The three directors behind The Winning Post estate on Bayview Road are accused of not being able to account for much of $3.045 million in deposits paid by purchasers. Loading “The question I’ve obviously asked is where is all the money. And I haven’t had a satisfactory response,” said Stephen Michell, the liquidator who this week went to the Supreme Court to take control of the company behind Winning Post Officer Pty Ltd. While it’s not clear where the money the company took from buyers has gone, neither is it clear, from affidavits and other documents filed in the Supreme Court this week, if Winning Post Officer ever even owned the land where they sold, via real estate websites, blocks of land ranging in price from $275,000 to $390,000. “It would appear that the company has been selling or purporting to sell properties to third parties which it neither owns nor has an apparent right to sell,” Mr Michell told the court.

“Over 100 land sales are presently in jeopardy should the deposit monies not be recovered,” Mr Michell wrote in his affidavit. “Many of the purchasers may be first home buyers.” Mr Michell found the company held $82,000 in cash, $1.6 million in an ANZ account and $1 million had been withdrawn "without attribution". "Most of the deposit monies have been disposed by the company," he wrote. RIC Homes, the company behind The Winning Post estate in Officer, is also marketing The Lotus Estate land for sale in Melton South.

The Melbourne Linh Son Buddhist Society owns that land. Its president, Duc Thang Nguyen, said RIC Homes no longer had a deal to sell its Melton South paddocks, although he confirmed there was an initial agreement to market the land. While the Melton South sales push is only a registration of interest campaign for the Buddhist’s land, in Officer it started taking money for sales last June. Ms Moutsakis had a conveyancer look over the documents before paying a deposit for land she thought would be her and her partner’s future. Now she’s dubious they will see their money again. “We’re at the bottom of the creditors' list,” Ms Moutsakis said. Last week she wrote to her local MP, Roads Minister Luke Donnellan.

Mr Donnellan said on Thursday the disappearance of the couple’s money, and that of many others, was highly concerning. He wrote to Consumer Affairs Minister Marlene Kairouz last week to ask her to look into the matter. The liquidator told the court that the firm behind Winning Post Officer had “held itself out to purchasers of properties … to be a licensed real estate agent” – an area Ms Kairouz oversees. Ms Kairouz said buyers “striving to own their own homes have every right to expect that contractual obligations are met and they get what they pay for”. A screenshot of an ad for the planned estate, and the land around it. Credit:realestate.com.au She said her department was investigating the case “as a matter of priority”.

Another Officer buyer, Diana Toth, also stands to lose tens of thousands of dollars. Having bought last year, she started to get nervous about her purchase in February but was repeatedly assured by the company that there were only minor delays. “It was the liquidator letter that we got just before June 30 that said something really screwy is going on here,” said Ms Toth, 55. Mr Michell said in his court filing that the company was “shrouded by lack of records and a lack of co-operation with me as liquidator, and I am concerned that I will have real difficulty in recovering the payments” made by purchasers such as Ms Toth.

The Age tried to contact the directors of Winning Post Officer – Jason Dinh, Khuyen Nguyen and Oanh Le – repeatedly this week. Calls and messages to Mr Dinh were not returned and a partner at Piper Alderman, the law firm that will act for the company when the case returns to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, declined to discuss the matter. A title search of the land in Officer the company was selling shows it is owned by Queensland racehorse owners Graham and Linda Huddy. They bought the 6.74-hectare site in 2016, for $4 million. On Friday a lawyer at the firm representing the couple acknowledged that Mr and Ms Huddy had originally agreed to sell a portion of their land to Winning Post Officer. Unbeknownst to the couple, though, the company had gone on to sell all of the land to individual buyers, their lawyer said. Ms Moutsakis is determined that she and her partner get their money back. “Most of us are just first home buyers who don’t deserve this,” she said.

The tone though among six other buyers The Age spoke to this week seems far more forlorn. Ms Toth doubts she will ever see her money again. “If they have moved money overseas my chances are zero of getting money back. I’ve had to just walk away and think ‘I’m not going to get myself crazy about this’.” She has now bought land elsewhere, and if she ever does see money returned, it will be a bonus. “There are quite a few people who’ve bought that don’t have the alternative to just move on like I have. They have just lost everything on this."