussing. The disappearance of Melissa Caddick and police kind of putting together what they think actually happened to her.

Her husband's now gone to court to get some of her money back or to have access to some money to pay bills for himself and their son. Uh, and of course that's met with not a whole lot of cheers, more snes of anything else. But meanwhile, police continued working the [00:27:00] case. And in January of 2021. Two months after Melissa vanished, they publicly stated that they believed she was still alive.

Investigators said then that they were treating it like a missing person's investigation and not a homicide. But behind the scenes pressure was mounting and more financial crimes were coming forward, and the scale of Melissa's fraud was expanding. Towards the end of February of 2021, they issued a warrant for Melissa's arrest.

She was no longer just a missing woman. She was now a fugitive. By this time, Alyssa's been missing for over three months with no sidings, no communications, and no confirmed leads. But then on February 21st, everything changed. A group of campers made a grim discovery along born to beach, which is about 400 kilometers south of Sydney, near the shoreline, they found a single running shoe with a decomposed human foot still inside of it.

At [00:28:00] first, it seemed too strange and disconnected to be related to Melissa's case, but testing soon confirmed the unthinkable. The foot did belong to Melissa Caddick, DNA. Samples taken from her toothbrush confirmed the match, and the shoe itself was identical to the one she had been wearing on the day of the ASIC raid.

But what was eerie was that Melissa had gone on camping trips to born to beach during high school. So it wasn't a totally random location to her. Experts said that the foot had been in the water for some time, but how it ended up in the ocean was unclear and so was the location of the rest of Melissa's remains.

Based on title patterns. Police concluded that if she had entered the water near her home in Dover Heights, it would've taken roughly three months for part of her body to drift that far south. And that timeline lined up with her disappearance. This is me just being shady, but like. If I was a cop and maybe I just wanted to make something up, I would be like, where did you find it?[00:29:00] 

Oh yeah, no. How long has she been missing? Yeah, that sounds about right. Three months. Yeah, take three months for it to only, you'd be looked at like a genius. 'cause that is like such a weird, I don't know, that's, I don't know. Maybe I'm just not that smart. I shouldn't say that on the record, but there it's, so with the discovery though, of her foot, the investigation shifted.

Foul play was no longer just a theory. It was now one of several possibilities. They didn't rule out the possibility that she had been murdered, but they also considered that she may have taken her own life. Some thought she may have jumped off the cliffs near her home. That same week ASIC announced they'd be ending their criminal investigation into Melissa's financial crimes, but they promised to continue digging into her financial records.

In hopes of untangling the full scope of the fraud and recovering whatever funds they could. A week after Melissa's foot was found, human remains were found at Molly Milk Beach, but they were determined not to be Melissa's. They were later identified as belonging to a 37-year-old man who had been [00:30:00] missing for a few weeks.

Two other sets of remains found on beaches in New South Wales were also found in undergoing testing. That feels like a lot of. Bodies up in this space in a short time? Yes. Yeah. Hmm. So during the first week of March, 2021, police divers searched the water surrounding Dover Heights, including a 6,000 square meter underwater search.

They did not locate any of Melissa's remains. During this search in April of 2021, Melissa's family held a private funeral to say goodbye now that she was presumed dead. By March of 2021, the depth of Melissa's financial crimes was starting to become even more clear. The number of victims had risen to 74, and it was revealed that in total, Melissa had stolen about $23 million from them among the victims.

As we said before, were her parents, her brother, and her cousins. At the time of her presumed death, Melissa was facing 38 criminal charges, but with her partial remains [00:31:00] found, those charges were dismissed. The legal process then just became about recovering whatever could be salvaged. So the court started liquidating all of Melissa's assets, including homes, cars, designer clothes, and high-end jewelry.

It was estimated that about $8 million was able to be returned to the victims, which is just a fraction of what had been lost. While that was all going on in February of 2022, a restraining order was filed against Melissa's husband, Anthony Colletti. So this was, I thought, really interesting. The order was requested by Isabella Allen, who was the lead investigator from ASIC, and was the person who helped build the case against Melissa for her financial crimes.

Had publicly accused ASIC of being responsible for Melissa's death, and claimed that she'd been tortured and interrogated during the raid on their home in November of 2020. This blew my mind. He actually took to writing and releasing music with lyrics, um, [00:32:00] basically like dis tracks to the investigators talking about his accusations.

He wrote songs that alleged wrongdoing, uh, by the authorities, and insisted that his wife Melissa, had done nothing wrong, and he later doubled down on that and said. You know, he never even asked Melissa why ASIC raided their home because he simply could not imagine that she had done anything illegal. He just thought she was very smart and good at what she did.

He had no clue why the authorities were there raiding their multimillion dollar mansion, which sir, you are a dj. Stay in your lane. This is not original songs. You don't need original songs here, right? But of course the speculation just continued to swirl. One of the more bizarre theories was that Melissa had faked her own death and cut off her own foot as a red herring to escape prosecution, which that would be extremely hardcore, and I would be.

