Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see a side of life. The average person has
Speaker 1: never exposed her I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of I Catch Killers. Today we
Speaker 1: have a deeply personal episode from a person who found
Speaker 1: herself the victim of a fraudser who betrayed her trust
Speaker 1: in the most heartless way. Now, throughout my policing career,
Speaker 1: I locked up all types of criminals, horrendous crimes, but
Speaker 1: the one type of offender who always got under my
Speaker 1: skin were fraudsters. I just find them despicable human beings
Speaker 1: who deliberately prey on honest, hard working people. The financial
Speaker 1: impact they have on the victims can be devastating, but
Speaker 1: more importantly, the loss of faith in human nature can
Speaker 1: have a deep impact. Today's guest, Tracy Hall, had a
Speaker 1: life destroyed by the actions of one man. As she
Speaker 1: described in a book, The Last Victim, I felt financially betrayed,
Speaker 1: emotionally destroyed, and stripped bare of everything I thought was real.
Speaker 1: But Tracy is not going to let a low life
Speaker 1: like Hamish McLaren define her life. She has spoken out
Speaker 1: about how this man came into a life, stole a heart,
Speaker 1: trust and money. Tracy's an impressive person, hard working, successful
Speaker 1: woman whose only mistake was putting her trust in a
Speaker 1: man who made his living deceiving people. Her story and
Speaker 1: other victim stories were covered in a hugely successful podcast
Speaker 1: series called Who the Hell Is Hamish Today. She's bravely
Speaker 1: agreed to come on the Eye Catch Killers podcast and
Speaker 1: share her story in the hope that others can learn
Speaker 1: from what she discovered on just how we all need
Speaker 1: to be careful with the trust we put in other people,
Speaker 1: even those we love. Tracy Hall, welcome to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Hey, Gary, how are you good?
Speaker 1: Good? Look? Thank you so much for coming on the
Speaker 1: podcast to tell your story. I think it's we're all.
Speaker 1: I think we go through life and we all meet
Speaker 1: people that their intent is probably not what they first portray,
Speaker 1: and we've all been victims of scams and frauds. So
Speaker 1: I think people are going to really buy into your
Speaker 1: story because I've read your book over the weekend, The
Speaker 1: Last Victim, and I've got to say, I can see
Speaker 1: how you would be deceived when someone's so highly motivated
Speaker 1: to this is the endgame. I'll do what they have
Speaker 1: to do. It can really bring you unstuck. I've got
Speaker 1: to ask, but what motivates you to talk out about it?
Speaker 1: Because a lot of people that are victims of scams
Speaker 1: and that there's an embarrassment attached to it, they just
Speaker 1: want to let it pass by.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: It took me a long time to talk about it,
Speaker 3: to be honest, I was so ashamed, I was so embarrassed.
Speaker 3: I was really trying to put the pieces together in
Speaker 3: my own mind about what had happened. And what I
Speaker 3: realized was that I had never really heard a story
Speaker 3: like this before. And it wasn't until I started talking
Speaker 3: about it that people came to me and said, Oh,
Speaker 3: that happened to my parents, or that happened to my auntie,
Speaker 3: that happened to me, And I thought, you know what,
Speaker 3: these stories need to be told to educate people, to
Speaker 3: warn other people, and also to release people of the
Speaker 3: shame and embarrassment similar to what I felt, because it
Speaker 3: does happen more often than you think, and it can
Speaker 3: happen to anyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you talk the shame and embarrassment, it's funny,
Speaker 1: isn't it, Because we all like to think we're not
Speaker 1: nai even no one can pull the wool over our eyes.
Speaker 1: But it happens time and again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it happens to you know, incredibly intelligent, well traveled,
Speaker 3: educated people, like.
Speaker 2: It really can happen to anyone.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, sometimes the stories that you
Speaker 3: hear on the news, you have this picture of who
Speaker 3: might be someone that gets scammed, and quite often it's
Speaker 3: sort of a lonely middle aged woman sitting in a
Speaker 3: lounge room looking for love on the internet and suddenly
Speaker 3: she gives her life savings to an African prince. And
Speaker 3: you know, those stories don't help because most of us
Speaker 3: brush past them and say, well, that would never be me.
Speaker 3: I would never fall for that, And to be honest,
Speaker 3: I was one of those people. And yet here I
Speaker 3: am I lost my life savings to someone who pretended
Speaker 3: to love me.
Speaker 1: Well, that's where what happened to you is a double
Speaker 1: edged sword, isn't it, Because it not only stole your
Speaker 1: finances but your emotions. And I would imagine that hurts,
Speaker 1: if not more, at least just as much as losing
Speaker 1: the finances when you put your love and trust in
Speaker 1: the someone.
Speaker 3: I think that's a common theme is that you know,
Speaker 3: finance is a one thing. You can always make money.
Speaker 3: If you're motivated, if you've got the right mindset, you
Speaker 3: can make money. It's the emotional betrayal and the emotional
Speaker 3: rebuilding that is the hardest. In building that trust in
Speaker 3: yourself probably first and foremost, but also the world around
Speaker 3: you because you for me, for example, i'd never come
Speaker 3: across anything like Hamish. You never been exposed to someone
Speaker 3: who was so callously deceiving me, intentionally for their own
Speaker 3: financial gain, and so everything you think about the world
Speaker 3: comes unstuck.
Speaker 1: It makes sense. I often think about how people become
Speaker 1: victims of what happened to you, or other scams, or
Speaker 1: where people have been just playing simple taken advantage. I've
Speaker 1: been a cop for a long time, so I'm not
Speaker 1: naive in what people are capable of. But I still
Speaker 1: like to see the good in human nature. And I
Speaker 1: can't believe someone would be so motivated to rip people off,
Speaker 1: basically take things from them. And I think that's where
Speaker 1: we come unstuck. Because if you are and we've got
Speaker 1: to go through life, you don't want to suspect everyone.
Speaker 1: We want to go through life putting a degree of
Speaker 1: trust because most people are good, genuinely good. But that's
Speaker 1: the aspect that they pray on because they don't think
Speaker 1: anyone would be aware of how deceptive they can be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you don't suspect somebody, you're not looking
Speaker 3: for those red flags, you know. You you know, I
Speaker 3: think we all go through life trusting people. You know,
Speaker 3: I talk a lot about there are these invisible contracts
Speaker 3: of trust that exist within our society that makes the
Speaker 3: world work.
Speaker 2: You know, you go to.
Speaker 3: The doctor, you don't ask to see their medical degree.
Speaker 3: You trust that they are going to prescribe the right
Speaker 3: medication for you because of their qualifications. You drive down
Speaker 3: the road and you trust the person coming in the
Speaker 3: other direction knows the road rules, has their license, hasn't
Speaker 3: been drinking.
Speaker 2: You get on an.
Speaker 3: Aeroplane, you don't swing left with your portable breathalyzer, and
Speaker 3: you know, ask the pilots to do a quick test
Speaker 3: because you trust that they are abiding by the rules
Speaker 3: and regulations that we have in our society to make
Speaker 3: it work. And then so we have these kind of
Speaker 3: like you know, these these these moments where people prey
Speaker 3: on that trust when you're not suspecting it. Because most
Speaker 3: of the time we do go throughout life thinking the
Speaker 3: best of people, and most times people have your best
Speaker 3: interest at harsh it's just the ones that don't that,
Speaker 3: like you said, do pray on that spot in you
Speaker 3: that doesn't suspect.
Speaker 1: And we've got to try and find that balance between
Speaker 1: a little bit a little bit of suspicion attached, not
Speaker 1: too naive, but also be able to go through life
Speaker 1: trusting people. And you want to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: You talked about red flags, and I know this in
Speaker 1: your book you refer to them at the time. They're
Speaker 1: just flags with the benefit of hindsight, and let me
Speaker 1: tell you, we're all very wise with the benefit of hindsight. Oh,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have done that, but you don't know unless
Speaker 1: you're in that situation. And I think with your situation too,
Speaker 1: it was you weren't looking out for a person that
Speaker 1: wasn't part of your life. You let this person into
Speaker 1: your life, and he manipulated that situation, so he was
Speaker 1: part of your life. So the very person that you
Speaker 1: put your most trust in is the one that's deceiving you.
Speaker 1: It's just it's so cruel and.
Speaker 3: Just I mean, from my experience in this particular experience,
Speaker 3: the level that was gone, to the level of detail
Speaker 3: that was gone to create a fake PERSONA knowing that
Speaker 3: if he was this person, I would fall more deeply
Speaker 3: in love with him and trust him more was even
Speaker 3: more callous in a lot of ways because he created
Speaker 3: different people, like a different persona for different people. So
Speaker 3: he just found out what it was exactly that would,
Speaker 3: you know, get me to trust him and love him,
Speaker 3: and he just double down on that.
Speaker 1: It's creepy. That's probably not a very appropriate word, but
Speaker 1: it's creepy that someone can go to cruel to the
Speaker 1: extent the way I want to tell your story and
Speaker 1: if you're you're happy with it, I'd like people just
Speaker 1: to hear it in a chronological flow. So we'll talk
Speaker 1: about obviously how it all ended, but let's talk about
Speaker 1: you as a person growing up. Let's get a sense
Speaker 1: of who you were.
