Meet the accountant linked to Sydney’s most infamous tax scammers
Sydney accountant Filomena Kyriacou woke up and texted her assistant with an urgent question.
“Is cup good,” she wrote. “Does your mum see criminal charges?”
Anthony Sumbati, who had been working with the 58-year-old accountant for four years, texted back. His mother saw a snake, he told Kyriacou. The mysterious “s” shape signalled “money coming, no office raids, one small black issue, all clears”.
It was mid-2019 and this had become a daily ritual. Kyriacou said she had been dreaming that she would be raided and arrested. Sumbati’s mother, a clairvoyant, claimed to see people’s future in the coffee grinds at the bottom of her cup.
Every morning was a variation on this text exchange. Kyriacou would ask the questions: Is there a fraud squad? Does she see bankruptcy? Does it go criminal? Will we get through this? Sumbati, a former Australian Idol contestant, would check with his mother. Sometimes they would turn over tarot cards. The replies were usually reassuring. But the anxiety persisted.
Kyriacou, the daughter of a builder, had grown up in Sydney’s eastern suburbs before qualifying as an accountant in 1983 aged just 17. She rose to be the co-head of the Sydney accounting firm Wentworth Williams, and for the past decade had been living the high life.
She spent millions of dollars on family holidays around the world, from Naples to Honolulu, $2500-a-night stays at the five-star Hassler Roma Hotel in Rome, marble-staircase renovations to her beachside home at San Souci, $30,000 Rolex gifts, a Porsche for her and a Mercedes-Benz for her husband.
But in April 2019, Kyriacou was afraid it was all going to come crashing down. The Australian Taxation Office was circling and had launched investigations into unpaid taxes on numerous fronts. Kyriacou herself, clients who Wentworth Williams had advised and companies that she had been a director of were all in its sights.
AFR Weekend has pieced together text messages, emails and police wiretaps from those investigations and others, including one of the biggest tax fraud cases in Australian history – Plutus Payroll. These detail the inner workings of the notorious accounting firm Wentworth Williams and reveal how it dealt with organised crime figures, serviced much of the construction industry and advised clients who turned out to be some of the most infamous tax scammers in the country.
No court action was ever taken by the ATO against Wentworth Williams for tax fraud. But in 2019, as the ATO took steps to recover millions of dollars from the accounting firm’s clients and its investigation extended to Kyriacou’s children, all she could think about was whether there would be criminal charges.
“It’s either they have decided I am OK or a nuclear bomb is about to hit, and I get charged,” she wrote to Sumbati, in text messages seen by AFR Weekend.
But to this day, there has been no “nuclear bomb” of criminal charges for Kyriacou. Though she was stripped of her tax agent registration in 2020, it would take five years for the ATO to finally catch up with her and even then, it was on a personal level. In December, she was ordered by the NSW Supreme Court to pay back $3.7 million in unpaid income taxes.
Kyriacou told AFR Weekend through her lawyers that she “has not committed any offence and has no reason to fear that she might be arrested and charged”.
The tale of accounting firm Wentworth Williams and its clients is the story of how tax dodging has become endemic in Australia, particularly in the construction industry, and how it takes a long time for the ATO to catch up. It’s a tale best told through the inner workings of three businesses that would burn brightly, but ultimately fly too close to the sun.
Part 1: ‘All about Plutus’
Adam Cranston and his father Michael, a former senior tax officer.
“You up?” the email subject line read.
It was 7.37am, May 18, 2017. News of the $105 million Plutus Payroll tax fraud had hit the papers.
It was a big story, both because of its scale and the people involved. The scam’s key architect wasAdam Cranston, son of the then-deputy tax commissioner, Michael Cranston. Nine people were arrested. Police had secretly recorded hundreds of hours of conversations over six months.
On the day the arrests were made public, Kyriacou had been awake since 5am. So had Wentworth Williams accountant Mohammad Mustapha. He emailed Kyriacou to alert her that it was all over the news.
“I woke up with a shock” Kyriacou responded. “We are ok. All about Plutus.”
Tax evasion is rife, particularly in the construction industry, costing billions of dollars in lost revenue. The ATO receives thousands of referrals a year, and the corporate regulator has strong powers to prosecute companies that do it, but still many go unpunished. And until the Plutus scandal broke, most Australians didn’t know the extent to which it was going on.
