Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, March sixteen, twenty twenty six. Australia's biggest manufacturers
Speaker 1: are warning of cost hikes and even rationing of industrial
Speaker 1: goods like plastics because of the Iran War. There's talk
Speaker 1: of petrol rationing and concern we might run out of gas.
Speaker 1: Four of the Iranian soccer group are on their way home,
Speaker 1: and there are allegations the remaining three Lionesses are under
Speaker 1: pressure to also go back to Iran. We're following that
Speaker 1: story and the war itself live right now at The
Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au. Cryptocurrency titan and occasional astronaut
Speaker 1: Russell Wilson has an incredible story of bouncing back from
Speaker 1: multimillion dollar fraud on his company Coinspot. But when we
Speaker 1: try to track him down for the list Australia's Richest
Speaker 1: two fifty, Wilson proved elusive, which made us even more intrigued.
Speaker 1: That's today's story. Angelica Snowden is a business reporter with
Speaker 1: The Australian and this year she's involved in one of
Speaker 1: my favorite parts of the Australian it's called the List
Speaker 1: Australia's Richest to fifty each year. It's a list of
Speaker 1: obviously billionaires. And one of the things I love about
Speaker 1: the list is that you John Stenzelt, the editor, and
Speaker 1: some of our other reporters have to actually hunt these
Speaker 1: billionaires down, but don't actually want us to tell the
Speaker 1: world how rich they are all the time.
Speaker 2: As it happens, apparently some of the time they don't,
Speaker 2: which is actually pretty interesting. I think you might find
Speaker 2: that many of the people who are involved in the
Speaker 2: list are very happily interviewed, and you know, they get
Speaker 2: pictured on yachts or you know, on their private jets. Perhaps,
Speaker 2: But as it happens, the fellow that I was reporting
Speaker 2: on this year did really not want to be involved
Speaker 2: at all. His name is Russell Wilson. He is a
Speaker 2: crypto billionaire. He's from Melbourne. He's pretty young, he's forty
Speaker 2: four years old. I think many people would have heard
Speaker 2: of his company, Coinspot, which is one of Australia's biggest
Speaker 2: crypto exchanges. But Claire, I don't know if you're involved
Speaker 2: in crypto.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that crypto will be like non fungible tokens
Speaker 1: that if I ignore it for long enough, it will
Speaker 1: just go away and no one will ever talk about
Speaker 1: it again. So I've been waiting about a decade now
Speaker 1: with crypto. I don't I don't know what these things
Speaker 1: are going away.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It seems to not be going away.
Speaker 2: And if Russell Wilson's wealth is anything to go by,
Speaker 2: I think it may have a very strong future. So,
Speaker 2: you know, essentially, Russell Wilson launched his company in twenty
Speaker 2: thirteen with you know, a couple of one hundred customers.
Speaker 2: I imagine it very quickly grew to a few hundred
Speaker 2: thousand a couple of years later, and today it is
Speaker 2: Australia's biggest crypto exchange platforms by a lot of people.
Speaker 2: It's very well known. As I said, the company is
Speaker 2: well known, but the man behind it is really not.
Speaker 2: He's virtually anonymous. He has gone to extreme lengths to
Speaker 2: keep his identity private, completely private.
Speaker 1: Is that because he's worried about his safety?
Speaker 2: My colleague and I, Liam Mendez, spent a number of
Speaker 2: months really trying to track him down and to work
Speaker 2: out why he wanted to keep this level of privacy.
Speaker 2: He says it's to protect his family. He ultimately did
Speaker 2: supply us with a pretty short statement to a very
Speaker 2: very long list of questions that we had. But I
Speaker 2: think what you might find interesting, Claire, is that while
Speaker 2: on the one hand, he really really strives to privacy,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, we actually tracked down a video
Speaker 2: of him in space on Jeff Bezos's spaceship In a
Speaker 2: similar way. Did you hear about Katie Perry Drick?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm hoping that she kissed the Earth when
Speaker 1: she came back. She's sang a really cringe withy song
Speaker 1: while she was up there sing did he kiss it?
