The Fake Proof That Was Supposed to Seal the Deal

An Australian company told its supply partner it had secured storage for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of diesel at a major Gulf port. The documents it provided as proof — Tank Storage Agreements from two terminal operators — now appear to be fraudulent. The tanks were never specified. The operators cannot be found. And the two men running the company have not answered a single question.

Real News Online Investigative Desk April 2026 Sydney • Dubai • Rotterdam • Manila

Editor’s NoteThis was a four-part investigative report based on corporate registry records, open-source intelligence, forensic document analysis, and testimony from parties with direct knowledge of the transactions described. Real News Online contacted GM Commodities Trading Pty Ltd and its directors, Rhys David Gebethner and Karan Maken, seeking comment before publication. No response was received. All named individuals are presumed innocent unless determined otherwise by a court of law. This report does not constitute legal advice.

The promise was substantial. A company called GM Commodities Trading Pty Ltd, registered in South Australia and presenting itself as an international Oil & Gas broker, told a supply partner that it had tank storage capacity secured at the Port of Fujairah — one of the world’s largest petroleum trading hubs. As proof, it provided Tank Storage Agreements issued in the names of two terminal operators. The agreements described 300,000 metric tons of Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel waiting in reserve. At April 2026 market rates, that product would be worth between $270 million and $330 million.

What the supply partner could not have known — and what this investigation has now established — is that the terminal operators named in those agreements appear to exist only on paper. The tanks they describe carry no registration numbers. The staff they list share a single telephone number. The refund clauses in one contract reference four different ports on three continents, in a document supposedly specific to one.

And the company that provided these documents as proof of its trading capacity has no Australian Financial Services Licence, was incorporated less than three months before the agreement it relied on was dated, and is run by two men whose combined publicly documented professional experience amounts to fifteen years in South Australian real estate.

The company

GM Commodities Trading Pty Ltd — Australian Company Number 684 316 167 — was registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on February 7, 2025. It is a proprietary company, limited by shares, incorporated in South Australia. Its stated focus is the Oil & Gas industry, Power Energy sector, and general commodities. Its website, hosted on the Wix platform, says the company was established in 2023.

That claim does not survive scrutiny. The company’s own ASIC certificate gives the date of commencement as the seventh day of February 2025. A two-year gap between a claimed founding date and a verifiable incorporation date is not a minor administrative inconsistency. In commodity trading, operating history is the foundation of counterparty trust. A company that cannot accurately represent its own founding date raises an immediate question about what else it may be misrepresenting.

The company lists two addresses. The first is 1 Hughes Street, Unley, South Australia 5061 — a residential street in suburban Adelaide. The second is a PO Box at the IFZA Business Park, Dubai Silicon Oasis, United Arab Emirates. The Dubai free zone registration can be completed remotely, within days, for as little as $3,500. It requires no physical presence in the UAE. The international footprint it implies is a postal box.

The directors

Rhys David Gebethner is named on the ASIC filing as Director and Managing Partner. His professional history, as documented across industry publications, property listing records, and professional networks reviewed during this investigation, is that of a South Australian real estate agent. He worked at Harcourts Real Estate, Williams Luxury Property, Fine Luxury Property, and Blac Velvet Group Pty Ltd. A 2023 profile in an Australian real estate marketing magazine discusses his branding approach in the property sector. A 2017 short course in contract law through Harvard’s online extension programme is listed in his credentials.

There is no public record of Gebethner working in commodity trading, oil and gas brokerage, energy finance, or any related field before GM Commodities Trading was incorporated.

Karan Maken is the company’s second Director and Managing Partner. Unlike his co-director, Maken has no publicly traceable professional history. He does not appear in any industry publication, professional networking database, or open-source record identified during this investigation. He is listed on the ASIC company extract as appointed on February 7, 2025 — the same day the company was incorporated. His name, his title, and his signature on company documents are all that can be independently established.

No licence to broker

Australian businesses that provide financial services — including acting as intermediaries in commodity trade finance instruments — are required to hold an Australian Financial Services Licence issued by ASIC under the Corporations Act 2001. A search of ASIC’s Financial Advisers Register and AFS Licensee Register returned no results for GM Commodities Trading Pty Ltd, for its ACN, or for either of its named directors. No applicable exemption has been identified. Operating without a required AFSL is a criminal offence under Australian law.

The company was asked directly whether it holds or has ever held an AFSL. No response was received.

Part One establishes what is publicly knowable about GM Commodities Trading and its directors. Part Two examines the documents the company provided as proof of its trading capacity — and what a forensic review of those documents reveals.

