Melissa Caddick: “Origins of a Con Woman” | S6 E2

Dirty Money Moves: Women in White Collar Crime

Australian con woman Melissa Caddick's sudden disappearance in November 2020 following a federal raid on her house sparked hundreds of theories about her whereabouts. Many believed Melissa had escaped with her money and gone into hiding. Others thought she’d been abducted and suspects ranged from angry investors to her ex-husband, Tony Caddick. Then there were the conspiracy theories. When Melissa’s severed foot showed up on a beach over 300 miles from the cliffs near her house, many people began to question if she severed her own foot and used it as a distraction to escape with the tens of millions of dollars she’d defrauded friends and family out of over the past eight years.

While the various theories about Melissa’s disappearance were a fascinating topic of discussion, people also wondered how one goes from a lower to middle class Australian girl with very little education, to a world class con artist? In this episode of Dirty Money Moves, we’ll take a look at the origin stories of Melissa Caddick‘s fraud, and it all began with simple white lies she put on her résumé …along with a sprinkling of confidence after getting away with smaller crimes which only emboldened her to go bigger.

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Follow host, Jami Rice, on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube @JamiOnAir to keep up with true crime cases she’s deep-diving into and providing commentary on.

Check out Jami’s other true crime podcast, MURDERISH, which is available in all podcast apps.

Dirty Money Moves is a collaboration between MURDERISH and Cloud10 Media.

Executive Producers are: Jami Rice and Sim Sarna

Research and writing by: Zach Selwyn

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