Here are a few of the greediest scammers!
3 - Australian Tax Fraud Record-Setting
Anthony Dickson and Michael Issakidis learned that lesson the hard way.
These business partners secretly operated one of the largest tax fraud schemes in Australian
history for six years.
By the time authorities caught up with them, they'd avoided paying nearly 135 million dollars
in taxes — a jaw-dropping amount, netting them around $63 million.
But how was it possible for these millionaire fraudsters to pull off such a large-scale
heist?
And how did they go undetected by the government for so many years?
In the secret world of corporate crime, the answer is a complex web of bogus companies,
fake identities, and offshore bank accounts.
An Intricate Scam On March 9th, 2006, Dickson and Issakidis
created a company called Neumedix Health Australasia.
Using this company, the two sought out inventors with ideas for new medical products and offered
these inventors thousands of dollars in funding for clinical trials.
But there was a catch.
If they wanted the money, the inventors had to give away their intellectual property rights
to another company called Athena.
Why?
Because Athena, an offshore company based in the Cayman Islands, was also owned by Dickson
and Issakidis.
After an inventor signed the rights away to Athena, the scammers then sold the rights
to Neumedix — aka, themselves— for a price way over its true value.
Then, Dickson and Issakidis fired the inventor whose idea they bought, allowing the pair
to claim they suffered millions of dollars in losses on medical ideas that hadn't worked
out.
l But what was the point of fabricating all
those fake losses?
As it turned out, Neumedix was also used as a legitimate business by Dickson and Issakidis.
The company earned hundreds of millions of dollars each year through various buying and
leasing agreements.
Normally, all that income would be subject to taxation.
By using their fake losses from the failed medical ideas, Dickso n and Issakidis claimed
they were making much less money than they actually were.
They kept 450 million dollars hidden from the government, allowing them to dodge 135
million in taxes.
Living Large With all that extra money, these two fraudsters
lived in the kind of luxury most of us only dream about.
Dickson purchased a waterfront mansion for 4.6 million dollars and lived there with his
third wife, a Slovakian woman named Dagmar Maxianova.
Meanwhile, Issakidis bought a 3.8 million dollar waterfront property, where he lived
with his wife, Donrecka.
Both men also spent lavishly on cars, yachts, and other properties.
Dickson bought a 1.1 million dollar Rolls-Royce Phantom and Rolls-Royce Ghost, engraved with
custom license plates, a million-dollar Riviera sports yacht, and a 10 million dollar shopping
center.
Issakidis used his money to buy a Bentley, a Rolls-Royce, private jet rides, and luxurious
vacations with his wife.
Busted Greed always catches up with you eventually.
Authorities noticed the unusual nature of Neumedix's finances, and eventually, the Australian
Taxation Office launched an official review.
After that, the tax fraud scam went up in flames.
In May of 2012, the two men were arrested and charged with tax fraud and money laundering.
Both men were found guilty.
Issakiddis was sentenced to ten years in jail in 2018, while Dickson was sentenced to fourteen
in 2015.
Aftermath Meanwhile, as her husband waited out his time
in jail, Donrecka Issakidis didn't want to move out of her 3.8 million dollar mansion,
despite the home being legally forfeited to the Australian government after Issakidis
landed in jail.
In December of 2020, the government filed an action to evict the fraudster's wife from
the house so that they could seize the property and auction it off.
Mrs. Issakidis tried to fight the government's efforts but was eventually kicked out in July
of 2021.
2 - The Bush Fire The worst scammers steal from people in need,
especially during Australian bushfires and the Covid pandemic.
Tiffany-Anne Brislane-Brown is that kind of scammer.
Tiffany-Anne Brislane-Brown Between 2019 and 2020, Australia experienced
a period of severe bushfires that burnt an estimated 60 to 84 million acres of land.
While bushfires aren't uncommon in Australia, this particular outbreak was terrible regarding
its intensity and duration, eventually leading to the destruction of over 5,900 buildings
and 34 casualties.
Couple this situation with the covid-19 pandemic, which broke out in early 2020, and things
weren't great for many Australian families and businesses.
To help combat some of this economic insecurity, the Aussie government established a program
where struggling small businesses could apply for and receive money from the government,
similar to the PPP loans in the US.
While the program legitimately helped many needy Australians, some saw the money as a
means to enrich themselves and cheat the system.
Brislane-Brown was then a 23-year-old woman who lived in the city of Newcastle in New
South Wales, Australia.
For two months, Brislane-Brown shamelessly used this bushfire relief program to scam
the government out of 60,000 dollars.
To get the money, she falsely claimed she owned several struggling small businesses
and applied for 24 separate program grants using a variety of bank accounts and phone
numbers to cover her tracks.