In a typical tax scam, a business engages a shonky labour hire firm – which formally employs their workers then manages the payment of wages and PAYG tax. But instead of passing on the tax to the ATO, the firm transfers it to related companies. When the ATO eventually catches up, the labour hire firms are wound up by a friendly liquidator, so the debts can’t be recovered, and a new company takes its place. And the cycle begins again.
Plutus turbocharged this scam by pitching its payroll services to legitimate, upstanding businesses, attracting hundreds of millions of dollars of wages to manage, then secretly siphoning off the tax.
Wentworth Williams was not part of the Plutus tax fraud, according to the prosecutors’ brief. But the links between the accountancy firm and the fraud’s key conspirators – Cranston, Jay Onley and Peter Larcombe – were scattered throughout the case.
The firm even rented the same office as the Plutus business at its plush Goldfields House headquarters on Sydney’s Circular Quay.
Though Kyriacou was never accused of being part of the conspiracy, and it is not suggested she was, her name was mentioned dozens of times in secret police wiretaps.
In recordings submitted for the trial, Plutus’ lawyer, Dev Menon, who was also Kyriacou’s solicitor and did work for Wentworth Williams, was asked by one conspirator managing a labour hire group “whose idea was this initially”?
“I think they got the idea from Filomena,” Menon said. “Peter [Larcombe] did.”
Larcombe was one of the key figures behind the Plutus tax scam. He was also a friend of Kyriacou and Wentworth Williams co-founder Angelo Russo, according to their own online messages, and had even been a client of the firm. Like Kyriacou, Russo has not been charged with any crime.
Emails seen by AFR Weekend reveal Larcombe wrote to Kyriacou in early 2014, with Cranston copied in, about setting up one of his labour hire outfits. Before Plutus, the conspirators had used a network of labour hire firms and although these were not part of the prosecution, they were referred to in the trial as “the pre-existing structure”.
“When we first met them [Kyriacou and Russo], I remember … I thought f---, life would be so good for these people, they’re killing it.”
— Adam Cranston to Jay Onley, according to a police wiretap
Kyriacou told AFR Weekend she only knew Larcombe, Cranston, Menon and Onley “professionally” – when they referred business to the firm – and denied she was close to them.
Indeed, she claimed she had “little or no contact” with them since 2015 when she was diagnosed with a form of bone marrow cancer and had “essentially not worked since then because of [my] poor health”.
Larcombe died before the Plutus tax scam was uncovered. He fell from a car park roof near Los Angeles airport in August 2016, his death deemed a suicide.
Days before, Kyriacou and Russo had drinks with him in Beverly Hills. And at his funeral, the pair posted a message online describing Larcombe as “our dear friend” who they caught up with in Dubai where he had based his operations since 2016.
Menon, the Plutus lawyer, mentioned Kyriacou another time in the police wiretaps as the conspirators’ conversations were secretly recorded. He told his colleagues that “every other phoenix that I’ve ever seen, I’m looking at Filomena”.
The accusation was never tested. Kyriacou denies engaging in any phoenixing – the practice of liquidating companies to avoid paying tax and rebirthing them under a different name – and says she had never been questioned or accused by the ATO, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission or police in relation to any such activity.
Cranston and Onley, the other key Plutus conspirator and a former champion snowboarder, also talked about the Wentworth Williams co-founders, according to the police wiretaps.
“When we first met them [Kyriacou and Russo], I remember … I thought f---, life would be so good for these people, they’re killing it,” Cranston told Onley in a January 2017 conversation. Onley agreed.
Asked about these comments, Kyriacou denied “making any money through setting up new firms to dodge taxes”. Cranston’s claim was never verified in court.
Onley had further connections with Kyriacou. He had invested alongside her in waste business Biocoal and even worked for one of her companies, known as Fessa, from 2014 to 2015.
Fessa is an Italian slur which means “c---”. Whether a middle finger to the ATO or a private in-joke (a company linked to one of Kyriacou’s relatives was named Minncha, a play on the Italian slur for penis), the company received tens of millions of dollars from Wentworth Williams client labour hire companies, according to accounts seen by AFR Weekend.
