By KATH GANNAWAY
VICTIMS of convicted fraudster Colin David McKenzie are urging others who were taken in by the former Yarra Valley car dealer to come forward.
And police who led the investigation have backed their call.
Yarra Ranges CIU Detective Senior Constable Ross Bingley said there is every possibility that McKenzie could be charged and tried if new cases were presented.
Upper Yarra residents and business operators Wendy and Margaret, who have asked for their names to be withheld, spoke with the Mail last week.
“We know there are others out there who are also victims, but who, because they feel ashamed, or foolish, or intimidated, did not report him,” said Wendy.
McKenzie, 66, was sentenced in July to three years in jail on 23 fraud-related charges, but could be out in as little as 16 months.
His victims said it’s nowhere near long enough for the pain and suffering he caused, and continues for some like Wendy and her partner who have lost property they have worked all their lives for, thousands in legal fees and their health in bringing him to justice.
The story of how McKenzie was able to con so many people reads like a convoluted crime novel.
Many of them are smart, astute people he had known since childhood, but there were also people in the finance and car industries who were conned.
Lilydale CIU Sen Const Bingley said his crimes were devious, sophisticated, but not necessarily complicated.
“He had been in the car sales industry all his life running car dealerships for decades, so he had an excellent working knowledge of what the finance companies require, so it was easy for him to defraud them,” he said.
Armed with the vehicle identification and chassis numbers from legitimate sales he had brokered for clients, he used the information to obtain finance saying he had purchased the cars.
“Basically, you have the legitimate owner who has bought the car outright, but unbeknown to her the finance company has financed it under McKenzie’s name,” Sen Const Bingley said.
“There’s one car, but this same vehicle has $30,000 finance on it that the legitimate owner has no knowledge of whatsoever.
“He would do this not only under his name, but in his wife’s name, and friends’ names, so this is where a lot of the victims, people he had known for 40-odd years, people he used to go to school with, he would just use their names and they would know nothing about it,” he said.
It became a balancing act of using borrowings to make the payments on cars that were being driven around by people completely unaware that there was an encumbrance over the vehicle.
Margaret’s family had bought cars through McKenzie for years.
She is still flabbergasted as the stories he spun and the measures he went to to obtain $36,000 in finance on a car they paid cash for and which was registered in her husband’s name.
McKenzie re-registered it to a car yard, then on-sold it to a Healesville man.
“You could see, it wasn’t my husband’s signature (on the change-over papers), his birth date was wrong and the colour of the car was wrong; I don’t understand how that wasn’t picked up,” she said.
It took them 12 months to get is back into their name, and longer to get the finance company to lift the encumbrances.
For Wendy, the saga started in 2006 with a phone call from a finance company questioning why she and her partner were behind in payments on a particular car.
They had withdrawn from a purchase that McKenzie had brokered, but again, armed with all the necessary details, he got finance in their name.
“It took me almost a year to get the evidence to take to the police,” she said.
“I had told the finance company it was forgery, but they wouldn’t listen.
“They pursued us with phone calls and the sheriff, and would just not accept at all what he had done.”
Wendy took her evidence of false invoices and signatures to Warburton police where she says Senior Constable Rob Ferns was the first person to listen and invest the time and expertise to start an investigation.
Once word got around, others came forward.
They started a once-a-month victims group which included a woman who had successfully taken McKenzie through the civil courts for a matter that went back to 1999.
Yarra Ranges CIU took over the investigation and charges were laid.
It took two years to get from Ringwood Magistrates’ Court to the County Court and a conviction.
Wendy and her partner are still battling with finance companies and with the impact on their lives.
“It has taken a terrible toll on our health,” she said, adding that both she and her partner had spent time in hospital as a result of the stress of the investigation, court hearings and the impact is has had on their immediate and long-term financial security.
“Our credit rating has been destroyed; the ripple effect of this is far greater than anyone would ever think,” she said.
While some orders have been made by the court for financial restitution, Wendy said she doesn’t hold any hope they will ever see any money come from McKenzie.
“I nearly fainted in court when they said he was writing a book,” she said.
“It’s ludicrous, but, at the very least, all the proceeds should be paid to the victims,” she said.
Wendy and Margaret say they hope that in reading their stories, others will be prompted to at least tell their stories to police.
They say it is important that the full extent of the damage that McKenzie has wreaked on people in the Yarra Valley, and beyond, is on the record, and that he is held to account.
