The motto of Clive Palmer’s new political party, Trumpet of Patriots, is Honor Omnia – Honour Above All.

Yet, after a tsunami of stories about the shady backgrounds of some of the party’s candidates in the forthcoming Federal election, one has to wonder whether the motto should be changed to Honor Inter Fures – Honour Among Thieves.

In the past few days, it’s come to light that at least three of the candidates being fielded by Trumpet of Patriots have somewhat shady pasts. And yet, nary a word from party leader, Suellen Wrightson.

David Sarikaya (aka Ali Davut Sarikaya, aka Dr David Kaye)

News reports have revealed that Trumpet of Patriots candidate for Reid, David Sarikaya (aka Ali Davut Sarikaya, aka Dr David Kaye) lied about his personal credentials, purchased a PhD from The American College of Metaphysical Theology – a US diploma mill – and “misled clients over several years into believing he had relevant credentials to deliver counselling services.”

Alarmingly, Sarikaya was treating people with PTSD.

According to Kate McClymont at The Sydney Morning Herald, when Sarikaya was confronted by these charges, he loudly protested his innocence, but later admitted he had lied under oath about his qualifications.

But theft? To my mind, taking money from vulnerable clients who have paid for psychology services you’re not legally qualified to provide is certainly a form of theft.

Michael Norman Jessop

Also, this week, we heard that Michael Jessop, the Trumpet of Patriots candidate for Dickson, is currently on bail, facing serious criminal charges for stalking, wilful damage and illegal possession of weapons – none of which prevents him standing for election to our Federal Parliament.

While conducting a search of Mr Jessop’s car last year, police allegedly found “a shovel, axe, gloves, duct tape, ropes and a cadaver bag.”

Mr Jessop protests his innocence, but I suspect he’ll have an excellent defence along the lines on, “Come on guys! They had a sale at Bunnings.”

I look forward with bated breath to seeing how this all plays out in court, but it’s important to stress these are currently just allegations and Mr Jessop must be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Gabrial Pennicott (aka Gabe Pennycott, Gabe Pennycote, Gabrial P.)

And then there is Gabrial Pennicott – running for Trumpet of Patriots in the seat of Wide Bay. It is upon Mr Pennicott I focussed my research this week.

Photo: Trio of Patriots – L to R: Gabrial Pennicott, Michael Jessop, David Sakiraya (photo collage from Pedestrian). Would you buy a used car from these guys?

On X, Pennicott describes himself as “husband, Dad, patriot.” On his Facebook profile – which is locked – he adds an extra line to tell us he is, “God’s chosen vessel to free His people from cerebral palsy.” Remarkably, I can find no other information about this divinely-ordained campaign anywhere on the internet.

According to his bio on Trumpet of Patriots, Pennicott is:

“A devoted Christian, family man and community leader, [who] brings life experience and unwavering commitment to the people of Wide Bay. Married with eight children and five grandchildren, Gabrial has faced life’s highs and lows, shaping his deep understanding of the challenges everyday Australians encounter. His active leadership in his church and role on the board of a traveling itinerant ministry underscore his dedication to serving others and fostering hope within communities.​

Butter wouldn’t melt.

Like his colleagues Sarikaya and Jessop, Pennicott also believes he’s been stitched up, but the Canadian and Australian courts begged to differ and jailed him for fraud.

Of course, now, Pennicott has “found God”, “seen the light”, and is cleansed of the sin of ripping millions of dollars off vulnerable retirees, skipping the country, adopting a false name, and setting up exactly the same kind of scam in Canada.

A few years in the clink, a quick dip in a baptismal bath, a couple of “praise the Lords” and voila – reborn without sin as an ideal candidate to serve as your Federal parliamentarian.

Rhea Nath at Pedestrian provides us with a quick rundown on Pennicott’s background:

“As reported by ABC News last week, a Queensland candidate for Wide Bay was revealed to have been convicted and jailed for fraud in 2011. Gabrial Pennicott, who was sentenced to four years and seven months in jail, was extradited from Canada and found guilty in a Victorian court for 23 fraud-related charges, per a report by the Commonwealth Department of Prosecutions.”

Questions were raised about the legitimacy of Pennicott’s operations in 2002. ASIC started investigating him in 2003 but did not interview him until 2004. Understandably spooked, he fled the country – reportedly within hours of being interviewed. At the time of his arrest in Canada in 2007, Pennicott actually faced 47 charges.