Onley would later have a falling out with Kyriacou and Russo, and by 2016 they were avoiding each other, sources close to the Plutus conspirators say. But Wentworth Williams maintained its relationship with Cranston, even after his arrest, when it hired him in mid-2017 to open a legal arm for the firm.
Russo and Kyriacou would not have known at the time that the Plutus conspirators talked about Wentworth Williams as their golden ticket if they were ever arrested.
“There’s a lot of shit we can give up in the event we get ….,” Cranston told Onley in one police wiretap. “I think we give up Wentworth, Global, and [indistinct].”
There is no suggestion this happened. But Onley predicted what he thought would be the authorities’ likely response. “The problem is, is they won’t even do shit.
“What they want is clean skins. What they want Adam is you ... you and your dad is the f---ing best and the worst thing because anyone gets their hands on you, you’re f---ed”.
“Makes headlines,” Cranston said prophetically, according to the police recordings.
Jay Onley outside the Supreme Court at Darlinghurst during his trial. Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Adam’s dad, Michael Cranston, was part of the ATO’s cross-departmental taskforce targeting phoenixing. He was well aware of Wentworth Williams and its reputation. The firm’s co-founder, Russo, had even worked as a senior official with the Tax Office.
Indeed, the wiretaps reveal that Adam was diligent in distancing his father from anything to do with the Plutus companies – or Wentworth Williams.
“My old man got nervous,” Adam Cranston told his Plutus colleagues, according to the wiretaps. “I remember years ago, I said, ‘Oh mate, do you want to come out to the footy? I’ve got box seats.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’ll come!’ and dad always goes, ‘Oh mate, who’s shouting the tickets?’ He goes, ‘Are you shouting?’ I said, ‘Nah’. He said, ‘Who’s shouting?’ I said, ‘Oh, Wentworth Williams, they have got a box’. He goes, ‘I can’t come’. I said, ‘Oh OK. OK’.
“Cause imagine if he’s in a box of Wentworth Williams ... and then somebody takes a photo of him and next minute they go down; he takes them down, and they’re like mate you were in the f---in’ box, like.”
Michael Cranston ended up being charged then acquitted of misusing his position to assist his son. But he still lost his job. He is not accused of any other wrongdoing. He later took a position with boutique law firm Waterhouse Lawyers, assisting those accused by the ATO.
The fallout from the Plutus fraud spread in all directions, but Wentworth Williams went from strength to strength. And it was an interest in Global HR – one of the labour hire firms used by the conspirators before they set up Plutus – that would take the suburban accountancy into the big time.
Part 2: Global HR, George Alex and ‘Big Jim’
George Alex outsdie court in August 2024. Jamie McKinnell / ABC
Global HR was more of a brand than a company. It was the catch-all name for a group of labour hire companies, which were liquidated and rebirthed in various guises over the years. It has often been described as “colourful”, and the personalities involved give a sense of just how colourful it was.
One of its main backers was organised crime figure George Alex. He brought “Big Jim” Byrnes – the former insolvency adviser to Alan Bond – into the firm. ASIC had banned Byrnes twice from acting as a company director, citing a “lack of commercial morality”, and in 2007 he had been convicted for using a baseball bat to smash the office window of a solicitor. Byrnes has never been accused of any fraudulent tax activity.
It was Byrnes who introduced Wentworth Williams to advise Global HR after meeting Russo through a mutual connection in the construction industry.
Byrnes and Alex were big characters, and it was only a matter of time before they fell out. By 2012, with Global HR’s tax liabilities growing, there was disagreement over who owed what from the business. Byrnes’ house was riddled with bullets later that year but no one was charged. And the dispute over Global HR spilled into the Supreme Court.
By 2014, Byrnes and Russo set up a new Global HR company, with Wentworth Williams as its registered office. Russo was a director and Byrnes a majority shareholder.
Kyriacou, who told the Supreme Court she was the person responsible for looking after Global HR, worked to liquidate the old Global HR entities Alex had shares in.
Byrnes spoke to AFR Weekend about his time at the firm. He said during certain periods, Global HR was making $4 million to $6 million a year on account of its blue-chip clients, “no union issues” and strong growth.
