Property at 99 Palmers Road, Truganina. Credit:Joe Armao In his final months, Wood was a director of a company ultimately run by Kaye's associates as part of a land-banking racket across Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia exposed by The Age in early 2015. Almost six months after his death, Wood's signature even appeared on a contract allowing property to be used as security for a Kaye-linked loan. Wood's graveyard instructions were just one of the bizarre stories heard in Federal Court in recent weeks as liquidators explored the labyrinth of companies, trusts and transactions that hid Kaye from public view as he fleeced small investors of tens of millions of dollars between 2010 and 2015. The hearings were public examinations of 10 key players in just two of the schemes – "Foscari" in Melbourne's outer-west, and "Midland" in Bendigo – by liquidators along with the corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). Both schemes were wound up in 2016 because of insolvency.

An advertisement for property investor Henry Kaye. It is now clear the regulator views Kaye – infamous in Australia for his wealth-creation seminars in the early 2000s – as the mastermind behind of what Jonathon Moore, QC, described in court as a "scam". In the hearings, Moore detailed how Kaye directed, and profited from, every major transaction within and across the schemes, reaping millions of dollars for himself, his sister Julia Feldman, and his long-term allies including "project manager" Michael Grochowski, and lawyer, Colin Adno. "You know don't you that this whole scheme was Henry Kaye promoted and driven from start to finish?" Moore asked of Kaye's lawyer Darren Eliau, a partner of Melbourne-based law firm Evans Ellis, formerly Clamenz Evans Ellis. Moore accused Eliau of helping "hide" Kaye behind layers of secretive trusts, so that his involvement would not deter potential investors.

Eliau, whose firm was a key player in the land-banking schemes, eventually conceded the complex trust structures were intended to "conceal" Kaye who was also banned from managing corporations for five years in 2010. The court heard how Kaye and his cronies moved millions of investors' dollars across ostensibly unrelated projects in undocumented and unsecured loans, transactions described by barrister Moore as money effectively "stolen". He put to Eliau that his firm had been "hopelessly negligent" in facilitating such transactions. Among the firm's senior lawyers examined was Daniel Clarke, who is also linked to the alleged $165 million Plutus tax fraud syndicate scam in NSW along with Adam Cranston, son of former Australian Taxation Office deputy commissioner Michael Cranston. The Sunday Age understands that Victoria's legal profession watchdog, the Legal Services Commission, is now investigating Evans Ellis in relation to the Kaye land-banking scam.

The court also heard: That a company ultimately controlled by Kaye, Bourke & Queen Mortgages, loaned money to a development company Foscari Holdings, at the extraordinary interest rate of up to 60 per cent.

How Kaye dictated terms including a direction that his Bourke & Queen Mortgages would loan money to the Foscari and then, later, that it would increase the level of the loan.

That Kaye's sister, Julia Feldman, also profited by lending money to Foscari though her company, Step Forward Investments.

Kaye and/or Feldman controlled the marketing and real estate companies that siphoned off one-third of the investor payments on Wood's Bendigo land.

Kaye associate and project manager Michael Grochowski concede that most of the investors' $24 million outlaid on the Bendigo project was eaten up in commissions or undocumented "loans" to other entities. The Belarus-born Kaye amassed a fortune from get-rich seminars in the early 2000s. His wealth education empire collapsed in 2003 owing 3500 investors up to $60 million. It appears that some of that money was spent on sites in Melbourne's sprawling outer-west where Kaye road tested his new business – urban fringe land-banking. In manipulative seminars from 2011 to 2014, Kaye, his sister and their offsiders, flogged projects such as Foscari (an "iconic architectural masterpiece") and Veneziane (the "Toorak of the West").

Similar schemes were rolled out on the fringes of Melbourne, Bendigo, Shepparton and Townsville. The Age has estimated that as much as $100 million may have been outlaid by investors across about 10 such schemes. But years after the projects were spruiked and options sold, not one sale has been finalised nor brick laid. In some cases, investors were literally buying options where Kaye's team only had options – an options on options, in other words. An important element of the Kaye swindle was to wrap it in credibility by promoting the involvement – usually fleeting and often unpaid – of big brand names including architects Fender Katsalidis, lawyers Slater and Gordon and, even, the Victorian government. Kaye's ingenuity stretched to winning a $520,000 grant from the Napthine government for innovative stormwater catchment; this, for a project never started, much less completed.

While Kaye was not among the 10 witnesses called for public examination, The Sunday Age understands that this is because ASIC is hoping to build a case against him before acting. But the regulator has a problem. Kaye appears to have disappeared. It's likely that much of the land-banking riches are with him. He is understood to have left Australia in the wake of The Age revelations and the official investigations that followed, including by ASIC, a Senate committee and the Victorian Legal Services Commission. If Kaye has absconded, and no one is held to account for ripping off thousands of investors, ASIC faces a potential embarrassment. It will soon be three years since The Age revealed the land-banking scam and pointed to the involvement of Kaye and his family. To date, no one has been held responsible. The land banking scam has been a top investigative priority for ASIC since.

If the regulator falls short in its pursuit of Kaye and his cronies it will be the second time it has done so. Its first attempt failed spectacularly almost a decade ago. Kaye's sister Julia Feldman was summoned for public examination but did not appear, claiming she was too ill. In the court, Kaye's accomplice Michael Grochowski blamed the deceased John Wood for many of the failings of the Bendigo scheme. There are is now real concern among investors and others seeking justice that, in the case of the Bendigo scam at least, the buck may yet rest with the one man unable to defend himself, or pay up. Got a tip? Contact us securely on JournoTips