Thousands of Australians are still likely in the dark about losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in their retirement savings. Authorities are still waiting for victims to come forward after more than a $1 billion was quietly lost from superannuation funds of workers across the country.

Social media ads and aggressive sales tactics were used to lure in regular working Australians. That was the case for Queensland woman Claire* who was encouraged to move her superannuation into a new fund and ultimately lost $165,000 when she later learned it had disappeared.

Claire only realised something was wrong when she received a strange email from “equity trustees” which in the moment didn’t mean anything to her at all.

“I was just lucky that I clicked on it,” she told Yahoo Finance.

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Claire, who works in education, admits she isn’t a sophisticated investor. She paid almost no attention to her superannuation but came across an ad while “doomscrolling” Facebook that caught her eye.

“It was along the lines of nine out of 10 super funds are underperforming. Is your’s one of them?” she recalled. “It wasn’t dodgy looking.”

She clicked to find out if her super fund was on the list.

“To get the article you had to put your name and your phone number and your email in, or something like that.”

However when she did, she didn’t get an article. Instead she got a call from a business on the Gold Coast.

Claire was urged to send through her latest superannuation statement, which she did, and that’s when the “constant” calls started.

Despite her reservations and skepticisms – and repeatedly declining their overtures – the pushy tactics from financial advisors on the other end of the line eventually wore her down and she was convinced to move her superannuation from industry fund QSuper to a fund she couldn’t actually find anything about on Google, called NQ Super.

“They essentially had an answer for everything and made it sound safe as houses, and if I didn’t do this I’m an absolute idiot… They sort of played on my naivety and my lack of knowledge of the super system,” she said.

In her late 30s, Claire was promised much higher returns by the time she retired if she switched.

In a subsequent statement of advice put together by an advisory firm called Venture Egg, and seen by Yahoo Finance, she was told the money would be put into mostly standard investments such as the Betashares Nasdaq ETF and Vanguard ETF funds for Australian and international stocks – common, low risk products that track broad sections of the stock market.

Against her better judgement, she moved her fund over in 2023. But the following year she received a “random” significant event notice in her inbox about an investment fund she’d never heard of.

Claire eventually discovered she had actually been moved into something called the Shield Master Fund which had since collapsed.

Claire is one of about 12,000 Aussies who lost an estimated $1.1 billion when Shield and, later, the First Guardian Master Fund imploded.

“I could have easily just deleted that email – it wasn’t a familiar name to me – but I read it, and I think that’s what the problem is,” Claire said.

A majority of people in those two funds have still not made an official complaint with the appropriate financial ombudsman, with corporate regulator ASIC believing many are still unaware they have been impacted.

Do you have a story? Nick.whigham@yahooinc.com

ASIC sent out correspondence to victims earlier this month, but there are still more than 9,000 people who have not lodged their complaint to receive compensation.

Melinda Kee is another victim and has been working with ASIC as well as the federal government as it works through the ongoing fallout and looks to shore up rules to prevent similar disasters in the future. She runs a Facebook group for victims and has built a website for anyone affected to find vital information about the advisory groups involved.

“I stepped up because it came down to who else was going to? These people are distraught… I’ve had 65-year-old men crying,” she told Yahoo Finance.

She is desperate to reach the thousands of Aussies – some of whom she believes are overseas – who appear unaware that at least some of their retirement savings have been lost.

Melinda has a lot of experience is financial markets and used to be a day trader. She was looking to shift her superannuation savings after the fund she was in at the time had gone backwards by $28,000 over the previous year.

During a period she was off sick from work, she used iSelect to change a number of bills including, gas, electricity and health and pet insurance. It was shortly after that when she began receiving cold calls about switching her retirement savings as well.

“This wasn’t a case of investors chasing speculative returns outside the system. This happened within the regulated superannuation and financial advice framework, overseen by licensed professionals and trustees with legal fiduciary obligations,” she said.

If you moved your superannuation and think you might be impacted, you can check to see a list of trustees and super platforms that funnelled money into the collapsed funds, which might be more familiar to most victims, and for which deadlines for seeking compensation are fast approaching.

Some victims have only until March 31, 2026, to seek compensation.

While some early decisions have been made for a select number of victims who were moved into the collapsed funds, a vast majority, like Claire, are still waiting for their claim to be worked through.

Melinda is advocating for ‘Pay Now Recover Later’ as the government taps the broader superannuation sector to help fund compensation for victims.

“It is not about rewarding risk-taking, it’s about restoring confidence, fairness, and accountability in a system Australians are required by law to rely on for their retirement,” she said.

This week, ASIC launched a fresh review into the practice of using lead generators to lure in superannuation investors, with more than 40 groups called out.

Lead generation is the process of identifying someone as a potential sales target and may offer a free ‘super health check’ or offer to find your lost super. They are often paid “marketing fees” by licensed financial advisers.

Super Consumers Australia is calling for a ban on lead generation for super and financial advice, along with closing the loophole that allows cold calling to offer financial advice.

The group said predatory super switching schemes had been fuelled by lead generators who had been using social media to collect people’s contact details and sell them on to third parties.

“These schemes are highly effective, they prey on people who are just looking to do the right thing and get on top of their super,” Super Consumer Australia CEO Xavier O’Halloran said.

*Claire is a pseudonym to protect her identity

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