‘Beyond exhausted’: Melinda and Danielle lost $500,000. They are helping thousands claw their money back

Exclusive: Melinda Kee and Danielle Adams should never have become friends.

The two Australian women live nearly 1000 kilometres apart and are admittedly “very different” people.

But a $1.1 billion superannuation crisis and a shared devastating financial loss brought them both together and sparked an enduring friendship.

Kee and Adams lost a combined nearly $500,000 after the First Guardian collapse wiped out roughly $446 million from 6000 Australian retirement funds.

Nine.com.au has reported on multiple Australians who have their superannuation funds frozen or drained, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the liquidation.

Some victims, like Queensland woman Debbie Simpson, have been faced with no choice but to keep working past retirement age.

When they realised their money was missing, the women had nowhere to turn.

In the chaos of searching for answers, Kee and Adams found each other. And a community of thousands.

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“We’ve been each other’s counsellors now for a year,” Kee, based in Sydney, told nine.com.au.

“It’s far more than just superannuation now... she’s been my rock.”

The early days of First Guardian collapsing into liquidation in 2025 came with a lot of confusion, financial lingo and endless documents.

And the second Shield Master Fund collapse left another nearly 6000 people with vanishing retirement funds.

Kee and Adams are both financially savvy, but even they struggled to piece together how it all unfolded and where to go next.

They knew others would be facing the same proverbial mountain.

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That’s how the SOS Save Our Super Facebook group and website was born.

Kee became the defacto leader of the group.

She spends hours every day welcoming new investor victims into the group, explaining the complicated process of lodging a complaint with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) and listening as they detailed the emotional turmoil of losing money.

“I was on the verge of having a mental breakdown, I was just beyond exhausted,” Kee explained.

“It got to the point that it was like 5pm, I’d walk in from work, lie on the bed, and I just couldn’t move because my days were starting at 4am.”

Kee connected with Adams and another woman Jenny*, who lost around $165,000 in both First Guardian and Shield Master collapses and wishes to remain anonymous, to help with content moderation.

Brisbane-based Jenny took on the mammoth task of moderating the Shield Master Fund sub-Reddit.

Their unpaid duties extend far beyond content moderation and research.

Now, they are an empathetic ear for nearly 3000 victims on Facebook.

The women spend hours on the phone helping victims lodge their complaint, or just listen to those feeling utterly powerless.

“That’s how the three of us have come together. And normally we speak every single day,” Kee added.

“We do a FaceTime pretty much every evening.”

About 10 to 15 victims join the group every week, with almost daily posts from new members who only just discovered their super was missing.

The trio is disappointed that SOS Save Our Super needed to be a victim-led group.

It emerged simply due to a lack of government support for the 12,000 Australians impacted by the superannuation crisis.

“I think the government put their heads in the sand for a while,” Adams said.

“And also, once something like this happens to you, your trust in everything is just annihilated.

“I didn’t feel confident reaching out to a government body for help.

“But I found the Facebook page, and I was like, ‘Holy s---! I’m not alone’.

“There’s so many people who have had the same thing happen to them, and you instantly have a bond created.”

Kee has met with government officials, superannuation fund chief executives, ministers and ASIC regulators in her efforts to untangle the web.

She isn’t one to hold her tongue and knows her advocacy has already created real change.

“I don’t hold back,” she laughed. “And they know that.”

‘You can’t walk away from a car wreck’

The key purpose of the SOS Save Our Super group is to help guide people through their ACFA complaint, or the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (CSLR).

The path to a resolution, once shrouded in darkness, is mercifully brighter and easier to traverse more than 12 months on.

Thousands of victims have received money back through AFCA determinations and payouts from Netwealth and Macquarie Investment Management Ltd (MIML).

Kee is waiting for a court resolution to her own complaint after AFCA determined First Guardian-linked InterPrac Financial Planning should pay her $368,093.11 plus interest.

InterPrac is taking AFCA and Kee to court to challenge this determination.

Adams is also involved in the federal court case against InterPrac.

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But even if they get repaid, both women staunchly vow their job is not done.

“Does it finish when we get paid? No, for me personally, I think I’m in far too deep,” Kee said.

’It would be like walking away from a car wreck and there’s people you know still needing help, trapped inside,” Kee said.

“Nobody could humanely walk away.”

Jenny also has not received any of her money back.

Kee thinks about those who have lost far more – Peter Spencer Franks, who is missing over $1 million in retirement savings, often comes to mind.

For all three, the end only comes when every cent is returned.

“It is something we all take really seriously, because of the amount of private messages that we have with people about their mental health...” Kee said.

“It’s been mentally exhausting as all hell, and I’d love to run when I get my money... but I can’t,” Adams agreed.

*Not her real name.