Speaker 2: Wow, we're going way back.
Speaker 3: I had a pretty average upbringing, i'd say, very you know,
Speaker 3: working middle class. I have two brothers, one of the
Speaker 3: side of me. So I grew up playing a lot
Speaker 3: of sport. If I couldn't catch a footy, I was
Speaker 3: out of the family pretty much. So lots and lots
Speaker 3: of sports. Very kind of wholesome upbringing Northern New South
Speaker 3: Wales and Southeast Queensland. And you know, my parents both
Speaker 3: worked really hard.
Speaker 2: We had a.
Speaker 3: Great education, and I've traveled a lot. So I did
Speaker 3: the obligatory a couple of years overseas. Yeah, straight after,
Speaker 3: you know, I got the backpack and went to London,
Speaker 3: did that and came back and went to university in
Speaker 3: all the New South Wales, studying sports science.
Speaker 2: I mean, just study something you love.
Speaker 1: I reckon.
Speaker 3: So that's what I did, and I ended up in
Speaker 3: sports marketing and traveled down to Sydney in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: eight straight after UNI and got a job at the
Speaker 3: Olympics Stadium, which was a dream, you know, working on
Speaker 3: that as they were building.
Speaker 1: It build up for the two thousand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and building the stadium and getting it all organized
Speaker 3: and the membership base and the marketing and the website
Speaker 3: and all of that back in the late nineties was
Speaker 3: pretty cool. And then all of the events that led
Speaker 3: into the Olympics to test the stadium, so I saw
Speaker 3: some of the biggest sporting events in the world, like
Speaker 3: it was incredible, and then of course the Olympics. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it had sort of set my career up that way,
Speaker 3: and moved on through to finance, worked for a hedge
Speaker 3: fund where it's in Telco, and more recently worked in
Speaker 3: global tech companies so eBay and go Daddy after pay Block.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, So for all intents and purposes, life was pretty
Speaker 1: interesting and a good childhood. Grew up and I think
Speaker 1: things were going well for you. And the excitement of
Speaker 1: the Sydney Olympics. Yeah, I obviously live in Sydney and
Speaker 1: I worked at the Sydney Olympics and that was it
Speaker 1: was just a great time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was an amazing to.
Speaker 1: Being involved in involved in that and the lead up
Speaker 1: to it. Then I can see why you're so excited.
Speaker 1: You talk about working marketing and different things you did.
Speaker 1: I've got to ask because you've made reference to it
Speaker 1: in the book and I'm going off topic here, but
Speaker 1: I'm just curious. The virtual shopping. Oh yeah, talk us
Speaker 1: through that. What was that about?
Speaker 2: Well, so it was when.
Speaker 1: And I'm saying this was someone that still gets nervous
Speaker 1: doing online shopping on their pon.
Speaker 2: So I just I was just it's all right, you're
Speaker 2: all good.
Speaker 3: Well, it was when the virtual reality the headsets were
Speaker 3: coming out. What we've seen at eBay was a really
Speaker 3: huge spike in people buying the headsets, and mostly for gaming,
Speaker 3: to be honest. But what it was bringing about was
Speaker 3: some technology that sort of started to open up a
Speaker 3: virtual world.
Speaker 2: And what we did was.
Speaker 3: We created a virtual reality department store where you could
Speaker 3: shop with your eyes. So you put the headset on
Speaker 3: and you literally just use your eyes attract your eyeball,
Speaker 3: and if you held your eye on something for long enough,
Speaker 3: it would pull up that item and then you could
Speaker 3: adjust the sizing, the color, whatever it might be, and
Speaker 3: then you could add it to kart and then you
Speaker 3: could check out with your eyes.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So it was a very immersive experience. There was obviously sound,
Speaker 3: there was some of those dizzy things that went on.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I get a bit dizzy when I
Speaker 3: do it. But yeah, it was a world first and
Speaker 3: we created it. You know, the code was written from scratch.
Speaker 3: It was something that had never been done before. And
Speaker 3: I ended up taking over to the US, to the
Speaker 3: EBA team over in the US and showcasing it over
Speaker 3: there in a big conference.
Speaker 2: So it was it was an incredible project to work on.
Speaker 1: Yeah I can imagine, Yeah I can find it. Did
Speaker 1: it take off? Did it well?
Speaker 3: The challenge is is not everyone have has the headsets,
Speaker 3: so in terms of the being able to access it,
Speaker 3: and then of course we worked with a huge department
Speaker 3: store in Australia and so you need, you know, you
Speaker 3: need these brands to be working with you. One of
Speaker 3: the challenges was the items needed to be rendered in
Speaker 3: terms of having that three sixty degree looks, so it
Speaker 3: wasn't just a picture flat on a page. It was
Speaker 3: a completely three dimensional rended So every product needed to
Speaker 3: be three sixty rented like that.
Speaker 2: Now that's a pretty expensive and long.
Speaker 3: Process to go through for a very small portion of
Speaker 3: people that would actually end up doing it. It was
Speaker 3: really more of a pr opportunity to show what's possible
Speaker 3: in the future and that a company like eBay, who
Speaker 3: was one of the very first e com sites, actually
Speaker 3: was progressive in their thinking about what the future of shopping.
Speaker 2: Might look like.
Speaker 3: I think another challenge is shopping, you know, for a
Speaker 3: lot of people as a very social event, So to
Speaker 3: do that in your lounde room on your own privately
Speaker 3: can be quite a lonely experienced.
Speaker 1: Taking the experience a wife.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was sort of you know, how do
Speaker 3: you circumnavigate that with technology and how do you create that?
Speaker 3: But you know, certainly it's definitely something that could be
Speaker 3: possible in the future.
Speaker 2: It's just it's a long journey.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I'm very curious about it. But I think
Speaker 1: it also gives a sense of who you are, Like
Speaker 1: we haven't you know, the person that's fallen in love
Speaker 1: with the Nigerian prince that just needs one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: so he can get his two hundred million dollars. You're
Speaker 1: not that person. You've grown up healthy family, active family,
Speaker 1: social life, traveled overseas, working in businesses, cutting edge, Sydney Olympics.
Speaker 1: You're a worldly person, not a native person. Is that
Speaker 1: a fair way to describe Tracy at that stage?
Speaker 3: That's definitely how I would see myself and incredibly lucky
Speaker 3: to have all of these experiences and see and do
Speaker 3: what I've done in my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you weren't walking around with blinkers just waiting for
Speaker 1: someone to show you attention. Then you just fall immediately.
Speaker 2: No, No, and I think it's fair to say that.
Speaker 3: You know, at the time when I met Hamish, I
Speaker 3: was a year out of my marriage and I was
Speaker 3: going through the divorce and the separation, and you know,
Speaker 3: a year post that, I felt like I was ready.
Speaker 3: I definitely wasn't looking for someone to sweep me off
Speaker 3: my feet or I definitely wasn't looking for another husband,
Speaker 3: no thanks. And you know, I was in my early forties,
Speaker 3: so having more children was probably off the cards as well.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't like I was desperately looking for those things.
Speaker 3: I was just looking for somebody to share my time with,
Speaker 3: somebody who had similar values and morals to me, some companionship,
Speaker 3: and yeah, just to kind of restart that side of
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 1: So how long were you married for.
Speaker 3: I think we were married for eight years, but together
Speaker 3: for like thirteen or something like that.
Speaker 1: And then you had a daughter to that marriage.
Speaker 2: Yes, I had a daughter, so she was born in
Speaker 2: twenty ten.
Speaker 1: And then when you've separated, going through all the emotional
Speaker 1: dramas of financial separation, everything that happens a divorce, so
Speaker 1: that that can be brutal. And you said twelve months
Speaker 1: it takes you to recover. That's I suppose that's about
Speaker 1: an average average all the time. And then you've got
Speaker 1: your life life in order, You've got a place that
Speaker 1: you're living in, you're living with your daughter. Everything's going fine,
Speaker 1: but you've decided that okay, it's time to get back
Speaker 1: into the world of living a life. You tried online dating.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I think the thing was when I met
Speaker 3: my ex husband, you know, online dating wasn't a thing.
Speaker 3: You know, I met him through friends and that's how
Speaker 3: you built a relationship. And the old days, the good
Speaker 3: old days, and so I was re entering a world,
Speaker 3: you know where this was very new to me. And
Speaker 3: at that time, I was, you know, I was working
Speaker 3: a huge job at eBay, I was working long hours
Speaker 3: building virtual reality department stores. I was, you know, almost
Speaker 3: solo parenting. I have my child most of the time,
Speaker 3: still working through the divorce. You know, these things take.
Speaker 2: A long time.
Speaker 3: So you know, I wasn't I wasn't going out really
Speaker 3: at all, you know, and I was pretty pretty aware
Speaker 3: that some awesome guy wasn't going to drop through my
Speaker 3: ceiling while I was watching maths on a Monday night.
