Our latest video investigation into Australian NDIS fraud features a Gold Coast witch doctor “spirit worker” accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NDIS while presiding over the tragic death of a vulnerable participant in suspicious circumstances. Marcia Cristina Carvalho De Menezes’s NDIS business continues to operate despite ongoing investigations surrounding this tragic death.
We also uncovered evidence of a massive prisoner harvesting fraud whereby a West Sydney businessman named Jamal Sabsabi fraudulently charged the government for hundreds of thousands of dollars in phantom disability services to prisoners locked up in jail cells. He operated dozens of NDIS and care related shell companies through which he paid himself at least $1 million a year for the privilege of running these scams.
Police have not charged this West Sydney businessman despite his business being shut down for fraud.
Shockingly, we found Jamal Sabsabi caught up in a new business in West Sydney. When we barged in to confront him, we found a new West Sydney businessman sitting in his place with a gigantic golden leopard statue on his desk worth thousands of dollars. Josef Yousif at first denied that Jamal worked at the new office, before admitting he had “hired” him for his great “experience.”
Upon investigating Josef, we discovered he operated under at least six different legal names with a combined criminal rap sheet that features over 50 court appearances.
This is the story of NDIS fraud on a truly mind boggling scale.
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Marcia Cristina Carvalho De Menezes
After our last video, we received a fraud tip off about an NDIS business owner on the Gold Coast named Marcia Cristina Carvalho De Menezes.
An ex-participant of hers named Rick Wilson accused her of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his NDIS plan through fraudulent invoicing. He believed she had replicated this scheme across multiple other participants in order to fund the purchase of a new house and a new car.
So we began looking into Marcia. The deeper we looked, the more cooked things became.
Marcia described herself on LinkedIn as a ‘‘spiritual worker.’’
We don’t know if she offered ‘‘spiritual consulting’’ work as a government-funded NDIS service to participants.
When asked directly whether she had ever performed, offered, recommended or referred to spiritual rituals, ceremonies, readings, “cleansings,” “protections,” or other practices involving spirits, possession, the spirit world - whether described as voodoo, spiritism, or by any other name - in the course of her work with NDIS participants, she refused to answer by deadline.
Marcia’s public Instagram account, posted under the handle @marciademenezes.info, describes her experiences encountering mermaids and elves on Gold Coast walking trails.
We also found Facebook posts of hers where she describes ‘‘walking zombies’’ and ‘‘vampires.’’ She approvingly recounted a story of another woman ‘‘killing’’ a ‘‘vampire’’ from her ‘‘energy field.’’ She appears to have also made predictions that read like hexes or curses: ‘‘Within 4 to 6 months, they will b completely out.’’
Separately to Marcia’s witch-doctor voodoo work, we learned that Marcia’s business presided over the death of a participant in suspicious circumstances. According to a whistleblower source, Marcia was reportedly the legal guardian of the participant when he tragically passed.
At time of publication, investigations into the death of this participant under her legal care remain ongoing. Marcia appears to have cancelled the Australian Business Number for the business associated with the death. Other than that, she continues to operate her NDIS business without a hitch, completely unregistered.
This brings me to Rick Wilson’s story with Marcia.
Rick Wilson’s Story
‘‘If I could have one wish, I wish it was 2017 again and I didn’t go to work that day.’’
Rick Wilson worked as a bouncer and private security guard on the Gold Coast. He was successful in his line of work, even looking after Johnny Depp and Amber Heard when Depp toured Australia.
Rick was working as a bouncer in 2017 when he asked a group of patrons to leave a venue because he believed they were on drugs. Six men then jumped him from behind and almost bashed him to death.
In the aftermath of this vicious assault, Rick was left with permanent disabilities. Doctors believed he suffered a stroke during the attack which left him with uncontrollable twitches and seizures which locked down the entire left side of his body.
It’s the ultimate nightmare scenario. Rick went from being a successful business owner to being locked inside his own body - almost overnight.
This is where Marcia Cristina Carvalho De Menezes entered the picture.
Now, Marcia found Rick when he was acutely vulnerable. The insurance money he received from WorkCover to cover his accident had been cut off and Rick faced the possibility of going homeless.
