Scam Investigations

You can follow the full investigation on our website at https://www.innersydneyinvestigations.com/vincentliew/

Vincent Liew & Sutee (Art) Sukantamala - an investigation into the management services they provided to the Bowan Island Bakery.

Part 1
I have been tasked with the responsibility of conducting investigations into the management services provided to the Bowan Island Bakery by Vincent Liew of Hospitality Management Pty Ltd.

We will be undertaking investigations into a number of allegations within the company. In order to maintain our independence, we have directed the Bowan company director to seek professional advice in relation to internal accounting concerns.

As the saying goes, there are always two sides to a story, and we will be asking the recently resigned CEO, Mr Vincent LIew, to share his perspective.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting investigation and I am excited to be working for one of Australia's iconic brands.

ESTIA Investigation Part 2

The allegation here is that ESTIA knew full well that their client’s home was being sold and if it was sold then their client, Louise, would likely be housed at that location for the rest of her life.

It is evident from the caption below, extracted from the ESTIA website, that ESTIA advocate for impartiality and grant their inhabitants the liberty to visit their paternal residence. In this particular case however, ESTIA made every effort to prevent Louise from entering her paternal residence. In this instance one must ask why did ESTIA go against their policy and refrain Louise from visiting her paternal home?

ESTIA Investigation Part 1

We elected to post this matter because there was much more to it. It centres on Louise, a woman with Down syndrome who lives in Sydney's Inner West. She was dragged from her home and placed in full-time care with ESTIA, and her residence was sold against her will several months later. She depended on ESTIA and her legal guardian to safeguard her best interests.

The matter was reported to us for investigation because the ESTIA Foundation Gladesville, a NDIS registered provider of full-time care for people with special needs, knowingly made a FALSE complaint to an officer at Gladesville police station.
The complaint to police was about being intimidated by Louise’s older brother Tony.

Louise now resides in the ESTIA Gladesville group home permanently after her mother passed away in early 2022. The complaint could have resulted in the brother being arrested and charged by police and then having to attend court on numerous occasions to defend an Apprehended Violence Order, and in the process expend thousands of dollars on legal fees.

Tony alleges that ESTIA management and staff were not acting in the best interests of Louise and she is becoming increasingly depressed. We will discuss the history of the matter in more detail in further posts.

Tony says that it was alleged that his daughter swore at an ESTIA staff member and subsequently when he went to book Louise in for one of his regular outings, he was told that he was now banned from seeing her because of the alleged swearing incident that had nothing to do with him. When he appealed to the staff member about the fairness of this banning, the staff member told him to take it up with ESTIA management.

Tony sent an email to ESTIA asking about the ban. He then sent another email giving them a deadline to respond or he would report them for online investigation because last time he wrote to ESTIA about his sister Louise being bullied into selling her house, they did not respond.

ESTIA then made a false report to police alleging they were intimidated rather than address the issue of the banning.

ESTIA FOUNDATION INVESTIGATION

We will be running an investigation into the ESTIA Foundation of Australia - Gladesville. Taken from their website, "The word Estia means hearth or warmth." Stay tuned to see how this translates to the hearth or warmth of one of their clients whom has Downs Syndrome whose mother recently died. I'll be reporting on this in the next day or two and the reader can make up their own minds if the NDIS funding that ESTIA receives for this client has an influence on their decision making process. We will also see how ESTIA, when in receipt of a complaint, relies solely on the interview of their client with Downs Syndrome and no other witnesses!

Owing to heavy commitments we had to take a break from regular reporting. On the flip side we have a few interesting matters that we will report on right here very soon. Tony Johns 😀

Debt Collecting Scam - PART 2

In May of last year, we published Part 1 of a debt collecting case in which we were referred a matter and, after investigating the circumstances, determined that it met the criteria to be classified by us as a SCAM. Part 1 can be viewed in the pictures attached.

The minor involved was a female 17 years old who had a lengthy medical history supporting an ongoing anxiety disorder for which she was taking prescription medication and I have confirmed this information.