I don't even have a word for what I would be if I found out that someone did that. How, how could someone even do that? I just [00:33:00] don't think it's possible. No. I mean, yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't think it's possible. Um, experts also explained that it would be almost impossible to get a clean slice without cutting through bone with.

But Melissa's foot was cleanly severed. Forensic experts said it was far more likely that the foot had detached naturally during decomposition in the ocean, but even the coroner's inquest would later include that there was no way to determine how the foot was separated, whether by natural causes or by force.

And of course, that leaves room for theories, rumors, and more and more questions. In September of 2022, the coroner's inquest to determine how and why Melissa died was held. It revealed a mess of conflicting accounts and investigative missteps. The coroner's report had made it clear that police mishandled key parts of the investigation.

The report noted that there was some concerns as to some of the steps taken and not taken particularly soon after Melissa was first reported missing. [00:34:00] One of the concerns was that police didn't examine Melissa's home or cars until 19 days after she was last seen. That is so wild considering Asics had just been there the day before and they could have really looked into this.

There was also internal disagreement among law enforcement over how to handle Melissa's husband, Anthony, one senior official, believed Anthony May have been responsible for Melissa's death. Another disagreed that there just wasn't any physical evidence of that. Both sides agreed though that Anthony's behavior was strange.

Investigators noted that he had given three different accounts of the last time he saw his wife. Anthony's testimony was also riddled with inconsistencies. His answers to questions were always different. Like, what time did you go to bed the night of the raid? Did he speak to Melissa afterwards? And how were they treated by the investigators?

The answers Anthony gave changed, depending on when and who you asked. At the end of the four day testimony, Anthony finally admitted that [00:35:00] he lied about the ASIC investigators mistreating them for the first time. He admitted that he knew Melissa had committed financial fraud. One detail that came out during the inquest added another chilling layer.

Despite leaving her phone behind on the morning of November 12th, data from her Uber account showed possible activity at Sydney Airport at 12:45 AM on November 13th, but no other information was released about that activity. Other information hinted at something darker. One of Melissa's friends recalled a time when Melissa was standing at the cliffs near their home and said, if I'm gonna end it, it's going to be here.

Her brother Adam also remembered her saying, if it all gets too much to me, you'll find me at the gap. In the end, the coroner wasn't able to determine exactly how Melissa died, but suicide and foul play both remained possibilities. There have been no new discoveries in the investigation into Melissa's disappearance since the [00:36:00] coroner's inquest.

Her jewelry, clothes, and home are in the process of being liquidated and sold and in legal documents. Melissa is now being referred to as being deceased. What do you think happened in this case, Melissa? I mean, I feel like it's the simplest explanation, right? I feel like. Police and everyone got too close and she wasn't going to go down without a fight or go down and she decided to take things into her own hands.

That's what I think too. The foot thing is interesting though, because I feel like if it was fingers, I'd be more inclined to be like, oh, that's. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe she did cut her fingers off a foot though. That is something totally different. Yeah. Um, you know what I did think though was odd because I feel like in a dismembering you don't usually, like, I feel like the shoe would not have been attached.

That was, that was the one thing that kind of threw me. 'cause I was like, I, I feel like. I don't feel like the shoes would still be attached if it was an intentional [00:37:00] dismemberment. It's right, and it's a very, uh, convenient thing that, that was the same shoe that was seen the day before, so they know it was her shoe and all of that.

I, uh, totally agree with that. There is a long form podcast on this. It's called Liar. Liar. I was telling Mandy when she was telling me what episode. Uh, you know, we were working on this week. I was like, she was starting to explain some things. I'm like, why does that sound familiar? And then remembered, so if you want like a long form, it has interviews with, um, family members, uh, with victims, a ton of victims, and just, uh, goes into more detail, um, about her life and like truly all the people she was.

Screwing over financially. Yeah. Which was a lot, including family. Like to do that to your parents and your brother and like you were just burning it all down. Like money is the only thing you care about. Power is the only thing you care about. And I feel bad, of course, for her son and everything, but like she was kind of on a fast track too.

Blowing it all up. Yeah. She really was like, you were going to get caught at some point. So, [00:38:00] um, anyway, that's a very interesting podcast, but it's called, uh, liar. Liar. Yeah. I'll have to check that. I know we don't really do lasting before we go on the show anymore, but Melissa, are you up for turning the page just this week and doing lasting before we go?

I would love that. Me too. I thought it would be fun just because we are covered a story this week from Australia and Australia has always been a very fascinating place too. Those of us here. On this side of the planet. Right. Uh, my youngest son actually realized for the first time, or I guess maybe learned for the first time that Australia has opposite seasons as us.

And so he was telling me that he was playing on one of his games that he plays on Roblox. Um, he was playing with somebody from Australia and the uh, kid of course was like, oh, you're out of school, like you're on summer. And that's how, you know he was taught, learned. That is not summer in Australia right now.

