December 3, 2025 • 19 mins
When Mark Leishman and his wife Kathy first sought out the help of George Dimitriou, they were suffering with cash-flow problems at Mark’s business.
By the time their working relationship with Dimitriou finished - and after they discovered he was only pretending to be an accountant - their Newcastle home was repossessed, and they lost, they say, $4 million.
Today, chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont on George Dimitriou, a serial conman and high-school drop-out who conned vulnerable people out of millions of dollars with the help of, allegedly, a bank loans manager, and a series of lawyers.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:02):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Seelinger Morris. It's Thursday,
December 4th. When Marc Leishman and his wife Cathy first
sought out the help of George Demetriou. They were suffering
with cash flow problems at Mark's business. But by the
(00:24):
time their working relationship with Demetriou finished and after they
discovered he was only pretending to be an accountant, their
Newcastle home was repossessed and they lost. They say $4
million today. Chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont on George Demetriou,
a serial conman and high school dropout who conned vulnerable
(00:47):
people out of millions of dollars with the help of
allegedly a bank loans manager and a series of lawyers. Kate,
welcome back to the podcast.
S2 (01:02):
Thank you for having me, Sam.
S1 (01:04):
Okay. Well, you know, we feel it's a special day
when you're on, so can you just begin with, I guess,
telling us who is George? Dimitri, you and I have
to ask how you stumbled onto this story. Because I'm
lucky enough I get to talk to you in the
hallways here at the newsroom. And you've told me in
the past about some really unexpected sources and locations where
you get tips, like, you know, other parents at the
(01:24):
school gate. You know, the rest of us just hear
about people's renovations, but you hear about, you know.
S2 (01:28):
Walking the dog is always a good source of stories. Exactly.
S1 (01:32):
So tell me how you stumbled on this one.
S2 (01:34):
Well, funnily enough, two lots of victims contacted me separately. Like,
completely randomly. Just said, could you please help us with
our stories? And the person we're talking about is a
man called George Demetriou, who's a 55 year old. He's
currently in jail in EMU Plains for a fraud. But
(01:58):
the thing that upsets the victims is that he has
ripped off and ruined so many people's lives. But he's
not in jail for ripping them off. He's in jail
for defrauding the ANZ bank. And you know, George Demetriou
left school in year ten and set up a garden
(02:20):
artistry business. So sometime around 2010, he thinks being a
fraudster is going to be so much more profitable. So
he just puts a sign up on the wall and
says that he is an accountant. He doesn't even have
any financial training. He doesn't. He doesn't go to TAFE.
(02:41):
He's got nothing at all. The one thing that's still
unclear to me is that he must have done a
couple of loans in order to get recommendations. Or maybe
he did a couple of things, but the victims hadn't
yet realized they'd been cheated. They think that it's all
(03:01):
going okay until it's not. Which brings us to Cathy
and Marc Leishman. Now they're, you know, a lovely couple
from Newcastle. Mark's father's business was experiencing some cash flow.
It was sort of like providing sort of like mining
(03:22):
software to companies anyway. A lawyer in Newcastle suggests that
they talk to this guy, George Demetriou, who's, you know,
seems to be pretty good at doing loans. So they
come down to Sydney and George says, yes, I can
do this, I can do that, you know, I'll fix
your car leases, etc.. Before they know it, they've got,
(03:47):
you know, bailiffs knocking on the door saying, we're about
to repossess your house. You know, I just remember Cathy
Leishman saying she works in a as a physio in
a private hospital in Newcastle and just saying the embarrassment
of having process servers come to the hospital. You know,
(04:10):
Cathy Leishman, you're served just.
S1 (04:13):
And she said they were respected members of the community. Yes.
S2 (04:17):
So a court, you know, later found that their signatures
had been forged on documents, you know, and then there was, um,
lepa Sana from the Central Coast. She and her husband
had their documents forged. Not only did their marriage break
down and they've lost their houses, she's been made bankrupt.
