A story published recently by Nine and broadcast on 60 Minutes has shown how Bill Papas, a former photocopier salesman, is alleged to have defrauded $500 million through his photocopier leasing and IT solutions business, Forum Group.

Papas launched Forum Group in 2011 and the company is now in the hands of McGrath Nicol liquidator, Jason Ireland, with Westpac having launched civil action in the Federal Court, alleging it was the victim of a potential major fraud.

In 2017 Forum Group purchased Imagetec Solutions to create a new $75 million entity. At the time Papas said: “The acquisition of Imagetec will not only enable us to provide new ways to add value to Imagetec customers through a broadened range of products and solutions, it will also deliver benefits to existing Forum customers by harnessing decades of service and operations experience which Imagetec is renowned for.

Nine reports Papas fled to Greece in June last year, weeks before Westpac launched legal action after suspected fraudulent loan activity was noticed by a customer.

Papas has remained silent on the matter, but ahead of the airing of a segment on 60 Minutes he released this statement, as published on the Sydney Morning Herald website:

“The reporting and opinions publicly advanced about Forum and other entities have been formulated without the benefit of a contradictor,” reads his statement, sent by defamation lawyer Rebekah Giles but attributed to Papas.

“This is because I have been deprived of the opportunity to fund any meaningful engagement with federal proceedings commenced by a well-resourced financial institution.

“I do intend to address the matters raised at an appropriate time but for now, my primary focus is my health.”

Ireland told Nine he and his team have combed through millions of pieces of evidence with a clear pattern emerging of what happened and where the money went.

“Our forensic team looked at nearly five million pieces of evidence, including Whatsapp messages, emails, bank statements. 150 bank accounts were in this business, so we looked at 110,000 transactions. When you go through the amount of data we went through, it actually comes through very clearly what happened and where the money went,” Ireland told 60 Minutes on Nine.

“As a real business, Forum did two main things. It provided photocopiers and other office equipment to businesses and also provided food digestor waste machines to largely hospitality-based businesses.

“Forum would then put together the documentation to say the customer wanted the machines so the customer would pay a monthly fee for them, and they would take those documents to banks and banks would fund the purchase of the machine. Now unfortunately what it looks like is the vast majority of those contracts were not real and this was part of the well-executed nature of the fraud.

“The customer was real, the customer was a very well-known company in many cases but the contracts and their want for the  machines was not real.”

Ireland also alleges Papas and Forum Group ensured the repayments were made like clockwock so as not to raise any red flags.

“It seemed to start in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and by the end of it, it was in the millions of dollars in each contract, so it got progressively bigger,” Ireland said.

WesTrac, a heavy machinery supplier, was one customer caught up in the activity. An “eagle-eyed” employee discovered a series of loans taken out with Westpac that the company had never actually signed up for.

This is when the plan is understood to have started to unravel, prompting Papas’ departure for Greece where he is said to be living a lavish lifestyle, buying soccer teams and shopping in upmarket areas.

Ireland said the shortfall in the saga will run into the hundreds of millions.

“This is because the money is not sitting anywhere,” he said.

“A large amount in the hundreds of millions of dollars went into the business, paying the operating cost of the business. Maybe $50 million into properties and then other lifestyle assets cars, yachts, jet skis, racing cars.

“Without the fraudulent loans the business was completely insolvent and so when the alleged fraud was uncovered and those funds stopped, the business collapsed.”

As has been widely reported, Forum Group partnered with Konica Minolta, Brother, Lexmark and Fuji Xerox among other companies.

Konica Minolta said it had no comment to make on the matter.

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