Marcia found Rick and ‘‘recruited’’ him onto the NDIS through her company. He didn’t know how the system worked at the time: ‘‘I didn’t know nothing about what money I was entitled to.’’ Indeed, he didn’t even know what an NDIS Plan Manager was.
Marcia took him in and promised to look after everything for him. She framed this as an act of generosity and kindness towards Rick - she told him that there were a lot of scammers in the system who would try to steal from him, so she promised to look after him.
Rick trusted her completely. She took over all his NDIS finances and moved him into a care home property under her management. Rapidly establishing complete financial and housing control over Rick, she became both his landlord and his NDIS provider.
Everything seemed fine until one day Rick’s plan managers alerted him to the fact that his NDIS funding was running out much faster than it should be.
Marcia controlled all of Rick’s invoicing - she was the only provider sending in claims to the government. So Rick asked her for a breakdown of his NDIS spending.
When Marcia finally handed over his records, what he found made him unable to sleep for weeks.
Marcia had been charging the government 8 to 10 hours a day, almost every single day - including Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays - for support workers who were only ever in his home for 3 to 5 hours maximum.
When workers asked to stay late because Rick was having seizures, Marcia told them he didn’t have the funding. Meanwhile she kept billing full hours to the government.
Rick’s former support worker, who we are calling Chelsea, confirmed it on camera. She worked for Marcia for five years.
Chelsea says workers were required to sign a contract with Marcia forbidding them from telling clients anything about their rosters, shifts or notes.
On one occasion Chelsea was away from work entirely so another worker stayed with Rick for three hours - Marcia invoiced the Australian government for ten.
Marcia managed to escape previous audits because she coached Rick, participants and support workers on what to say to auditors: ‘‘She coached me on things, on what to say and what not to say.’’ Marcia was his landlord while he was a vulnerable disabled person facing homelessness - he didn’t have much choice.
Rick estimated that Marcia drained around $168,000 - close to his entire annual plan - in a single year.
But the documentary evidence Rick provided us was, if anything, worse than his worst fears.
Rick’s plan management statement - generated by his independent plan manager, Butterfly Management - shows the problem in black and white.
Invoice 125 from My Gold Coast Care Group, covering 13–18 October 2023, was paid out of Rick’s NDIS plan MULTIPLE times over.
Overlapping invoices (125, 125A, 125B) claimed the same service periods.
And in a single invoice dated 14 May 2024, the company billed - and was paid for - 301 hours of weekday self-care support across a ten-week period, on top of 77 Saturday hours, 98 Sunday hours and 49 public-holiday hours.
Over roughly eleven months - from October 2023 to September 2024 - the statement records more than $220,000 paid out of a single budget category, ‘Assistance with Daily Life,’ with the overwhelming majority going to Marcia’s My Gold Coast Care Group. That figure covers claimed hours; what Rick and his former support worker describe is a systematic gap between the hours actually worked and the hours billed.
She also appears to have established a corrupt relationship with a friendly occupational therapist, Sarah Pottage, who allegedly billed for multiple sessions Rick never attended. Marcia may have taken a cut of these sessions - Rick confirms he met Sarah only once in his four years under Marcia’s control.
Faced with this mammoth fraud, Rick ultimately decided to record Marcia for his own legal records. In the state of Queensland, it is legal to record conversations that you are part of.
On one recording Rick made available to us, Marcia says:
“I will take as much money … I want them to see that you need more.”
So she admitted to gaming the NDIA’s need-assessment process, front-loading the year’s draws to signal apparent need to the NDIA so that they would uplift his plan.
She seems to have simply counted on the NDIA adding more money to Rick’s plan once she ran it dry through fraudulent billing.
Marcia’s coercive control tactics are evident in the recording as we hear her shout at Rick to ‘‘fuck off.’’
Marcia ultimately carried out savage reprisals against Rick for the crime of questioning her fraud. She threatened to have him kicked off the NDIS for confronting her - a threat Rick truly believed she could carry out.
Most brutally, she weaponised her control over Rick’s housing situation, calling police to kick Rick out of his own unit. She made him homeless: Rick went into housing crisis and had to move between temporary accommodations every two weeks.