She doesn't even know that she's been made bankrupt. Because
(04:41):
all the documentation goes to George Demetriou's office. And when
it comes up in court about her failing to turn up,
they file more fake documents saying she's in a mental
Institution and that's why she can't come to court. So
poor leper is still fighting the bankruptcy trustee. But when
(05:04):
you've been stripped of everything of all your money, you
don't have the resources to fight on. And I think
this is what is so heartbreaking for these people is
that having lost everything, it's really hard to find the
funds to try to fight back. And that's where George
(05:26):
Demetriou has got away with it for a while. But
it's also interesting what the court thinks about these kind
of things, because Ading Demetriou, in some of these things
have been solicitors and on one case, one of the
New South Wales court judges said yes, but solicitors wouldn't
(05:48):
do that.
S1 (05:49):
Yeah.
S2 (05:49):
And it's that thing. You can imagine the frustration sitting
there in court where they're believed. But you're not.
S1 (05:57):
You'd feel so let down. You'd feel so betrayed.
S2 (06:00):
And I think the victims feel that they've been let
down by the police. They've been let down by the
Law Society because their lawyers were sometimes in cahoots with Demetriou.
The bank, like a number of them, complained to the bank,
and nothing ever seemed to have been done. And if
(06:21):
there's any legal aid lawyers listening out there, gee, some
of these people could do with a hand.
S1 (06:27):
Yeah, right. Okay. Well, we're going to get to the
allegations against how the police and the courts and the
Law Society and so forth, you know, might have very
well failed these clients of George Demetriou. But take us
into what his modus operandi was like. Did he have
a sort of set game that he played, I guess.
S2 (06:43):
Look, what he did was you would come to him
to get a loan and so in some cases he
would falsify your tax return, like in one case with
Sue Arnott from Brisbane. She was she was earning $20,000
a year and she had a house. So her brother
(07:06):
was wanting to use her house as equity for a loan.
The next thing her tax return is she's getting 220,000.
So the loans are astronomical. They're falsifying valuations on houses.
They're falsifying. This is Demetriou loan documents selling houses from
(07:28):
under people by forging their signatures. It was all encompassing
and widespread. But he would also set up companies with
victims names and then get company loans. It was quite
sophisticated and very complicated, like trying to unravel, you know,
(07:49):
some victims names and companies were used to cheat other victims.
And so then Demetriou would pit them against each other saying, oh,
you know, Sam, it was Kate that stole your money,
not me. So he sort of kept them apart. Wow. Oh, look,
(08:10):
it's it's just heartbreaking.
S1 (08:11):
It's horrible. And I think it was Sue Arnott. I
think she was the person who I think was on
$20,000 a year. And was it her that had, like,
I don't know, multiple, multiple companies under her name that
I think Demetriou had sort of put in her name.
S2 (08:24):
When she finally went to an ANZ bank account and said, look,
could you just give me a list of the loans
that I have in my name? She did not know
that he had taken out personal loans, company loans, but, um,
she had some financial backing. She was lucky in some ways.
(08:46):
So it was Sue Arnott that pursued George through the
courts and made him bankrupt. And also it was her
loan that the ANZ was able to prove fraud on
Demetriou's behalf. But again, as I said, the police took
action because he defrauded the ANZ, not because he defrauded
(09:09):
all these poor other people.
S1 (09:12):
And then there's one detail that really stuck out for
me from your story. This is a Melbourne businessman who
you've called Mr. M because he's asked not to be named,
and he was chasing George Demetriou for the return of
his own money. And astonishingly, he said he went to
police and he was put onto a detective from the
New South Wales Fraud Squad who, after hearing Mr. M's story,
said you too, and said that there were plenty of others,
(09:35):
like did the police then take action after that, or
was he just left with a oh, you also got duped.
S2 (09:40):
Look, I think that, um, I mean, look, nothing ended
up happening with all these allegations, But this was extraordinary.
So in 2011, Mr. M, who's been put on to
George Demetriou, somebody else had heard about him. So he
needs a loan to finance some business arrangements. So he
(10:00):
goes along to Demetriou and he uses two houses in
Melbourne as security for the loans. Now the loans are
meant to go into a family company account and it
was something like I think two point, I think it
was 2.3 million. So you know, yes, the loan's been approved.
(10:23):
So he keeps checking in the company account. Not there,
not there. He finally goes into his own local ANZ
bank and they go, oh yeah, yeah, it went in
and it went out. And he said, it went out.