Facebook Moment Eventually, the police caught up with Miss.
Brown.
But it wasn't her scam that made her go viral — rather, her mugshot.
When Newcastle police issued a warrant for her arrest, they also posted a notice on Facebook,
hoping that someone could locate Brislane-Brown.
In the post, the police included a 2015 mugshot of Brown with a confused look on her face,
messy hair, and a tattoo on her collarbone that reads: "We don't remember days, we remember
moments."
Clearly, this wasn't Brislane-Brown's first run-in with the law.
In 2015, she got arrested for an unknown charge, leading to the mugshot that—five years later—caused
quite the stir.
The unflattering mugshot led to jokes about her messy appearance all over social media.
This eventually led Brown to post her own comment — while a warrant was out for her
arrest — which read: quote "Loving the photo taken how many years ago?
Let's calm down on the comments, guys.
It's not every day I look like trailer trash.
Let's just say it wasn't a good angle, shall we?"
The police then fired back with their own comment: quote "Probably time you walk into
a police station before we find you."
Brislane-Brown also felt the need to post a more flattering picture of herself to her
personal Facebook page, captioning it: "Here's an actual pic of me.
Let's take the time to acknowledge this is NOT my current Newcastle police page photo."
Verdict Unflattering mugshots aside, Brislane-Brown
still had to pay the piper.
She eventually pled guilty to six counts of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage
in September of 2020.
She was sentenced to two years and nine months in jail, becoming the first person in Australia
to be jailed over bushfire relief fraud.
She was also ordered to pay back the 60,000 dollars she scammed from the program.
1 - Way of Life Jade Killin
On the surface, Jade Killin was your average, family-devoted suburban mother.
She was a 33-year-old mother of three living in Unanderra, a family-friendly suburb outside
the city of Wollongong.
However, her home life wasn't completely normal, as her husband was in jail for armed robbery.
Still, on social media and in real life, Killin effortlessly played the part of your typical,
caring mother-of-three.
But underneath that bright, cheery exterior was a darker side.
The truth was, Killin made her living running a high-end identity theft operation, all from
the comfort of home.
So how did she do it?
The Operation Killin ran a complex operation.
Throughout her criminal career, Killin stole the identities of 786 people and used their
information for her own enrichment.
She applied for loans and lines of credit in her victim's names to buy and resell the
latest Apple products.
Police say she used her stolen identities to receive tens of thousands of dollars worth
of loans — loans she applied for with the stolen identities.
When police searched her home, they found bank cards with different names, blank driver's
licenses, and 14 databases with the private information of countless Australians.
Killin was extremely devoted to her life of crime, too.
On a mirror in her home, she wrote an incriminating phrase in red lipstick saying, quote "fraud
is not a crime, it's a way of life."
Police also actually found a daily schedule for her criminal activities written above
her bed.
The schedule included reminders, such as "apply for five loans using different names," "complete
any research on new companies and credit options" for Sunday, and "place five orders with different
names with all carriers" for Tuesday.
Apparently, devoting yourself to a life of crime means having to work on the weekends!
Just how dumb can criminals get with keeping evidence around?!
Zac Ahrens Sadly, many of her victims were blind to Killin's
scam.
One such victim was a man named Zac Ahrens.
Killin attempted to use Ahrens' personal information to take out a 40,000-dollar loan in his name
from a lending company called Now Finance.
Luckily for Ahrens, Now Finance asked Killin for more identification before they gave out
the loan, a request which led Killin to withdraw her application.
Still, it wasn't all good news for Ahrens.
He wasn't aware that his personal information was compromised until he got a phone call
from the Lake Illawarra Police.
Ahrens credit report also took a nosedive, and he's had difficulty taking out loans—real
loans that he needs—to buy property.
Busted So how did Killin's complicated identity theft
operation finally get busted?
Two main incidents led to her downfall.
The first occurred when Killin used a fake medical certificate to get out of community
service she'd been assigned after being charged with drug possession.
Staff at the corrections office noticed that the certificate looked odd and alerted the
police.
But the final nail in the coffin for Killin came after she attempted to buy an elaborate
card printer that was worth 11,000 dollars.
Normally, these printers were for banks and government offices, but Killin told the printer
company she needed the machine for a local bowling club.
Suspicious of the order, a representative from the printer company called the bowling
club and discovered that no one named Killin even worked there.
The company then notified the police, who tracked Killin down because she used her real
address to place the printer order.
Killin was arrested and pleaded guilty to 33 charges of fraud and dishonesty.
While this wasn't how Killin imagined her story would end, she ultimately got to be
closer to her husband… behind bars.
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And let us know in the comment section what’s the dumbest thing you’ve seen someone do
in real life!