Celebrity Don Tolman Tricked in Aussie Scam

By Gi Linda-

Celebrity sells! So, when Don Tolman flashed his famous smile in a promotional video for Nightcap Village, a notorious land-share nightmare in which I and other investors lost life-savings totaling over $2.24 million, we contacted Don Tolman's team about his star appearance, presuming he consented to use of his reputable name and famous face for advertising an alleged scam. We received no reply.

Screenshot -Nightcap promo video
Tyler Tolman and Don Tolman

It was not until I met Don Tolman in person at a Uki cafe that I discovered how, like me, he had been tricked into supporting the land-share scam.  Sitting with Don in the cafe were two locals who had also lost their investment in the Nightcap Village fiasco, and they explained how Don's son Tyler had not only used his father's fame and name to illegally sell interests in property, but had also taken control of Don's websites and product marketing.

Don Tolman told us he was tricked when he was invited to visit the Nightcap Village project in 2018. The tour was filmed, then Tyler used his father's famous face to sell home-sites without relevant permissions.  

Don was clearly distressed: "I can't believe my own son would do this..." 

Don's son, Bali-based health coach, Tyler Tolman, began promoting the land-share venture in 2016, naming his favorite spot Tolman Ridge.

 

Tyler Tolman's first promotional video for the Mt Burrell land-share venture

By 2019, Tyler Tolman was asking $320,000 for a prospective pre-DA  home-site on Tolman Ridge, and making promises in online webinars that investors would receive "legal title" to their home-site, as well as receiving "native title". The spurious native title is a contrivance involving a local Minjungbal tribe agitated by a "freeman" activist who enjoys the benefit of squatting rights with presumed aboriginal sovereignty over the property.

The failed land-share venture at Mt Burrell was first marketed in 2014-15, advertised as "ethical investment opportunities" on websites "Truthology" and "Freedom Summits," promising potential investors co-ownership of land.

In July 2015, investors' funds were used to purchase a 640 acre property at Mt Burrell, through a private company, Wollumbin Horizons, without fulfillment of promises that investors would be co-owners of the land. 

Instead, the self-appointed company director issued himself a $1 shareholding, and claimed personal ownership of the land we had paid for.

So, instead of becoming co-owners of the estate we had paid for, investors were made "unit holders" in a fake "trust" as owners of nothing. It was announced that investment moneys were now re-designated as "non-recoverable loans" or "non-returnable application fees" for membership of a proposed community called "Bhula Bhula Community Village" or "Bhula Bhula Village Community".

The venture has expanded in the last four years, with three properties now projected to be included in "Nightcap Village," offering 300 proposed dwellings and a shopping center.  Potential investors are not told that the property at 3222 Kyogle Road and the adjoining commercial precinct are contested by previous investors.

Tyler Tolman celebrates 

During 2014-17, the first condition for acceptance of investors as "community members" was unquestioning loyalty to the cultish leaders, with their unconventional fiscal practices and dubious conduct. Anyone who objected or called for accountability was violently awarded the left-boot of fellowship without return of "application fees".

During 2016-17, construction of unapproved dwellings by investors in defiance of Tweed Shire Council regulations was encouraged until investors were evicted from the property.

A false narrative, laced especially with calumny against opponents, wrongly advises potential new investors that litigation ongoing since 2017 by defrauded investors was decided in favor of the developers. Assurances that embezzled funds were returned are not true.

Don Tolman views plans for Nightcap Village

Tyler was informed in 2016 that more than twenty investors had lost life savings in the land-share venture that he promotes. He cared not a rat's ass!  

Escorting his father through the proposed site of Nightcap Village in 2018, Tyler Tolman planted an avocado  tree to stake his claim in the prospective development.

Tyler Tolman plants a tree on "Tolman Ridge"

Images of the ceremonial tree planting were included in a Nightcap Village promotional video, also published on Tyler's YouTube page, where he invites viewers to quickly grab a neighbourly home-site next to daddy Don on "Tolman Ridge," for an investment starting at only $250,000.

Marketeers of the prospective "Nightcap Village" boast in newsletters that the lure was a success! After only three weeks of using Don's famous face despite his objection, they hooked 13 new sales of home-sites, with more investors keen to stake a claim on "Tolman Ridge" next-door to the imagined dream-homes of the esteemed American celebrities.

Bali-based Tyler Tolman teaches the value of fasting under the slogan "heal thyself," but he is not a legitimate real estate agent and has no legal right to sell any interest in properties in Australia. Online advertising by an overseas unregistered agent offering land-share opportunities without development approval is cyber-fraud under Aussie law. 

Screenshot from Nightcap promo video with Tyler Tolman

In promotional videos, webinars and public meetings, where Tyler uses his father's good name to sell a bad scam, he never mentions the project controller.  

In June 2017, NightCap Village contracted with the company in an apparent phoenix move to acquire the property and divest liabilities.

On July 4, 2017, the company owning title to the land in external administration with Vincents Chartered Accountants.

On June 20, 2019, two years later, Vincent's liquidator Steven Staatz was granted receivership of the property in Brisbane Federal Court, in case QUD 32/2017, and a lien over the land with authority to sell it to the primary benefit of the lawyers and the liquidator, so leaving defrauded investors with a beneficial interest in nothing. 

A statement of claim charging land-share fraud is listed for hearing at NSW Supreme Court of Equity, Real Property List, on August 2, 2019.

An appeal from the Federal Court decision is listed for hearing on August 15, 2019. 

Meanwhile, the promotional video featuring Don Tolman has now been removed from the Nightcap village website and from Tyler Tolma's website, and neighbours report that the avocado tree planted by Tyler Tolman at Nightcap Village has met a prescient fate:

"The Avocado tree being ceremoniously planted on Tolman Ridge in the promotional video was planted in clay in the middle of a 4-wheel drive track and has been run over and destroyed." 
 

Don Tolman says he was tricked into promoting a scam by his son Tyler Tolman