The setup
It was just before 6am on a Tuesday in Punchbowl when the knock came.
Financial Crimes Squad detectives, supported by the Raptor Squad, moved on a western Sydney home while a second team executed a warrant at an office tower in the CBD. By the end of the morning, a 32-year-old partner at a Sydney law firm was in the back of a car, headed for Campsie Police Station.
His name was Elic Tang. He was the sole director and principal of Rosemont Partners, a self-described "multidisciplinary boutique" firm where, according to its own website, he prides himself on being a "jack of all trades." By lunchtime he was facing a stack of charges: participating in a criminal group, six counts of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception, five counts of knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime.
Tang is the first solicitor charged under Strike Force Myddleton. He is, almost certainly, not the last given the comment made by Detective Superintendent Gordon Arbinja, Commander of the Financial Crimes Squad:
"This arrest is the first professional facilitator in a legal capacity charged under this strike force, and it sends a clear message that no role or qualification places anyone above the law."
Busts to date
If you've been following our earlier coverage, you already know the network he's alleged to have worked for. Sydney media is now calling it the Penthouse Syndicate, and over three chapters we've watched it grow from a car-finance scam into something much larger:
Ghost cars, luxury property & Louis Vuitton: The Barangaroo fraud saga. The extraction phase. Stolen identities, ghost car loans, Ferraris parked outside Barangaroo penthouses.
From Barangaroo penthouses to Bondi salons. The integration phase. Fraud proceeds washed through a champagne-soaked beauty salon.
The fortune teller, the ghost-car syndicate & Sydney's $70m loan-fraud ring. The recruitment phase. Ordinary people steered into taking out loans they'd never see a cent of.
Each chapter showed a different face of the operation. This chapter shows the most uncomfortable one yet. It's about the people sitting in the offices, quietly signing the paperwork that makes all of it possible.
The modus operandi
By the time Strike Force Myddleton turned its attention to Tang, the Penthouse Syndicate's reach was already staggering. Police now allege the network defrauded Australia's major banks and financiers of more than $250 million. The NSW Crime Commission has restrained $95 million in assets. Twenty-five people have been charged. Bing "Michael" Li, the alleged ringleader, was arrested in a penthouse in the Crown residential tower at Barangaroo.
The question detectives had been circling for months was a simple one. How does a fraud network buy tens of millions of dollars worth of Sydney property without anyone inside the system raising a hand?
The answer they now allege is Tang.
Police allege he used his position inside the legal profession to help the syndicate acquire more than $25 million worth of mortgaged Sydney property, held in the names of various syndicate members. On top of that, they allege he laundered millions of dollars of suspected criminal proceeds on the syndicate's behalf.
Money that began its life in ghost car loans and falsified mortgage applications, the kind of money the Bondi and Barangaroo chapters of this story traced in earlier articles, allegedly passed through a solicitor's hands and came out the other side as clean, registered, bank-financed real estate.
Tang was refused bail.
Likely AML gaps & evasion tactics
The earlier chapters of the Penthouse Syndicate story showed how criminals exploit weak identity checks, cash-heavy businesses and spiritual influence. This chapter shows how they exploit professional legitimacy, and it points squarely at the gaps the AML reform is built to close.
1. Legal professionals outside the current AML perimeter
Under the pre-Tranche 2 regime, Australian lawyers are not reporting entities for most of the activity they perform, including property conveyancing, trust account movements and the formation of legal structures.
Evasion tactic: Route high-risk property purchases and fund movements through a law firm where no AML program, no KYC file and no Suspicious Matter Report obligation applies.
2. Trust accounts as a layering tool
Solicitor trust accounts are designed to handle client money safely. They are not designed, and were not historically monitored, as AML choke points. Funds moving through a trust account inherit an implicit halo of legitimacy.
Evasion tactic: Use a cooperating solicitor's trust account to receive, hold and disburse funds, obscuring the transactional trail from the originating fraud to the final asset.
3. The "professional sign-off" shortcut
Banks, valuers, real estate agents and regulators give weight to documents signed by a solicitor. A compromised solicitor can convert fraudulent funds into a bank-ready, registry-ready transaction without those downstream parties ever seeing the upstream risk.
Evasion tactic: Present counterparties with a transaction that is already "legally packaged," relying on professional trust to short-circuit their own due diligence.
4. Insider knowledge compounding across professions
The Bondi chapter flagged Ibnu Pratama's insider knowledge from McCarroll's and Toyota Financial Services. Sungkar brought NAB knowledge. Hu brought NAB and CBA knowledge. Tang brought knowledge of property law and settlement mechanics. Each professional added a layer that the previous one couldn't.
Evasion tactic: Stack professional insiders across the transaction lifecycle, loan origination, settlement, title registration, so that every stage looks credible to the next.
5. Small firms, concentrated control
Tang is the sole director of Rosemont Partners. Small, owner-operated practices can be high-quality and well-run, but they also concentrate decision-making, file oversight and client acceptance in a single individual. There is no second partner to challenge an unusual matter.
Evasion tactic: Prefer small practices where a single compromised principal can authorise, execute and sign off on the entire transaction with minimal internal friction.
About First AML
First AML comes from the perspective of both a technology provider, but also as compliance professionals. Prior to releasing, First AML’s all-in-one AML workflow platform, we processed over 2,000,000 AML cases ourselves. Understanding the acute problem that faces firms these days as they try to scale their own AML, is in our DNA.
That's why First AML now powers thousands of compliance experts around the globe to reduce the time and cost burden of complex and international entity KYC. First AML stands out as a leading solution for organisations with complex or international onboarding needs. It provides streamlined collaboration and ensures uniformity in all AML practices.
Keen to find out more? Book a demo today!