And he said, yes, it's gone into these accounts. And
they were associated with Demetriou. But when he rings up
(10:45):
to meet you, Dmitri says, oh, yes. Remember, you gave
me permission to invest the money in on your behalf.
And he said, I did not. This money is for
a family loan. He said, no, no, you gave permission.
He said, okay, where's my signature? There was nothing. And
the other thing was that his family, they're all fighting,
(11:06):
saying you've taken the money. He said, I didn't. I
promise you, the money went in and the money went out,
and he went to the New South Wales Police. And
that's when they were told, oh, so you too have
been defrauded by this man.
S1 (11:22):
And did he ever get his money back?
S2 (11:24):
No.
S1 (11:26):
We'll be right back. So I do have to ask, though.
I mean, did the A and Z fail the victims
of George Demetriou?
S2 (11:41):
Look, I think that they did Because I think that
they possibly just thought it wouldn't be possible. But now,
you know, I sort of wonder if they ever went
back after the court case. And don't forget, the court
case was, you know, Demetriou ripping off the ANZ bank
(12:02):
after their former Chatswood you know, loans manager admitted in
court saying yes I faked the signature. Did they go
back and check what else. What other claims had come
before them previously. Did they reassess, you know, what had
(12:22):
happened to their customers in the past? I don't know,
they wouldn't say.
S1 (12:27):
So you've asked them and just got silence? Yes. Okay.
And I wanted to ask you about Anna. She was
left bankrupt after Demetriou manufactured loan documents and forged her
and her husband's signatures on numerous documents, including on the
sale of their house at Copacabana. She's the one who
told you that her marriage broke down from the stress
(12:48):
and the horribleness of all of this, and she told
you that her efforts to, quote, bring attention to the
frauds perpetrated by Demetriou have been dismissed at every turn.
So who did she turn to? And I mean, are
there any other authorities that sort of failed to stop
George Demetriou when they could have possibly done so? Besides those,
you know, we've discussed?
S2 (13:06):
Well, she's been to the police. She has pleaded with
the bankruptcy courts, saying that I was a victim in
all this. And it's just like no one has believed her.
No one has listened to her. And, you know, to
find yourself bankrupt after, you know. And I have to clarify, too,
(13:29):
that in some of these situations, these people were already
in financial distress. And George Demetriou just made it worse.
So whether their financial position was going to lead to
the eventual outcome, I don't know, but whatever happened, Demetriou
(13:49):
just made things so much worse for people.
S1 (13:53):
So you mentioned just then that, you know, she told
so many people about what was happening to her. No
one believed her. Why?
S2 (14:01):
Because I just think that fraudsters get away with it.
Because people don't believe that they will do it. They
don't believe that lawyers will help them do it. And
there's one lawyer, Hector X, and I've been writing about
Hector X for years. He's been found, you know, guilty
(14:21):
of professional misconduct. So he was acting for some of
the victims. And then it turns out that when George
Demetriou declares himself bankrupt and transfers his assets to another
former bankrupt who is helping him backdate the documents. But
(14:42):
Hector X, who's meant to be representing his own clients,
but instead he's doing the dirty with George Demetriou and
he actually died in September last year. But there are
multiple claims for professional negligence against Hector X, and this
(15:02):
is another failure by the regulators. The Law Society actually
took over his practice in 2020. He had to hand
in his practising certificate again. So the Leishman's who were
victims of Hector X, they've been pestering the Law Society
to release their files so that they can at least
(15:25):
try to recover some of their funds under, you know,
this professional negligence cover for victims of lawyers.
S1 (15:33):
Because they say not only have they lost their house
in Newcastle, but also $4 million, right?
S2 (15:38):
Yes. But they can't get their files back because the
Law Society has them. And at the last I heard,
they were saying, oh, now it'll cost you $600 if
you want to get them from this office, or if
we bring them into the city, that'll cost, you know, $800.
And you think these people have suffered enough, and now
(15:59):
you're charging them to get their own files from your office? Like,
it's just. I just think the wheels of justice in
this case.
S1 (16:09):
Have ground these people under the.