In February 2020, she joined the Plus Fitness 24/7 Five Dock Gym with the intention of using exercise to help alleviate her anxiety. She was in her final year of high school and desired to study well while experiencing minimal anxiety difficulties.

Gabby's parents insisted on no 6- or 12-month contract when she attended a gym because they were concerned that her anxiety would flare up as a result of the stress of the HSC year preventing her from remaining at the gym and incurring costs until the contract expired.

Gabby informed the gym in mid-2020 that she was no longer attending since the stress of the HSC had exacerbated her anxiety and she was unable to sleep.

We have investigated this situation and discovered that Gabby was the victim of a scam

On its website, ECollect Australia advertises, "Recovering debt with the utmost professionalism."

Potential clients may read this website and believe that it accurately reflects the truth, at which point they may then use ECollect's debt collection services (refer to the pic labelled Attachment "A")

The ECollect debt collector assigned to Gabby’s matter was a man purported to be Daniel Guzman (refer to the pic labelled Attachment "B").

The ECollect website asserts that Guzman has "special expertise" in restoring the business relationship with the debtor.

The ECollect website also stated that Guzman is known for “strong work ethic”. This statement could infer that Guzman is a debt collector that operates ethically.

We will begin taking a closer look at all this together with Guzman's special expertise in the next post, Part 3.

IT Scam – Part IV

To recap, in Part III, we shared a few images that Maxinet uses on their website to promote their services under the tab titled “Web Services”.

One such service advertised, domain name management, is critical for many businesses and domain name owners to ensure that their domain name does not expire.

The other image in Part III was obtained from the tagline on the Maxinet website, which states "We Care - Our business strategy is centred on customer care," yet some customers may find this statement misleading, as they did NOT care in this instance.

Additionally, the Maxinet website indicates that one of the services they provide is "intrusion detection." Again, some customers may find this remark misleading, as when the current owners took over from the prior owner and founder of Maxinet, he expressed concern about the new Maxinet owner's intrusion into his personal email. We know this since he consulted us regarding this unauthorised access.

This raises the obvious question of why they were unlawfully accessing the former owner's email account, as well as whether they do the same thing with their customers' email accounts too.

For those unfamiliar with the domain registration process, it is nearly identical to that of the Services Australia registry for motor vehicle registrations, except that the renewal periods are far longer. Maxinet manages domain registration renewals and sends out a renewal notification and reminder roughly a few months before your domain's registration is set to expire.

Consider what would happen if Maxinet sent renewal notices using the same Maxinet Accounts email address for 20 years and then chose to send renewal notices embedded in a pdf emailed from another company named Hotline IT with an attachment.

Clearly, if you received an email from Hotline IT and they were not in your contact list, you would assume it was spam, advertising, or perhaps a phishing scam, but you would never suspect it was a letter from Maxinet regarding the renewal of a premium domain. This is exactly what they did….

We will follow up on this scam investigation and provide a further update very soon.

SCAMMING THE BODY CORPORATE – Part 11

Unfortunately, when Serge Zarconi, the ex-policeman, who will have to reach into his pocket to see a lawyer about the defamation action he "threatened" me with, does so, he will be confronted with a barrage of questions from the lawyer eager to act, given his $750/hr plus GST fees.

If Zarconi contacts a lawyer, the lawyer will direct him to forward all of the data including the defamatory and threatening stuff, so that they may then advise him correctly when they meet to obtain their $10-15k initial payment on account for starters.

During the meeting, the lawyer will enquire, "Which parts are false?" and Zarconi will then be at a loss for words here, for if he answers truthfully and says "none," the lawyer's next enquiry will undoubtedly be, "you truly did not threaten to knife the strata manager, did you?"

Zarconi will be at a loss for words again here because he is fully aware that even if he enters the witness box and declines to answer that question (for a very good reason), the opposing party in the litigation will have several witnesses to call to testify that they heard the threat, including Zarconi's wife.

If Zarconi intends to use contemporaneous notes he took during a recent telephone chat with me in a defamation action or in any court for that matter, my guess is that he will exclude the section concerning the threat he made.