Part Two of Four

The Documents Provided as Proof

A Tank Storage Agreement with twenty-one red flags, a refund clause referencing four ports in a contract for one, and staff who all share the same phone number

When GM Commodities Trading sought to demonstrate to its supply partner that it had genuine petroleum storage capacity secured, it provided Tank Storage Agreements. These are standard instruments in the international oil trade: contracts between a product owner and a terminal operator, specifying which tanks hold which product, in what quantity, at which facility. They are the paper that underpins physical transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They are also, investigators have established, among the most commonly forged documents in commodity trade fraud.

The supply partner in this transaction was represented by Angelito Salcedo, a trade intermediary in the Asia-Pacific region. Liaising on behalf of GM Commodities Trading was a company representative named Mr. Joseph, whom GM Commodities Trading had appointed specifically to work with Salcedo on these transactions. Mr. Joseph was not an independent party. He was GMCT’s own man in the room.

Salcedo spent months attempting to verify the documents he had been provided. He raised concerns. He sought independent confirmation of the storage capacity described. He worked through Mr. Joseph, through the company’s contact channels, and through direct inquiry. He received no satisfactory explanation and no resolution.

This investigation has now reviewed the primary document Salcedo was given: a Tank Storage Agreement bearing reference number KWFJ73D1724909-EN, dated October 22, 2025, naming a company called Kelder Walt Ltd as the storage operator. It is a substantial document — pages of legal language, technical annexures, operational appendices, and certification claims. It is also, according to forensic analysis, a fraud template. It contains twenty-one distinct indicators of fabrication.

The operator that cannot be verified

Kelder Walt Ltd presents itself as a petroleum storage operator registered in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Its listed UK address — 75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9HE — is a virtual office and mail drop in Covent Garden, one of the most frequently exploited addresses in the United Kingdom for shell and fraudulent company registrations. It appears in Companies House records for thousands of entities with no physical presence in the building. No legitimate petroleum terminal operator of the scale described in this contract lists a shared mailbox as its registered head office.

Its Dutch address, in the Waalhaven port zone of Rotterdam, cannot be verified as hosting any Kelder Walt operation. Terminal operators working in Rotterdam are listed in the Port of Rotterdam Authority’s published directory. Kelder Walt does not appear in it.

The tanks with no numbers

The most fundamental piece of information in any tank storage agreement is the identity of the tanks. Real contracts name them by registration number. They specify the terminal. They attach independently verified capacity measurements. This contract, for 300,000 metric tons of diesel worth up to $330 million, lists the terminal name in Annexure I as “TBA.” It lists the terminal in Annexure VII as “TBA.” It lists all tank numbers throughout the body of the document as “TBA” — to be advised.

To be advised means not yet determined. It means the tanks, as of the date this document was signed and presented as proof of secured storage, were not specified. A contract for the storage of a quarter-billion dollars of petroleum product, presented to a supply partner as evidence that capacity exists, names not a single tank. This is not a drafting error. It is evidence that the storage capacity described in this document may never have existed.

“A contract for the storage of a quarter-billion dollars of petroleum product, presented as evidence that capacity exists, names not a single tank.”

The financial trap

The contract’s payment structure is built to extract money before any product can be independently confirmed. Article 11.2 requires a Standby Retainer Fee of $25,000 per month, payable in advance on the first business day of each calendar month. Annexure II establishes a minimum monthly invoice of $38,000, regardless of whether any product moves or any tank is ever inspected. The operator’s own liability for the product it claims to be storing is capped, under Clause 8.3, at $1 million — for a contract covering product worth up to $330 million. The party at financial risk is entirely the lessee.

Monthly retainer

$25,000

Payable in advance, Art. 11.2

Min. monthly invoice

$38,000

Regardless of throughput

Operator liability cap

$1M

Against $270M–$330M product

Three staff. One phone number.

Annexure VIII of the contract lists three named operational personnel: Stefan Haagen as Operations and Logistics Manager, Anna Novikova as Logistics Coordinator, and Margot Anderson as HSE Supervisor. All three individuals are given the same contact telephone number: +31 10 310 4916. No legitimate company lists multiple employees in distinct operational roles with a single shared number. This finding is consistent with fictitious identities maintained behind one point of contact.

Four ports in a contract for one

The contract’s refund clause, Article 15.1, references the Port of Houston, Jurong in Singapore, Fujairah, and Rotterdam — in a document that is specific to the Port of Fujairah. There is no commercial explanation for this. The only coherent interpretation is that this clause was copied verbatim from a master template used simultaneously across multiple fraud operations, and that whoever adapted it for this transaction failed to remove the other locations. This contract, in other words, is not unique to GM Commodities Trading or to this deal. It is one instance of a standardised instrument used to defraud multiple victims.

The fraud scorecard

Key FindingNo single indicator in isolation would be conclusive. Together — and particularly the combination of unnamed tanks, three fictitious staff sharing one phone number, a multi-port fraud template, and an advance fee structure payable before any verification — the pattern is consistent with what port fraud authorities classify as a Tank Storage Receipt scam: a well-documented scheme in which fabricated storage documents are used to extract advance payments and induce downstream transactions.

