As they battle cancer, these investors fight to recover their super

Meredith Wright's husband is dying of cancer, and she's trying to recoup his retirement savings.

But the collapse of the Shield and First Guardian schemes has made it a complex matter.

The regulator is considering whether it will intervene to stop a proposed sale that could make recouping funds harder.

Meredith Wright lives with a permanent disability and was supposed to be cared for in retirement.

Instead, she's become her husband Kevin's carer and is fighting to recoup about $200,000 of his retirement savings, as he battles lung cancer.

Doctors have told Mr Wright he has not got much time to live, and Ms Wright is watching him slowly fade away.

"He is skin and bone, there's nothing of him," she tells ABC News.

"He doesn't eat anymore, but he does drink a lot of fluids, which I think is the only thing keeping him alive.

"He got up Tuesday morning at four in the morning, had a fall, split his head open. I can't leave him. I can't go away anywhere.

"Everything stops for me because it stopped for Kev, and I'm just trying to look after him the best I possibly can."

In February 2025, Mr Wright was preparing to retire and logged into his superannuation account when he discovered that his money was missing.

That's when he learned that his account had been frozen.

Ms Wright contacted Brighter Super, who informed her that Mr Wright's entire super had been rolled over in August 2023 into NQ Super.

Ms Wright then called NQ Super and was advised that most of the money — about $200,000 — was invested in the Shield and First Guardian managed investment schemes, which have since collapsed.

Ms Wright has gone to the financial ombudsman to try to recover the funds by making a complaint to the licensee that oversaw the financial advisers that lured people into the schemes.

This was a firm called InterPrac, owned by a publicly listed company called Sequoia, which now claims to have sold it.

Of almost 12,000 investors who pumped more than $1 billion of their retirement savings into the First Guardian and Shield schemes, more than 6,000 were clients of advisers under InterPrac.

These 6,000 clients put about $680 million into the two funds on the advice of their financial planners who were licensed under InterPrac.

They are now worried that the sale of InterPrac to Bellbird Australia could shrink the pool of money available to compensate them.

The corporate regulator is considering whether there are grounds to stop the sale.

Ms Wright said a now-banned former financial adviser, Rhys Reilly, gave her husband advice to move his funds across to First Guardian and Shield.

In April, the corporate regulator banned Mr Reilly from providing financial services for 10 years. Mr Reilly has lodged an appeal.

Mr Reilly told ABC News that he had tried to work with InterPrac previously to help compensate victims, and he felt deep sympathy for the victims and hoped they would be compensated.

A spokeswoman for Sequoia told ABC News: "We are unable to comment on personal matters due to privacy."

ASIC is also suing InterPrac, which is the only solvent financial advice licensee with exposure to the collapsed investment funds.

"I just want Kevin's money back; it's his money," Ms Wright said.

In September 2019, Ms Wright fell critically ill with a rare disease called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM).

The neurological condition can cause a sudden, widespread attack of inflammation in the brain and spinal cord, and at the time it left Ms Wright in ICU.

With physiotherapy, she was eventually able to build up strength to communicate again, but said the condition left her permanently disabled.

She said in late 2023 the couple was lured into the now-collapsed investment schemes.

At the time, there was a campaign underway to ensure Australians who had changed jobs and may be missing super to amalgamate all their funds.

They filled out an online form that they thought would help find whether they had lost super, and, "within a matter of hours, Rhys Reilly rang us and said, 'Oh, you should invest with us, your money's going to be worth so much more.'

"At no stage did we realise or believe we'd signed a rollover form," Ms Wright said.

The problem is they had. But they did not realise until February 2025 when Mr Wright was preparing to retire.

"I'd been isolated at home for nearly six years when we decided for Kevin to retire at 60 to give me quality of life," Ms Wright said.

Having realised that their super was missing, they now faced "a long process" trying to recover it.

Richard Orr is another investor who is fighting for his money.

He was also advised by the InterPrac adviser Rhys Reilly to move more than $200,000 of his retirement savings.

The 54-year-old Perth man told ABC News that he had very little time left to live.

He has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and said it was untreatable and had spread.

Mr Orr was now having chemotherapy fortnightly in the hope of prolonging his life, but said it had left him with constant brain fog and he had lost 21.5 kilograms.

He breaks down when he thinks about his family's future.

"My daughter, the first night that I told my family [about the cancer], she cried for three hours," Mr Orr said.

