On November 12, 2020, Australian woman Melissa Caddick set off for a run but never returned.
It emerged that she was being investigated by the country’s financial watchdog after she was suspected of stealing roughly £15million while posing as a qualified financial advisor – with her own friends and family her main victims.
ITV are releasing a three-part docuseries about the ‘con artist of the century’ called Vanishing Act, beginning on December 18 after a long stint only being available to stream on ITVX.
Read more about Caddick’s astonishing story, and how to watch the series, by reading below.
Melissa Caddick vanished from her home in the early hours of November 12, 2020, leaving her husband Anthony Koletti (pictured with Caddick) and son in the house
Pictured: Kate Atkinson as Melissa Caddick in Vanishing Act ahead of the docuseries being aired on ITV
Caddick stole over £15million from investors in her Ponzi scheme across roughly a decade
Who was Melissa Caddick?
Melissa Caddick was a 49-year-old financial advisor who lived in a wealthy area of Sydney called Dover Heights with her husband and former hairdresser, Anthony Koletti.
That pair married in 2013 after Caddick divorced her first husband, Tony Caddick, the same year, with whom she had one child, a son, who was 14 years old at the time she disappeared.
Caddick was suspected of faking her advisor’s licence in 2012 when she started a Ponzi scheme – using new clients’ money to pay off old ones – having worked as a financial advisor for roughly a decade prior.
Court documents indicate that her first ‘suspected contravention’ took place in May 2009 when she set up her own financial firm – which clients believed they were investing in for the next decade.
From 2012 to 2020 she scammed her clients out of £12 million ($23m), a time during which she bought her $6.2m five-bedroom home in Sydney.
Farid Assad SC, a lawyer representing corporate regulator Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in 2021, told courts that Caddick had ‘faked many documents’ in her ‘quite elaborate fraud’ by pasting her name into a friend’s licence.
He said: ‘Ms Caddick built up a sizeable and loyal client base, and befitting of a successful businesswoman were the trappings of wealth, real estate in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, luxury motor vehicles, designer clothing and jewellery.
‘Unfortunately Ms Caddick’s success and the financial services business were all a facade.’
Before her disappearance in 2020 Caddick’s world began to crumble.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, in August 2020 one of Caddick’s investors struck up a conversation with a fellow patient at the dentist.
The patient knew Caddick and told the investor that Caddick has been using her financial advisor’s licence – the investor went on to report Caddick to ASIC.
The commission then began its investigation and on November 10, 2020, froze Caddick’s bank accounts and properties to prevent her from leaving the country.
Her home was raided the next day and officers removed designer clothes, shoes and jewellery.
An Investigation was launched by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) after she was tipped off by one of her investors
The conwoman’s home (pictured) was raided by ASIC and the AFP on November 11, 2020. Caddick vanished the following morning
When did Melissa Caddick go missing?
Caddick went missing the morning after the raid at 5.30am without her keys, phone, or wallet.
Caddick’s son heard her leave, assuming she was going for a regular morning run, but with her not returning for 30 hours, Koletti eventually reported her absence to the police, by which point she had already missed a deadline to deadline to surrender her passport and any tickets to leave Australia.
Another three months later, her detached foot was found inside an Asics shoe washed up on Bournda Beach some 250 miles from her home.
She was finally declared presumed dead in May 2023, but the exact cause and time of death remain unknown.
An oceanographer did, however, confirm that her foot, and the rest of her body, could have entered the sea off Sydney, and been swept the 400km in the intervening months.
What did Melissa Caddick do with her money?
The legal proceedings after Caddick’s death gave an indication into the purchases made with her clients’ money.
Koletti was allowed ‘a few thousand dollars’ worth of items which were seized by receivers to save time and legal costs. These included a steel Breitling watch and an 18-carat white-gold ring.
Caddick’s son received the less-valuable parts of a sneaker collection with the remainder to be sold online to fund victims’ reimbursements.
Real estate, luxury jewellery and clothing and artwork were all sold to the same end.
Her mansion in Dover Heights was also sold by liquidators, which brought in $9.8m for the property in January 2023.
A class action by 24 defrauded investors was launched against several of her auditors hired to conduct annual checks of her clients’ self-managed superannuation funds – a sort of retirement fund.
The lawsuit alleges auditors failed in their duties and were negligent, engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct, breached their contract and breached the Corporations Act.
The first episode of Vanishing Act airs on December 18 on ITV at 9pm
How to watch Vanishing Act
The first episode of Vanishing Act airs on December 18 on ITV at 9pm, with the second and third parts shown over the next two days at the same time, on the same channel.
The show, starring Australian actor Kate Atkinson as Caddick and Jerome Velinsky as Koletti, was first broadcast in Australia in April 2022.
It has been available on ITVX since August 3 for UK viewers on demand, alongside an accompanying documentary, The Real Vanishing Act: The Missing Millionairess.
The documentary will also be on ITV on December 21 at 9pm.
