When retired policeman Geoff Gauci packed up his old life and moved to an over-50s gated community on Melbourne's northern fringe, he pictured his next chapter as peaceful.
After spending 36 years investigating shoplifters, drug trafficking, burglary, fraud and deception, it was time for the quiet life.
Seduced by promises of low maintenance and resort-style living at an affordable price, he bought into a Lifestyle Communities development at Wollert, impressed with its high-security cameras and boom gates that guarded a manufactured urban landscape of neat rows of uniform houses and perfectly manicured fake lawns.
It was a setting reminiscent of the Hollywood movie The Truman Show.
"The way it was presented to me and my wife, I expected everything to be above board, knowing that I'm dealing with Lifestyle, a publicly listed company," he says.
"I did my homework, and I checked on them. And I would have assumed that everything was kosher."
But 18 months later, earlier this year, he and two other residents, Thom Meads and Steve Doudle, found themselves investigating the utopia they thought they'd bought into.
"To me, it's like I'm in a financial prison," Gauci says.
"I've got to bail myself out in order to get out, and it's just wrong."
Adele Ferguson reports.
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