GIM Trading Collected $23 Million From 80 Investors Through Bonds Falsely Linked to Major Banks

Australia's corporate regulator has wound up a Sydney-based investment company after finding it collected approximately AUD $23 million from around 80 investors through fake bond products that were falsely presented as linked to major financial institutions including HSBC, Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, and the Canadian government.

Global Investment Marketing Pty Ltd — known as GIM Trading, ACN 663 732 296 — was placed into external administration and liquidated on 5 March 2026. Liquidator Jason Bing-Fai Tang of KPT Restructuring in Sydney has been appointed. The fraud period ran from April 2024 to March 2025.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission obtained travel restraint orders against the company’s final director, Darren Michael Geddes, in September 2025 (ASIC Media Release 25-213MR). None of the financial institutions named in GIM Trading’s marketing confirmed any connection to the company.

AFP’s Operation Firestorm and the Boiler-Room Connection

The investigation into GIM Trading forms part of Operation Firestorm, the Australian Federal Police’s probe into international boiler-room fraud syndicates operating across the Asia-Pacific region.

A former GIM Trading director, Stephen Cubis, told ABC News in September 2025 that he believed the company had operated fraudulently. He said he had changed the company’s bank account password after suspecting fraud and departed the role in October 2024, before Darren Geddes took over as director.

"I believe the company has been operating fraudulently," Cubis told ABC News, adding that he had changed company bank passwords after becoming suspicious of its operations.

The GIM Trading investor profile — Australians drawn into unregulated investment products through trusted community channels, freedom movement events, and anti-establishment media platforms — overlaps closely with the audience cultivated by Jamie McIntyre through his Australian National Review (ANR) platform, his Truthbook.social network, and his Free Speech Summit events in Australia.

No independent source directly connects McIntyre to GIM Trading. ASIC’s company extract for GIM Trading lists only the company’s four directors. However, the audience pipeline and the marketing methods are structurally identical to those McIntyre has built and exploited for his Bali and Lombok property ventures.

McIntyre’s Bali Property Operation: The Criminal Proceedings

McIntyre, an Australian national based in Bali and Lombok since approximately 2021, operates Lux Projects Bali and Lux Property Group through PT Bali Real Estate Investments, a registered Indonesian entity. He is the promoter of Nesara Bay City and Gesara Bay City — two Lombok property developments marketed to foreign investors.

Criminal fraud reports have been filed against his Bali representative, Barry Kevin Grossman, at Ditreskrimsus Polda Bali — Bali’s Special Crimes Investigation Directorate. Civil proceedings are active at Denpasar District Court, with a claim filed on 14 March 2026. Satpol PP Badung issued a stop-work order against a 70-unit Lux development in Kerobokan Kelod in December 2025, which workers defied in January 2026.

The reports were filed by Christina Natalia, formerly the legal Direktur of PT Bali Real Estate Investments and a former co-owner of McIntyre’s offshore holding company Azure Wave Enterprises. She has also handed official bank records to Indonesian police, which document the flow of Australian investor funds through two Australian intermediary entities into McIntyre’s operational accounts and then onward through Azure Wave Enterprises, registered in St Kitts and Nevis.

How the ANR Network Conceals the Regulatory Record

McIntyre’s Australian National Review platform, which claims approximately 550,000 followers, presents him as a “self-made millionaire” and “soon-to-be billionaire” overseeing AUD $6–8 billion in client wealth. It makes no mention of his 2016 Federal Court ban from managing corporations and providing financial services, his Senate testimony in which senators called him a “conman” and “the most evasive witness in seven years,” or any adverse regulatory history.

The platform is supported by a network of at least fifteen domains designed to mimic legitimate media outlets — including sites that mimic The Times of London, CNBC, and Indonesian news brands — which publish self-authored promotional content and then cross-cite each other as independent journalism. Lux Projects’ own website aggregates these articles as “media coverage.”

ASIC is now examining whether McIntyre’s ongoing property investment promotional activities — embedded within ANR content, Free Speech Summit sponsorships, and live events — breach the terms of his 2016 Federal Court ban from providing financial services.

The Audience Most at Risk

ASIC, the AFP, and AUSTRAC are all conducting active enquiries. Indonesian prosecution proceedings against McIntyre are expected by April 2026.

The audience most at risk spans both continents. In Australia, freedom movement participants, COVID sceptics, and sovereign citizen community members are, by design, predisposed to distrust ASIC warnings — making them unlikely to check the public record before investing. In Bali and Lombok, expats and foreign tourists who encounter Lux Projects marketing may not have access to Australian court records or understand Indonesia’s property permit requirements.

Anyone who has received an investment pitch connected to Lux Projects, Nesara Bay City, Gesara Bay City, the Australian National Review, or GIM Trading is advised to verify any individual or company before committing funds at asic.gov.au or by calling ASIC on 1300 300 630.

Sources: ASIC Media Release 25-213MR (September 2025); ABC News, 17 September 2025; ASIC v McIntyre [2016] FCA 1276; Senate Hansard, 30 September 2015; TechBullion — Aftab Ahmad, 11 March 2026; Ditreskrimsus Polda Bali criminal report (2026); Bali Terkini, 12 January 2026; AFP fraud squad on background, March 2026.