Flemington Markets shop allegedly at centre of $15m Westpac fraud ring

afr.com:

A mango and mandarin stall at Sydney’s Flemington Markets is at the centre of a scheme that falsified revenues, profits and invoices to steal more than $15 million from Westpac over five years, the bank alleges.

The alleged fraud ring involved 13 parties related to the owner of the Fresh Xpress stand, Kathie Musumeci and her husband Andrew. Westpac alleges up to 90 per cent of the invoices were suspicious, court filings show.

Westpac says just over $15 million was stolen from 2011 and 2020, and faked invoices that were used to secure the money included inaccurate ABN’s for 24 companies and at least five of them did not exist at their listed address.

Cheeky Farms in the Northern Territory was one beneficiary of the alleged fraud scheme. 

Under the system, known as invoice financing, Westpac paid Fresh Xpress early for money owed to it by customers, with the company producing invoices to prove the claims. The alleged fraud shows how such products are exploited, with some banks exiting the business due to the higher risks.

While Westpac remains in the invoice financing business and is confident in its risk controls, it took nearly a decade for the bank to identify irregularities with this business as part of a routine audit.

“The internal investigation revealed… the first defendant failed to keep up to date debtor records, in that of the 37 debtors reviewed, 24 had an ABN that differed from that recorded,” the bank’s filings in the Supreme Court of NSW claim. “The contact details recorded in the plaintiff’s records for 13 debtors were not accurate. Five of the debtors did not exist at the address recorded in the plaintiff’s records 32 of [the] debtors were not able to be contacted using the contact information recorded in