For instance, Paul Webster, apparently LBA’s chief legal officer, was actually a Queensland barrister whose name was Anthony Newman, as prosecutor Abbie Roodenburg told the court.

Still, it looked like a good opportunity, and in February 2019, people from KB Securities and JB Asset Management – which KB Securities had selected as its investment scheme manager – travelled to Melbourne, where they first met Charisiou.

They toured Caydon’s Hall Street site in Moonee Ponds with a Caydon sales director and subsequently decided to go ahead with a $30 million investment. KB Securities and JB Asset Management eventually made seven more investments in Melbourne and Brisbane, sending Charisiou almost $395 million.

Each transaction involved the use of false documentation. But these deceptions were peppered with genuine encounters, which made them more believable.

In March 2019, for example, Perpetual, which Charisiou had said would provide trustee services to the investors, sent JB Asset Management a due diligence questionnaire. Weeks later, Charisiou sent a false trust deed purportedly creating a trust between LBA and Perpetual to manage the investments, purportedly signed by senior Perpetual figures.

None of the properties that Charisiou and the investors discussed were purchased. Some others were, but they were not approved for use by the NDIS. In the end, the scheme came apart by chance.

David Payton, the chief executive of Payton Capital, was negotiating with ABL Life Insurance. It was August 2019 and Payton was hoping to secure ABL’s backing to finance apartments in Melbourne’s Australia 108 apartment tower.

But ABL was already invested in that building, the South Korean group’s head of alternative investments, Jiroo Eoh, told Payton. That was through Charisiou’s company, which claimed to have purchased 41 apartments in the block through the NDIS program.

Payton was surprised. He had not seen LBA or Charisiou on the list of buyers. He checked again. They weren’t there. Payton also told Eoh that, according to the NDIS, LBA was not an approved provider of disability housing.

Investors in Charisiou’s scheme started to make their own inquiries. They contacted World Class Global, the developer of Australia 108, providing their property titles and contracts of sale. They were forgeries.

The title information that JB Asset Management had relied on had come from a website purporting to be linked to PEXA, the titles service. It was not. The investors were told PEXA had no idea about the website provided to them by Charisiou’s colleagues.

In the end, four charges were brought against Charisiou – he pleaded guilty in November. Prosecutors charged him with obtaining a financial advantage by deception in relation to just the first two Melbourne transactions, totalling $38.6 million.

They restricted the two other charges to use of false documents because the investors had discovered that the Perpetual trust had not, in fact, been established.

“It became apparent to the victim companies that documents that purported to establish the … trust were false,” Roodenburg told the court last year. “The prosecution accepts that it cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt that the victims were deceived by such documents, and accordingly, it is not alleged that the remaining funds were transferred as a consequence of deception.”

The whole process also raises questions about the investors’ due diligence. Charisiou’s barrister said the discovery by the investors that the purported Perpetual trust hadn’t been set up could have prompted them to end their involvement – but they didn’t.

“There are materials available which make it clear that the victims were told that there was fraudulent behaviour, at least probable fraudulent behaviour,” Charisiou’s barrister Chris Winneke, KC, said. “It’s unfortunate – and it’s hard for us to criticise the victims, and we don’t, but it is unfortunate that it wasn’t picked up.”

Their own retail and corporate investors thought the same. The frauds triggered lawsuits in late 2019 by South Korean investors against KB Securities and JB Asset Management over the losses.

In February last year, the Seoul Southern District Court sided with Saemaeul Korea Federation, Korean Re and Korea Forestry Co-operatives Federation and ruled that KB Securities had to return the investors’ invested principal and agreed interest.

KB Securities and JB Asset Management were contacted for comment through their lawyers, Johnson Winter Slattery.

JB Asset Management staff arrived in Melbourne in August 2019. They wanted National Australia Bank to freeze the account into which they had been transferring funds and demanded Charisiou return the money he had taken.

Two days later, he refunded $245.7 million. By the time Charisiou pleaded guilty in November, about $360 million had been repaid.

In total, Charisiou had spent $54 million on purchases of property not part of the agreement between LBA and the South Korean investors, some $16 million of which was recouped from sales of properties.

He also transferred $1.65 million to his wife’s account, which was used to pay off mortgages on the family home in Maribyrnong, in Melbourne, and another property in Mount Macedon. There is no suggestion his wife was involved in or aware of Charisiou’s crimes.

Charisiou’s lawyers had argued his mental health deteriorated severely after a sudden and traumatic heart operation in 2017 had left him severely weakened and unable to work.

“Here’s a man who is suffering from a mental illness, recognised illness, who engages in, objectively on any view, a hair-brained scheme,” Winneke said in November.

“The reality is … that if you take the view that he’s suffering from a mental illness … it’s not what the investors initially wanted, but ‘I’m investing in property for them, my intention is to enable them to get a return. I am paying interest in accordance with the contractual obligations’.

“And there’s evidence that interest is being paid.”

It was an argument Charisiou himself made – even as he blamed the investors for not doing their own due diligence thoroughly.

“‘It was massive wrongdoing, I just didn’t think of it as fraud. I was just giving them what they wanted and twisting the story to keep it going’,” Winneke quoted him as saying in November.

“‘My intention was eventually I would somehow still give them a return. Even though the investors didn’t do due diligence, I understand that I did the wrong thing, and this is my responsibility. No time to reflect or pause. I was always reacting to the next crisis. At the same time, I should have accepted that it wasn’t right and dealt with it more expeditiously’.”

But on Friday, Victorian Supreme Court judge John Champion sided with the prosecutors and their submission that it was a “hugely successful” fraud.

“While these effects are consistent with the disorder from which Mr Charisiou suffers, it is clear that even taking them at their highest, the impact would have been relatively mild,” Justice Champion said.

“[Charisiou] was clearly aware that his actions, which were highly sophisticated and required significant planning and preparation, were wrong. A high level of skill and knowledge was required to carry out your offending.”