However, he said he had nothing to do with the day-to-day management and that Kyriacou “ran the wages side”.
“She came to us and said they had a ‘tax effective’ structure, it was completely legal and she would manage everything. In 2013, I would move to America and it was perfect for me.”
He says he sold out of the business because he “smelt too much smoke”.
Colourful Sydney figure James “Big Jim” Byrnes. Instagram
“I had made enough money out of it, and they were doing too much stuff that I didn’t know about. And so I didn’t really want to be tarnished by it.”
When this was put to Kyriacou via her lawyers, she denied being in charge of wages, involved in the tax structure, taking any money out of Global HR or having any control of the company or its bank accounts.
“The extent of revenue Ms Kyriacou derived from Global HR was limited to professional accounting fees invoiced by Wentworth Williams,” her lawyers said.
Russo, who was a director of Global HR, did not respond to requests for comment.
In 2017, Onley would reflect on Global HR when he was discussing the risks of continuing with the Plutus scheme, even with the ATO on their tail. “Global,” he told Cranston in a secret police recording.
“See if that f---er [Byrnes] can stay on the radar that long … they’ve rebirthed it a couple of times, but that f---er stayed under radar, and they’ve been raping it, and they’ve been labour hiring for 10 years.”
In 2018, something happened that seemed like a disaster at the time. Alex and his crew wrested back control of the Global HR brand. Alex cut Kyriacou out of the group, which later became GHR Consolidated.
Last December, Alex was jailed for six years for what was described as “the monetary form of rape and pillage” involving Global HR’s tax activities in the construction industry. For Filomena Kyriacau and Wentworth Williams, George Alex’s 2018 Global HR coup had proved to be both a sliding doors moment and a blessing in disguise.
It was an investment in another business that was probably the start of its undoing.
Part 3: Biocoal, dodgy R&D and bikies
Waste business Biocoal must have seemed like the right opportunity at the right time for Wentworth Williams. It was 2014 and the accounting firm was growing, largely because of the work it was doing for Global HR. Kyriacou and Russo were looking for somewhere to invest when the unlikely named Biocoal came across their radar.
But as the decade wore on, the investment would catapult Wentworth Williams and its principals into a much more dangerous league, and ultimately into violent confrontation with the outlaw motorcycle gangs playing there.
That, in turn, would bring Wentworth Williams to the attention of police organised crime squads, and some industry insiders believe it was the reason the ATO began its investigation into the firm’s clients and its companies.
Biocoal was ostensibly set up to sell a patented combination of recycled plastic and coal that energy-intensive industries could use to reduce pollutants. But as one early investor said in an email to Kyriacou, seen by AFR Weekend, there was “little or no tangible evidence or basis to support any sustainable business proposition”.
Plutus conspirator Onley was also among Biocoal’s early backers, although he cashed out before Russo and Kyriacou.
At first, the business was doing well, and even attracted government support, applying for and being awarded more than $1 million in state government grants. But its trouble began with the $5.5 million purchase of a NSW Central Coast property, which it leased to a waste recycling company. That business used it as a dumping ground for glass, aluminum and plastic.
According to sources, a senior official at the recycling company – a prominent figure in the industry who can’t be named for legal reasons but will be referred to as Simon – had his own silent backers. These were said to be drawn from the ranks of the Comancheros – an allegation Simon told AFR Weekend was “absolutely not” correct.
As the Environmental Protection Authority started cracking down on dumping activity on the site, Kyriacou and Russo became embroiled in a growing dispute with the recycling company about who owned the property.
Sources say it escalated into a clash at a cafe in Sydney’s inner west in August 2018. On one side were Simon and about a dozen men he introduced as “investors” and on the other were Kyriacou, Russo and associates of George Alex, according to a signed statement by Russo, seen by AFR Weekend.
When this was put to Simon, he said he had “no comment” and “no knowledge” of the alleged events.
But according to Russo’s statement, the men who accompanied Simon were heavily tattooed, muscular and appeared to be very angry. They had invested millions of dollars in the recycling business but felt they had been cheated.
