By Theo Loxley | TherapyInsights.com.au | 4 April 2026
These allegations have been reported in media coverage and remain subject to investigation. No findings of wrongdoing have been confirmed.
Breaking: Investigation Triggered After Hundreds of Complaints
A National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) provider is under investigation after hundreds of complaints were lodged against a Gold Coast modelling agency that holds NDIS registered provider status in what is shaping up as one of the most unusual and concerning cases to emerge from Australia's disability support system in recent memory.
Diversity Models, founded by Monique Jeremiah and described as Australia's first NDIS-registered modelling agency, has been the subject of multiple reports on Channel 9's A Current Affair following a wave of complaints from former clients, disability advocates, and community members.
The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is understood to be scrutinising the agency's operations. The case has drawn national attention not just because of the individual allegations involved, but because it exposes a category of NDIS provider risk that regulators and policymakers are only beginning to grapple with.
What Has Been Reported
A Current Affair first aired an investigation into Diversity Models in September 2025, with fresh allegations surfacing in subsequent reports through early 2026. The program reported on complaints from former clients about the agency's business practices, financial arrangements, and treatment of NDIS participants who had signed up as models.
According to media reports, Monique Jeremiah confronted journalists during the course of reporting, a moment that drew further public attention to the case.
Jeremiah has publicly denied all wrongdoing. In a lengthy video response uploaded following the initial A Current Affair broadcast, she described the coverage as "an extensive attack" on her professional and personal reputation.
The investigation comes as community groups, petitions, and disability advocacy organisations have publicly called on the NDIS Commission to formally review the agency's registration status and practices.
Key Allegations: What Has Been Claimed
The following allegations have been reported in media coverage or raised in public complaints. None have been proven, and Diversity Models and Monique Jeremiah deny wrongdoing.
Financial practices:
Former disabled models have allegedly been charged significant joining fees and costs to participate in agency events in what critics describe as "paying to work"
Models are alleged to have been underpaid for completed work, with the agency reportedly retaining a substantial portion of earnings
At least two former participants have accused the agency of financial exploitation, according to reporting and public complaint records
Conduct and representation:
According to media reports and community accounts, models were allegedly directed to appear "more disabled" in shoots
Fresh allegations reported by A Current Affair include claims that a First Nations model was allegedly told to look "more Aboriginal," with images reportedly altered to darken her skin tone
Jeremiah allegedly impersonated a disabled Muslim woman in a commercial, according to community accounts reviewed by Kaleidoscope News
Privacy and harassment:
Following the initial A Current Affair broadcast, Jeremiah uploaded a video to YouTube in which she allegedly disclosed a former model's NDIS number, personal email address, date of birth, medical history, support worker's contact details, and plan manager's information, a serious act commonly referred to as doxxing
Jeremiah also reportedly acknowledged using artificial intelligence tools to determine the model's whereabouts from a Facebook photograph
The video has since been deleted
Multiple individuals who publicly criticised the agency reported being subjected to online harassment and name-calling by Jeremiah and associates
Discrimination concerns:
The agency has been accused of excluding transgender and non-binary models from representation, with community members alleging the policy constitutes discriminatory practice
Jeremiah has described her approach as "positive discrimination," a framing that has attracted significant criticism from disability and LGBTQIA+ advocates
Why This Case Is Different: A New Type of NDIS Risk
This is not a case of a traditional care provider submitting fraudulent invoices for services never delivered. That distinction matters, and it is why this case may have implications well beyond Diversity Models itself.
The NDIS was designed to fund support services: therapy, personal care, assistive technology, accommodation. Diversity Models sits in a different category entirely: it is a business representation and identity monetisation model that is funded, at least in part, through NDIS participant budgets.
The exploitation vector here is not overbilling for care hours. It is alleged to involve something more subtle and more difficult for regulators to detect: using the promise of opportunity and representation to gain access to vulnerable participants, then allegedly extracting financial value through fees, payment gaps, and the commercial use of participants' identities, images, and NDIS status.
Participants who wanted to model, who wanted visibility, community connection, and the sense of being seen in public life, allegedly found themselves paying for that opportunity rather than being paid for it.
As the founder of NDIS Participants and Providers Australia, which first raised concerns about the agency, explained to Kaleidoscope News: "The NDIS exists to empower participants, not to see them exploited through unfair contracts, excessive joining fees, or events where people were effectively paying to work."
For a system-level analysis of how NDIS fraud patterns are evolving, see: NDIS crisis 2026: $5 billion fraud claims, support cuts and system changes explained
National Context: This Investigation Sits Within a Broader Crackdown
The scrutiny of Diversity Models is not occurring in isolation. It comes amid an intensifying national crackdown on NDIS fraud and provider misconduct that spans traditional and non-traditional provider categories alike.
The NDIS Fraud Fusion Taskforce a joint operation involving the NDIS Commission, Australian Federal Police, Services Australia, and state law enforcement agencies has significantly escalated its activity in recent years. Cases prosecuted through the taskforce have included a $3.5 million fraud case that resulted in criminal charges, forming part of a pattern of enforcement action designed to signal that provider misconduct will be met with serious legal consequences.
The NDIS Commission has also expanded its compliance and audit capabilities, with a particular focus on provider categories that have not historically attracted close scrutiny including non-traditional service models that use the scheme's infrastructure in ways that were not envisioned during its design.