Ultimately, Pennicott was held in a Canadian jail before being bailed, then extradited to Australia. Here, he was tried and ultimately served three years and three months in prison. You can read a summary of the charges and his sentence, here.

Gabrial Pennicott was born in Tasmania. His parents, Neil and Ronda, were well-respected, law-abiding and financially successful hoteliers who ran the Park Hotel – later rebuilt as The Black Buffalo – in North Hobart. Pennicott has four sisters. The two I was able to track down on Facebook seem to be absolutely lovely ladies – one, in particular, is an LGBTIQ+ ally. In fact, the entire Pennicott family seem like amazing, hard-working, responsible people. Nothing written here should reflect on them.

Neil and Ronda Pennicott appear to have done everything possible to give young Gabrial the best possible start in life. He was educated at the Friends Quaker School and at the Anglican Hutchins School in Hobart before attending Geelong Grammar. Pennicott even had the hide to attend his “Graduating Class of 1984” 40 year reunion!

Effectively born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Pennicott had every opportunity to build a successful, wealthy, honest life like other members of his family. Instead, he became involved with a real estate fraudster called Henry Kaye, at whose crooked knee, he learned the gentle art of scamming pensioners for their last cent. Having learned from the master, Pennicott set up his own company.

Between 2001 and 2003, Pennicott, described as a “high-flying Melbourne businessman”, presided over a string of failed property investment and finance schemes which defrauded his clients of “up to $20 million”. Ultimately, according to Kate McClymont, Pennicott was pursued for $1.5 million in damages.

Explaining the discrepancy:

“20 investors [had] begun court action to reclaim $3 million they allege they lost by investing in Pennicott’s IBP Corporation, [later] Sunset Capital. The assets of Sunset Capital [were] liquidated to pay some debts. But Pennicott had more than 200 clients, leading to estimates his company’s total debts could be $20 million.”

According to statements made to ASIC, Pennicott’s disgruntled former clients alleged he had:

“… forged signatures, falsified property valuations and rental income estimates and even staged a burglary of his own office so that incriminating documents disappeared.”

When things started getting too hot for Pennicott in late 2004, he acquired a passport from the Caribbean island of Dominica and made a dash overseas.

For a time, Pennicott divided his time between Dominica and “a luxury Newport Bluffs villa in California’s Newport Beach” before settling in Canada where he found himself in the town of Kelowna BC, known as a haven for wealthy retirees.

Given his haste to flee the country, who can blame Pennicott for leaving behind his wife and four children with no visible means of support. According to his first wife, he left them penniless and dependent on social welfare to survive. Great Dad that he is, Pennicott agreed to pay the kids’ private school fees, but was subsequently sued for non-payment of tuition. Meanwhile, Pennicott rented himself a waterside mansion in Kelowna.

Here, adopting the aliases Gabe Pennycott or Gabe Pennycote, he charged punters thousands of dollars to attend investment seminars, offering deals that were genuinely too good to be true.

According to local newspaper, The Province (1 January, 2006):

“Pennicott has been advertising his wealth-creation ‘business mastery
program’ seminars in Kelowna, charging $3,950 for a two-and-a-half-day
workshop promising to double investors’ money in six months. He even
offers a 200-per-cent money-back guarantee. Investors are directed to pick
up their refund at a West Vancouver business address at 1489 Marine Dr. in
Ambleside Village that turns out to be a post-office box.

In his ads for the Nov. 4 seminars at the Grand Okanagan Lakefront Resort
and Conference Centre in Kelowna, Pennycott boasts: “In 2001, Gabe
implemented three years of solid learning and created a new business that
turned over $52 million in its first year from an investment of only
$3,000. Financial success is so easy when you know how.”

A handsome, charismatic, apparently wealthy businessman, Pennicott wooed and won a stunningly beautiful woman who, at length, became his second wife. Cynthia (known as Cyndi) was (and is) a devout Christian; the daughter of parents who run their own well-respected ministry in Abbotsford, Canada. Apparently, Pennicott did reveal his legal difficulties to his future wife and in-laws – no doubt protesting his innocence – and it seems they were generously willing to overlook his shady past.

However, perhaps Gabe didn’t spill all the beans. When the shit hit the fan in Canada in late 2005-early 2006, local newspaper The Province suggests that Pennicott’s devoutly Christian in-laws were blind-sided by an allegation possibly more shocking than all the rest. They report that Cyndi’s mum:

“… did not respond when asked if she knew that the 38-year-old [Pennicott] is alleged to have once run an Internet pornography site out of Canada, under the name Pure Filth Communities Ltd.”