S2 (16:11):
Ground. Not only have they turned slowly, they've ground them
into oblivion.
S1 (16:16):
And I guess, just to wrap up, I guess this
would seem to be the, you know, the indignity. To
top it all off, is that the allegation in your
piece is that this Sydney solicitor, the late Sydney solicitor
Hector X, that he allegedly helped George Demetriou to retain
his Lamborghini as Maserati, millions of dollars that he'd stolen
(16:37):
from clients by sort of, I guess, hiding them away.
Is that right before he declared himself bankrupt?
S2 (16:42):
Yes. That's right. It's I mean, that's the the last
insult is in fact, I think he said he had
$3 in his account.
S1 (16:51):
That's right.
S2 (16:52):
But it's interesting because his, um, his current bankruptcy trustee
has now extended his bankruptcy because normally you bankrupt for
three years, but the bankruptcy trustee has found all these anomalies,
you know, hiding assets, etc.. So his bankruptcy has been
(17:14):
extended for an extra, I think an extra four years
until 2027. Till 2027.
S1 (17:19):
But but does that mean that he's still got millions
of dollars allegedly stashed away somewhere and is a Lamborghini
and his Maserati?
S2 (17:25):
Well, I think that that is what is believed. But again,
a bankruptcy trustee needs to be funded in order to,
you know, pursue this because doing forensic accounting, doing that
kind of tracing is not cheap. So you need for
someone to come along and say, I will give you
(17:47):
X amount of money to go after this man, his
poor victims. You know, they often don't have the money
to fund this. So it's a vicious circle. Like you
can get away with stuff if you if your victims
are crushed, are financially crushed. It's win win for you
as the crook.
S1 (18:08):
So, I mean, so what should happen next? I mean,
is anyone actually going to do you think take notice
of this story? I don't know. Pick up on it.
S2 (18:14):
I don't know. It's. Yes. It'll be interesting to see
what does happen.
S1 (18:21):
Okay. Well watch this space. Listeners and viewers, thanks so much, Kate,
as always, for your time.
S2 (18:25):
Oh my pleasure.
S1 (18:45):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is
a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism,
subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to
(19:05):
support what we do. Search The Age or Smh.com.au. Subscribe
and sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter to receive
a comprehensive summary of the day's most important news, analysis
and insights in your inbox every day. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the
(19:27):
morning edition. Thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Seelinger Morris. It's Thursday,
December 4th. When Marc Leishman and his wife Cathy first
sought out the help of George Demetriou. They were suffering
with cash flow problems at Mark's business. But by the
(00:24):
time their working relationship with Demetriou finished and after they
discovered he was only pretending to be an accountant, their
Newcastle home was repossessed and they lost. They say $4
million today. Chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont on George Demetriou,
a serial conman and high school dropout who conned vulnerable
(00:47):
people out of millions of dollars with the help of
allegedly a bank loans manager and a series of lawyers. Kate,
welcome back to the podcast.
S2 (01:02):
Thank you for having me, Sam.
S1 (01:04):
Okay. Well, you know, we feel it's a special day
when you're on, so can you just begin with, I guess,
telling us who is George? Dimitri, you and I have
to ask how you stumbled onto this story. Because I'm
lucky enough I get to talk to you in the
hallways here at the newsroom. And you've told me in
the past about some really unexpected sources and locations where
you get tips, like, you know, other parents at the
(01:24):
school gate. You know, the rest of us just hear
about people's renovations, but you hear about, you know.
S2 (01:28):
Walking the dog is always a good source of stories. Exactly.
S1 (01:32):
So tell me how you stumbled on this one.
S2 (01:34):
Well, funnily enough, two lots of victims contacted me separately. Like,
completely randomly. Just said, could you please help us with
our stories? And the person we're talking about is a
man called George Demetriou, who's a 55 year old. He's
currently in jail in EMU Plains for a fraud. But
(01:58):
the thing that upsets the victims is that he has
ripped off and ruined so many people's lives. But he's
not in jail for ripping them off. He's in jail
for defrauding the ANZ bank. And you know, George Demetriou
left school in year ten and set up a garden
(02:20):
artistry business. So sometime around 2010, he thinks being a
fraudster is going to be so much more profitable. So
he just puts a sign up on the wall and
says that he is an accountant. He doesn't even have
any financial training. He doesn't. He doesn't go to TAFE.
