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In a rare interview, Victoria Police investigators have revealed the circumstances surrounding one of Australia’s largest gold heists.
On an ‘ordinary’ Monday morning in April 2020, the Melbourne Gold Company on Collins Street in Melbourne was held up by armed robbers.
Around $3 million in gold and cash was taken by criminals on the seventh level of a high-rise building. When Armed Crime Squad detectives arrived, uniformed police were already in the vicinity, handling an unrelated incident at a bank.
While the coincidental situations initially presented a headache for investigators, they would later prove fortunate, as police cameras captured footage of a suspect leaving the area in a white Holden.
“You can imagine as the offender has come out of this armed robbery, the police are standing there formalising this other job, and he’s had to act really casual to get to the car, put the stuff in and drive away,” Detective Sergeant Mark Walsh told the Sunday Herald Sun.
“I bet at some point it crossed his mind he was in trouble. We wouldn’t have had identification on the car straight away if the other job hadn’t happened.”
The vehicle was equipped with stolen plates, and initial attempts to follow this lead were fruitless. In another startling stroke of luck, investigators began a cursory check of car hire businesses and discovered the vehicle.
“So the first one we go to is Budget in Camberwell, and I pull into the driveway, and sure enough, there’s this Holden Colorado sitting there in the driveway being cleaned,” Walsh said.
“The person we spoke to initially just made the call off their own knowledge, without properly looking into it. They only have four of them [vehicle model] in the country and three of them are used in the mines.
“They said it was hired out in the afternoon before the job and returned two hours after the incident. So we were like it has to be this car.”
An Asian female hired the vehicle; however, inquiries were once again unhelpful. Her partner, Karl Kachami, was a Deakin University finance teacher and didn’t appear to be a likely suspect.
With little else to work with, investigators began following Kachami, observing him purchasing PVC pipe at a hardware store. While this didn’t seem too out of the ordinary, a random stop to dump rubbish proved decisive.
“The investigators went and looked, and the only thing of value was a cut-up number plate. There was the letter S on each of them. We just thought it was a bit dodgy,” Walsh continued.
“The letters matched where the letters on the stolen number plates would be. Then we watched as he took these PVC pipes into his mansion in Fitzroy.”
Police executed a search warrant on Kachami’s house and discovered a handgun, a couple of pieces of gold, and more cut-up number plates.
He would later concede that he hired the car on behalf of the robbers and provided police with information on where the stolen goods were located – buried in farmland.
Investigators later linked the crime to Daniel Ede, a manager of the gold-dealing business, based on his unusual behaviour during the crime.
“We knew Karl wouldn’t have done this alone, but it was only at this point we were able to link Daniel,” Walsh explained.
“When you first look at CCTV footage, you’re looking at the offender and stuff. But when we looked at the footage back again we noticed what Daniel was doing. It’s only slight but as Karl comes through the door he motions for him to pull the firearm out – he just makes a slight tilt of his head.
“And there’s another point where he is emptying out the cash, and Daniel motions his head, pointing to the other side of the room. And where he was pointing – and Karl doesn’t pick up on it – is a safe with another six million in cash and gold.”
A raid on another property owned by Kachami uncovered PVC pipes containing $300,000 in cash. Another $333,000 cash, believed to be Ede’s share, remains unaccounted for.
Kachami was sentenced in 2020 to four years in prison, with a non-parole period of two years. Ede was sentenced in 2021 to five years and nine months in jail, with a non-parole period of three years and nine months.
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