Key Points
- A coroner found that Melissa Caddick, who vanished more than two years ago, is dead.
- Police raided Caddick's Sydney home in 2020, two days before her disappearance.
- Caddick preyed on mostly friends and family to steal up to $30 million through her investment scam.
More than two years after conwoman Melissa Caddick mysteriously vanished, a coroner has found she died.
"I believe it is appropriate for me to say at the outset, I have concluded that Melissa Caddick is deceased," NSW Deputy State Coroner Elizabeth Ryan said on Thursday.
"However, a more problematic issue is whether there is enough evidence as to how she died."
The long-running coronial examination delved into the circumstances leading to the 49-year-old Sydney fraudster's disappearance in November 2020 and her mindset at the time.
Caddick's badly decomposed right foot in a running shoe washed up on a beach on the south coast of NSW three months after her disappearance, leading authorities to presume she was dead.
Coroner's findings
The coroner dismissed a claim by Ms Caddick's husband that he did not know anything about her disappearance.
Ms Ryan said detectives should have referred her November 2020 disappearance to the NSW homicide squad.
"Early dismissal of the possibility that Ms Caddick had been harmed by another person created the risk that information which might shape the direction of the investigation may have been lost," the coroner said during her findings on Thursday.
The inquest also found the missing fraudster's husband, Anthony Koletti, could not be ruled out as being involved in her disappearance, with Ms Ryan calling his inconsistent evidence "regrettable".
"It is fair to say that when he was not creating further inconsistencies, he was attempting to account for them with opaque and at times unintelligible explanations," she said.
The part-time hairdresser and DJ contradicted himself on multiple occasions during the inquest, including suggesting Ms Caddick was a keen runner and had potentially gone for a jog the morning of her disappearance, despite CCTV footage showing she had not run in weeks.
Husband of Melissa Caddick, Anthony Koletti. Source: AAP / Dan Himbrechts
His lawyer, Judy Swan, put his murky evidence down to "his limited intellectual capacity", however, Ms Ryan did not agree.
"His discrepancies are too numerous and too persistent to be attributable to stress and lack of intellectual sophistication," she said.
The inquest found Mr Koletti had "some awareness" of Ms Caddick's movements during the days before and after her disappearance, but made a conscious choice "not to disclose it".
Ms Ryan opened her findings by saying she believed Ms Caddick was dead.
"I believe it is appropriate for me to say at the outset, I have concluded that Melissa Caddick is deceased," she said.
"However, a more problematic issue is whether there is enough evidence as to how she died."
Why was Melissa Caddick investigated?
Police and investigators from the corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, raided Caddick's Dover Heights home on 11 November 2020.
Two days later, she was reported missing by her husband, Anthony Koletti.
The inquest heard from a number of key witnesses, including Mr Koletti, a part-time hairdresser and DJ, who told the court he had no knowledge of her financial scam.
The officer-in-charge of the investigation into her disappearance, Detective Sergeant Michael Foscholo, told the inquiry last year he believed the fraudster had taken her own life.
Caddick, a self-styled financial adviser, preyed on mostly friends and family to steal up to $30 million through her investment scam, using the money to fund her lavish lifestyle before disappearing.
Her eastern suburbs mansion sold for nearly $10 million in January.
A collection of jewellery, once owned by the fraudster, has also attracted large sums, with a recent auction garnering $800,000 that will go towards paying back victims.