Obviously Zarconi’s statement over the phone to me, "you picked the wrong guy" is a threat. To begin, prior to him calling me, I have never communicated with him, made any mention of him, and have never spoken to or seen him in my life.

Second, I wrote a polite letter to his wife. Thus, the term "picked" implies that one has chosen a battle, whereas the phrase "wrong guy" implies a threat, because clearly, he is the correct one, as evidenced by his spitting chips.

Thus, with any hope, Zarconi will initiate a lawsuit acting on his own behalf because that is his only option, as any lawyer will be precluded from acting due to the frivolous and vexing nature of the litigation.

The beauty of the situation is that Zarconi is working for and on behalf of his wife, who I am confident can more than cover the legal bills and any damages awarded, even if she has to sell the leaky apartment to do so.

SCAMMING THE BODY CORPORATE – Part 10

I had been contacted by strata management requesting an interview with Tony Johns. The caller presented himself as the strata manager for the property in question and then inquired as to whether the strata management had retained myself and/or Scam Investigations..

I said, “Well you are the strata management, did you retain me? If you don’t know that you retained me, then surely you did not retain me. If in doubt, I can confirm 100% that you did not retain me.”

When I inquired as to why he wanted to know, he answered that he had received an email indicating I had stated to the writer that I had been hired by strata management.

The strata manager refused to say who sent him the email and I thought, gee you have really got some front. I also asked him to forward me a copy of that email but he did not. It won’t be a difficult process to get a copy of that email in due course.

There was only one individual who could make such a claim to strata management, and that individual was Zarconi who obviously had contacted strata management and sought to deceive them by declaring in an email that I had informed him that I had been recruited by strata management.

I'm not sure why he contacted strata management to falsify inform them of my engagement.

Perhaps he was attempting to extract a confession in order to then threaten to sue for breach of privacy. In any case it was likely a fruitless exercise to divert attention away from the serious issues at hand, such as threatening to stab the strata manager while his wife was nearby, harassing and intimidating people, and generally being an aggressive menace intent on ruining their lives with the upshot of it all bolstering the aggrieved resident’s potential damages claims. They spent millions of $$ on a luxury apartment close to the Harbour Bridge and Opera House only to find they are bunged up with a grisly bear who lives next to the front door (and letterboxes) and who is intent on making their lives a misery.

Investigations are continuing.

SCAMMING THE BODY CORPORATE – Part 9

Despite Zarconi's clearly agitated condition over the phone, I attempted to reason with him and engage in meaningful dialogue. However, he was on a mission that allowed no space for deliberation. He attempted to persuade me that the polite letter I had sent to his wife was, in fact, threatening. The motive here was discussed in the last post Part - 8

Zarconi concluded that none of his numerous NCAT applications against strata were frivolous or vexatious, as I have asserted, because strata would have brought legal action to that affect if they were.

At my latest count, I discovered over 20 distinct NCAT case numbers in the last three years, all of which were initiated by Zarconi and his wife. That's a staggering seven cases every year against the one body corporate!

I asked him if he and his wife could have managed the situation much better from the start. He claimed he had always done everything correctly. At that point, I intervened and informed him that he was not being as upfront with me as I had been with him. Following that, the vitality of his submissions faded because he recognised that I had recognised that he was not being truthful.

Zarconi subsequently indicated that he intended to sue me for defamation. Of course, this was further evidence that Zarconi was a vexatious litigant because I had the luxury of conveying the truth. I then expressed to him my desire for him to take that action as all he could achieve would be to give this topic some more airplay. The call was terminated following Zarconi's threatening remark, "You have picked the wrong guy."

It’s obvious that Zarconi was incensed by the posting of this matter on Scam Investigations’s page. Despite his assertion to me that he has done everything right from the beginning, indicated clearly that he has failed to take into account, his threats to stab the strata manager, his intimidation and threatening behaviour to the other residents, the many vexatious or frivolous NCAT matters, his intent to make the body corporate members’ lives a misery and intent to cost the body corporate as much as he possibly can, his false claim to police that I threatened his wife, and his threat to me over the phone.