Speaker 2: You know, I had to do something.
Speaker 3: And you know, at that stage of your life, your
Speaker 3: friends are all coupled up, and you know, it's it's
Speaker 3: hard to meet people.
Speaker 2: So what do you do? You know?
Speaker 3: So, yeah, so I started, I you know, plunged headfirst
Speaker 3: into the Sydney dating pool via dating apps.
Speaker 1: I'm smirking here because I found it funny in your
Speaker 1: book that your friends were living vicariously for you with
Speaker 1: your successes and disasters on the online dating Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a brave new world. I have
Speaker 1: no understanding about it. I can relate to watching masks
Speaker 1: because when my relationships have been in bad times, I
Speaker 1: watch that because that makes me feel better.
Speaker 2: It's pretty you look at all the time, you look
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: The dysfunction there and go, I'm not that bad. So
Speaker 1: I understand that. So I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: get the sense of who you were at the time
Speaker 1: that Okay, you've been through you've had your ups, you've
Speaker 1: had your downs, your successful career, but you're getting back
Speaker 1: into a social life and starting to live life again
Speaker 1: after your marriage separation. What was it about Max, let's
Speaker 1: refer to him as Max. What was it about Max
Speaker 1: that talk us through the first contact, how it happened,
Speaker 1: and just talk us through how the relationship developed.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, it was pretty slim pickings back
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen, if I'm honestly from what I hear,
Speaker 3: it's still slim pickings now. But you know there was
Speaker 3: I swiped right on him because his photos look like
Speaker 3: he just looked normal, you know, and he had you know,
Speaker 3: megawatts smiley atal geographic blue eyes, and you know, he
Speaker 3: in these photos he was doing things that it seemed,
Speaker 3: you know, that he liked doing. He was running, he
Speaker 3: was surfing, he was you know, just sort of have.
Speaker 1: A fighter with his shirt off, which is.
Speaker 3: No And there were no sedated tigers in Thailand. There
Speaker 3: was none of that action going on. And and he
Speaker 3: wasn't wearing a bond Dutch hat, so you know, things
Speaker 3: were looking okay, so swipes right.
Speaker 2: He just looked normal, I guess.
Speaker 3: And it was funny because he'd reached out to me,
Speaker 3: and I didn't get back to him for like three
Speaker 3: weeks or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I was distracted and busy and working and whatever I
Speaker 3: was doing. So our very first contact with him having
Speaker 3: a bit of a jab at me saying, oh, he
Speaker 3: finally decided to have a chat to me, And I
Speaker 3: think that's what started in terms of our connection, was
Speaker 3: there was this like that was this really good banter.
Speaker 3: It was great conversation on the chat, and obviously then
Speaker 3: we moved on to a phone a phone call, and
Speaker 3: then we agreed to meet for dinner. But this all
Speaker 3: took quite a long time because I was in a
Speaker 3: situation I was working a lot, and I was looking
Speaker 3: after my child most of the time, so I didn't
Speaker 3: really you know, and I think I say it in
Speaker 3: the book. You know, you have actually at that stage
Speaker 3: of your life little time for actual dates and even
Speaker 3: less time for dickheads. So you don't want to be
Speaker 3: spending your time with someone that is not you know,
Speaker 3: is not kind of connecting you with you in some way. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: we have this connection, and he had what seemed to
Speaker 3: be a very similar sort of oussy upbringing around the
Speaker 3: same time, you know, in the seventies and eighties, so
Speaker 3: we had a lot.
Speaker 2: Of common reference points.
Speaker 3: You know, his banter was great, there was great chat,
Speaker 3: lots of laughs, very ausy bit of Alarican.
Speaker 2: So it's just easy.
Speaker 1: Period of how long Tracy this is?
Speaker 2: Well, I think we connected.
Speaker 3: I don't think we met after we connected on the app,
Speaker 3: so probably about a month, maybe something like that, maybe
Speaker 3: even longer. I can't remember now, but I remember it
Speaker 3: been quite a long time. So there was a lot
Speaker 3: of time to go back and forth and have these conversations,
Speaker 3: and then of course, you know talk talk on the phone.
Speaker 1: Okay, can I just make the point here because I
Speaker 1: just I want people to sort of really live what
Speaker 1: you were going through there. That would give you some
Speaker 1: comfort too, wouldn't it. It's not the type of person
Speaker 1: why didn't you respond? And then sends you a hundred
Speaker 1: texts and you haven't responded in five minutes and where
Speaker 1: have you been? Type? So even that sets up a
Speaker 1: base of normality of confidence well, this person's not a
Speaker 1: try hard. He's taking his time and it's just moving
Speaker 1: at a reasonable pace. Is that fear to describe? How?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it felt.
Speaker 3: It felt really comfortable, and it didn't feel pushy like
Speaker 3: you said. It just felt really normal. He seemed to understand,
Speaker 3: you know, the situation I was in my corporate life,
Speaker 3: the life I had with my daughter, and he wasn't
Speaker 3: sort of pushing into that. It was like, you know,
Speaker 3: whenever you've got time, or do you have time, and
Speaker 3: we'll catch up for a meal. And that's sort of
Speaker 3: how it progressed. And it was like, okay, well in
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks time, I've got this night. So
Speaker 3: and that's what we agreed to. We agreed to meet.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the exchange via the text messaging, then a
Speaker 1: conversation and then a meal. Describe us on the I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm primed. Tell us about your first date.
Speaker 3: This was actually this is what I did have to
Speaker 3: go through with the with the police.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a placeman in me because I'm thinking, okay, well, okay,
Speaker 1: tell us what happened on the first Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 3: So the first date, he came and he can pick
Speaker 3: me up in the city. He booked a restaurant. He'd
Speaker 3: planned the whole thing, which was great. It was like
Speaker 3: one lessing I had to sort of worry about. And
Speaker 3: I after work that day, I went for a drink
Speaker 3: with a work colleague and we were just down in
Speaker 3: the city where he's.
Speaker 2: Going to pick me up and having a drink.
Speaker 3: And he arrived early and we just ordered a drink
Speaker 3: and I said, hey, we've just ordered a drink. Why
Speaker 3: don't you come in. You can meet my friend from
Speaker 3: work and then we'll go.
Speaker 2: And he was sort of like, oh.
Speaker 3: First of all, it was like there's you know, there's
Speaker 3: no parking here that it's a no parking zone. Don't
Speaker 3: worry about it. I'll just you know, I'll wait a
Speaker 3: few minutes. And I'm thinking, well, I've just literally I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm just going to have to skull this and and
Speaker 3: I said, no, what, you just come in.
Speaker 2: There's a park up around the corner.
Speaker 3: I told him where he could park, and he kind
Speaker 3: of got a little bit shirty. But it's always hard
Speaker 3: to tell with text and when you've not met anybody, impossible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was like, look.
Speaker 3: If you just want to meet me at the restaurant.
Speaker 3: I'll just meet you at the restaurant, or we can
Speaker 3: do this another time, and knowing that it had taken
Speaker 3: so long to organize this one night because of my schedule,
Speaker 3: it was kind of like, oh, that's a bit, that's
Speaker 3: a bit you know, bit brash or a bit you know.
Speaker 2: I just it just felt a bit spicy.
Speaker 3: And anyway, I said, no, no, no, well I'll finish
Speaker 3: up and I'll come out. And it was all about
Speaker 3: the fact he couldn't park and it was no parking
Speaker 3: zone and all of this. Anyway, we go up to
Speaker 3: the restaurant, which was in Pot's Point, and so I
Speaker 3: got in the car and it was the first time
Speaker 3: I met him, and he was sitting down and I
Speaker 3: remember having a little bit of like a sinking feeling
Speaker 3: my tummy because he just wasn't kind of like what
Speaker 3: he was in the photos. I mean, nobody is. And
Speaker 3: then I thought, well, maybe I'm not what I look
Speaker 3: like in my photos either, but I didn't. I remember
Speaker 3: looking over in the in the car and thinking, oh,
Speaker 3: it's not that he's not all that.
Speaker 1: I always thought with those dating apps, you'd be better off,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you. Underplaying what you look like and then you
Speaker 1: look better than your picture. That would have to Yes,
Speaker 1: just a theory. But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe the people don't get as many I don't know
Speaker 3: what you call them, hits or like matches or whatever.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're breaking that down. You've gone for a
Speaker 1: drink with a girlfriend beforehand.
Speaker 2: It was a guy from work.
Speaker 1: Heah, it can't come in, and the reluctance. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think if I was in his spot, I could
Speaker 1: make a good impression on the friend or whatever, come
Speaker 1: in and talk. So there was a reluctance for him
Speaker 1: to come in there.
Speaker 3: There was a reluctance for him to do that. It
Speaker 3: was all based on the fact he couldn't park, or
Speaker 3: he'd been a no parking zone. Anyway, I got in
Speaker 3: the car and I was like, oh, he's not all that.