Speaker 1: Did he wear a skin Sight blue jumpsuit?
Speaker 2: Indeed he did, He absolutely did. On his jumpsuit it
Speaker 2: does say R. Wilson, But in all of the press
Speaker 2: clippings about that particular mission, he's referred to as an
Speaker 2: anonymous six crew member. So it's a really really bizarre
Speaker 2: kind of story here. You know, I'm a business reporter.
Speaker 2: A lot of my stories come through courts and court reporting,
Speaker 2: and initially I heard about this on another podcast. It
Speaker 2: was really all about this fraud that affected coinspot. But
Speaker 2: what was kind of the missing piece in that podcast
Speaker 2: was who was the man behind this company, and as
Speaker 2: it turns out, it's Russell Wilson, who is from suburban Melbourne,
Speaker 2: and that's really where I my interest in this story
Speaker 2: first kicked off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it involved a scammer, an Englishman living in the
Speaker 1: city of Blackpool, which is a seaside town in Lancashire,
Speaker 1: famously bleak and wind swept, like most British seaside towns.
Speaker 1: I must say, what was the scam, how did it happen?
Speaker 2: James Parker, who was at the center of this fraud,
Speaker 2: lived in a mold infested flat and he was poor,
Speaker 2: you know, living in poverty essentially, but he discovered how
Speaker 2: to exploit coinspot and mister Wilson's platform. What it involved
Speaker 2: was taking bitcoin from the platform without actually buying it.
Speaker 1: James Parker has now passed away, so he never actually
Speaker 1: faced justice for what he allegedly did to Coinspot, but
Speaker 1: that must have been devastating, not just for Russell Wilson,
Speaker 1: but for the few hundred people at that stage who
Speaker 1: had their money in Coinspot.
Speaker 2: Absolutely again going back to my interest in this story,
Speaker 2: after listening to the podcast, we sort of worked out, well,
Speaker 2: where's Russell Wilson's voice in all of this. You know,
Speaker 2: this is his company. He nearly lost the entire company
Speaker 2: at this point, you know, a few years ago, and
Speaker 2: now he's worth one point one billion dollars. About forty
Speaker 2: million dollars was taken out of this platform, and as
Speaker 2: I understand it, it was customers bitcoin. And in court
Speaker 2: documents transcripts that I've obtained from the UK, we've got
Speaker 2: Russell Wilson's account of him trying to negotiate with the
Speaker 2: scammers in real time about how to get the money back,
Speaker 2: and he described it as literally the worst week of
Speaker 2: my life. That's a quote that came from these documents.
Speaker 2: And what we discovered was that in a nightly reconciliation process, Wilson,
Speaker 2: who is very involved in the company, discovered that the
Speaker 2: reconciliation was out by millions of dollars and ultimately learned
Speaker 2: that this glitch existed in the platform and that it
Speaker 2: had been abused basically, and forty dollars had been taken.
Speaker 2: So what he then embarked on was this intense back
Speaker 2: and forth with James Parker, James Parker's financial advisor, who
Speaker 2: has now been jailed over this scheme. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's an incredible tale. He I think his first and
Speaker 2: last conversation with James Parker was while James Parker was
Speaker 2: being wheeled through an airport on a wheelchair from the
Speaker 2: UK trying to go to Jubai, you know. So he
Speaker 2: really thought at that point like, I'm going to lose
Speaker 2: this company and I'm going to lose all of this money,
Speaker 2: is what he told the court. Ultimately, the money has
Speaker 2: been returned largely and UK authorities have through proceeds of Crime,
Speaker 2: got all of the cash most of the cash back
Speaker 2: is what I understand. But it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: What do you think about bitcoin having absorbed this whole episode.
Speaker 2: I guess it's you know, again, like you, I do
Speaker 2: not dabble him in bitcoin or cryptocurrency by any stretch.