On the 21st of December, I received an interesting telephone call from strata management. The call left no doubts that Zarconi had contacted them in relation to the Scam Investigation postings of his threatening activities hence their call to me. To those following this unusual scam, I shall continue with this investigation in the next post.

SCAMMING THE BODY CORPORATE – Part 8

On Tuesday, 7 December last, I answered a phone call from a private number on my mobile.

The caller was a mature sounding guy who stated angrily that I had sent a threatening letter to his wife, which had been reported to the police. Naturally, I immediately knew who it was. He did not identify himself. It was Serge Zarconi, ex-policeman and husband of the owner of the leaky apartment.

The letter was not threatening in any way, and immediately upon learning of reporting the threatening accusation to the police, I realised he was attempting to utilise the AVO system to prohibit me from sharing additional material on this page. He was trying to scam the NSW police by making a false accusation to launch them into action for him. This could land Zarconi with a criminal charge pursuant CRIMES ACT 1900 - SECT 547B Public Mischief;

Any person who, by any means, knowingly makes to a police officer any false representation that an act has been, or will be, done or that any event has occurred, or will occur, which act or event as so represented is such as calls for an investigation by a police officer, shall be liable on conviction…..

The offence carries a sentence of 12 months imprisonment and/or $5,500. Zarconi will definitely need a lawyer for this type of charge.

It would be especially difficult for Zarconi given he is an ex-policeman and expert in this area of criminal law to therefore argue that he did NOT know what he was doing in making the false report to police. The converse applies.

It was rather simple for him to stop my postings regarding the body corporate scamming scheme in which he and his wife were involved. All they had to do was respond by Friday, 3 December 2021, by the close of business, but they both chose to disregard common sense and handle the case in an unprofessional and confrontational manner. As a result, at 6:04pm on Friday, 3 December, and in accordance with my advice in that letter to the wife and owner of the leaky apartment, I published the first post in this subject – SCAMMING THE BODY CORPORATE – Part 1

Using a credible source, I was able to confirm that Zarconi, the former policeman, had actually reported the "threatening" letter to the NSW Police Department. Zarconi appeared to be attempting to mislead the NSW Police by filing a false report in an attempt to obtain an AVO that would effectively compel me to appear in court and, in the interim, put in place court orders prohibiting me from engaging in any further "threatening" behaviour, which would include both electronic (emails, posts, etc.) and physical threats. However, the police would have recognised the bogus accusation with a single glance at the letter. Obviously they were not wearing any of it and were well aware he was manipulating the system, hence his phone call to me.

If the wife found the letter I sent to her threatening, why didn’t she make the report?

Rather than engaging in real conversation with me, he was adamant that I acknowledge that the body corporate employed me. The truth was that the body corporate did NOT hire me, as I informed him several times. He then attempted to convince me to reveal who directed me to publish this scam on the Scam Investigations page. Naturally, that was a nonsensical enquiry, given right to privacy and the fact that he was not the intended recipient of the letter I had sent and was not mentioned in it.

Unbeknownst to Zarconi, in his phone call to me he had unwittingly provided me with critical information that I was eager to have. Readers of past entries in this topic will recall that I wrote in Part 4;

“A letter was drafted and sent to the wife. I did not put the husband’s name on the letter or refer to him in that letter in any shape or form. The reason for this was twofold. A copy of that letter is attached.”

Zarconi had kindly fulfilled the second reason for my written letter to his wife.

I shall continue with more of how the conversation panned out with the very aggressive sounding Zarconi in part 9 very soon.

SCAMMING THE BODY CORPORATE – Part 7

Readers should be informed that the owner of the leaky apartment and her husband self-represented at the NCAT hearings in order to save on legal bills.

The strata management retained a lawyer for good reason, and as a result, it was costing the strata a fortune in legal bills while thus costing them nothing.

I wasn't shocked to receive a phone call from the former police officer beyond the deadline I had established for his wife to answer or the matter would be reported to the Scam Investigations page.