Speaker 3: And then we went up to the restaurant in Pot's
Speaker 3: Point and we couldn't find a park and ironically, he
Speaker 3: parked in a no parking zone. This doesn't matter, I'll
Speaker 3: just pay the fine. And I was like, but you're
Speaker 3: just really spicy about not parking. This is what was
Speaker 3: going on in my head, and I was just like oh,
Speaker 3: but you know, by that stage we'd had a few
Speaker 3: laughs and it felt really comfortable, and I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: up to you. You know, it's your car, your license
Speaker 3: or whatever. We went for dinner and it was really nice.
Speaker 3: It was pretty casual, it was nothing fancy. It was
Speaker 3: just this beautiful Asian restaurant and had great conversation. I
Speaker 3: can't remember if he drank. He didn't drink a lot
Speaker 3: at all the whole relationship. And I think I had
Speaker 3: a glass of wine and we ordered and had some
Speaker 3: food and we had a laugh and it was a
Speaker 3: very pretty quick dinner. Actually, I was really tired. I've
Speaker 3: been working really long hours.
Speaker 2: And I think I yawned when he was that's not
Speaker 2: that's Tracy.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: I think he was manologuing about something and I and I.
Speaker 2: Said, I'm sorry, I'm so tiny. He said it's fine,
Speaker 2: we'll get you home.
Speaker 3: And there was no kind of like, oh god, you know,
Speaker 3: why are you so tired? It's only nine o'clock. He
Speaker 3: was he was very caring and said that's fine, we'll
Speaker 3: get you home. And he said I'll put you in
Speaker 3: a cab. So we went, you know, we left the restaurant,
Speaker 3: didn't get a parking ticket, and that was our night.
Speaker 3: He put me in a cab and that was that.
Speaker 1: And what was your impressions after that? For the first
Speaker 1: first catch up.
Speaker 3: I thought it was a really nice meal. You know,
Speaker 3: we'd had great conversation, we'd connected, we found out a
Speaker 3: little bit more about each other. He was really interested
Speaker 3: in the work I was doing at the time, the
Speaker 3: virtual reality depart and store. He asked a lot of questions.
Speaker 3: He was a great listener. There was banter, you know,
Speaker 3: it was it wasn't all serious. There was some laughs,
Speaker 3: and it felt really easy and comfortable and he had
Speaker 3: great chat and that was that.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you left. That would be nice to catch
Speaker 1: up with him again. Yeah, And who initiated that or
Speaker 1: was the mutual so that let's do this again?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was probably in a text afterwards and it
Speaker 3: was probably something along the lines. So, you know, that
Speaker 3: was a really great dinner.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Yep, love to do it again if you're up for it. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm up for that, you know. So it was it
Speaker 3: was very casual, like there was nothing sort of formal
Speaker 3: or stilted. It just felt like it flowed really.
Speaker 1: Nicely, Okay, And how did the relationship progress past that point?
Speaker 1: It became more regular.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it was kind of the time I had
Speaker 3: available were every second weekend and then the odd the
Speaker 3: odd night during the week, you know, every couple of
Speaker 3: weeks or whatever. So we just planned it around my schedule.
Speaker 3: There was never any pressure for me to get babysitters
Speaker 3: or anything like that. It was very much in my hands.
Speaker 3: So we just planted around what my availability was, which
Speaker 3: you know, in retrospect probably suited him quite nicely because
Speaker 3: he was off doing a whole bunch of other things.
Speaker 3: But yeah, just whenever I was available, he would he
Speaker 3: would be available, and we'd go for meals, either in
Speaker 3: the city or somewhere close to work. And then on
Speaker 3: the weekends, I think the first sort of weekend experience
Speaker 3: we had together, he picked me up and we went
Speaker 3: up to Palm Beach and he took the paddle boards
Speaker 3: and we went paddleboarding on Pittwater and we walked up
Speaker 3: to baron Joey Headland and had a beautiful, beautiful walk
Speaker 3: and then you know, came back down, got some cheese
Speaker 3: and a beer and watched the moon rise over Avalon Headland.
Speaker 3: And you know, and then that was the end of
Speaker 3: the day. He dropped me home and went on back
Speaker 3: to Bontai himself.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the pace you were comfortable with the pace.
Speaker 2: It was a slow burn, right, yeah, very slow burn.
Speaker 1: You wanted to move quicker, but it was just sort
Speaker 1: of or it was the way you were both both were.
Speaker 2: I think it was just the way we both were.
Speaker 3: You know, I was still coming out of my separation
Speaker 3: and divorce, and yeah, I wasn't in a rush. And
Speaker 3: I wasn't in a rush too, you know, like I said,
Speaker 3: I wasn't looking for another husband or to have more
Speaker 3: children or anything like that. So it's just I was
Speaker 3: just really comfortable with the way it was. We had
Speaker 3: a great time. I knew that my circumstances in situation
Speaker 3: didn't allow much more than that. So that was on me,
Speaker 3: which you know, it was what it was. And then
Speaker 3: and then he seemed comfortable with that.
Speaker 1: What did he reveal about himself as this relationship was developing.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean there are a lot of stories, and
Speaker 3: you know, this is over the course of sort of
Speaker 3: six or seven nine months. In the beginning, you know,
Speaker 3: everything from his family situation where he told me his
Speaker 3: parents had passed away in a plane crash, so he
Speaker 3: was sort of left in often quite young and grew
Speaker 3: up in.
Speaker 2: The foster system. So there was a lot of talk
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of talk about sort of, you know,
Speaker 3: his career because you know, of course, we were working
Speaker 3: full time in corporate at this point, so it takes
Speaker 3: such a big portion of your day. So when you
Speaker 3: catch up at the end of the day, that's sort
Speaker 3: of for what happened at work today, What have you
Speaker 3: been doing, what you been working on? And he told
Speaker 3: me he was a chief financial investment officer for a
Speaker 3: family office, so working on a lot of sort of
Speaker 3: al turning investments and hedge funds and things that I
Speaker 3: knew a little bit about, but not a lot. And
Speaker 3: so there was a lot of chit chat about his
Speaker 3: line of work and what he'd done and what he'd
Speaker 3: done in the States. He told me he'd spent sixteen
Speaker 3: years in America and he'd only come home about a
Speaker 3: year beforehand, and he was sort of rebuilding his career here,
Speaker 3: looking for a more simple life and didn't want to
Speaker 3: be on Wall Street and all of this kind of crap.
Speaker 2: Lots of stories, so.
Speaker 1: We've got this, you know, it's a heart string pull
Speaker 1: out of his parents died in the plane crash that
Speaker 1: he happened to survive, raised by foster family. Then worked
Speaker 1: in New York. Was it sixteen years? Was there during
Speaker 1: September eleven? And lost a friend as he's walking to
Speaker 1: the tower to meet the friend. All these things, they're
Speaker 1: not unbelievable, but they're sort of I get the sense
Speaker 1: that he was sort of dripped feeding little bits and
Speaker 1: pieces about him, about himself, creating this persona of the person,
Speaker 1: because I see that there were at times when he
Speaker 1: was unavailable or he was just sort of reclusive, and
Speaker 1: you're thinking, well, he's been through a lot of trauma
Speaker 1: in his life. This is just make excuses. Of course,
Speaker 1: we haven't even We've just called him Max, But at
Speaker 1: this stage you knew him as Max Taveta. Did you
Speaker 1: see any documents with his name on it or anything?
Speaker 3: I picked up mail from his letter box that was
Speaker 3: addressed to Max Tevita.
Speaker 1: Because when I'm looking through the process of this, I'm thinking, well,
Speaker 1: if I was started seeing someone that I liked, I didn't,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be checking their names or going through Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's have a lot.
Speaker 3: It was the last time you asked someone for one
Speaker 3: hundred points by D when you met them.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but after talking.
Speaker 2: To you, maybe we show maybe it should be good.
Speaker 3: It is interesting about the stories, because I think this
Speaker 3: is really important to mention, is that when you recount
Speaker 3: a story, you tell the whole story. What's missed in
Speaker 3: that is that that story came in probably ten, twelve,
Speaker 3: fifteen installments, and it's a little bit each time, and
Speaker 3: so it's not until you look backwards that you go,
Speaker 3: that's the whole story, and oh my gosh, that seems
Speaker 3: so far fetched. But at the time when it's just
Speaker 3: a little piece of information, and then the conversation moves on,
Speaker 3: and then two weeks later there's another piece of conversation
Speaker 3: that relates back to that story. Now he was clever
Speaker 3: because everything matched. But it was not like these stories
Speaker 3: came out in one go, because if they had of
Speaker 3: they would have seen so crazy.
Speaker 1: That's a good point, that's yeah.
Speaker 3: But when when I'm telling these stories, of course I
Speaker 3: tell them in one piece because it's the full story.
Speaker 3: And that's how we that's how we express how how
Speaker 3: ridiculous these things are. That he said, but in reality
Speaker 3: they came in bits and pieces, and this is the
Speaker 3: death by a thousand cuts. This is the course of
Speaker 3: control that occurs, because how did it have been in
Speaker 3: one go?
