Three pennies in the fountain of Trio Capital losses

And the appearances of SMA speak, in my view, to enduring links between three colourful figures in the world of penny stock scams, Jeff, Jim and Jack.

The Albury fund manager Trio Capital is shaping up as the worst case of superannuation theft in Australian history, after $180 million in investors' money disappeared offshore.

To borrow a stanza from Trio's last remaining director, David Andrews: "Then those pathetic putrid looters/ Came up behind me to bully, ambush and bash -/ Callous bulls in a fragile china shop/ Plundering nothing less than someone else's cash."

First among the penny stock trio is Jeff, the dashing Jeffrey Revell-Reade, once believed to reside in Austria. BusinessDay later found him staying in the swish Sydney suburb of Darling Point getting around in a Mini Cooper S.

Revell-Reade was the owner of the forerunner to SMA, the patriotically titled Oz Group, which administers $540 million in Australian superannuation money.

Revell-Reade cuts quite a swath in London press reports, which name him as the controlling figure identified by the British Financial Services Authority in a report into Pacific Continental Securities.

Pacific Continental was the rogue British broker that recklessly misled customers between 2005 and 2007, flogging them penny stocks that turned out to be worthless.

Revell-Reade is facing a court action by the British Serious Organised Crime Agency seeking orders to freeze #3 million ($5.2 million) from the sale of his house in Wimbledon, South London, under proceeds-of-crime laws.

After BusinessDay reported on Revell-Reade's ownership of Oz Group, he sold his business to the managing director, Nigel Westoby - and more on that transaction later.

Then there is Jim, the Scottish accountant James Campbell Sutherland, whose former business Zetland Financial was listed as the owner of Pacific Continental.

Sutherland, based in Hong Kong, is the owner of a foreign exchange trader in Australia called Go Markets.

Two Go Markets directors remain directors of an SMA-owned fund promoter called Endeavour Securities.

Sutherland's name appears in early organisational charts of ARP Growth, a Trio Capital fund also invested offshore with $59 million now missing.

Finally there is Jack. Jack Flader has come into focus in Trio Capital as the man who ended up with every dollar sent to a Trio fund called Astarra Strategic in his pockets.

A NSW Supreme Court hearing was told Flader was the ultimate owner of Trio Capital.

Before that, the Brooklyn-born Flader was a business partner with Sutherland in Zetland Financial, before falling out and setting up his own business around 2006.

Flader was also heavily involved in Pacific Continental.

Flader and Sutherland have been named as defendants in a huge US court case about a stock lending scam that raised $US1 billion ($1.1 billion) and dudded the Internal Revenue Service of $US234 million.

Now, on previous form, when Jeff, Jim and Jack do business, it seems to be a reasonably safe bet you should watch where your money goes.

So imagine the surprise when the successor to Jeff's business, SMA, appeared at Trio Capital's deathbed to successfully bid for the administration business of four Trio Capital superannuation funds.

Double that surprise when Jack's existing financial planning business, Wright Global Investments, appointed a director called Graham Kinder in June.

Kinder was at that time a director of the misleadingly named Industry Superannuation Australia (it is not an industry superannuation fund), which has a website registered by a Trio Capital subsidiary.

And who administers Industry Superannuation Australia? Jeff's old business, SMA.

I am in no way suggesting any nonsense on the part of Kinder, but his surprise appearance illustrates ties between companies linked to Jack (Wright Global) and Jeff (SMA).

I'm told by Nigel Westoby he is indisputably the new owner of the SMA business he bought from Jeff.

Westoby says he was never a bankrupt but had a 1996 dispute with the Australian Taxation Office, which is why there is a record of a two-month arrangement on the Insolvency and Trustee Service of Australia's register.

The liquidation in 2000 of a Melbourne metal fabrication business he was a director of, Chipstar International, was due to an irreparable breakdown of relations within the company.

And his previous experience in financial services, before meeting up with Jeff in about 2007, was as secretary of the small Bentmore Credit Union in rural Victoria in the 1980s. He didn't have any involvement in lending.

On the face of it, Westoby's less-than-stellar track record has little to suggest why his business is close to Jim's business and continues to bump into Jack's old businesses. Except, that is, his previous relationship with Jeff.

It puzzles me how Jeff, Jack and Jim got Australian financial services licences in the first place. And it worries me that their current and former business interests appear to have links that endure.