When we played these recordings back to her in person, Marcia denied everything, before incorrectly trying to claim that these recordings were illegal. She denied any knowledge of the death in her care, calling us ‘‘crazy.’’
Rick did the right thing. He went to the NDIS. But tragically, the NDIS went after Rick rather than Marcia. They investigated him for ‘‘overspending’’ and red-flagged his account. They closed the case without ever pursuing Marcia.
The system punished the victim.
Jamal ‘Jiggly’ Sabsabi: ASX-Listed NDIS Prisoner Harvesting Fraud
If Marcia’s NDIS fraud was ultimately limited to a small number of participants under her direct coercive control, West Sydney businessman Jamal ‘Jiggly’ Sabsabi appears to have hit the big time with industrial-scale NDIS fraud.
Jamal’s company, Freedom Care Group, was the only NDIS provider ever listed on the Australian stock market - the ASX. They managed to raise $3.2 million from investors while pulling in $38.5 million in annual receipts.
He presented himself to the world as a prosperous, upright businessman.
While reserving his fraud for Sydney’s working class western suburbs, Jamal built a $5 million mansion for himself right near Sydney Harbour. He splashed out $466,000 renovating this 5-bedroom, 3-bathroom Sydney home, fitting it out with a swimming pool and an outdoor pavilion. His driveway boasts a BMW and a Mercedes, with the Mercedes starting at $87,000.
Life was good for Jiggly Jamal!
In public, he sold himself as the model ethical NDIS operator.
He hosted investment lunches at the Hilton and boasted on podcasts: ‘‘I have set up six values for Freedom Care Group that we all read and we all share together and we all practice in our day to day working with participants. Those six values are respect, integrity, compassion and empathy, collaboration and excellence.’’
But Jiggly Jamal perhaps flew a bit too close to the sun when he decided to start boasting that NDIS fraud sweeps would help his business by decimating competitors.
Jamal gave an exclusive interview to stock-picking site Stockhead where he uttered these fateful comments:
‘‘The NDIS is casting a big net to catch the fraudsters – and rightfully so. The sooner they get them, the better it will be for the ethical providers.
That will add to the cost of good providers until the sector gets cleaned up. But when that is over it will be a good place to operate because you won’t have the cowboys to compete with – or be labelled as such.’’
Within just six weeks of these comments, Jamal’s own company was under audit for charging the government hundreds of thousands of dollars for phantom disability services to prisoners sitting in jail cells.
Perhaps when Jamal said that he wanted the NDIS to ‘‘cast a big net to catch the fraudsters,’’ he was talking about his own business? The lady doth protest too much, methinks!
Freedom Care Group collapsed owing creditors over $6.7 million. Liquidators later discovered that Big Jiggly Jamal had been siphoning off more than one million a year in consulting fees to dozens of NDIS-related shell companies he controlled.
How did this fraud scheme work?
Freedom Care Group submitted invoices to the NDIA for Supported Independent Living - 24/7 disability care - for participants on its books.
The only problem here was that some of these ‘‘participants’’ were sitting in prison cells in some of Sydney’s most notorious correctional facilities at the time.
No disability support ever took place. He appears to have just signed up dozens of prisoners across Sydney’s jails, presumably by offering kick backs to the prisoners themselves or their families.
He then billed the government for 24/7 disability care support, which the government proceeded to pay with no questions asked. The NDIA paid the invoices without ever cross-referencing participant identities to make sure they were not prisoners sitting in jail cells.
This fraudulent prisoner-harvesting scheme would still be going on today were it not for a courageous whistleblower who alerted the NDIA. Without a direct whistleblower report, the government would otherwise have had no way of discovering the fraud.
It’s worth noting that in a podcast appearance Sabsabi virtually bragged about this scheme:
‘‘60% to 70% of the participants we look after fall into the psychosocial, neurodiverse background ... complex behaviours happening in the background … complex diagnoses, usually there’s many diagnoses, a lot of medication involved, a lot of robust planning, especially through the discharge process or release from custody.”
