FIGHT TO RIP BACK CASH

Investors brace for action after tourism plan fails

DUDDED Mayfair 101 investors are preparing a new class action to be brought against overseers of the investment products at the centre of a failed $1.6bn Far North tourism mecca at Dunk Island.

The new push to recover up to $67m of hard-earned investor cash follows a Federal Court ruling to prohibit director James Mawhinney from raising funds or marketing finance products for the next 20 years.

In late 2020 Slater and Gordon filed a class-action lawsuit in the Federal Court against IPO Wealth security trustee

Vasco Investment Managers.

However, a new lawsuit has legal firms making contact with investors in the M Core and M+ products encouraging noteholders to join a class action.

“The noteholders have banded together to come to a group decision, but we have not come to that decision yet and have not listened to all lawyers,” an anonymous investor said.

The investor consortium made up of about 50 noteholders plans to pursue legal teams who signed off on Mayfair product advertising and M Core security trustee PAG Holdings Australia.

Cairns-based investor Bruce

Golightly who lost $1m after sinking his life savings into the “secured” M Core debenture product had not given up on securing a return.

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t have a go,” he said. “The obvious (stakeholders) in our sights are the law firm that ticked off all the advertising before it went to market and the security trustee, is probably the biggest one.”

The group has met Stewart Levitt of Sydney-based firm Levitt Robinson Solicitors who advised investors a partial return of 30 per cent could be possible.

Most investors in the group have sunk more than $500,000 into Mayfair products and a lot invested a big chunk of their superannuation.

A Melbourne-based grandmother who stands to lose $800,000 said cash invested in the M+ product could have guaranteed a mortgage-free retirement but now she is in shared accommodation and surviving on Centrelink.

“We had written it off and I started speaking to other noteholders and we realised that there is potential to get the money back or at least some of the money back,” she said. “But I do have dark moments where I think it is all pie in the sky and we will never get it back.”