(02:41):
He's got nothing at all. The one thing that's still
unclear to me is that he must have done a
couple of loans in order to get recommendations. Or maybe
he did a couple of things, but the victims hadn't
yet realized they'd been cheated. They think that it's all
(03:01):
going okay until it's not. Which brings us to Cathy
and Marc Leishman. Now they're, you know, a lovely couple
from Newcastle. Mark's father's business was experiencing some cash flow.
It was sort of like providing sort of like mining
(03:22):
software to companies anyway. A lawyer in Newcastle suggests that
they talk to this guy, George Demetriou, who's, you know,
seems to be pretty good at doing loans. So they
come down to Sydney and George says, yes, I can
do this, I can do that, you know, I'll fix
your car leases, etc.. Before they know it, they've got,
(03:47):
you know, bailiffs knocking on the door saying, we're about
to repossess your house. You know, I just remember Cathy
Leishman saying she works in a as a physio in
a private hospital in Newcastle and just saying the embarrassment
of having process servers come to the hospital. You know,
(04:10):
Cathy Leishman, you're served just.
S1 (04:13):
And she said they were respected members of the community. Yes.
S2 (04:17):
So a court, you know, later found that their signatures
had been forged on documents, you know, and then there was, um,
lepa Sana from the Central Coast. She and her husband
had their documents forged. Not only did their marriage break
down and they've lost their houses, she's been made bankrupt.
She doesn't even know that she's been made bankrupt. Because
(04:41):
all the documentation goes to George Demetriou's office. And when
it comes up in court about her failing to turn up,
they file more fake documents saying she's in a mental
Institution and that's why she can't come to court. So
poor leper is still fighting the bankruptcy trustee. But when
(05:04):
you've been stripped of everything of all your money, you
don't have the resources to fight on. And I think
this is what is so heartbreaking for these people is
that having lost everything, it's really hard to find the
funds to try to fight back. And that's where George
(05:26):
Demetriou has got away with it for a while. But
it's also interesting what the court thinks about these kind
of things, because Ading Demetriou, in some of these things
have been solicitors and on one case, one of the
New South Wales court judges said yes, but solicitors wouldn't
(05:48):
do that.
S1 (05:49):
Yeah.
S2 (05:49):
And it's that thing. You can imagine the frustration sitting
there in court where they're believed. But you're not.
S1 (05:57):
You'd feel so let down. You'd feel so betrayed.
S2 (06:00):
And I think the victims feel that they've been let
down by the police. They've been let down by the
Law Society because their lawyers were sometimes in cahoots with Demetriou.
The bank, like a number of them, complained to the bank,
and nothing ever seemed to have been done. And if
(06:21):
there's any legal aid lawyers listening out there, gee, some
of these people could do with a hand.
S1 (06:27):
Yeah, right. Okay. Well, we're going to get to the
allegations against how the police and the courts and the
Law Society and so forth, you know, might have very
well failed these clients of George Demetriou. But take us
into what his modus operandi was like. Did he have
a sort of set game that he played, I guess.
S2 (06:43):
Look, what he did was you would come to him
to get a loan and so in some cases he
would falsify your tax return, like in one case with
Sue Arnott from Brisbane. She was she was earning $20,000
a year and she had a house. So her brother
(07:06):
was wanting to use her house as equity for a loan.
The next thing her tax return is she's getting 220,000.
So the loans are astronomical. They're falsifying valuations on houses.
They're falsifying. This is Demetriou loan documents selling houses from
(07:28):
under people by forging their signatures. It was all encompassing
and widespread. But he would also set up companies with
victims names and then get company loans. It was quite
sophisticated and very complicated, like trying to unravel, you know,
(07:49):
some victims names and companies were used to cheat other victims.
And so then Demetriou would pit them against each other saying, oh,
you know, Sam, it was Kate that stole your money,
not me. So he sort of kept them apart. Wow. Oh, look,
(08:10):
it's it's just heartbreaking.