Part Two examined the Tank Storage Agreement and its twenty-one fraud indicators. Part Three identifies a second entity operating in the same ecosystem — one already on the official blacklist of a major European port authority.

Part Three of Four

The Second Ghost Terminal

Terneuzen Terminal BV: a stolen Dutch address, a stolen American company name, and a spot on the Port of Rotterdam’s official fraud blacklist

The Kelder Walt agreement is not the only fraudulent terminal document connected to this case. A second entity — presenting itself as Terneuzen Terminal BV via the website terneuzenterminal.com — has been identified operating in the same fraud ecosystem. Unlike Kelder Walt, whose fraudulent character must be established through document analysis, Terneuzen Terminal BV has already been formally blacklisted by FERM Rotterdam, the official security and fraud prevention body for the Port of Rotterdam. Its website was flagged as malicious by a major internet security service within the thirty days before this article’s publication. And every physical and corporate identity it presents has been stolen from a legitimate company.

A real address, taken without permission

Terneuzen Terminal BV lists its address as Finlandweg 17, 4538 BL, Terneuzen, Netherlands. This is a genuine address. It belongs to Packaging Terminal Terneuzen, a legitimate subsidiary of Verbrugge International — a Dutch stevedoring and logistics company founded in 1958. Their operational contact is ptt1.operations@verbrugge.nl. They have no connection to Terneuzen Terminal BV and no knowledge of any entity operating under that name at their premises.

The technique is deliberate. A counterparty performing a basic address search finds a real industrial facility at a genuine Dutch port location. The deception is only exposed when someone calls the actual tenant.

A stolen corporate identity

The website also references Torrance Logistics as a preferred warehousing partner — a name borrowed, without authorisation, from the real Torrance Logistics, which is now part of PBF Energy and operates under pbfenergy.com. A fraudulent entity trading as Torrance Logistics LLC at a separate domain has been flagged by multiple fraud monitoring services. The fake Terneuzen Terminal has layered a second stolen identity onto its first.

Official blacklists and security flags

FERM Rotterdam maintains a public blacklist of fraudulent tank farm and logistics websites. Terneuzen Tank Terminal B.V. appears on it. The Jet-A1 Fuel Fraud Database lists the same entity and its associated fake Torrance Logistics operation as part of a single coordinated scheme. Capital Gas Logistics fraud alerts carry the same finding.

ScamAdviser, reviewing terneuzenterminal.com across forty data points, found the site flagged as malicious by DNSFilter within the preceding thirty days. It is co-hosted with other known fraudulent websites — a technical pattern consistent with shared criminal infrastructure. Its SSL security certificate was expired. A related domain, terneuzentankterminalbv.com, received a trust score of 17.1 out of 100.

The same playbook

Terneuzen Terminal BV publishes, on its own website, a step-by-step procedure for its Tank Storage Agreement process. The client provides corporate and supplier details. The terminal sends a lease agreement and invoice described as “showing a commitment to pay.” The client signs and pays immediately. A Tank Storage Receipt is promised within thirty-six business hours.

FERM Rotterdam describes this procedure, in its fraud advisories, as the standard operating model of storage spoofing fraud. The port authority is explicit: any petroleum transaction requiring upfront payment — for document endorsement, tank access fees, or storage charges — should be treated with extreme caution. These are, in FERM’s classification, common methods in fraudulent commodity transactions.

No footprint that can be verified

A genuine independent tank terminal operator of the scale Terneuzen Terminal BV claims — worldwide facilities since 2012, operations across Rotterdam, Houston, Fujairah, and Singapore — would appear in the Dutch Chamber of Commerce register, in port authority operator directories, in industry association membership lists such as VOTOB or FETSA, in trade press, and through professional profiles for its leadership. None of these exist for Terneuzen Terminal BV. Nor do they exist for Kelder Walt Ltd. Both claim the Port of Fujairah as an operational location. Neither can be found in any Fujairah port authority record identified by this investigation.

Part Three documented the second entity in this fraud ecosystem and the official responses already recorded by port security authorities. Part Four turns to the people who tried to get answers — and what must now happen.

Part Four of Four

The Men Who Got No Answers

Months of due diligence, a wall of silence, and the regulatory bodies across five jurisdictions that now have reason to act

Angelito Salcedo conducted himself as a serious trade professional should. When documents provided by GM Commodities Trading raised questions he could not resolve, he did not walk away quietly. He raised the irregularities. He sought verification. He pressed for explanations through every channel available to him, over a period of months. He worked with Mr. Joseph — the representative GM Commodities Trading had itself appointed to liaise with Salcedo on these transactions — to find a path to legitimate resolution. Neither man found one. Neither has received a satisfactory answer to this day.

