Speaker 1: Approacha Production, Episode five, The Dingo of Colin Street. If
Speaker 1: you've gotten this far in the podcast, you probably have
Speaker 1: some questions like me, questions like did he end up
Speaker 1: going to jail, does he have to pay back in
Speaker 1: either cash? Or did he stash any of the money
Speaker 1: away in a foreign country so we could use it later.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I actually asked that question from Dan,
Speaker 1: and he answered pretty directly.
Speaker 2: Firstly, if I.
Speaker 3: Did that, I wouldn't be talking about it with you.
Speaker 1: Good point.
Speaker 2: And secondly, they were just going to tack it off
Speaker 2: me anymore.
Speaker 1: If you've got questions, don't worry later in this episode
Speaker 1: how you can actually appear in episode eight, and asked
Speaker 1: Dan some of the questions you might have for yourself
Speaker 1: in the meantime, I wondered if Dan or any of
Speaker 1: his mates, or at least any of the hangers on
Speaker 1: invested their cash in crypto or something similar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he wasn't really a Marke was. Yeah, someone I knew,
Speaker 3: and I knew a lot of people at that time,
Speaker 3: and there was money floating around. But I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: everyone got their fair fair whack of changed, so you know,
Speaker 3: anyone could sort of walk up and go hey, Dan,
Speaker 3: you know I want to do this? Can you give
Speaker 3: me some money to do it? And most people were like, Dan,
Speaker 3: I want to dare the two girls at the bar
Speaker 3: to like kiss? Can I five hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: To give it?
Speaker 3: But then there was other Yeah, there was thinkers. You know,
Speaker 3: there's people that are like, hey, Dan, can you give
Speaker 3: me some money because I want to start a business.
Speaker 2: I want to do this.
Speaker 3: I want to do that, you know, by far and
Speaker 3: away the guy who benefited, you know, and people say
Speaker 3: to me, you know, like he should give you some
Speaker 3: money and all that, and I'm like, look, I don't care.
Speaker 3: Like whatever people did with their little bit of the money,
Speaker 3: that's fine. But apparently he bought you know, some bitcoin
Speaker 3: when it wasn't worth very much, and now it's obviously
Speaker 3: worth quite a lot. I think he probably bought it
Speaker 3: like or bucks.
Speaker 1: But it's worth seventy one down. He wouldn't need.
Speaker 3: To have bought much. Put it that way, like, I
Speaker 3: don't know how much exactly he bought. I don't know
Speaker 3: how much, you know, money he's got now. But he
Speaker 3: said to me before, like if you want a car,
Speaker 3: I'll buy it for you. So I can only assume
Speaker 3: that he's made some decent money. But you know, again,
Speaker 3: I don't know, and you know, I don't even care,
Speaker 3: because it's like whatever it was, the spirit, it was
Speaker 3: in the spirit of.
Speaker 2: The whole thing.
Speaker 3: The whole thing was just an absolute you know, you
Speaker 3: got to do what you wanted to with the money.
Speaker 3: And you know a lot of people say to me, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, you wasted all the money. You know, it
Speaker 3: wasn't you know, you were done with the money and whatever.
Speaker 3: I was like, find your own ATM car and go
Speaker 3: for it. You know, the loopholes are out there.
Speaker 1: Although this is an amazing story and it sounds like
Speaker 1: Dan and his mates were having a brilliant time, at
Speaker 1: some point it was better to end Dan's breaking the law.
Speaker 1: The lawry's breaking is called theft by finding. That's when
Speaker 1: someone takes possession of something but fails to establish who
Speaker 1: owns it, which is essentially what Dan did. It wasn't
Speaker 1: his money, and he knew that, so I guess in
Speaker 1: layman's terms, it's like finding a big bag of money
Speaker 1: on the side of the road and you've got two choices.
Speaker 1: You go and spend that money, or you take it
Speaker 1: to the cops and say I found this bag of money,
Speaker 1: and then I think you wait about three months and
Speaker 1: if no one comes forward, you get the money. I
Speaker 1: wanted to know if Dan ever thought of doing this,
Speaker 1: maybe going to the bank and saying, hey, I found
Speaker 1: this glitch in new system and it's giving me free money.
Speaker 1: I'll show you how it's been happening if you give
Speaker 1: me a job.
Speaker 2: I thought.
Speaker 3: I thought, yeah, like, I've obviously heard stories of people
Speaker 3: doing that before, but yeah, I never I never thought
Speaker 3: that that would be. Every time you talk to them,
Speaker 3: they're very they come across as being quite arrogant. So
Speaker 3: I didn't think that they were going to be on
Speaker 3: board with like, you know, oh you found a.
Speaker 2: Floor in our system. Oh that's very good, thanks very much.
Speaker 3: We'll give you a job now, or you know, like
Speaker 3: we'll meet with you. I don't think they would have
Speaker 3: done anything like that. I think they're I think they've
Speaker 3: got a communication issue.
Speaker 1: Since the glitch happened in twenty eleven, you can imagine
Speaker 1: that the banks might have knuckled down on their security.
Speaker 1: We tried to get a bank on to chat about
Speaker 1: their heightened security. Now guess what they said, No, So,
Speaker 1: how did this happen in twenty eleven. Well, each night,
Speaker 1: between midnight and early morning, the ATM machines would go
Speaker 1: into what was called standalone mode. This meant that they
Speaker 1: weren't communicating with the bank systems. Now, for me, this
Speaker 1: was a Google search, But for Dan he learned this
Speaker 1: glitch firsthand.