According to Russo’s statement, one of Alex’s associates advised Kyriacou “watch out, these investors are bikies, they are very dangerous people, be careful of what you say. If you don’t do what they want, these are the type of people who will pull out a gun and kill you.”
Back at the cafe, the meeting became hostile after Kyriacou and Russo raised the cost of removing glass from the Central Coast site. One investor allegedly said, “I will bash your head in if the invoice is not cancelled.”
An intimidated Kyriacou left the meeting crying.
That wasn’t the end of it. The next month some of the same men visited Wentworth Williams’ Kogarah office, telling the receptionist they wanted to speak about the Central Coast property, according to a source familiar with the incident.
The men eventually left the Wentworth Williams office after realising Kyriacou and Russo weren’t there, but the pressure was mounting.
Five months after the first meeting, another was arranged, according to Russo’s statement. It was January 2019 and George Alex himself had been brought in to broker a resolution between the parties at the Kirramisu Cafe in Coolangatta, Queensland. But as Russo arrived with Kyriacou, Simon allegedly took him aside and, with two “investors”, walked him to a separate nearby cafe.
“When are you going to bring Filomena into line?” Simon allegedly said. “Are you going to sign an agreement today?”
Before Simon even finished his sentence, one of the investors punched Russo in the ribs, headbutted him and punched him in the face, Russo alleged in the signed statement seen by AFR Weekend. “You’ll now give us a lease as was previously agreed,” Simon allegedly told him. “You don’t want matters to get worse, do you?”
Bleeding from the nose, his T-shirt covered in blood, Russo staggered to the bathroom. Kyriacou, thinking he had been stabbed, passed out when she saw him.
As an Alex associate took Russo to hospital, Kyriacou was left at the cafe with Simon and Alex. She signed the lease agreement, later telling Russo, according to his statement, “I had to sign, they were going to hurt us.”
Asked about the event, Simon said: “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Kyriacou told AFR Weekend the alleged assault and intimidation became part of a police investigation. It is unclear whether any action was taken.
Queensland’s bikie taskforce Maxima later heard about the attack and started looking into it. At the same time, the NSW Environmental Trust terminated Biocoal’s R&D grant due to non-compliance and sought to recover $2.4 million plus interest from the company.
All this drama had put the spotlight firmly onto Wentworth Williams, its founders and its clients. Even the sleepy ATO started to take an interest, opening a formal investigation.
The pressure was building.
Part 4: ‘I think I will be charged’
If there was any doubt about just how serious the ATO investigation was, it would have been dispelled in April 2019. One by one, like warning shots across Wentworth Williams’ bow, the regulator began auditing the firm and its clients. The results were damning.
The Tax Office started issuing garnishee notices to the banks of Wentworth Williams clients, which allowed it to scrape money from their bank accounts in a bid to recover the tax debt It also issued damning audits of the firm and its clients.
It was around this time that Kyriacou was texting her assistant, Anthony Sumbati, and his clairvoyant mother asking for reassurance that all would be well.
The ATO found one “funds management” company Kyriacou and Russo were directors of, known as Verona, had received $1.8 million from Global HR from 2016 to 2018 as well as $8.5 million in unexplained deposits. The money was used to make cash withdrawals or pay other people.
Former “Australian Idol” contestant Anthony Sumbati worked with Kyriacou for four years. Getty
An ATO audit of another business – Kyriacou’s “management consulting” firm Vista – found 40 per cent of the company’s spending was for “personal use and enjoyment that was in no way capable of forming part of enterprise”.
Vista’s spending ranged from holiday flights overseas, jewellery and fashion to cafes, restaurants, beauty salons, laser clinics and hypnosis. Other payments in 2018-19 went to individuals such as Alex and his associates.
Despite little indication Vista was conducting any business, the ATO investigation found Kyriacou and Wentworth Williams lodged business activity statements claiming GST credits based on the personal spending.
“Kyriacou therefore actively and intentionally disregarded her extensive knowledge in accounting and taxation,” the ATO audit concluded.
Reading an audit while on holiday in Thailand, Kyriacou texted Sumbati. “I think I will be charged,” she wrote before asking him: “is the cup good”.
“Professionally I am ruined,” she went on. “I just have such a bad feeling. I think I am going to be smashed.”