The comment about neurodiverse people here is an awful insult, asserting that people on the spectrum are all inherent crooks that belong in some kind of penitentiary for the criminally insane to be harvested by Jamal. These comments from Jiggly Jamal and his crew of ne’er do wells will be sure to piss off a lot of Aussie Mums and Dads.
Auditors ultimately uncovered at least $340,000 in phantom services for incarcerated ‘‘participants.’’ The directors initially tried to write this off as a mistake - a ‘‘processing error’’ - and agreed to a $300,000 repayment plan. But auditors then discovered that the entire corporate structure of Freedom Care Group was a scam.
Sabsabi had 31 businesses registered in his name, most of them linked to the NDIS. Freedom Care Group sat inside a byzantine corporate group: a holding company (FCGH) pursuing an ASX listing, a parent (FCC) with at least seven operational subsidiaries, a 50:50 joint venture (RDS), a specialised disability accommodation entity (FHCS) and a 29% stake in another provider (KDC).
While the main company was sliding toward insolvency, Sabsabi and his co-director Walid Jamal-Eddine paid themselves more than $1 million a year in “consulting fees” - recorded in the books as “client relations officer services” - funnelled through their own side-companies.
When the liquidators came in, they found $1,734,592 in related-party debtors - money owed back to Freedom Care Group by other entities the directors controlled.
A single line item - Freedom Care Corporation - owed $1.45 million. The directors said this was an ‘‘accounting error’’ from an ‘’investment transaction’’ that would be ‘‘reversed in the next audit.’’
The directors’ own ROCAP declared the company had a $1.9 million surplus. The liquidators found a $3.6 million deficiency. The directors disclosed total liabilities of $2 million; the liquidators found $6.77 million. The directors disclosed no related-party debtors at all.
When the NDIA finally froze $5.7 million in claims after the anonymous tip-off in September 2024, Freedom Care Group - which had no other income stream - collapsed within three months.
Workers were left $550,000 out of pocket in unpaid wages, superannuation and leave. The company also owed $366,025 in five years of unpaid workers’ compensation insurance premiums to iCare, stretching back to November 2020 - a five-year period of non-payment on a mandatory insurance obligation, suggesting long-running financial mismanagement well before the audit.
Then came the strangest part. The NDIA simply went silent on the liquidators.
Direct approaches to the Federal Minister and the Assistant Minister were, in the liquidators’ words, ‘‘largely ignored.’’
The agency hasn’t provided an audit update, hasn’t said what information it needs, and hasn’t responded to offers to assist. The $5.7 million in frozen claims sits in limbo. Workers’ entitlements stay locked up. Participants were referred back to the NDIA to find new providers and left stranded.
The liquidators ultimately tried to sell the business during administration for roughly $82,000 in cash plus assumption of liabilities - a fire-sale price for a company that had been generating $25 million in annual revenue.
The buyer was Freedom Healthcare Services (FHCS) - a related entity inside the same corporate group, effectively the directors’ associates buying back the business at a pittance. The NDIA then placed FHCS under its own manual payment review, killing the purchaser too. The sale was repudiated. All liabilities reverted to liquidation.
A formal NDIS banning order was finally issued against Freedom Care Group in February 2025 - only after liquidators had already buried the corpse. The liquidator pointed out at the creditors’ meeting that banning a liquidated company was meaningless. Incomprehensibly, the Commission pressed ahead anyway - while making no individual bans on Jamal or his co-directors.
The administrators flagged potential breaches of s180 (directors’ duty of care and diligence) and s184 (the criminal provision covering good faith and use of position) of the Corporations Act. On the criminal provision, the liquidators are still waiting on the NDIA’s findings on the fraudulent claims before deciding whether to pursue referrals.
To this day, there is no NDIS banning order on Jamal Sabsabi. He has never been charged or prosecuted.
He continues to enjoy his $5 million bayside mansion while workers go unpaid.
And now he’s back working in the NDIS with a new business.
Josef Yousif and the Golden Leopard
We were tipped off by a whistleblower that Sabsabi had quietly reopened under a new banner: LifeLink Supports.
The phone number on LifeLink emails matched the phone number from the previously banned Freedom Care Group. Sabsabi’s name was on the emails. He was hanging around the office.
