‘I gulped’: Caddick client received money back after learning of ASIC probe

Just as she was called in to see the endodontist for root canal treatment on August 13, 2020, the only other patient in the waiting room told Dominique Ogilvie that it was imperative she see her later.

Moments earlier, the subject of Melissa Caddick being Ogilvie’s financial advisor had been raised as the two waited for their appointments.

Sydney businesswoman Melissa Caddick disappeared in November 2020.

Ogilvie told an inquest into Caddick’s presumed death that she was alarmed by the urgent tone of the woman’s voice and, as she had millions of dollars invested with Caddick, she was concerned to find out more.

Ogilvie had met Caddick while staying in the same apartments in the US ski resort of Aspen in January 2020. Caddick falsely claimed that she owned the apartment. Later, when they returned to Sydney, Caddick said a place had come up in her investment business, the inquest heard.

Ogilvie said she contacted one of Caddick’s clients who said he was very happy with her services as Caddick was delivering a 20 per cent return on his investment.

After healthy returns on her initial investment, Ogilvie had $2.5 million invested with Caddick by August.

At the endodontist, the other patient left her details at the desk and when the two met later that same day Jennifer Porter, a financial advisor who had worked with Caddick before she was committing her frauds, dropped a bombshell. Caddick was illegally using her Australian Financial Services Licence, she told Ogilvie.

“I gulped … I was very anxious,” Ogilvie told the inquest on hearing this information. She immediately rang Caddick asking to withdraw all her funds, telling Caddick she had found a house she wanted to buy.

Ogilvie said she had had no idea at the time that Caddick was misusing her clients’ funds. “I just felt so nervous that Melissa was doing something that was dishonest and something that may be illegal,” Ogilvie said.

Porter later told Ogilvie that ASIC was investigating Caddick. Asked by counsel assisting Louise Coleman if she ever talked to Caddick about the ASIC investigation, Ogilvie replied “absolutely not”. She never spoke to Caddick again after her funds were returned, she said.

The inquest heard that by August 21, 2020, Ogilvie received all her money back, plus the profit of about $380,000.

Caddick’s husband Anthony Koletti, who followed Ogilvie into the witness box, said he had “no knowledge” of his wife’s frauds.

Koletti, a hairdresser, said that his wife’s earnings and tax returns were “not really something I paid attention to … I am not really financially savvy”.

“It was certainly a surprise to me,” he said of the raid on their house on November 11, 2020, by the Australian Federal Police and ASIC. However, Koletti said he wasn’t worried about it as “I was just under the belief that she had done nothing wrong”.

His wife disappeared in the early hours on the following day, only hours after their house was raided in relation to the ASIC probe into the $23 million Ponzi scheme Caddick, 49, had been running since 2012. Most of her victims were family and friends.

Her right foot, containing her partial remains washed up on a remote beach on the NSW South Coast in February 2021, three months after she was last seen.

Koletti’s evidence is continuing.

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