I was well aware that the wife would hand the letter over to her husband since she had no other way of responding to my letter than by way of an admission, because the facts I presented to them were an accurate and truthful account of their actions and I could find witnesses in support. They were aware of this, as was I.

The ex-policeman responded because this may potentially harm the wife's reputation and he wanted to stop this.

The fundamental difficulty they had was that my allegations were true and that the husband was, in fact, working as the wife’s agent in all of this with her full consent. Thus, it was a collaborative effort.

This thus raises the issue of liability in the event that any or all of the victims in that apartment block suffered emotional trauma from this.

With a sizable juicy asset pool in the form of the Elizabeth Bay waterfront property, albeit a leaky one, I would have assumed that the residents if they suffered psychological damage would band together and pursue legal action if they are not too afraid to do so.

However, the issue here is that they are probably too afraid to do so because the former police officer threatened to stab the 80-year-old strata manager during one of his rages whilst the wife was nearby.

As a result, I suspect that the emotional trauma may have been aggravated by the absence of a remedy to the situation, as they were scared that the repercussions of taking that remedy could fuel the ex-policeman to carry out that threat.

In Part 8, I will report on the telephone call I had with the ex-policeman on Tuesday, 7 December 2021 at 3:37pm.

SCAMMING THE BODY CORPORATE – Part 6

I previously stated that it would not be unrealistic to anticipate that a high-profile company executive and an ex-police officer would handle a water leak professionally, maturely, and in a businesslike manner. Nevertheless, the material I have indicates otherwise.

Additionally, and as indicated previously, the owner of the leaky apartment launches her aggressive husband and ex-policeman as a preferred method of conducting business with regards to a water leak, despite her enjoying the luxury of high level business expertise and training.

The husband and ex-policeman then engages in aggressive, threatening, and intimidating behaviour as a prelude to launching frivolous and vexatious litigation with the intent of inflicting the greatest amount of trauma possible.

According to my research, the owner and her husband have done really well here. They did traumatise people in order to make their lives miserable, and they sustained this campaign of terror and intimidation extremely successfully for an extended period of time as well, making no distinction between victims, whether elderly or female.

Readers following this thread will also note that I wrote to the owner of the leaky unit because I wanted to find out the truth of the allegations in my possession. I needed overwhelming evidence that this was indeed their modus operandi, the usual way they conducted themselves with respect to the matter of the water leak as reported to Scam Investigations.

As previously reported, my letter to the woman and sole owner of the leaky apartment included no mention of the husband and former police officer, Serge Zarconi. In a very nice letter I sent to the wife, I set a deadline for a response. The letter politely requested her version of the events and nothing more.

The owner was given every opportunity to handle this scam report professionally and business-like in order to avoid it being posted on our page. However, she elected to handle the interaction exactly as reported. She declined my invitation to present her side of the story, she made no response statements, she made no response at all.

Rather than that, she opted to unleash the ex-police officer who spoke aggressively, was confrontational, and threatening when he called me.

I shall report more on this investigation very soon.

SCAMMING THE BODY CORPORATE – Part 5

We are continuing with our investigations in this matter.

We posted our first post Part 1 in response to our letter to the owner of the leaky apartment (see letter in Part 4) seeking her account of the incident. We did not hear back from her by the stipulated time, close of business Friday, 3 December 2021.

The letter stated unequivocally that we would be posting on our Scam Investigations page if we did not obtain a response by the specified period.

As a result, we decided that the owner and her husband were in favour of such a posting on our dedicated page for scam investigations.

The owner was provided with an opportunity to stop the matter being posted on our page by simply responding to our letter, but she declined.

Those who have been following this thread will be aware that one of the allegations is that the owner of the leaky unit launches her ex-policeman husband rather than dealing with issues in a professional and respectable business-like manner, which she is more than qualified to do given her extensive corporate experience at the board level of a mining company.

However, their modus operandi is to operate in tandem with the ex-policeman husband, using aggressiveness and threats to traumatise and instil terror in the occupants of that small apartment complex.