It's actually. Winter. Yeah. It's very confusing to me. Um, so I thought it would be fun to do a little game. I'm [00:39:00] gonna ask you some questions. We're just gonna test your knowledge. Just we're, we'll call this one of Australia, Australia real or ruse. Do you, I'm me give you facts. Do you think this is a real thing or do you think this is a fake thing?

Oh, I can't wait. Okay. About Australia. Okay. So I'll just give you a really easy one to kind of start off with so we can. Kind of see what we're doing here. We'll see how I answer before we call it easy. Go ahead. Okay, so the National Animal of Australia is the Tasmanian Devil. Is that real or is it a ruse?

A ruse, yes. The real national animal of Australia is actually the red kangaroo and the emu, which. Here's the thing. Who, which is the country that has, uh, the unicorn as its official animal? I'm not sure. Um, oh my gosh. I'll, I'll think about that. But there is one. So I really did get nervous there for a second.

Yeah. But continue. Australia once lost a war to emus real or ruse, a war, a war. I mean, I [00:40:00] kinda want it to be true. I gotta be honest. I'm gonna say true. Just 'cause I want this, I want a movie about this. It's real. What? It's real. Look up the great EMU war No. Of 1932. I'm guessing it was not a proud military moment, but yes.

Go check that out. Oh my gosh. Okay. I will. Wow. This is really sad. Australia. Okay. Um, and I've, I, the unicorn is the official animal for Scotland. I just, okay. That actually kind of makes sense for Scott, but weird. Come on now. Go ahead. It's weird. Okay. Real or Ruse Australia has a mountain named Mountain Disappointment.

I want that to be true as well. It's, and apparently it was named by Explorers who were bummed that it did not offer good views. Imagine hiking to the top of this mountain and you're like, wow, this place is terrible. You know what we're gonna call it? Mount disappointment. I love that. That might be my favorite fact of all time.

Seriously. I think if I was gonna climb a mountain, I want it to be mount disappointment. 'cause I would be irritated if, even if it had a good [00:41:00] view, I would just be too tired. For sure. For sure. Okay. How about this one? The word for a swimsuit in Aussie slang is bgy. Bgy or buggy? Budgie Ugg Muggles. Hundred percent.

Yes. That is it. Because I watch Below deck and that is a thing that they talk about. Yeah. Buggy smuggler. Is it, um, all swimsuits or is it specifically referring to tight fitting men's for sure. Tight fitting men's. Okay. Uh, things. Yeah. Okay. They, they, the guests a lot of times will ask them to dress up and that's what they will end up wearing.

Awesome. All right. See reality tv, it really does help me. I would've never forget. So it's bgy budgie smugglers. Mm-hmm. Bgy smugglers. But what's a bgy? Um, do I wanna know? That's a, maybe a good question. Maybe I should not be asking that. It's better if you don't. Okay. Let's do, uh, one more of these and let's see if you can get this one right.

Okay. The mag pies in Australia are so aggressive. There's a website that tracks their attacks. [00:42:00] Oh my gosh. Anyone that wants to say anything about Florida, let's just remember. Australia does exist. Um, I'm gonna say yes, I think there probably is one. It is, it's called Magpie Alert. So I guess before you go out for the day, you might wanna go check the, the magpie forecast, like see if they're gonna be out there attacking you.

Okay. I actually do have one more because it's so ridiculous. And, um, actually. Unbelievable. In some ways, a wombat's poop is cube shaped. Oh, I don't want any of these facts to be true. And this one has to be true because why? Yeah, it's, but why do they, uh, Australia has got some creatures I love a good critter, a good creature.

I love animals. Um, we don't have those here, so I am always surprised to learn new things. Uh, that feels like how, uh, they say Australia, the water goes down backwards in the, you know, toilets and stuff like that. For an animal [00:43:00] to poop in cubes wild. Very wild. Wild. I wanna see what their poop emoji is in Australia.

Yeah. If it's different than ours, let us know. Yeah. Love to see it. Yeah. I, the animals and the critters they have there kind of freak me out. There was another fact I just saw that said that, um, uh, spiders in Australia can grow as big as a dinner plate, which I. Ugh. I immediately, not my son. There's like a, there's a, um, YouTuber, Jordan Ali, I think that's his name.

It might not be, but he does like a bunch of traveling stuff, but he lives in Australia, so he will randomly be like, let's see how many spiders I can find in five minutes. And you would be surprised. Oh no. And upset. It will be a ton. So, um, yeah, it's very, it's, it's a wild world over there. We have Florida man though, so you know, we do.

Our ours are alive and well and human and yours are just pooping cubes for some reason. I don't get it. I know. Alright guys, well that was fun. Hope you learned a few fun facts about Australia and maybe some not so fun facts, but just facts. Yeah. [00:44:00] Perfect. All right, that was the episode for this week. We will see you back next week.

Same time, same place. News story. Have a great week. Bye.