Speaker 2: You'd go, come on, mate.
Speaker 3: Really, So I think that's important to mention because it
Speaker 3: creeps up on you.
Speaker 1: That's very important to mention, because you're quite right. If
Speaker 1: I put it all there and go, this is what
Speaker 1: he's told you, I'd be going, Tracy, look, yeah, but
Speaker 1: if it's have you got family? My parents passed away?
Speaker 1: That could be the first.
Speaker 3: That was literally the first conversation of it. And then
Speaker 3: you move on to oh, what are we going to
Speaker 3: order for dinner?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry your parents have passed away? And then plane
Speaker 1: crashes All planes scare me because of what's happened. Yah. Yeah, quite,
Speaker 1: that's a valid point, and that's you know, and that's
Speaker 1: how they manipulate, that's how they they do it. He
Speaker 1: can't present with all these things up up front, even
Speaker 1: like over in New York. Well he worked in New
Speaker 1: York for sixteen years. Good chance he was there during
Speaker 1: September eleventh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just had to put the dates together, and yeah,
Speaker 3: it wasn't unusual I mean, that was a big that
Speaker 3: was a big story. But you know, there's this thing,
Speaker 3: you know, you make the life so big that you
Speaker 3: can't not believe it.
Speaker 2: Because the other.
Speaker 3: Thing to mention is the level of detail he went
Speaker 3: to when he did tell a big story. That story
Speaker 3: in particular, when I asked him, it wasn't like I
Speaker 3: was there and the plane hit and I was under
Speaker 3: and I had to run away and that was that's
Speaker 3: the end of the story. He went into detail about
Speaker 3: first and last names of people that work with him
Speaker 3: on Wall Street, what floor they worked on, what department
Speaker 3: of what company they worked for, how he knew them,
Speaker 3: how old they were, their wives' names and last names. Like,
Speaker 3: there was so much detail that he went into when
Speaker 3: telling that story that you can't just go come on.
Speaker 1: But it gives it some credibility, doesn't it if the
Speaker 1: way someone's real relaying a story that.
Speaker 2: Was completely made up.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, maybe he'd told the story before,
Speaker 3: Maybe he'd just made it up on the spot. Maybe
Speaker 3: he was playing a game with himself to see how
Speaker 3: clever he could be, and how like nothing faulted and
Speaker 3: everything lined up. Yeah, strange, it's incredible talent.
Speaker 2: Well in Wondergred, Well, he.
Speaker 1: Had been a fraud ser and living a large portion
Speaker 1: of his life ripping that people off. So yeah, he
Speaker 1: had to have some skills in that era. Did you do,
Speaker 1: because most people these days jump on social media and
Speaker 1: have a look around. Did you were you curious to
Speaker 1: what his profile was on social media?
Speaker 2: One hundred percent.
Speaker 3: I think you should always deep stalk people that you're
Speaker 3: about to meet.
Speaker 1: Call it stalking. We talk against stalking on the shape,
Speaker 1: but I think everyone, yeah.
Speaker 3: I think you should investigate people that you're that you're
Speaker 3: looking to meet, that you've never met before.
Speaker 2: So yes, of course they did.
Speaker 3: He had preempted that and he said, you, I'm not
Speaker 3: on social media.
Speaker 2: I don't agree with it.
Speaker 3: I don't want anyone to know stuff about my life,
Speaker 3: like I want a private life. You know, there was
Speaker 3: an again it was it was a story that went
Speaker 3: with it and an excuse. Now, it's one thing not
Speaker 3: to have a social media profile. At that time, Cath
Speaker 3: didn't have social media profile. It shouldn't even on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3: So I do have friends that don't have a social
Speaker 3: media profile, and that's fine, you know, that's that's everyone's choice.
Speaker 2: What was weird was.
Speaker 3: That there was no digital footprint of Max to picture.
Speaker 3: So yes, I did search, and again I think I
Speaker 3: go into this in the book. It would be after
Speaker 3: we'd met, which was like generally a dinner, probably be
Speaker 3: like ten or eleven at night. I'm lying in bed,
Speaker 3: I just done a big day, and I'm searching up
Speaker 3: things that he may have said, just a double check
Speaker 3: or to research or what have you, and nothing would
Speaker 3: come up. And you know, Max Devita doesn't exist online.
Speaker 3: You know, there is no digital footprint of Max Devita
Speaker 3: because he actually is a fictitious character. But at eleven
Speaker 3: or eleven thirty at night, when I'm exhausted and nothing
Speaker 3: comes up, and I'm scrolling and I do another search,
Speaker 3: and I'm just I end up putting the phone on
Speaker 3: the side bench and going to sleep. And then at
Speaker 3: six am the next day that it all starts again. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you just you get distracted and you're busy, And
Speaker 3: I think this is really interesting thing is that vulnerability
Speaker 3: can come in a lot of ways. And you know,
Speaker 3: I was vulnerable at the time because I was going
Speaker 3: through a divorce. But I was also distracted. I was tired,
Speaker 3: I was bringing up a child, pretty much on my own.
Speaker 3: I was, you know, there was a lot going on,
Speaker 3: and you know, I didn't have hours to just to
Speaker 3: sit there and throw through the internet trying to find
Speaker 3: but yes, I did. You know, I checked out plane
Speaker 3: crashes nineteen seventy five, you know, nineteen seventy eight, plane crashes,
Speaker 3: whatever date.
Speaker 2: He told me.
Speaker 3: Well, and I'd look and I couldn't find anything. And
Speaker 3: then you know, of course again it's eleven thirty at night,
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking I've just got to go to bed,
Speaker 3: and then he moves on.
Speaker 1: And you're balancing all that up, and I understand all
Speaker 1: the chaos of just getting through life with all the
Speaker 1: things that you got going. But okay, you're not getting
Speaker 1: the footprint on social media or digital. But there's a
Speaker 1: real person. There's a person telling you he does exist.
Speaker 1: Because there he's sharing my bed with me. I know
Speaker 1: he's there. It's not or it doesn't appear to be fictional.
Speaker 1: How did the relationship progress? When did it become that
Speaker 1: you call yourself a couple or you're exclusive to each other?
Speaker 1: And how did that evolve?
Speaker 2: I don't know, because I don't know. In your forties,
Speaker 2: like you, my boyfriend, what.
Speaker 1: Do you call someone yet partners.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: He isn't asking me. You're going around with me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you go out with men.
Speaker 3: I mean, from my perspective, it was pretty much from
Speaker 3: the moment I met him, Know, I wasn't seeing anyone else.
Speaker 3: I was spending all my spare time with him that
Speaker 3: I could. I was very much invested in the in
Speaker 3: the relationship. From his point of view, I don't know,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I mean it sort of progressed over time.
Speaker 3: It was a very intimate, emotionally intimate relationship. Physical intimacy
Speaker 3: was sort of like that took a lot longer. He
Speaker 3: was kind of a bit weird in that way.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, I saw in the book you questioned him
Speaker 1: about that and he came up with it's a slow
Speaker 1: slow burn.
Speaker 3: I like, yeah, this way, Yeah, what starts with what
Speaker 3: do you say? What starts through the bang ends in
Speaker 3: a fizzle. I was like, well, that's a big, pretty
Speaker 3: big fizzle in the end. But it was a big fizzle. Yeah, look,
Speaker 3: you know that was just that was just him. But
Speaker 3: I guess the relationship felt incredibly safe because you know,
Speaker 3: the conversations we had were at such a deep level.
Speaker 3: He sort of presented this level of emotional intelligence and
Speaker 3: empathy and compassion. And you know, remember he was a
Speaker 3: phenomenal listener, so he just had to listen to the
Speaker 3: things I was saying and present those back to me.
Speaker 3: And that felt very intimate and close and you know,
Speaker 3: very secure, very safe.
Speaker 1: And it was like you were both exposing yourself emotionally
Speaker 1: exposing yourself, and you felt secure and secure in that.
Speaker 1: And it got to the point where you introduced your
Speaker 1: daughter to him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, after quite a while, I introduced her because I
Speaker 3: was on the phone to him a lot, and she'd
Speaker 3: often overhear.
Speaker 2: A conversation how old she was.
Speaker 3: She would have been five and a half six six,
Speaker 3: something like this, and she just knew as Max on
Speaker 3: the phone, and you know, he was very engaging. So
Speaker 3: he called her, you know, Rascal and you know, hey,
Speaker 3: what's the rascal up to? And you know, he every
Speaker 3: time he'd come and see me or meet with me,
Speaker 3: he'd bring a little packet of like, you know, chocolate
Speaker 3: freckles to leave for her, and you know, just really
Speaker 3: what I thought were thoughtful things at the time. And
Speaker 3: so they would have this conversation on you know, on
Speaker 3: speaker quite a lot but it did take a long
Speaker 3: time for me to introduce him to her because I
Speaker 3: would just see him when I you know, when I
Speaker 3: had spare time when she was with her dad.
Speaker 2: So you know, they go along really well.
Speaker 3: I mean, he he just sort of matched her energy.
