Bret Silvey: Cricketer, brother of author jailed for Humich family’s $71m ‘callous, dripping with guile’ fraud

A man who fraudulently obtained tens of millions from one of Perth’s biggest investment dynasties has been handed a 12-year jail term, with the judge describing his crimes as “breathtaking”, “callous” and “dripping with guile”. Bret Silvey — the brother of best-selling WA author Craig Silvey — flinched and appeared shocked when the sentence was handed down as he appeared in the District Court by videolink from Casuarina Prison on Friday. Judge Nicholas Egan said the 44-year-old took many years to cultivate the trust of Randal Humich and his father Ivan Humich, then breached it grossly. After a career as a cricketer in Australia and the UK, the father-of-two became a full-time stock market trader in 2011, borrowing money from investors for a fixed term and promising an agreed rate of return. But he got carried away, securing “enormous” sums from the Humich family using “skilful deceit”, “treacherous cunning” and “subterfuge”. The “extensive fraudulent scheme” involved forgery and buying domain names from a US-based registry that appeared — at a glance — to be a Sydney-based legal firm and trading platform CommSec. But they were in fact one letter short. “You effectively impersonated real solicitors as well as falsifying bank guarantees,” Judge Egan said. “Your offending is nothing short of breath-taking, involving eye-watering sums of money.” By the time a newspaper article about fraudulent bank guarantees raised the suspicions of Randal Humich, the amount Silvey had extracted was $71 million. His victims did all they reasonably could to protect themselves from financial loss, Judge Egan said, but their efforts were defeated by an “extremely sophisticated and persistent” ruse. And when confronted, Silvey claimed he’d been hacked. The Humich family took civil action, securing freezing orders over his assets and clawing back $63.24m before he filed for bankruptcy. Judge Egan said Silvey’s cooperation in the Supreme Court proceedings had been limited as he declined to provide details of his assets worldwide on the basis it might incriminate him. While the loss from their loans was $7.75m, the Humich family had forked out an estimated $1m in legal expenses on top, the judge said. He accepted defence counsel Nicholas van Hattem’s submission that his client didn’t do it to fund a lavish lifestyle and instead believed the profits he would make would cover the loans. But that was an unreasonable belief, the judge said. Mr van Hattem also submitted that Silvey’s motivation stemmed from his involvement in “elite sports culture” of challenging oneself to the next level. However, elite sportspeople didn’t tend to employ “guile and subterfuge”, Judge Egan said. Silvey will be eligible for parole after serving 10 years.