When the fully clothed body of financial adviser Steve Halgryn, 52, washed up on a Sunshine Coast beach in April 19, the initial focus was on solving the mystery of how he died.
Yet months later, as his grieving family still await a coroner's report, it is his business activities that have caught the attention of the corporate watchdog, the police and the local community.
About 600 investors in Australia and offshore mostly in Halgryn's native Zimbabwe are now trying to track down the millions they have ploughed into an alleged Ponzi scheme that had sucked up to $96 million in client funds into an unregistered scheme, SFS Global Trading Syndicate, that promised 24 per cent annual returns.
Accusations have already been levelled at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission over how an unregistered scheme run out of Buderim on the Sunshine Coast could operate for so many years without raising the suspicions of the corporate cop.
And there are plenty of signs ASIC should have been aware Halgryn was up to something. BusinessDay can reveal Halgryn and his business partners have been investigated time and time again but no action was ever taken against the businessman.
Administrators were appointed to Halgryn's businesses Suncoast Financial Solutions and SFSGlobal in late June.
But the administrator's task piecing together the business has been hampered by a robbery at Halgryn's A1 Home Loans offices at a strip of shops on Lindsay Road in Buderim in the weeks before his death. All books and records as well as the company's computers were stolen.
A spokesman for Queensland Police says there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding Halgryn's death and that police were investigating the robbery. Halgryn is suspected to have had a heart attack.
Administrators are now relying on the few company documents and hand-written notes regarding the business they have found at another property to find out more about Halgryn's operation.
One of the few documents located is a schedule of investors running into the hundreds and showing that at some point in time the scheme had $96 million in client funds.
A locked website accessed by BusinessDay shows his company Suncoast Financial Solutions owns scores of property in the US states of Michigan and Georgia.
The syndicate appears to have not been registered in any jurisdiction and has been operating for at least five years, according to those close to the investigation.
Halgryn's business relied on heavily pooling investor funds and using contracts for difference (CFDs) to bet on the swings in commodity, index and foreign exchange markets, sources say.
It's a scheme that was remarkably similar to that run by a former business partner of Halgryn's Scott Logan, BusinessDay can reveal.
ASIC took action against Logan in 2014 for running an unlicensed, unregistered scheme trading CFDsunder the banner of Coastal Capital.
Logan's scheme was operated out of the Victorian town of Torquay between 2011 and 2013 by Shore Capital, trading as Coastal Capital. He was formerly an authorised representative of controversial financial services outfit Romad Financial Services before Romad's licence was cancelled in 2011.
During all of that time Halgryn was Logan's co-director at Shore Capital.
Logan was banned from working in financial services for two years on November 17, 2014. Less than two weeks later, Halgryn resigned as a director of Shore Capital.
Halgryn appears to have avoided sanction from the watchdog despite being a co-director of Shore Capital during Logan's inappropriate financial activity.
Logan did not return calls.
BusinessDay was also unable to make contact with another of Halgryn's former business partners, Stephen Barnard, who ran SSGlobal Trading with Halgryn up until his death.
When BusinessDay contacted his home this week a female who answered the phone refused to pass on the message simply saying "we're not interested". Fairfax Media is not suggesting Barnard was involved in Halgryn's syndicate.
Halgryn also came across the watchdog's radar in 2013 over concerns he was running an unlicensed mortgage broking business through A1 Home Loans.
Sources close to Halgryn's business activities told BusinessDay it was around that time Halgryn reorganised the management of the syndicate from Suncoast Financial Solutions to SFSGlobal Group out of concern the watchdog would sniff out the Ponzi scheme.
It wasn't until last year that ASIC first got a warning about the SFS Trading Syndicate. A financial planner contacted the regulator concerned about the high 2 per cent per month (24 per cent per annum) rate of return promised by the operation.
ASIC is understood to have contacted Halgryn in September to investigate his operations yet found little evidence to support allegations of wrongdoing.
The watchdog contacted Halgryn again in December 2015 over concerns he was operating a financial services business.
Again ASIC did not find enough evidence to commence action. It is believed the watchdog was still reviewing the matter at the time of Halgryn's death. It's unclear whether action will be taken to help recover investor monies.
Syndicate members will now have to wait for at least 60 days before administrator Paul Nogueira of Worrells finishes his review.
"The fact that the records have been stolen is hindering our investigation but we're trying to piece it together to get some information to the court and to the investors as well so they know what's happening," Nogueira says.
Until then he is hoping investors can help him piece together the clues.
Know more? Contact: sarah.danckert@fairfaxmedia.com.au
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