‘Just horrible’: Pensioner’s property deal turns sour

• Date: 28 March 2021
• Published date: 28 March 2021
• Publication title: Herald on Sunday

She was concerned at the length of time it might take to sort the paperwork to sell her mortgage-free North Shore home and settle on this new one. The 75-year-old, who has long lived by herself, says she was introduced by the estate agent to some gentlemen who could facilitate the process and soon she was moving in.

Having made it home, she experienced difficulty in securing a copy of the sale and purchase agreement. Eventually, in frustration, she checked the property title and was shocked to find her name wasn’t on it. Further, the property she thought was bought with cash was saddled with a mortgage registered to BNZ that now sits at $1.1 million.

“I’ve never had a mortgage on a property,” she said.

Rosolowski complained to the bank — who referred the matter to police, who later passed it to the Serious Fraud Office — and lawyered up, but has in the years since been stuck in legal limbo and now finds herself unable to cut the winter chill.

“Because I don’t own the property I’m not allowed to alter anything with it, so I couldn’t even get a heat pump,” she said.

“It’s been a convoluted nightmare.”

Jayden Carter, a 20-something truck driver from Northland, got a call about this property a few years ago. He was registered as a founding director of SLR Holdings, the company that is today recorded as owning the property.

“I didn’t know anything about that company until the cop rung me up and said ‘What’s this?’”

Carter’s signature appears on director consent forms for SLR Holdings filed with the Companies Office, but he says he struggled to recall signing the document.

“We met up once. As I said to the cop, I can’t remember signing anything, but I did meet with them and have a few beers.”

“Them” allegedly refers to brothers Chris and Gerard Peters, a pair of businessmen who operate a cluster of companies such as Peters Property Holdings, the same pair who Rosolowski said offered to facilitate her paperwork.

In a series of legal letters from lawyers Lee Salmon Long over the past two months, brothers Gerard and Chris, and mother Serene — strenuously denied any wrongdoing.

Through the lawyers, they declined to respond to detailed questions about specific transactions or make any on-record comments.

The Peters family insisted any SFO investigation was a private matter, and claimed unspecified inaccuracies in the Herald on Sunday’s description of property and investment transactions in the alleged scheme. The family also declined to explain where millions of...