“I’m innocent!” cried Pennicott when the mounties thundered up to his door in April 2007. Poor, misunderstood Gabe fervently declared his enthusiasm for returning to Australia to clear his name. (You can’t help thinking he could have done this more quickly without the Dominican passport and rather bizarre detour via the US and Canada.)

In 2007, facing the prospect of a trial in an Australian court – hallelujah! – Gabe found God. It’s amazing that no crook has ever thought of that before, right?

Pennicott now heads a business consulting company called YDMA – Your Digital Marketing Agency. Registered in 2023, it’s a legit company with an ACN and an ABN registered under the business name, Wise Advocate Pty Limited, with a swanky Gold Coast address: 2 Corporate Ct, Gold Coast MC, Queensland, 9726, Australia.

Looks posh, eh?

YMDA also has a very professional looking website which features the shiny faces of its executives and management consultants in classy black and white thumbnails. The captions reveal only their first names – though you can find their last names if you search. It seems like a thriving, successful company with a good-sized staff and international representation. But, having looked at a lot of astro-turf websites in my time, there was something about it that niggled at me.

The first thing that became apparent is that most of the staff listed on the YDMA website don’t live at the Gold Coast, or even in Australia. In fact, not even Gabrial Pennicott lives at the Gold Coast where his office is registered. Responding to questions about his place of residence, Pennicott recently revealed that, while his office is at the Gold Coast, he lives “just south of Gympie.” Turns out, “just south of Gympie” is somewhere around the Noosa/Peregian area where his current wife dabbles in real estate.

So, who works at that sparkly corporate headquarters at Corporate Centre One, 2 Corporate Court, Bundall? No-one as far as I can tell.

And then, I remembered something I read about Pennicott’s operation in Canada. There, it transpired, Pennicott’s West Vancouver corporate address was not a flash glass, marble and chrome set-up in a swanky high rise. Nope. It was a UPS (United Parcel Service) office. His business address, where clients were directed to pick up guaranteed refunds, was nothing but a post-office box. Intrigued, I looked up Serviced Offices at 2 Corporate Court and bingo! What do you know? A company called Intellispace – Serviced Offices Gold Coast – is located at exactly that address.

Now, of course, that’s not illegal, nor necessarily shonky. But it does seem maybe just a leetle bit of a red flag.

And then, I started looking for reviews of YDMA.

One review from Elijah Chique helps us understand how Pennicott’s business may work. Chique writes:

“I went into business with Gabrial on July 25, 2022, after being lured by a likely fake ‘grant’ offer. Gabrial claimed he could license my business within six months, but it turned out to be a scam.”

I have no way of establishing whether what Chique says is true, and I’m not claiming it is. You can read the rest of his one-star review here.

There’s a similar review at the same link from a Liam Harman who says:

“Gabriel [sic] is one of the biggest liars!! After talking to him on the phone I could tell most of what he was saying was lies. I work in the industry he was claiming to know all about. He was just making up lie after lie to try and land a new victim. He then pressured me for weeks on end to give him 20k up front to make me a website … call after call once he got a whiff of my price range.”

Disgruntled former staff? Overly-sensitive clients? Jealous competitors? Complete randoms just making up shit on the internet? All these things are possible. But, here’s the thing: when you have a history like Gabrial Pennicott’s these kinds of allegations tend to have the ring of truth – even if they’re not true. As my grandma used to recite to me: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

There is little biographical information on any of the executives or staff available at the YDMA website. But, I did find an extensive bio for Pennicott here, which includes his stellar work for “Wok in a Box”. If all it says is true, Pennicott must be rolling in so much money you have to wonder why the hell he’s hassling people to stump up cash for websites, flogging real estate in Noosa, and running for a comparatively low-paying job as an MP.

Or perhaps this has something to do with it?

Finally, I took a close look at the executives and staff listed on the YDMA website. Most seem to be simply casual contract workers. Very few of them list YDMA on their LInkedIn profiles, and those that do have other jobs – some of them full-time. Most only worked at YDMA for short periods. Quite a few, still listed on the YDMA site as current employees, noted on LinkedIn that they no longer worked there.