The next day, as more client accounts were garnisheed, and Kyriacou’s children started getting audited, her text messages kept turning to whether the ATO investigation was going to become a criminal case. If it did, bankruptcy would not be enough to save her.
As panic rose, Kyriacou turned to Waterhouse Lawyers where a certain former deputy tax commissioner now worked. “Michael Cranston is [$]1490 an hour,” she was told in a text.
The fee was not the issue, however. Kyriacou was told Cranston could not represent her because he was “conflicted”. “Shit we helped him,” Kyriacou complained to Sumbati in a text, perhaps referring to hiring his son after the Plutus arrests. “How quickly people forget.”
As the regulatory scrutiny intensified, there was also more trouble brewing at Biocoal. Kyriacou was the company’s sole director, and at a liquidator’s meeting in April 2019 she came under fire from angry creditors. Her proposal to settle company debts by sharing 30 per cent of Biocoal profits for three years did not go down well.
“It was a bloodbath. I thought I was going to die,” she texted Sumbati after the meeting. “They insinuated I was a tax fraudster because dev [Menon] and jay [Onley] were involved in the company. Dev never was.”
By June 2019, the Australian Federal Police’s organised crime squad, Strike Force Raptor, started making inquiries about “possible fraud matters” involving Biocoal, according to an email sent by the squad and seen by AFR Weekend.
That September, the Tax Practitioners Board made several inquiries into Kyriacou’s status as a tax agent. And by November, Wentworth Williams was “red hot”, as one insolvency practitioner told an associate of Alex in a conversation picked up on a police wiretap.
Alex also attracted attention as the ATO and AFP started to look into the labour hire companies the organised crime figure had inherited from Wentworth Williams. It was later revealed that Alex and his group had been under AFP surveillance from 2018 to 2020.
By July 2020, Alex and his conspirators had been arrested and charged over a $10 million tax fraud using the Global HR companies.
According to sources close to Kyriacou, on hearing the news Kyriacou texted an associate of Alex’s saying, “the winner takes it all”, followed by champagne bottle emojis. The message appeared to be that after decades of Global HR changing hands, Alex and his crew were the ones to take the inevitable punishment.
But Kyriacou did not escape scrutiny. That year the Tax Practitioner’s Board moved to strip her tax agent registration following advice from the ATO. The board highlighted that she had been director of seven companies the ATO alleged had breached taxation obligations over several years. The ATO gave evidence to the TPB of 26 Wentworth Williams clients that owed $18 million in taxes.
In the case of Biocoal, the ATO found less than 3 per cent of the $3 million in R&D invoices submitted to claim its $1.6 million government grant were actually linked to R&D, according to an audit seen by AFR Weekend. Some invoices were altered and others duplicated in “a deliberate act to mislead the commissioner and dishonestly claim expenditure”, the ATO said.
Filomena Kyriacou was spotted at the Elvis musical at Sydney’s State Theatre.
Kyriacou claimed she had no involvement in the R&D application, which she said was filled out by a former Biocoal director – a submission that did not deter the TPB from suspending her tax agent registration in part due to her directorship of Biocoal.
The TPB ban resulted in the closure of Wentworth Williams. Russo and Kyriacou, after decades of working together, are no longer talking.
The ATO also pursued Kyriacou personally for a $3.7 million income tax debt. Its lawyers took an extraordinary 12 months to serve Kyriacou with the legal action last year after failing to find her, despite Kyriacou being spotted at the Elvis musical at Sydney’s State Theatre and on a luxury cruise from Sydney to Tasmania. In December, after Kyriacou failed to lodge a defence, the court handed down default orders for her to pay the money.
Kyriacou’s lawyers said she would seek to stay the order and that she was challenging the ATO’s tax assessments in the Administrative Review Tribunal.
If she fails it’s unclear where she will get the money, or if she will simply declare bankruptcy. She will have to declare her position by March in response to a separate case by the Commonwealth Bank to bankrupt her over a $779,000 loan.
But the coffee grinds at the bottom of Sumbati’s mother’s cup appeared to be right on that fateful day in 2019. Despite Wentworth Williams being in and around the businesses at the heart of some of the biggest tax fraud cases Australia has seen, there are still no criminal charges for Kyriacou.