"I'd told Rachel [his wife] to go and see her. I asked her what was wrong, and she said: 'My dad won't be around to see me get married or to have our kids.' So, yeah, that broke my heart."

Mr Orr previously held his super savings with industry fund CBUS super.

In 2023, he put his details into an online ad offering to "compare super". He then got a call from a telemarketer, also known as a lead generator, who discussed the option of shifting his money.

He was put in touch with a financial adviser and lured in with the promise of having a more active financial manager and potentially higher retirement savings.

While his official documents, known as a Statement of Advice, suggested his funds would be invested in Shield via Macquarie, that was not the case.

Rather than Macquarie having oversight of his money, his latest Your Choice Super statement suggests it was channelled into First Guardian, via the super trustee Diversa.

The regulator is separately suing Diversa over alleged due diligence failures concerning the First Guardian investments, but Diversa is fighting the legal action.

Mr Orr said that instead of spending his last months in this world enjoying life with his family, he has had to lodge a financial complaint with the ombudsman to hold InterPrac accountable and recoup his retirement savings.

He was worried what would happen to his family if he did not get his retirement savings back before the cancer killed him.

"I worked six days a week for 20 years and have been working in the mines for the past 16, 17 years," he said.

Mr Orr said he would keep fighting to ensure his family was looked after.

"If I'm not here to do it, who's going to?" he said.

Banned financial adviser Rhys Reilly told ABC News: "My thoughts and prayers go out to Richard, Kevin, their families and all the victims suffering as a result of this matter."

"I believe Richard, Kevin and all of the victims should be compensated by the government immediately," he said.

Mr Reilly also said the regulator had "not taken any responsibility itself", and that "ASIC was made aware of concerning behaviour by these funds as far back as 2019".

ASIC's chair Sarah Court has previously told the ABC that, at the time, ASIC "looked very closely" at issues associated with "cold-calling models" but that the regulator was "certainly not put on notice of any issues" related to First Guardian.

As investors fight, the regulator is also considering another battle.

First Guardian’s liquidators — Ross Blakeley and Paul Harlon of FTI Consulting — have told investors that out of nearly half a billion dollars lost in the collapse, they have recovered about $8 million, and it was unclear whether they could get more back.

Ms Court told Senate Estimates last month that the regulator was "considering all options" on whether it could stop InterPrac's attempted sale of its business to Bellbird Australia.

On October 13, Sequoia said in a statement to the ASX that it had sold InterPrac to Bellbird Australia for $200,000 and said it had revoked the "deed of cross guarantee" as it relates to InterPrac.

This deed, entered into on June 2, 2022, meant Sequoia Financial Group and its group entities (including InterPrac at the time) legally guaranteed each other's debts in a winding-up scenario.

On October 19, Sequoia told the ASX: "ASIC informed Sequoia that the documents submitted to it by Sequoia and InterPrac were under consideration, [and] had not yet been accepted for lodgement" and that the regulator had sought further information.

If the sale to Bellbird is not stopped, investors fear they will not get their money back.

"We weren't notified of the sale," Ms Court told Senate Estimates after Labor Senator Deborah O'Neill asked about the planned sale to Bellbird.

"We had previously taken action to prevent another attempt at a sale of InterPrac by Sequoia, and that matter ceased — that sale didn't proceed.

This is Sequoia's second attempt to offload the business after a prior deal collapsed.

In March, Sequoia agreed to sell InterPrac to Conquest for $50,000.

But ASIC went to the Federal Court seeking a receiver over the guarantees, citing concern for creditors. Sequoia then gave undertakings, and ASIC dropped the case.

ASIC has now sought further information from Sequoia in relation to the sale to ascertain whether InterPrac has been validly released from the deed, and the sale can proceed.

InterPrac has also separately challenged or delayed some Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) determinations in the Federal Court, meaning payouts for some individual investors are tied up in litigation.

One of those investors is First Guardian investor Melinda Kee, who runs advocacy group Save our Super.

In late October, she wrote to Senator O'Neill and others who sit on the Joint Standing Committee on Corporations Law and Financial Services, looking into the collapses, urging them to bring "InterPrac before the committee to answer questions publicly".

Liberal Senator Paul Scarr, who sits on the committee, told ABC News that would be "something I'll advocate for".

He also said he wondered if there were other Australians at risk because of other similar investments.