S1 (08:11):
It's horrible. And I think it was Sue Arnott. I
think she was the person who I think was on
$20,000 a year. And was it her that had, like,
I don't know, multiple, multiple companies under her name that
I think Demetriou had sort of put in her name.
S2 (08:24):
When she finally went to an ANZ bank account and said, look,
could you just give me a list of the loans
that I have in my name? She did not know
that he had taken out personal loans, company loans, but, um,
she had some financial backing. She was lucky in some ways.
(08:46):
So it was Sue Arnott that pursued George through the
courts and made him bankrupt. And also it was her
loan that the ANZ was able to prove fraud on
Demetriou's behalf. But again, as I said, the police took
action because he defrauded the ANZ, not because he defrauded
(09:09):
all these poor other people.
S1 (09:12):
And then there's one detail that really stuck out for
me from your story. This is a Melbourne businessman who
you've called Mr. M because he's asked not to be named,
and he was chasing George Demetriou for the return of
his own money. And astonishingly, he said he went to
police and he was put onto a detective from the
New South Wales Fraud Squad who, after hearing Mr. M's story,
said you too, and said that there were plenty of others,
(09:35):
like did the police then take action after that, or
was he just left with a oh, you also got duped.
S2 (09:40):
Look, I think that, um, I mean, look, nothing ended
up happening with all these allegations, But this was extraordinary.
So in 2011, Mr. M, who's been put on to
George Demetriou, somebody else had heard about him. So he
needs a loan to finance some business arrangements. So he
(10:00):
goes along to Demetriou and he uses two houses in
Melbourne as security for the loans. Now the loans are
meant to go into a family company account and it
was something like I think two point, I think it
was 2.3 million. So you know, yes, the loan's been approved.
(10:23):
So he keeps checking in the company account. Not there,
not there. He finally goes into his own local ANZ
bank and they go, oh yeah, yeah, it went in
and it went out. And he said, it went out.
And he said, yes, it's gone into these accounts. And
they were associated with Demetriou. But when he rings up
(10:45):
to meet you, Dmitri says, oh, yes. Remember, you gave
me permission to invest the money in on your behalf.
And he said, I did not. This money is for
a family loan. He said, no, no, you gave permission.
He said, okay, where's my signature? There was nothing. And
the other thing was that his family, they're all fighting,
(11:06):
saying you've taken the money. He said, I didn't. I
promise you, the money went in and the money went out,
and he went to the New South Wales Police. And
that's when they were told, oh, so you too have
been defrauded by this man.
S1 (11:22):
And did he ever get his money back?
S2 (11:24):
No.
S1 (11:26):
We'll be right back. So I do have to ask, though.
I mean, did the A and Z fail the victims
of George Demetriou?
S2 (11:41):
Look, I think that they did Because I think that
they possibly just thought it wouldn't be possible. But now,
you know, I sort of wonder if they ever went
back after the court case. And don't forget, the court
case was, you know, Demetriou ripping off the ANZ bank
(12:02):
after their former Chatswood you know, loans manager admitted in
court saying yes I faked the signature. Did they go
back and check what else. What other claims had come
before them previously. Did they reassess, you know, what had
(12:22):
happened to their customers in the past? I don't know,
they wouldn't say.
S1 (12:27):
So you've asked them and just got silence? Yes. Okay.
And I wanted to ask you about Anna. She was
left bankrupt after Demetriou manufactured loan documents and forged her
and her husband's signatures on numerous documents, including on the
sale of their house at Copacabana. She's the one who
told you that her marriage broke down from the stress
(12:48):
and the horribleness of all of this, and she told
you that her efforts to, quote, bring attention to the
frauds perpetrated by Demetriou have been dismissed at every turn.
So who did she turn to? And I mean, are
there any other authorities that sort of failed to stop
George Demetriou when they could have possibly done so? Besides those,
you know, we've discussed?
S2 (13:06):
Well, she's been to the police. She has pleaded with
the bankruptcy courts, saying that I was a victim in
all this. And it's just like no one has believed her.
No one has listened to her. And, you know, to
find yourself bankrupt after, you know. And I have to clarify, too,
(13:29):
that in some of these situations, these people were already
in financial distress. And George Demetriou just made it worse.