As far as I am aware, a number of complaints have been lodged with the NSW Police regarding these threats.

Because the leaky flat is located on the ground floor, occupants are frightened of being met by the ex-policeman when entering and exiting the building.

Thus, on the one hand, the owners of the leaky flat terrorise their neighbours and the nominated strata manager, while on the other hand, they are constantly threatening and initiating frivolous and vexatious legal action that is costing the body corporate hefty legal bills. It would seem the pair as a tag team are using their intricate knowledge of the systems, both criminal and civil to financially and emotionally work over the other residents and manager of the body corporate.

On Tuesday, 7 December at 3:37pm I received a telephone call from the owner of the leaky unit’s husband and ex-policeman, Serge Zarconi. I will further update this ongoing investigation very soon.

SCAMMING THE BODY CORPORATE – Part 4

In almost all of the scams that I have investigated, there was never any doubt as to the allegations because the evidence was overwhelming. Usually I do not interview the other side to hear the other side of the story simply because I do NOT need to. There is no other side.

To give an example, recently someone reported to us that they were scammed when they tried to purchase a tractor they had found advertised online. A bank statement was produced with the sum of $18,000 debited and email correspondence provided in support. The website www.green-tractor.com where the advertisement for the cheap tractor pointed to, was dodgy to say the least. As soon as this site received the $18,000 payment the owners closed shop and went back into the business of thieving under the banner www.charliesmachinery.com.

However in this case, I wanted to seek a view of the information I was presented with from the other side because I couldn’t just take one side of the story as fact without any overwhelming evidence. I was actually certain that the ex-policeman and his corporate wife would proffer some plausible account why they acted in such a manner (if indeed the allegations were even true) that caused someone to report the matter to us.

I believed that the best approach to ascertain the truth was to simply ask. To be honest, I was hoping that the claims relayed to me via a third party had another side to the story and that I could simply dismiss the case.

A property search was undertaken and, as indicated by the third party, the property was wholly in the wife's maiden name. The ex-policeman is not on the title.

A letter was drafted and sent to the wife. I did not put the husband’s name on the letter or refer to him in that letter in any shape or form. The reason for this was twofold. A copy of that letter is attached.

We shall report further on how the matter progressed in Part 5 very soon.

SCAMMING THE BODY CORPORATE – Part 3

As indicated in Part 2, we have now performed additional investigations attempting to ascertain the whole story here. Our initial investigations were exploratory in nature, and we discovered an extensive list of NCAT cases online, confirming the information we have received.

Additionally, we discovered that the ex-police officer and his high-profile business wife, who are purportedly married, do not share the same surname. We also discovered that the property with the leak is wholly owned by the wife. The husband is NOT listed as having any interest in the property on the title.

Putting aside this body corporate issue, I have found it is a regular practise for husbands to conceal assets in the wife's name when they act irresponsibly or in a manner that is likely to result in a damages suit (rarely vice versa because the wife is way too smart). If the spouse has no assets on paper, the plaintiff will never recover any costs or damages awards, regardless of how successful the action is, unless of course the action is the result of both husband and wife acting as a team that led to the legal action and it can be proved they acted as a team. The litigant will simply wind up with a significant financial loss as a result of the legal bill if one cannot prove they acted as a team.

I am not claiming that this is the case here, but if this property ownership structure was designed to avoid culpability for any damages claims, then those who established the plan committed a grave error.

This is how corporate high flyers establish themselves, through trusts, clever ways, and the like, in order to evade any attempt at financial accountability from their reckless actions.

Again, this may not be the case here, but given the gravity of the situation, I am undertaking some investigations into it.

The allegation here is that the wife of the leaky apartment launches her husband who then conducts himself in a threatening, abusive and intimidating manner towards other residents, including the elderly. This may account for property set up solely in the wife’s name.

When the grizzly bear lives on the outside, you are safe when you are on the inside. But what do you do when the grizzly bear lives on the inside and so do you?

Stay tuned as we progress through this investigation live as it happens. We will report again real soon.