We went out there to confirm it. Pete, in undercover disguise, bumped straight into Jamal walking out the front door.
But the registered front man appeared to be a bloke by the name of Josef Yousif.
The Wolf of West Sydney
Josef Yousif operates under at least six different legal names - each one a slightly different spelling variation of his actual name.
Joseph Yousif
Joseph Yousiff
Joe Yousif
Josef Yousif
Jouseph Yousif
Jouseph Yousiff
Very legitimate. We believe he has used these aliases to obscure a criminal history including more than 50 court appearances and multiple convictions - he has multiple court appearances under each different legal name.
When we walked into the LifeLink Supports office, Josef’s desk boasted a $1,000 golden leopard statue. He claimed this was a $20 ornament from China, but we later found the model online retailing for around $1000. His desk also boasted a gold paper tray, two mobile phones, and what looked like a golden vape.
Quite why Mr. Yousif felt confident enough to boast such luxuries while running a government funded welfare support program for severely disabled people escapes us. He truly seemed to believe he was on the set of Wolf of Wall Street.
Disturbingly, the words ‘‘SIL’’ for ‘‘SUPPORTED INDEPENDENT LIVING’’ appeared visible on a whiteboard behind his desk - the same line of service Sabsabi used to run the prisoner harvesting scams.
So we got about the task of asking Josef about Jamal Jiggly, at which point his story changed three times in three minutes.
We asked Josef whether Jamal worked there. He said no.
We then told him that we had seen Jamal walk out of the office the day before, with his name on emails.
This prompted Josef to change his story: actually, Jamal was an employee.
He had hired him despite knowing about the prisoner-harvesting fraud because Jamal had ‘‘a lot of experience.’’
Another staff member then walked in.
Not knowing that Josef had just confessed to us that Jamal was an employee, this new staff member told us that Jamal didn’t work there at all.
When we put what Josef had just said back to her, she revised: Jamal worked there, but only as a ‘‘contractor.’’
Josef tried to play things very smoothly. While other staff members screamed at us and threatened us, Josef promised that they had nothing to hide and offered us glasses of water for our trouble.
We asked Josef directly whether he was running the business for Jamal. He denied it.
We asked him to swear on his mother’s life. He then tried to instead swear on our mother’s lives - a kind of subtle threat against our families.
He then called the police on us, at which point I received a $400 fine for ‘’trespassing’’ through their offices.
A Flower Bouquet, More Police, And A Court Appearance
At this point, Pete and I remained unsatisfied with our inability to directly confront Dr. Jiggly Jamal Sabsabi. So we decided to knock on the front door of his $5 million mansion with a $200 flower bouquet congratulating him for running one of the most profitable NDIS businesses in the country.
Jiggly Jamal immediately called police, at which point three car patrols pulled up and gave us a formal move on order promising to arrest us if we did not immediately vacate the vicinity. Police put it to us that we were possibly ‘‘stalking’’ Dr. Jiggly Jamal and causing him great fear and alarm.
We were devastated. Police had been called on us twice in two days, simply because we dared to ask questions about the extent of this massive government funded fraud.
What were we to do?
That’s when we got a final tip off that our new friend Josef Yousif would be sentenced for a criminal matter at Liverpool Local Court the following Friday.
I immediately went to my local antique shop and bought a $200 massive silver leopard statue to gift to Josef as a good luck charm for court. I thought it would make a beautiful addition to the $1000 golden leopard statue perched on his desk at his NDIS office.
But Josef did not appear at all excited to see us. Gone was the affable businessman we found at Lifelink Supports who offered us glasses of water as refreshment. He rejected my silver leopard gift with a look of violence in his eyes.
We ultimately left the rejected silver leopard statue gift outside the court house with our security guards. We made our way through the court metal detectors with the intention of sitting in the public court gallery to write down the details of Josef’s sentencing.
Josef seemed panicked at this prospect. Whatever it was that he was being sentenced for, we knew he didn’t want us sitting there as journalists.
His first tactic of choice was intimidation. He found us outside the courtroom, sitting in a row of public seats. Knowing that we could not film inside the court house, he sauntered over to us and drew himself up inches away from our heads.
