Police claim solicitor had role in huge fraud ring
Elic Tang's arrest under Strike Force Myddleton is a landmark moment — the first solicitor charged in connection with the Penthouse Syndicate. Its implications for professional conduct, regulatory oversight and the duty to know your client reach far beyond one firm in western Sydney.
When NSW Police executed search warrants at properties across Sydney's western suburbs and the CBD in the early hours of Tuesday morning, they were not simply making another arrest in a financial crime investigation. They were crossing a threshold.
Elic Tang, 32, a partner of Rosemont Partners and the firm's sole director, became the first solicitor to be charged under Strike Force Myddleton — the NSW Police Financial Crimes Squad's investigation into the Penthouse Syndicate, an organisation police allege has defrauded Australia's major banks and financial institutions of more than $250 million through one of the most sophisticated fraud and money laundering operations in the nation's recorded history.
Tang appeared briefly at Bankstown Local Court on Wednesday morning and was refused bail. He is expected to apply for release on Thursday. His solicitor, Shirin Razi, declined to comment.
The charges are grave. Tang faces six counts of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception, five counts of knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime, and one count of participating in a criminal group. Police allege that he used his standing within the legal sector to facilitate the purchase of multiple mortgaged properties valued at more than $25 million, registered in the names of various syndicate members, and that he laundered millions of dollars of alleged proceeds of crime on the group's behalf.
Tang's arrest is the latest development in an investigation that has methodically worked its way through every professional layer of the property transaction. The syndicate's alleged ringleader, Bing "Michael" Li, was arrested last year at the Crown Barangaroo penthouse that gave the operation its name. A NAB business banking manager who began his career as a mortgage broker, Timotius "Donny" Sungkar, was charged in November with using his insider access to fast-track fraudulent business loan approvals worth almost $10 million for shell companies linked to the group. The following month, mortgage broker Andrew W. Hu was charged with facilitating almost $100 million in fraudulent home and business loans.
What police appear to allege is that Tang's role was to provide the legal infrastructure for the syndicate's property acquisitions — the conveyancing, the title transfers, the documentation that transformed the proceeds of fraud into registered real property held in the names of syndicate members. It is precisely the role that gives solicitors their unique position in the transaction chain, and precisely the reason that position attracts both trust and responsibility.
The NSW Crime Commission has restrained approximately $95 million in assets connected to alleged syndicate members. Twenty-five individuals have now been charged. Police have said further arrests are expected.
The Law Society of NSW declined to comment on the charges against Tang at the time of publication. That is, in the formal sense, the appropriate response while criminal proceedings are before the courts. But the Tang arrest raises questions that the profession's regulatory apparatus will need to address — and address publicly — regardless of how the individual case resolves.
The Society's powers are not merely reactive. Under NSW law, the Society can take over the management of a law firm where its principal's practising certificate has been suspended. The question of when and how those powers are exercised, and whether the existing framework of trust account supervision, client identity verification and suspicious matter reporting under anti-money laundering obligations provides adequate protection against a solicitor willing to abuse their position, demands serious examination.
Rosemont Partners describes itself as a multidisciplinary boutique. Its website became unavailable within hours of Tang's arrest. Tang had described himself professionally as a "jack of all trades" across multiple practice areas. The firm had no public profile commensurate with the scale of transactions it is alleged to have processed.
Detective Superintendent Gordon Arbinja chose his words with precision when he addressed the Tang arrest. "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. Our investigators will continue to target individuals who abuse their professional standing to support criminal networks."
The phrase "professional facilitator in a legal capacity" is not incidental. It reflects an investigative focus that places the solicitor not merely as a participant in fraud but as a structural enabler — someone whose professional authority gave the scheme a veneer of legitimacy that neither a banker nor a broker could provide alone.
The Penthouse Syndicate investigation has not arisen in isolation. The Australian Financial Review has reported separately that a wave of AI-assisted mortgage fraud has rocked the major banks, with AUSTRAC calling in ten lenders to share data as regulators work to establish the true scale of the problem. The Tang arrest sits within a broader landscape in which financial crime is becoming more technologically sophisticated, more institutionally embedded and harder to detect through the conventional oversight mechanisms the legal profession relies upon.
For solicitors practising in property law, conveyancing, commercial transactions or any area involving the movement of significant funds on behalf of clients, the Tang case is not a cautionary tale about one bad actor. It is a reminder that know-your-client obligations, source-of-funds verification and suspicious matter reporting under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act are not merely compliance exercises. They are the profession's first and most important line of defence against exactly this kind of exploitation.
The Law Society, the Legal Profession Admission Board and the broader regulatory community will be watching Strike Force Myddleton's progress closely. They should be. So should every practitioner who has processed a property transaction without asking, with sufficient rigour, where the money came from.
Tang remains in custody. Rosemont Partners has gone dark. The investigation continues.