On ScamAdviser (where YDMA has 3 reviews – one positive, two negative) I found someone claiming to be a former YDMA employee. Andrea D claimed:

“They [YDMA] employ good people, but they offshore them so they can get away with not paying salaries. So in effect, they [the employees] bankroll their business using ‘unauthorised loans’ from their own [businesses]. They still owe me 6 weeks of salary after well over a year. They know that going after them is more expensive than just swallowing the loss. Do not accept a job from this company!”

I understand we live in a digital world and remote work is a thing, but I did wonder at this business model for a company which Pennicott purports to be so wildly successful. Turning to ChatGPT, I asked why a company might be set up this way.

“What’s offshoring?” I asked the AI. ChatGPT replied that:

“Offshoring means hiring workers in another country, often where labor is cheaper. It legal and common when done transparently – think remove support teams in the Philippines or India [but] a disreputable company might hire offshore workers under the guise of ‘contractor” status or use vague ones that don’t promise guaranteed payment.

They might also delay or deny payments with excuses like ‘waiting on client funds’ or ‘admin issues.’ Some might even ghost workers once the work is done.”

To be clear, I’m not accusing YDMA of doing any of these things, I was simply curious about Andrea D’s allegation..

Naturally, given his past, I was also curious about Pennicott’s religious views. In an official Trumpet of Patriot campaign video, Pennicott tells us of his mission to reclaim Australia for God. According to Pennicott, prophecy tells us that a global revolution to reclaim the world for God will emanate from Australia – “the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit.” Apparently, Pennicott’s motivation for seeking election is to help to realise that prophecy and has nothing whatsoever to do with an MP’s generous salary and superannuation benefits.

What Pennicott describes in his video is known in fundamentalist churches as “Kingdom” thinking – the idea that Christians must build a Kingdom of God here on earth before Jesus will return. It’s a belief widely held by Trumpist Christians and the purpose for which their Project 25 document was written. The strategy for achieving this goal is to reclaim the 7 Mountains of Culture for God, so that, ultimately, only Christians will sit at the head of all government and public institutions. (See my blog post “Christian Dominionism: Follow the Money“) for more on this.)

One of those “mountains” is business. In 2018, Pennicott tweeted that his company, Baxton Media (also a real estate enterprise, founded in Tasmania but now operating from Noosaville under the name Salt 4 Property):

“… creates and builds businesses on Kingdom principles for Kingdom purposes that impact the whole world.”

But now, Gabrial Pennicott has fixed his sights on summitting the mountain of politics. Indeed! It is for the purpose of establishing a Christian theocracy that this corporate Christian crusader is currently clipping on Clive’s crampons.

This is all mildly amusing. But, before we dismiss Pennicott’s sins as simply “white collar” or “white shoe” crime, perhaps we should consider the words of one of his victims, who described the extreme stress caused by Pennicott’s actions:

“There’s a lot of people who have died, had strokes and heart attacks, because of this.”

What a legacy. And now, by running for politics, Pennicott brings all his past to the fore again, blackening the family name, and no doubt causing great distress to relatives who have nothing whatsoever to do with his former crimes or current business interests.

In closing, one happy thing I am delighted to tell you is that, at some stage after they relocated to Australia, Gabrial Pennicott’s lovely Canadian Christian wife, Cynthia, departed stage right. Smart move, girlfriend! Pennicott has since moved on to wife number three, but his ex, too, has remarried – and upgraded spectacularly in the husband stakes. Well done, Cyndi!

Asked about the antics of Gabrial Pennicott, real estate industry consumer advocate, Neil Jenman, said:

“When it comes to Mr Pennicott, I have two words of advice for Canadian consumers – stay away.”

That may also be excellent advice to the voters of Wide Bay and, indeed, to anyone considering placing a vote for Trumpet of Patriots.

Chrys Stevenson

NB: I’ve made every attempt at fairness and accuracy in the article above, but, in cobbling together information from many different sources, it is possible I have made errors. If I have, I’m happy to correct them. However, as Mr Pennicott says on his own website: “the Company makes no warranties or representations as to its [the website’s] accuracy. The Company assumes no liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in the content of the Site.”

If it’s good enough for Gabe, it’s good enough for me.

—–

A short note about Australia being “the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit.”

Bayside Christian Church, who, unlike Pennicott, have done their research, tell us correctly that:

In May 1606, de Quirós [took] possession of ‘all the … lands that I have newly discovered … and all this region of the south as far as the Pole, which from this time shall be called Austrialia [sic] del Espiritu Santo.’

But de Quirós hadn’t discovered the southern continent, only the largest island in what is today known as Vanuatu.”