So whether their financial position was going to lead to
the eventual outcome, I don't know, but whatever happened, Demetriou
(13:49):
just made things so much worse for people.
S1 (13:53):
So you mentioned just then that, you know, she told
so many people about what was happening to her. No
one believed her. Why?
S2 (14:01):
Because I just think that fraudsters get away with it.
Because people don't believe that they will do it. They
don't believe that lawyers will help them do it. And
there's one lawyer, Hector X, and I've been writing about
Hector X for years. He's been found, you know, guilty
(14:21):
of professional misconduct. So he was acting for some of
the victims. And then it turns out that when George
Demetriou declares himself bankrupt and transfers his assets to another
former bankrupt who is helping him backdate the documents. But
(14:42):
Hector X, who's meant to be representing his own clients,
but instead he's doing the dirty with George Demetriou and
he actually died in September last year. But there are
multiple claims for professional negligence against Hector X, and this
(15:02):
is another failure by the regulators. The Law Society actually
took over his practice in 2020. He had to hand
in his practising certificate again. So the Leishman's who were
victims of Hector X, they've been pestering the Law Society
to release their files so that they can at least
(15:25):
try to recover some of their funds under, you know,
this professional negligence cover for victims of lawyers.
S1 (15:33):
Because they say not only have they lost their house
in Newcastle, but also $4 million, right?
S2 (15:38):
Yes. But they can't get their files back because the
Law Society has them. And at the last I heard,
they were saying, oh, now it'll cost you $600 if
you want to get them from this office, or if
we bring them into the city, that'll cost, you know, $800.
And you think these people have suffered enough, and now
(15:59):
you're charging them to get their own files from your office? Like,
it's just. I just think the wheels of justice in
this case.
S1 (16:09):
Have ground these people under the.
S2 (16:11):
Ground. Not only have they turned slowly, they've ground them
into oblivion.
S1 (16:16):
And I guess, just to wrap up, I guess this
would seem to be the, you know, the indignity. To
top it all off, is that the allegation in your
piece is that this Sydney solicitor, the late Sydney solicitor
Hector X, that he allegedly helped George Demetriou to retain
his Lamborghini as Maserati, millions of dollars that he'd stolen
(16:37):
from clients by sort of, I guess, hiding them away.
Is that right before he declared himself bankrupt?
S2 (16:42):
Yes. That's right. It's I mean, that's the the last
insult is in fact, I think he said he had
$3 in his account.
S1 (16:51):
That's right.
S2 (16:52):
But it's interesting because his, um, his current bankruptcy trustee
has now extended his bankruptcy because normally you bankrupt for
three years, but the bankruptcy trustee has found all these anomalies,
you know, hiding assets, etc.. So his bankruptcy has been
(17:14):
extended for an extra, I think an extra four years
until 2027. Till 2027.
S1 (17:19):
But but does that mean that he's still got millions
of dollars allegedly stashed away somewhere and is a Lamborghini
and his Maserati?
S2 (17:25):
Well, I think that that is what is believed. But again,
a bankruptcy trustee needs to be funded in order to,
you know, pursue this because doing forensic accounting, doing that
kind of tracing is not cheap. So you need for
someone to come along and say, I will give you
(17:47):
X amount of money to go after this man, his
poor victims. You know, they often don't have the money
to fund this. So it's a vicious circle. Like you
can get away with stuff if you if your victims
are crushed, are financially crushed. It's win win for you
as the crook.
S1 (18:08):
So, I mean, so what should happen next? I mean,
is anyone actually going to do you think take notice
of this story? I don't know. Pick up on it.
S2 (18:14):
I don't know. It's. Yes. It'll be interesting to see
what does happen.
S1 (18:21):
Okay. Well watch this space. Listeners and viewers, thanks so much, Kate,
as always, for your time.
S2 (18:25):
Oh my pleasure.
S1 (18:45):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is
a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism,
subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to
(19:05):
support what we do. Search The Age or Smh.com.au. Subscribe
and sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter to receive
a comprehensive summary of the day's most important news, analysis
and insights in your inbox every day. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the
(19:27):
morning edition. Thanks for listening.
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