It was only a matter of time before the scourge of identity theft forced an insolvency practitioner to validate their appointment and Sydney liquidator Steve Kugel has recently been enjoying the inconveniences that flow from discovering an appointor is not who he seems.

Kugel was contacted on April 19 by a person identifying themselves as Tony Aguis, director of a company called LG Energy Solutions. Over the next couple of days Kugel and Aguis communicated electronically.

Aguis explained that he was in Hong Kong and wanted to place the company into liquidation. He told Kugel that the other directors of the company had recently resigned.

He also provided Kugel with details of creditors claims and documentation about proceedings initiated against the company by LG Electronics Australia. For the purposes of this tale SiN will call the plaintiff in those proceedings the Real LG.

Over the course of the week Kugel sought various information from Aguis.

He obtained a copy of a driver’s license but communication was intermittent and frequently unsatisfactory. The elusive Aguis, who claimed to be based in the Chinese capital, Beijing, blamed international telephony networks.

Kugel meanwhile took steps to confirm the identity of who he was dealing with. It didn’t take long for anomalies to emerge.

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