At 5 feet 9, he was a short guy - he wouldn’t ordinarily know the experience of towering over others. So he must have savoured the fact that we were sitting down. He momentarily stood over us, projecting into our space, moving his crotch space sickeningly close to our heads.
‘‘Don’t you’se have anything better to do with your lives?’’ he asked, in a by now familiar West Sydney-inflected drawl.
‘‘Not really, no,’’ Pete replied politely.
We sat there with smiles on our faces - we would not be intimidated. But knowing he could not be filmed, Josef was increasingly confident and arrogant.
‘‘What are you being sentenced for today?’’ I asked.
‘‘Just a driving offense. Haven’t you’se ever been done for driving?’’ he smirked.
Still smirking, he walked a couple yards off. He then began making phone calls on two separate mobile phones while eyeing us, smirking and gloating as he paced back and forth. He seriously swapped between phones as though he was some kind of big dog operator.
I think the point of this rather pathetic performance was that we were supposed to think that he was about to bring all his fully sick boys to the court house to bash us. But this didn’t have much impact on us, because we had two massive Samoan bodyguards outside who weighed 200 kilograms in muscle. We weren’t going to be folding.
Then Pete got up to use the bathroom. I saw Josef immediately hang up his calls and follow right behind him.
My alarm bells started going off. Was he planning on trying to bash Pete in the court room toilets?
I followed inside to try protect Pete.
Inside there were only two bathroom stalls. Pete was in one, while Josef took the other.
I suspect Josef’s plan was to wait for Pete to come out to wash his hands so that he could jump him.
So I started loitering near the wash basins, playing loud music through my phone, calling out to Pete. Eventually Pete finished up, washed his hands, and we left the bathroom. Josef remained inside.
His behavior became increasingly erratic. So when I saw him finally emerge from the bathroom to walk briskly outside the court house, I assumed he had just decided to leg it and give up on sentencing that day.
Unimpressed, we made our way inside the court room to the public gallery, waiting for him to inevitably return.
A couple minutes passed before a police officer came over and tapped us on the shoulder. I didn’t know what was happening so I looked to the court room entrance to see Josef pointing us out. I distinctly heard him say something to the effect of ‘‘That’s them, the ones threatening me.’’
Police hauled us outside.
Josef had gone outside to the local police station to say that we were stalking him and causing him fear and alarm. Whatever it was that he was being sentenced for, he was desperate enough to try to set the police on us to make sure we wouldn’t be in the court room to take notes during his sentencing.
The police issued us a formal move-on order from the vicinity of the public courthouse, threatening to arrest us if we didn’t comply. I looked over to Josef as he huddled with police officers, looking as though he were on the verge of tears. It was a gutsy performance.
We ultimately complied with the police move on direction, because unlike Josef, we weren’t intent on breaking the law.
But I was stunned. In the course of investigating Jamal and Josef, we had the NSW Police set on us three times in three days of reporting. Some of the police officers involved in hauling us out of the court room that day were in fact the same police officers who had given us a trespass notice at LifeLink Supports’ office.
I couldn’t believe we had been hauled out of the courtroom so as to ensure that no journalists would be present for his sentencing. I couldn’t believe Josef’s abject cynicism, his ability to shapeshift from swaggering bully lording over us to pitiful mess crying to the police in the span of just a few minutes.
In all our efforts to uncover NDIS fraud, the authorities came down hard on the side of the abusers, swindlers, hucksters and gangsters. In the course of all our efforts to clean up the system in order to protect disabled people, the powers that be decided to close ranks and protect the criminals.
How much taxpayer money was wasted harassing us with NSW Police each time we went out to film in West Sydney?
And given their seeming total impunity, how much more taxpayer money would Marcia, Jamal and Josef be free to incinerate in the months and years ahead?
Before releasing this investigation, we put some of our findings about Josef to Labor’s Assistant Minister for the NDIS, Senator the Hon Jenny McAllister.
Her response was strong:
‘‘There is nothing lower than trying to steal money from a disabled person. If you seek to drain the plans of people with disability, then we are coming for you.’’
These are strong words.
We will believe them when we see Marcia, Jamal and Josef brought to justice.
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