Australia’s most shameless recruiter commits to repaying $548k to avoid fraud charges

Australia’s most shameless recruiter, Luke Hemmings, has avoided trial for at least six months after a mediation agreement was endorsed by a court last month on the Gold Coast.

The Gold Coast Bulletin reported last month that Hemmings, 32, was initially scheduled to have a committal hearing at Southport Magistrates Court on 20 January over the three fraud charges.

Hemmings is alleged to have defrauded three companies, blockchain software developer Fsoft, accounting practice software developer Practice Ignition and bill payment automation developer Parakeet Payments, out of a combined $547,808 between 26 April 2023 and 1 March 2024.

Hemmings was charged after police raided the Southport office of his recruitment agency, Whitefox Recruitment (“18 Local, National and Global Accolades Received to Date!”) in 2024.

But instead of a committal hearing in court on 20 January, Hemmings’ barrister told the court that the matter between the parties would proceed to justice mediation.

Magistrate Joan White allowed the matter to proceed as a civil matter, provided Hemmings repaid the half a million dollars owed within six months, and set the next court date for 27 August 2026.

Hemmings has been a blot on the recruitment industry for the past few years, initially in Canberra and, since late 2023, on the Gold Coast.

The Daily Mail reported in 2024, “A court ordered another recruitment agency called Lambert Willcox Group, which was run by Hemmings, to be closed over a $170,000 debt. Hemmings was also the head of another firm called Coceptive Recruitment, which entered liquidation in 2021, with the business owing creditors $760,000. The company previously traded under the name Whitefox Recruitment Canberra after Hemmings established the businesses with his mother in 2019.”

A clue as to Hemmings’s modus operandi can be garnered from a 14 December 2023 article in the Courier Mail.

Lambert Willcox, solely directed by Mr Hemmings, was plunged into liquidation on December 7 (2023) after Supreme Court wind-up action by Ormeau-based business lender FSoft.

FSoft operates Biz Core, a service that facilitates customer direct debits on behalf of small businesses.

In his affidavit for the case, FSoft chief operating officer Dominic Balke said Lambert Willcox, then trading as Whitefox Recruitment Canberra, owed it $169,000.

Documents submitted to the court showed the funds were withdrawn in 15 transactions “by third parties” as direct debit refund claims, using Lambert Willcox’s account, in July this year.

Although Hemmings has a Sourcr rating of 4.56, there hasn’t been a new review posted since April 2025, and the handful of jobs listed on the Whitefox website vary wildly from Senior Solar Sales Consultant to Labourer/Powder Coating Assistant

In a curious piece of timing, Hemmings’s mother, Suzanne Mussillon, (“Governance sits at the core of Suzanne’s leadership philosophy. She is meticulous about compliance, documentation, financial oversight, and risk management.”) returned as Whitefox director last month.

Mussillon resigned as company director when Hemmings relocated Whitefox from Canberra to the Gold Coast in 2023 (“….we made the tough decision to exit the Canberra market in July 2023. This decision was driven by the market conditions and our strategic focus on private sector recruitment, as opposed to the public sector roles dominating the Canberra market.”).

Former Whitefox director and partner Danielle Garland has vanished from public view, with no digital footprint by anybody of that name in Australia

Hemmings, also known throughout his professional life as Dene Broadbelt, Lucas Hemmings, Dene Musillon, Dene Morgan, Harrison O’Connor, Nic Lloyd, Clay O’Connor, and Harrison Eyles, has a long record of loose money-management practises, erratic behaviour, and broken promises.

Queensland police are not the first authorities to have encountered Luke Hemmings. For more than a decade, Hemmings has come to the attention of authorities in Victoria, New South Wales, the ACT, and the Northern Territory as he has moved from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, leaving a trail of out-of-pocket customers, clients, and creditors in his wake.

In November 2018, Hemmings pleaded guilty to a charge of using a carriage service to menace, harass, and offend after calling a personal trainer in the early hours of the morning and asking him gratuitous questions about his anatomy before it was dismissed on mental health grounds at a Sydney Local Court.

The Whitefox Recruitment website is the first recruitment agency I am aware of that specifically addresses anticipated legal issues, providing this helpful note.

When I wrote about his current charges in July 2024, Hemmings responded, via a solicitor, with a Defamation Concerns notice, which appears to be his modus operandi when his preferred professional narrative is challenged in any way.

In December 2023, when the Courier Mail asked about the extensive publicity surrounding his previous ventures, Hemmings denied that any of it was true and, to date, has not been convicted of any criminal offence.

I await with great interest the results of Hemmings’s commitment to repay more than half a million dollars in the 219 days allowed by the court (equating to $2,498 per day, for every day of that period).

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