That detail — that Mr. Joseph worked for GM Commodities Trading, appointed by the company to be its face in these negotiations — matters. It means that Salcedo’s questions were not disappearing into the void. They were reaching the company. The company chose not to answer them.

What Salcedo was given, and what it meant

The Tank Storage Agreements provided by GM Commodities Trading were presented as evidence of something specific and material: that the company had genuine, reserved storage capacity for petroleum product at a named international port hub. This was not a background representation or a general claim of competence. It was a specific assertion about a physical asset — tanks, at a terminal, holding product — offered to induce a supply partner to engage in transactions on the basis that the capacity was real.

If that capacity did not exist, then the foundation of every transaction Salcedo was invited to participate in was false. The documents that GM Commodities Trading provided as proof were, on the evidence of this investigation, fabricated. The tanks they describe were never specified. The operators they name cannot be verified. One of those operators is on a European port authority’s official fraud blacklist. The other was assembled from a master fraud template used across multiple simultaneous operations.

The questions that were never answered

Real News Online put written questions to GM Commodities Trading Pty Ltd, to Rhys David Gebethner directly, and to Karan Maken directly before publication. We asked whether the company holds or has ever held an Australian Financial Services Licence. We asked whether Gebethner and Maken conducted due diligence on Kelder Walt Ltd and Terneuzen Terminal BV before presenting those companies’ documents to supply partners. We asked what explanation they could offer for the twenty-one fraud indicators identified in the Tank Storage Agreement. We asked what response they gave to Angelito Salcedo’s representations.

No response was received from the company or either director.

What the authorities should do now

The evidence assembled across this investigation calls for action across multiple jurisdictions. This is not a matter that can be addressed by any single regulatory body.

ASIC
Australia

Investigate whether GM Commodities Trading Pty Ltd (ACN 684 316 167) provided financial services without an Australian Financial Services Licence, in potential breach of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth).

AFP & AUSTRAC
Australia

Examine whether the presentation of fraudulent Tank Storage Agreements to a supply partner constitutes fraud under the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth), and trace any associated financial flows through AUSTRAC reporting.

Companies House & Action Fraud
United Kingdom

Investigate Kelder Walt Ltd’s UK incorporation, its use of the 75 Shelton Street virtual mailbox, and whether offences under the Fraud Act 2006 were committed by its named representatives.

Port of Fujairah & UAE Public Prosecution

Verify whether Kelder Walt Ltd and Terneuzen Terminal BV hold any terminal licence or sublease at the Port of Fujairah, and engage Fujairah Customs Authority regarding the storage capacity they claim.

FERM Rotterdam & Dutch Authorities

Expand the Terneuzen Terminal BV blacklist investigation. Coordinate with National Politie on the criminal infrastructure — shared server hosting, address theft, identity theft — identified in this report.

NBI
Philippines

Accept a formal complaint from Angelito Salcedo and his associates. Coordinate with the AFP and Interpol on a cross-border investigation consistent with the pattern documented here.

If you have received similar documents

Tank Storage Receipt fraud causes its most serious harm through secondary victims: investors, financiers, and downstream buyers who are shown fraudulent storage documents as proof that product exists and who commit capital on that basis. If you have been presented with a Tank Storage Agreement or Tank Storage Receipt connected to GM Commodities Trading Pty Ltd, Kelder Walt Ltd, Terneuzen Terminal BV, or any entity presenting similar documents, do not make any payment until the terminal operator has been independently verified by the relevant port authority. Preserve all documentation. Report to your national financial crimes authority and to FERM Rotterdam at ferm-rotterdam.nl. If US-connected interests are involved, file at ic3.gov. Consult legal counsel immediately if any payment has already been made.

Angelito Salcedo did everything right. He asked the questions he was supposed to ask. The company that was supposed to answer them sent its own representative to sit across from him and say nothing. That representative worked for GM Commodities Trading. That company’s directors have still not spoken.

Series conclusionGM Commodities Trading Pty Ltd was incorporated in February 2025, not 2023. Its directors have no publicly documented experience in commodity trading. No Australian Financial Services Licence has been identified for the company or either director. The Tank Storage Agreements it provided to a supply partner as proof of secured storage capacity contain twenty-one forensically identified fraud indicators across one document alone, including tanks listed as “TBA,” three staff sharing one phone number, and refund clauses copied verbatim from a multi-operation fraud template. A second terminal entity it relied on has been officially blacklisted by the Port of Rotterdam’s fraud prevention authority. The company’s own appointed representative sat across from the supply partner it had induced into these transactions and produced no answers. Neither has anyone else.

Corrections and right of replyReal News Online is committed to accuracy. If you have information that corrects or adds context to any part of this report, contact the Investigative Desk. GM Commodities Trading Pty Ltd, Rhys David Gebethner, and Karan Maken are welcome to submit a response for publication alongside this article.