Cocoon: NDIS Claims for the Dead and Imprisoned

For years, Cocoon SDA Care presented itself as a major disability housing and support provider, operating across several states and marketing homes for people with complex needs. Its legal name was Horizon Solsolutions Australia Pty Ltd, a Queensland company with a registered head office in Eight Mile Plains. It is unrelated to other Australian businesses that use the word "Cocoon" in their names.

On 29 May 2025, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission made public what it said its investigation had found: Horizon Solsolutions Australia Pty Ltd, trading as Cocoon SDA Care, and its director, Muhammad Latif, had been permanently banned from delivering supports or services under the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The Commission also refused the company's application to renew its registration. The allegations were stark. The provider had lodged claims for participants who were dead, and for participants who were in prison.¹

The case now stands as a test of how quickly the NDIS can detect and stop suspected misconduct inside a system built around trust, delegated care and public money. Cocoon's homes included specialist disability accommodation in suburbs on Melbourne's fringe, including Weir Views, Wyndham Vale and Strathtulloh. The people living in those homes were among the scheme's most dependent participants. The Commission's finding was not merely that paperwork had failed, but that public funds had allegedly been claimed for services that could not have been delivered.¹

The ban

The regulatory record shows the Commission had moved in stages. It issued a notice of intention to ban Horizon and Mr Latif on 10 March 2025. A suspension notice followed in early May, taking effect at 9am on 9 May, after the Commission identified immediate safeguarding concerns during targeted site visits. Permanent banning orders were then issued on 27 May and took effect at 9am on 7 June 2025.²

Commissioner Louise Glanville said the investigation had found repeated breaches of the NDIS Code of Conduct, a failure to act with integrity, honesty and transparency, and service failings that showed the provider was not competent to deliver supports.¹ She described the conduct as "callous and deliberate abuse" of a scheme designed to support people with disability. The investigation was conducted with the National Disability Insurance Agency and other federal agencies through the Fraud Fusion Taskforce, the cross-government body established in November 2022 to target fraud against the NDIS.⁷

The Commission also said something that turned out to matter more than the ban itself. Other individuals and businesses linked to Horizon, it said, continued to be monitored, and further action would be taken as appropriate.¹

Where the clients went

The suspension created an immediate safeguarding problem. Reporting at the time said as many as 438 participants, many living in Cocoon-run specialist disability accommodation, needed alternative arrangements at short notice. Cocoon wrote to clients describing a "change of management" and directing them toward another provider, Crescent.³

The same reporting said the letters did not disclose the corporate links behind that transfer. Crescent had reportedly been acquired in April 2025 by Pranay Kumar, Cocoon's former executive director of operations, from a former personal assistant to Zaffar Khan, described as Cocoon's corporate strategist. Before that, Crescent's shares had reportedly been held by Horizon's own parent entity.³ The NDIS Commission warned Cocoon over the arrangement and said it was investigating the restructuring.

The effect, if the reporting is borne out by corporate records and liquidators' findings, was that participants were being steered from a suspended provider to a business with recent links to Cocoon's own leadership network. Whether that amounted to illegal phoenix activity is a question for liquidators, regulators and, potentially, the courts. For participants and families, the more immediate issue was simpler: who was responsible for their care, and what had they been told?

The whistleblower

The company's problems had allegedly been visible from inside long before the regulator acted. Tanya-Lee Quinn, who served briefly as Cocoon's chief executive in August 2023, has said she identified serious financial and compliance irregularities and raised them with the office of the then NDIS minister, ASIC, the Australian Taxation Office and the NDIS Commission. In published reporting, she alleged she was escorted from the company's premises after raising concerns and said she had refused to be complicit in what she described as a "cash-flow siphon masquerading as care".⁴

If that account is accurate, regulators were warned in detail almost two years before the ban. That timeline raises a central public-interest question: whether the agencies charged with protecting participants and public funds had enough information to intervene sooner, and if so, why the company continued operating until 2025.

The collapse

Horizon Solsolutions entered creditors' voluntary liquidation on 28 May 2025, the day before the Commission's public announcement. ASIC published notice of the appointment on 29 May, naming David Ian Mansfield and Philip Andrew Robinson of Deloitte SRT as joint liquidators. A later creditors' meeting notice, published on 29 August, confirmed the company remained in liquidation and scheduled a meeting for 15 September 2025.⁶

The Australian later reported that liquidators had estimated debts at about $80 million, including approximately $16 million owed to staff in wages, superannuation and entitlements and about $64 million owed to other creditors, and that allegations of insolvent trading were being examined.⁵ If confirmed, the collapse would mean the public bore exposure on both sides: first through NDIS payments claimed by the provider, and then through the Commonwealth's Fair Entitlements Guarantee, which can cover certain unpaid employee entitlements when a business fails.⁸

What happens now

Three inquiries now converge on the same set of facts. The NDIS Commission has said it continues to monitor people and entities linked to Horizon.¹ The liquidators must investigate the company's affairs, including possible insolvent trading, asset transfers and director conduct, and report suspected offences where required. The Fraud Fusion Taskforce already had a completed regulatory investigation that named both the company and its director.⁷

No criminal prosecution of Mr Latif or other named individuals has been identified on the public record from the sources reviewed for this draft. That may change.