Speaker 2: I think maybe Liam does, but I, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: we should ask.
Speaker 1: Him it's be getting paid too much.
Speaker 2: I think that those concerns, you know, that's what the
Speaker 2: concern was ten or five years ago, right, and I
Speaker 2: think that's what the concern remains as far as I
Speaker 2: can tell. I should say that in response to our questions,
Speaker 2: you know, Wilson said they're really focusing on the security
Speaker 2: of the platform and that they insist you know nothing
Speaker 2: like this is going to happen to the platform again,
Speaker 2: and that they work with regulators and authorities.
Speaker 1: Now coming up, why did Russell Wilson's team threaten to
Speaker 1: call the cops on the Australian. So tell me about
Speaker 1: your and Liamb's adventures kind of tracking him down. What
Speaker 1: did you do and how did you find him and
Speaker 1: what did he say when you eventually did.
Speaker 2: Russell lives in Berwick, which is about an hour drive
Speaker 2: sort of southeast of Melbourne. When you're there, you feel
Speaker 2: like you're in the country. It really doesn't feel like
Speaker 2: you're close to any kind of city. He really didn't
Speaker 2: want to talk to us. We tried the old fashioned
Speaker 2: sort of approach of knocking on his door, except you
Speaker 2: can't really get to his door because it's got like
Speaker 2: huge gates. There's a security sort of guard always stationed
Speaker 2: like outside of the house, but in the sort of
Speaker 2: perum at us. So, I mean, look, we're doing our jobs, right,
Speaker 2: We've obtained all of this information. It's really our job
Speaker 2: to be able to put this to Russell and to
Speaker 2: ask him what he wants to say and if you
Speaker 2: can tell us anything else. But ultimately he wouldn't, and
Speaker 2: we tried walking up to the gate a number of times.
Speaker 2: We parked our car outside and were approached by security
Speaker 2: guards a number of times, you know, Liam in particular,
Speaker 2: told to leave, told that the police have been called.
Speaker 1: We just want to put you on the rich list man.
Speaker 2: It was pretty extreme. We did get some pictures of
Speaker 2: Russell walking out of his Fried Chicken shop, which he
Speaker 2: also owns in Mary.
Speaker 1: This is the hilarious thing about it too. He looks
Speaker 1: very sort of furtive, and it doesn't look good. It
Speaker 1: would have been better to stand still, have a lovely
Speaker 1: photo taken. We could have organized some hair and makeup
Speaker 1: for him. You know, it made him look good, put
Speaker 1: him on the cover.
Speaker 2: Hopefully he will talk to us one day in the future.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if he's listening, but I really
Speaker 2: still want to talk to you if you are.
Speaker 1: I always find it intriguing that Johnston results time is
Speaker 1: spent persuading some of the billionaires to talk to him,
Speaker 1: and then dealing with the others who are very keen
Speaker 1: to talk. He's had some hilarious covers of that magazine
Speaker 1: where people are posing up in dressing gowns that he
Speaker 1: had a bunch of billionaires in a pool recently. What
Speaker 1: does it tell us about wealth and about Australian's desire
Speaker 1: to be seen to be rich.
Speaker 2: You know, we live in a social media world. We
Speaker 2: live online, our lives are played out online normally. In
Speaker 2: this case it's the opposite. Coinspot really doesn't have much
Speaker 2: of a presence online. Russell definitely does not. Their entire
Speaker 2: sort of company and the people behind it are just anonymous.
Speaker 2: And I think it's very unusual to find somebody who
Speaker 2: has this much influence and power and money who doesn't
Speaker 2: want to be seen to be using it perhaps or
Speaker 2: to be partially known for it.
Speaker 1: Angelicus noden Is Business reported with The Australian. Thanks a
Speaker 1: thank you, Claire. You can read Ange's story right now
Speaker 1: at The Australian dot com dot au and the list
Speaker 1: Australia's Riches two fifty will be published on Friday