Speaker 3: He was very engaging. He's very knock about, kind of
Speaker 3: jovial guys. So you know, there were a lot of
Speaker 3: laughs and a lot of banter again, which you know
Speaker 3: that suited her.
Speaker 1: Very good way to your heart, isn't it if you've
Speaker 1: got a child and a child enjoys spending time with Max.
Speaker 3: It's if someone engages with your child and shows interest
Speaker 3: and it's easy, then that's a tick. We didn't really
Speaker 3: spend weekends together or anything like that. It was always,
Speaker 3: you know, holidays is when they spent the most time together,
Speaker 3: which sort of happened, you know, more towards the end
Speaker 3: of the relationship. My mom came on holidays with us.
Speaker 3: He built a relationship with my mom with my family,
Speaker 3: you know, so there was a bit of closeness there
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: A couple of things where he made excuses last moment
Speaker 1: excuses not to meet with your friends or commit to
Speaker 1: a function and not turn up to a function. You
Speaker 1: look back now and again with all that piece together,
Speaker 1: But at the time, yeah, he was an investment banker
Speaker 1: or the work he was doing, and he was busy
Speaker 1: all the time, and these things happened. So talk us
Speaker 1: through that. Where you'd line up to meet your friend.
Speaker 1: I love your friend. What's her name, Caath? She We've
Speaker 1: got to get her in the police. She spotted him, amlawa.
Speaker 3: She did, she did her bidy sensors were going off
Speaker 3: from the beginning, and you know, cars incredible. I've known
Speaker 3: her for nearly twenty years. And you know, the way
Speaker 3: that Greg Barrup described it in the podcast was it's
Speaker 3: like being in an illusionist show. So when you're sitting
Speaker 3: in the front row and the illusionist is doing all
Speaker 3: the tricks, you don't see any of them because you're
Speaker 3: just you're in the front row. But if you're standing
Speaker 3: side of stage and you're watching these tricks happen, you
Speaker 3: can see everything that's going on. And Kath was standing
Speaker 3: side of stage.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a very good way of describing it. And
Speaker 1: I can understand you would have been seeing Max and
Speaker 1: reporting back to kathgo and this happened that happened, and
Speaker 1: that's strange. That's strange. So yeah, the death of the
Speaker 1: parents in the plane crash, and that he happened to
Speaker 1: survive and woke up unconscious, and all the tragedies and
Speaker 1: all that. She's getting that all in one lump, looking
Speaker 1: further away. But tell us about what because I like
Speaker 1: her attitude, like she was a good friend, like really
Speaker 1: trying to just take a step back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Kath is a really curious person, and she
Speaker 3: always asks a lot of questions. So where some friends
Speaker 3: or you know, some relationships, you're like, oh, how's Max,
Speaker 3: and you go, yeah, good, we're going you know, we're
Speaker 3: going for dinner, or we're going to buy her next
Speaker 3: weekend or whatever. That would be the end of the conversation,
Speaker 3: whereas Kath follows up with questions and constantly curious about
Speaker 3: what's going on. And of course her senses were going
Speaker 3: off as well, so she was trying to get information
Speaker 3: and really trying to understand, and she was listening to
Speaker 3: all of this stuff, and you know, to the point
Speaker 3: where she took me for breakfast one morning. And I
Speaker 3: write about this in the book, and Kath, like I said,
Speaker 3: I've known her for the best part of twenty years.
Speaker 3: I've never seen this woman cry, not once. And she's
Speaker 3: sitting across the breakfast table from me, and she's holding
Speaker 3: my hand, and I'm thinking, oh my goodness, she's going
Speaker 3: to tell me she's got cancer or something bad has happened.
Speaker 2: And I said, what's wrong?
Speaker 3: And she said, I don't know how to say this
Speaker 3: to you, trace, but I just don't think Max is
Speaker 3: who he says he is. I'm really worried about you
Speaker 3: investing your superannuation with him now. She is the only
Speaker 3: person I told I was doing that. Probably she was
Speaker 3: the only one that asked. But also too, we don't
Speaker 3: talk about our money. We don't talk about who we're
Speaker 3: investing with. We don't talk about how much we earn.
Speaker 3: You know, it is a taboo subject in a lot
Speaker 3: of in a lot of ways, it's private. And she
Speaker 3: was asking those questions and getting that information, and she
Speaker 3: was so worried because in the background, she was writing
Speaker 3: to MIT and these you know, these companies that he
Speaker 3: said he'd worked for in America, and she was trying
Speaker 3: to get employee records and trying to see whether he
Speaker 3: was actually a student at that university. And she was
Speaker 3: trying to do her own background. This is where she
Speaker 3: would be great and at place she was building a
Speaker 3: dossier of her own. But yet at this point she
Speaker 3: didn't have anything. She just knew it wasn't quite adding up,
Speaker 3: just didn't feel right, didn't all right. And she's she
Speaker 3: says to me, you know, I'm just really worried. And I,
Speaker 3: you know, and I and I said to her, and
Speaker 3: this is the other thing.
Speaker 2: You know. She hadn't met him. And I said to her, Kat,
Speaker 2: but you haven't met him. You don't know.
Speaker 3: You don't know him like I do. You don't you
Speaker 3: haven't heard the conversations we've had. You he's got my back,
Speaker 3: he's got my best interests at heart. You'll see, You'll
Speaker 3: see when you meet him.
Speaker 1: You're in your love bubble too.
Speaker 3: Of course I have my Rose could classes on, and
Speaker 3: I wanted her to get to know him the way
Speaker 3: that the way that I did. He was very socially awkward,
Speaker 3: so getting him to meet friends, because he had reniqued
Speaker 3: on so many different occasions, was tricky. And I didn't
Speaker 3: have a lot of availability either. So when I was
Speaker 3: available or had a schedule, we wanted to spend time together.
Speaker 2: So that was really that was a difficult thing.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we finally got a time to have dinner
Speaker 3: and had dinner with her and her husband, and you know,
Speaker 3: she just perpet him with questions, and you know, her
Speaker 3: husband walked away. Go no, you know, if you weren't
Speaker 3: so suspect on him, I think he was a really
Speaker 3: great guy. And of course she was building this this
Speaker 3: folder of information about him so that she could have
Speaker 3: handed it to me so that without any doubt I
Speaker 3: would believe what she was saying, because she knew that
Speaker 3: I was so in love with him, and she didn't
Speaker 3: want to ruin our friendship either.
Speaker 2: This is a twenty year friendship. This is not something
Speaker 2: down the toilet.
Speaker 1: If she pushed too hard, that would almost be well,
Speaker 1: you're going to make a choice between him and me,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I would.
Speaker 3: Have defended him, or I would have tipped him off,
Speaker 3: you know. And so she she knew she had to
Speaker 3: play it really carefully. But I'm so you know, I'm
Speaker 3: so grateful for you know, the questions she asked me
Speaker 3: and the fact she had the guts to take me
Speaker 3: for breakfast and say, I'm really worried because a lot
Speaker 3: of people wouldn't do that.
Speaker 2: They'd just sort of wait.
Speaker 1: And see conversation.
Speaker 3: Really, and that's why she was crying like this is
Speaker 3: this is the most stoic woman you've ever met, and
Speaker 3: she's crying so obviously meant something to her, and that
Speaker 3: would have been a really, really hard time for her,
Speaker 3: and she was determined to protect me, and it was
Speaker 3: just I guess, I don't know if luck is the
Speaker 3: right word, but he was arrested before she, you know,
Speaker 3: had a chance to give me that.
Speaker 1: Forwarder get across.
Speaker 2: But she is also the one that sent me the
Speaker 2: video of.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll talk about the arrest. But how long had
Speaker 1: you been seeing Max before she started to become sus.
Speaker 3: I don't know when she first started to become sus,
Speaker 3: but when she took me for breakfast that was I
Speaker 3: think it was early in twenty seventeen, So this stage,
Speaker 3: it's nearly a year after we've been together, and it
Speaker 3: was when the conversations around the money started heating up.
Speaker 3: You know, the self managed super fun happened in early
Speaker 3: two thousand and fifty seventeen, so I think that was
Speaker 3: what prompted her to have that chat with me at
Speaker 3: that time. But I suspect that she was sus on
Speaker 3: him for a very long time, just because of the
Speaker 3: stories I was recounting to her his name. You know,
Speaker 3: she said, that's a you know, that's a that's.
Speaker 1: I like an intuition there that Tavita is an island
Speaker 1: in the Pacific tongue name. Yeah, he's white.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was that was us for her. You know,
Speaker 3: I didn't I didn't know that cultural relevance or that reference,
Speaker 3: so I couldn't relate to that. Again, I probably did
Speaker 3: a quick search one night late on the Internet about it.
Speaker 3: But I would say she was probably suspect fairly early on.
Speaker 2: But it did take.
Speaker 1: Her and her concern as a friend in that early
Speaker 1: stage you have your heart broken, not then when it
Speaker 1: ramped up the hold that now you're investing your finances,
Speaker 1: it's going to be more than your heart and your finances.