For background on the Darwin case and what it signals for provider compliance nationally, see: NDIS fraud arrest in Darwin - are honest providers being squeezed out?
NDIS Fraud Is Evolving - And This Case Shows How
To understand the significance of the Diversity Models case, it helps to understand how NDIS fraud and misconduct has developed since the scheme launched.
Phase 1 - Small provider overbilling (early years): The earliest wave of NDIS misconduct involved small operators billing for services not delivered, inflating hours, or registering fake participants. This was fraud in its most elemental form, and enforcement focused on catching individual operators and prosecuting straightforward cases.
Phase 2 - Structured billing systems (mid-period): As the scheme matured and enforcement tightened, more sophisticated misconduct emerged. Organised networks of providers created systems that technically complied with billing requirements while delivering little or no actual support. Shell structures, related-party transactions, and inflated referral arrangements characterised this phase.
Phase 3 - New business models exploiting system gaps (now): The current phase - of which the Diversity Models case is a significant example - involves operators who have identified structural gaps in the NDIS framework and built business models that sit within those gaps. These are not simply fraudulent billers. They are, allegedly, enterprises that have found ways to leverage NDIS registration and participant access for commercial purposes that were never intended by the scheme's architects.
In this phase, the harm to participants is not only financial. It is reputational, psychological, and relational involving breaches of trust by people and organisations that presented themselves as advocates and allies.
Monique Jeremiah and Diversity Models represent, according to media reporting and community complaint records, a clear example of this third phase. Whether or not every specific allegation is ultimately substantiated, the model of risk they illustrate is real and it will not be confined to this single agency.
The Human Cost: What This Means for NDIS Participants
Behind the regulatory and systemic dimensions of this case are real people disabled Australians who approached Diversity Models because they wanted something most people take for granted: the chance to be seen, to work, and to participate in public life.
The NDIS was built on the principle that people with disability should have control over their own lives and the supports that enable them. A modelling agency that genuinely delivered on that promise would be a legitimate and valuable use of the scheme's framework.
What the complaints allege instead is that participants' aspirations were exploited. That their NDIS budgets were accessed not to support their goals, but to subsidise an agency's operating model. That when they raised concerns, they faced harassment, public humiliation, and in at least one case, the exposure of their most sensitive personal and medical information.
The consequences extend beyond individual participants. Cases like this corrode trust in the NDIS, in providers who claim to serve disability communities, and in the promise that the scheme can genuinely support community participation and employment goals.
They also create a chilling effect. Participants who might have pursued legitimate representation opportunities may now hesitate, uncertain about who to trust and what protections exist. That hesitation has a cost that does not appear in any audit report.
What Happens Next
Several regulatory and legal pathways are now open following the complaints and media scrutiny of Diversity Models.
NDIS Commission action: The Commission has the power to investigate registered providers, impose conditions on registration, suspend registration, or revoke it entirely. The complaints process that has been triggered creates a formal obligation to assess whether Diversity Models meets the standards required of NDIS providers. Given the nature and volume of complaints including allegations involving privacy breaches and financial misconduct the Commission is expected to conduct a substantive review.
Compliance and audit activity: Even where formal deregistration does not result, providers under investigation typically face significantly heightened compliance requirements. Audit cycles accelerate. Documentation requirements intensify. Financial arrangements are scrutinised in detail.
Privacy and regulatory referrals: The alleged doxxing of a participant including the disclosure of an NDIS number, medical history, and support worker contact details may attract scrutiny from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner independently of NDIS Commission action. The use of AI tools to track an individual's location, if substantiated, raises additional concerns under existing surveillance and privacy frameworks.
Broader provider category review: This case is likely to prompt the NDIS Commission to take a closer look at the wider category of non-traditional NDIS providers businesses that sit outside the conventional care and support model but hold registered provider status. The regulatory framework was not designed with modelling agencies, talent management firms, or similar identity and representation businesses in mind. That gap may need to close.
Legal exposure: Depending on the outcomes of the investigation, individual complaints may be referred to law enforcement. The Fraud Fusion Taskforce's expanded mandate covers misconduct across all NDIS provider categories.
Legal Disclaimer
These allegations have been reported in media coverage and remain subject to investigation. No findings of wrongdoing have been confirmed. Monique Jeremiah and Diversity Models deny the allegations. TherapyInsights.com.au attributes all claims to their stated sources and does not make independent findings of fact.
The Bigger Picture
The Diversity Models case will ultimately be resolved through regulatory and, potentially, legal processes. The individual outcome matters for the participants who have come forward, for the integrity of the NDIS, and as a signal to others operating in similar grey zones.
But the more durable significance of this case is systemic. It shows that the NDIS remains a target for exploitation not just by the opportunistic or the dishonest but by those with enough sophistication to build business models that look, from the outside, like exactly the kind of innovative, inclusion-focused enterprise the scheme was designed to support.
The Commission's challenge is not simply to respond to this case. It is to build the regulatory intelligence to identify the next one before hundreds of participants have already been harmed.
For now, the investigation is active. The complaints have been lodged. The scrutiny is intensifying.
And the system is watching.
Theo Loxley is an investigative journalist covering disability policy, NDIS economics, and healthcare systems for TherapyInsights.com.au. Published 4 April 2026.
References:
A Current Affair broadcasts (Sept 2025 onwards), Kaleidoscope News investigative coverage, public Change.org complaint petitions, and community documentation. Nothing is invented or assumed.