Speaker 2: That's what she was most worried about.
Speaker 1: Okay, just about the finances that he used to like
Speaker 1: five cars. Well, tell us it's all up, like what
Speaker 1: your impression you You thought, okay, he's got a bit
Speaker 1: of money, and then he'd flash it, but then he'd pull.
Speaker 3: It back and yeah, and again this is where the
Speaker 3: things come slowly, the death by thousand. So the cars
Speaker 3: appeared over time. It wasn't like, hey, I've got five cars,
Speaker 3: because I go, you're a jerk.
Speaker 2: Like what why?
Speaker 3: And I actually said that to him because by the
Speaker 3: time I'd seen the fourth car that just sort of
Speaker 3: appeared one day, I was like, what single forty year
Speaker 3: old guy who lives in BONDI needs five cars? Like,
Speaker 3: you're just a jerk, Like that's so excessive. And the
Speaker 3: next conversation was, you know what, Tries, I've been thinking
Speaker 3: about what you said about the cars, and you're right,
Speaker 3: I don't need them. I'm going to get rid of
Speaker 3: a couple of them. And then suddenly they all started disappearing.
Speaker 1: So he was just a chameleon that kept changing for whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure if I had been impressed by.
Speaker 1: That, you would have had ten cars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably would have given me a couple I don't
Speaker 3: know and put them in someone else's name. But you know,
Speaker 3: they sort of started disappearing, and you know, there were
Speaker 3: signs of wealth, but there are also signs of not wealth.
Speaker 3: And when I questioned those things, you know, he had
Speaker 3: an answer for everything. Right, So he lived in a
Speaker 3: one bedroom apartment in Bondou was a beautiful apartment, but
Speaker 3: it was small.
Speaker 2: It was it was fairly minimals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, minimalist's say, and yeah he so it asked him
Speaker 3: about things and he'd say, Trace, I've lived that life.
Speaker 3: This is the apartment I had in New York. And
Speaker 3: of course he's got the photos to show me, you know,
Speaker 3: and he tells the stories and overtime told stories about
Speaker 3: this apartment and he lived in that building and where
Speaker 3: it was and the whole thing. And he said, I've
Speaker 3: lived that life, and I came back to Australia to
Speaker 3: live a more simple life. He goes, all I want
Speaker 3: to do is go surfing, do my job and spend
Speaker 3: my time with great people.
Speaker 1: Now, when we apply the drip feed coefficient into that,
Speaker 1: it makes sense, like when you're telling it, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you could see someone he liked these surfing Okay, I've
Speaker 1: just decided to change directions in life. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: you can understand that if you're getting fed in the
Speaker 1: moment about added up.
Speaker 3: It all added up and coupled with his persona and
Speaker 3: his desire to have a simple life and just do
Speaker 3: the things he loved, I could relate to that. You know,
Speaker 3: he's like, what I want to.
Speaker 2: Be doing now?
Speaker 1: How he got you to invest in what he was doing? Again,
Speaker 1: that was done incrementally. Who was done in small small
Speaker 1: parts talk us through that.
Speaker 3: I mean probably as backstory. There were hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 3: of conversations about finances and investing and money in his
Speaker 3: line of work and his career and what he was
Speaker 3: doing at the family office for some of the richest
Speaker 3: families in Australia, and reports and the Bloomberg monitors on,
Speaker 3: you know, in his apartment and you know the office
Speaker 3: and the pictures from the office, and you.
Speaker 1: Know, the whole set up, the whole thing.
Speaker 3: It was like a movie, right, And this started from
Speaker 3: the day that we met, the day that we first connected.
Speaker 3: This story was built over time, over conversations, over text messages,
Speaker 3: over phone calls, over reports and documents, and you know,
Speaker 3: he created this whole movie so that I believed that
Speaker 3: he was who he said he was.
Speaker 1: Even phone calls.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were phone calls with people that I overheard
Speaker 3: and I could hear the person on the other end
Speaker 3: about a trade that he needed to put through. So
Speaker 3: it was someone in his back office that was executing
Speaker 3: the trades for him, Claudia, I need to do this.
Speaker 3: What was the price of gold it close yesterday? What
Speaker 3: is it today? What's it likely to be? Have you
Speaker 3: modeled that? I need to put fifteen on that? And
Speaker 3: do you know I don't know who these people. I
Speaker 3: still don't know who these people are. I don't believe
Speaker 3: they were real trades. But this, you know, I witnessed
Speaker 3: all of this over a long period of time. So
Speaker 3: by the time there was a conversation about my superannuation
Speaker 3: and what I was doing with my super, what fund
Speaker 3: I was investing with, how much I was paying in fees,
Speaker 3: you know, and then his point of view about that,
Speaker 3: everything kind of confirmed that he was a person who
Speaker 3: knew what he was talking about, had my best interests
Speaker 3: at heart, had my back, wanted me to be financially independent,
Speaker 3: and said to me, let me help you. And if
Speaker 3: he had a knocked on my door two weeks after
Speaker 3: we met and said, hand over your superannuation, your life savings,
Speaker 3: everything you've got, I'm going to invest it for you,
Speaker 3: I said, bugger off, who are you like? I've met
Speaker 3: you two weeks ago. But he created this long con
Speaker 3: of information and this presentation of who he was to
Speaker 3: have me believe that he was the perfect person to
Speaker 3: invest my life savings. So when he asked me and said,
Speaker 3: you know, we should do a self managed super fun
Speaker 3: for you because you'd get so much more return, you'd
Speaker 3: be financially independent, quicker you could, you know all of
Speaker 3: this stuff, and of course it was peppered with lots
Speaker 3: of compliments around You're one of the hardest working people
Speaker 3: I've ever met. You work so hard, trace like you
Speaker 3: deserve this, and you know, really building me up. And
Speaker 3: so I thought it was the right thing to do,
Speaker 3: so we set up a self managed super fun. He
Speaker 3: groomed me throughout that whole process, worked with a solicitor,
Speaker 3: presented all the documents to me, explained everything. The self
Speaker 3: managed super fund was actually set up, legitimately had a constitution,
Speaker 3: everything was done correctly removed. I had to go and
Speaker 3: close down my superannuation fund and transfer that money into
Speaker 3: a business banking account that I'd set up. I needed
Speaker 3: all the documentation for the funds to allow that, and
Speaker 3: then what he got me to do was pull a
Speaker 3: check out of that business account. And I believed I
Speaker 3: had a trading account set up at belt pot of Securities.
Speaker 3: I filled in the paperwork it submitted, and he said,
Speaker 3: write a check out to Bell Pot of Securities. That's
Speaker 3: what I did, thinking it would go into my account,
Speaker 3: but I didn't put my name on that check Bell
Speaker 3: Pot of Securities, Tracy Hall Investments, or whatever the account was,
Speaker 3: and so it went into a washing account of his.
Speaker 2: At Bell Pot of Securities, right, And that's how it happened.
Speaker 1: And the way you describe it, the new use word grooming,
Speaker 1: and I think that's an apt way of describing it.
Speaker 1: We usually do that with pedophiles with children, but this
Speaker 1: is a different crime, but the same process it is grooming,
Speaker 1: and the effort that has to go to leave paperwork
Speaker 1: all around the desk and you compute the screen open,
Speaker 1: then talking business, talking shop on the phone. And the
Speaker 1: sense that I got, the way he got you in there,
Speaker 1: it was almost like I'm doing you a favor. I'm
Speaker 1: not desperate for it. So it wasn't him saying, hey
Speaker 1: I need I've just got a short fall of funds.
Speaker 1: I need this. It was look, if you want, I
Speaker 1: can't help you. And the first one was like incremental too,
Speaker 1: it was ten thousand, yes, So that gives you the
Speaker 1: confidence and then surprise, surprise at ten thousand dollars double
Speaker 1: or whatever, and you come back and think maybe he
Speaker 1: does or not. Maybe I always knew he did, he
Speaker 1: knew his job. So then it built up and I've
Speaker 1: just got the you'd remember it better than I would,
Speaker 1: I would imagine, but the amount of money, So just
Speaker 1: going through it and comment if you wish. But so
Speaker 1: it was fourth of October twenty sixteen was ten thousand dollars. Ye,
Speaker 1: and then you've got to return that's right for that
Speaker 1: And then tenth of February twenty seventeen, one hundred and.
Speaker 2: Eighty seven thousand, that was my superannuation.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about that. How did he just say, okay,
Speaker 1: let's move it all across.
Speaker 3: So that was the self managed super fund. So that
Speaker 3: was my twenty two year career worth of superannuation. And
Speaker 3: that was completely transferred across to a self managed super fund,
Speaker 3: which I then withdrew in a check for a trading account.
Speaker 3: But that trading account was not in my name. He
Speaker 3: went into an account of his right.
Speaker 1: And then thurd of April eighty thousand, two thousand and seventeen, Yeah,
Speaker 1: twelfth of June two thousand and seventeen forty thousand.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they were some shares and some savings that I
Speaker 3: had accumulated, mostly shares that I'd earned through working in tech.
Speaker 3: And he again, you know, throughout the countless conversations we
Speaker 3: had about you know, Trump's antics and how that was
Speaker 3: impacting the US markets and what was going to happen,
Speaker 3: and it was at an all time high. So you should
Speaker 3: cash those in and then we'll invest them and we'll diversify.
Speaker 3: And you know, he gave me the whole strategy and
Speaker 3: so encouraged me to do that. So that's what I did,
Speaker 3: and then transferred that to the self managed super fund.
Speaker 1: And this is eighteen months into your.
Speaker 2: Relationship, almost eighteen months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, you trust him. He's met your family, holidays,
Speaker 1: you're staying at each other's place. There was intimacy, their
Speaker 1: physical intimacy, everything that a relationship would be defined as
Speaker 1: you're in this relationship, talk about buying a house, moving
Speaker 1: to Byron Bay, going to look at the houses.
Speaker 2: It's just multiple houses.
Speaker 1: Bullshitting with the real estate agents pointing out houses. I
Speaker 1: used to live this or I used to own that house,
Speaker 1: and then why don't we buy this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got contracts on houses, we saw floor plans,
Speaker 3: I mean, the level of dep like it was just
Speaker 3: a game for him, you know, he didn't have a job,
Speaker 3: like I was busy working sixteen hour days trying to
Speaker 3: earn a living, and he was doing all this on
Speaker 3: the side, just as a bit of a game. So
Speaker 3: we'd go to Byron and travel throughout the Byron hinterland
Speaker 3: and look at house after house. I took my mom,
Speaker 3: I took my daughter with us, you know, and you
Speaker 3: imagine yourself, you know, in a couple of years moving
Speaker 3: up there and having that life. And we spoke about
Speaker 3: it at length, you know, in those wee hours of
Speaker 3: the morning chats that you have about what you want
Speaker 3: your future to look like. And he just presented that
Speaker 3: back to me.
Speaker 1: I see here. It's just evil, isn't it. It's hard
Speaker 1: to comprehend because I know those type of conversations where
Speaker 1: you're sitting down planning your future. The excitement would have
Speaker 1: been coming out of the pause of your skin about
Speaker 1: the hit I can see the life, We've got the
Speaker 1: future together, and the whole time it was it was
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: The thing too, that I find so interesting is how
Speaker 3: you can fake loving someone for that long, like you
Speaker 3: know when someone likes you or not right, like you
Speaker 3: know that, or he's just not that into.
Speaker 2: You, you know, and that little look.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or just the dismissiveness of respect or whatever it
Speaker 3: might be. Like he was so there and it was
Speaker 3: it was so real, and yet it wasn't. And I
Speaker 3: just think, gosh, the level of investment that he went
Speaker 3: to to pretend to love at that intimate level. Because
Speaker 3: this wasn't just a business deal. This was a life
Speaker 3: we were describing and building and and you planning, but.
Speaker 2: It was all it was all just fake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is hard to comprehend, I think to get
Speaker 1: the sense of and I've just pulled a quote out
Speaker 1: of your book, but to get a sense of your
Speaker 1: life as of before it all blew up on the
Speaker 1: eleventh of July two thousand and seven, and you're in
Speaker 1: a good place. And this is how you described your
Speaker 1: life when you woke up feeling good. I woke up
Speaker 1: feeling fulfilled in every life area family tick, career, tick,
Speaker 1: personal growth tick, health, tick, relationship double tick. Could this
Speaker 1: be the elusive contentment I've heard so many people speak of.
Speaker 1: So that was your mindset?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was and I'd been through and the first
Speaker 3: part of the book talks about this.
Speaker 2: I'd been through a lot, you know. My dad died
Speaker 2: really young.
Speaker 3: You know, I'd been through a divorce, my mum got
Speaker 3: breast cancer, I had a miscarriage. There was a lot
Speaker 3: that happened, and I had coped with a lot, and
Speaker 3: so you know, the traumatic kind of the separation that divorce.
Speaker 3: I'd gotten to a place, you know, two and a
Speaker 3: half years after that point where I felt like I'd
Speaker 3: met someone who you know, I felt like I was
Speaker 3: in a relationship like what my parents had, you know,
Speaker 3: which is what I always aspired to. And yeah, I
Speaker 3: felt like, oh my god, finally things are coming together.
Speaker 1: I see that, and I pulled it out as a
Speaker 1: quote because it just it's so sad. We've all been
Speaker 1: in that stage of life where you think maybe this
Speaker 1: life is for me, this is it's all, everything's lined up,
Speaker 1: and then it went tragically south. Yeah, we did. You
Speaker 1: couldn't get in contact with him over a twenty four
Speaker 1: hour period, or there was a text working late and
Speaker 1: you text him but there was no response. But do
Speaker 1: you want to take it from there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, We've been to Byron for the weekend, I was
Speaker 3: up there presenting at a marketing conference and came back.
Speaker 2: He was up there supporting me.
Speaker 3: It was he drove back after I flew back, and
Speaker 3: I missed a call from him one morning that I
Speaker 3: was busy like at school, holidays, were getting kids off
Speaker 3: to camps and the whole thing, getting into the office,
Speaker 3: and I spent the rest of the day trying to
Speaker 3: get back in touch with him and couldn't, and that
Speaker 3: was very unusual because he was always very responsive. We
Speaker 3: spoke a losh and by that night I was getting
Speaker 3: pretty worried, and I spent a lot of that night
Speaker 3: deep in the Internet trying to find the phone number
Speaker 3: of his brother in law, who I'd met his sister.
Speaker 2: He's surfing Buddies, people.
Speaker 3: That he grew up with, and I knew their company names,
Speaker 3: so you know, I reached out to them. So I
Speaker 3: was doing a lot of outreach overnight and barely slept
Speaker 3: and woke up super early the next morning because I
Speaker 3: still hadn't heard called Bondo police and asked them to
Speaker 3: do a wellness check on him because I just had
Speaker 3: a feeling that something was wrong. I thought he'd been
Speaker 3: in an accident.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 3: While that was happening. Kath called me and she said,
Speaker 3: how are you? And I said, I'm really worried. I
Speaker 3: haven't slept a wink. Something's happened to Max. She said,
Speaker 3: I'm going to send you a link. I said, oh
Speaker 3: my god, he's died. What's happened. There's been an accident.
Speaker 3: He's surfing as there's been a shark attack. She said, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: click on the link and call me back. And I
Speaker 3: clicked on the link and it was the crime Stoppers
Speaker 3: video of him being arrested outside of his apartment in Bondai,
Speaker 3: and his face was all blowed out, but of course
Speaker 3: I knew it was him, and so I called Bondai
Speaker 3: police back and said, you don't need to do a
Speaker 3: wellness check on him. He's fine, he's been arrested, and
Speaker 3: they said, yes, we know that, and all the information
Speaker 3: you gave us about the man that lives at that
Speaker 3: address is not who lives at that address. And that's
Speaker 3: when I was like, well, who lives there? What's his name?
Speaker 3: What is because the video and the article that was
Speaker 3: online that morning was just sort of Bondai businessman forty
Speaker 3: seven superannuation fraud. It was very broad and what the
Speaker 3: detectives have hoped with that video was that people like
Speaker 3: me would see and then come forward because they didn't
Speaker 3: have all the victims at that point, but no details
Speaker 3: had been released. And then that's when I did get
Speaker 3: in touch with his brother in law and he'd sent
Speaker 3: me a message saying, you know, call me back urgently
Speaker 3: on this number, Chris, and in brackets he wrote Hamish's
Speaker 3: brother in law. And that's the first time I saw
Speaker 3: his name. And I called Chris and I said, who
Speaker 3: the fuck is Hamish? And he said Hamish McLaren And
Speaker 3: I said, well, who's Max Tavita. So I was just
Speaker 3: in this world where I was like I'd heard this
Speaker 3: new name. I didn't know him as that, And then,
Speaker 3: of course, armed with his actual name, I would go
Speaker 3: into the internet and find a very long and deep
Speaker 3: history of all of the things that he had been
Speaker 3: up to.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, look we might we might take a break.
Speaker 1: At this point, I'm I'm angry. I can't imagine how
Speaker 1: you It would just be an absolute headspin on trying
Speaker 1: to comprehend that. So we're going to take a break,
Speaker 1: and when we get back, we'll talk about how you
Speaker 1: processed what you found out and how your life was
Speaker 1: from that moment or that turned upside down. But I
Speaker 1: think those that have been listening to your talk through
Speaker 1: understand how the relationship just organically grew and there weren't
Speaker 1: warning signs. Their everything seemed perfect. And you're not some
Speaker 1: naive idiot that just was told the whole pack of lies.
Speaker 1: You're a smart person, a person that had the intelligence
Speaker 1: to suspect someone, but you've just been calm, Just calm that. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be fascinated how you did react after
Speaker 1: finding out the person that you loved and invested your
Speaker 1: money with didn't even exist. Buckle up back soon