Speaker 3: I think they've got smart ATMs now, like they say
Speaker 3: smart ADM.
Speaker 2: You know, the dumb ones of twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically it goes into this mode where it's not
Speaker 3: really communicating with the main banks system. I guess it
Speaker 3: can perform transactions, it can perform tasks, but ultimately it
Speaker 3: doesn't know exactly you know, how much money is in
Speaker 3: your bank account at that time. And I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: I was doing the transfers at this time, and it
Speaker 3: was just you know, just a bit of call it
Speaker 3: what you want luck, wrong place, right time, right time,
Speaker 3: wrong place, whatever you want to call it. Like it
Speaker 3: was just sheer fluke that I found it out. I
Speaker 3: found this out.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it was a really full time job
Speaker 1: for you to daily be thinking about how much you transferred,
Speaker 1: how much needs to go back? Set alarm for midnight?
Speaker 1: Am I going to get close enough? Like that's got it?
Speaker 1: It's got to be tough.
Speaker 3: It was tough, but it was also like the greatest
Speaker 3: job ever as well, because it was like like some
Speaker 3: sort of secret agent, you know, like you had this
Speaker 3: little system and to like to be tricking a massive
Speaker 3: bank with all these security you know, like they have
Speaker 3: like millions of computers and millions of you know people
Speaker 3: looking at them, you know, constantly monitoring transactions, and like
Speaker 3: it just felt like guy was invisible where I shouldn't
Speaker 3: have been.
Speaker 1: At this point, you have four months in, it's getting
Speaker 1: close to the end, which comes in a different way
Speaker 1: than you would expect. Did you think you were going
Speaker 1: to get caught?
Speaker 2: Still?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I never thought that I wouldn't get caught
Speaker 3: the whole knowing what I know now that I could
Speaker 3: have actually just walked away from this and nothing would
Speaker 3: have happened to me. That blows my mind even more
Speaker 3: than the fact that I, you know, sort of brought
Speaker 3: about my own demise in a way. But I didn't
Speaker 3: see it as being my demise. That was me getting
Speaker 3: my life back because I've lost who I was, so
Speaker 3: I didn't Yeah, I didn't identify with the person that
Speaker 3: I was anymore. So I wanted to take a step
Speaker 3: to get that back, and I thought that ultimately being
Speaker 3: punished for what I did would.
Speaker 2: Be a good start.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, I think it's reported in the
Speaker 3: media that like my conscience got me, Like it was
Speaker 3: sort of my conscience a bit. But I'd done everything
Speaker 3: I wanted to do. You know, I didn't want to
Speaker 3: do anything else. All I wanted to do is have
Speaker 3: a great time. And I had a great time.
Speaker 2: It was amazing.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't change any of it, you know. The only
Speaker 3: other option was to go overseas and transfer millions of
Speaker 3: dollars away and ultimately be you know, a fugitive, and
Speaker 3: and that I decided that wasn't me. I remember when
Speaker 3: I decided that I was going to stop, I had
Speaker 3: this sort of twitch in my in my right eye
Speaker 3: that had developed, and it developed is like a little
Speaker 3: just a little flicker.
Speaker 2: Underneath my eye.
Speaker 3: Like I thought I was getting some kind of neurological disease,
Speaker 3: Like I thought I was. Yeah, I thought I might
Speaker 3: be affected forever because my like that all the vessels
Speaker 3: underneath my eye.
Speaker 2: Just wouldn't stop pulse haating. And I guess it was
Speaker 2: just a.
Speaker 3: Product of the indrel and running through him for that long.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, but I started the Yeah, I started
Speaker 3: to show real physical symptoms like something really bad was
Speaker 3: going to happen.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so I had to stop.
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm going to die. I'll have to stop.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so I told, you know, I told my mates.
Speaker 3: I told old mate and yeah, like he wasn't you know.
Speaker 3: It was like, this is the best thing that's ever
Speaker 3: happened to us.
Speaker 2: What are you doing? You know, why would you? Why
Speaker 2: did you give this up?
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I'm gonna feel like I'm gonna die,
Speaker 3: Like look in my eye it's like twitching like crazy,
Speaker 3: like this is not good.
Speaker 2: It's not a good situation. He's like, yeah, I know,
Speaker 2: but you know, like yeah, all right, right it's here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was real. Yeah, it started.
Speaker 1: It would flicker all day and I was like, n
Speaker 1: I've got.
Speaker 2: To I've got to get out of this. I've got
Speaker 2: to just I'm going to stop doing it.
Speaker 1: I'll get to the moment Dan decided to stop using
Speaker 1: his magic card in this episode and how it all ended. Surely,
Speaker 1: by now the bank's starting to ask questions. Surely they're thinking,
Speaker 1: hang on this, Dan Saunder's bloke doesn't have an the
Speaker 1: income and he's got more than a million dollars owing
Speaker 1: on his credit card. Maybe someone should call him. The
Speaker 1: bank did send Dan some letters, and to be honest,
Speaker 1: it was laughable when you read them. This letter was
Speaker 1: dated the twenty fourth of June twoenty and eleven, a
Speaker 1: few months after the glitch started.
Speaker 3: Dear missus Saunders, did you know your account is overdrawn
Speaker 3: or over its limit?
Speaker 2: Count? Number? Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: Account balance one million, six hundred and forty nine thousand,
Speaker 3: seven hundred and fifty four dollars and fifty nine cents debit.
Speaker 3: This is a reminder that your account is overdrawn and
Speaker 3: has been for twenty days. If you haven't done so already,
Speaker 3: it's important that you pay the overdrawn amount immediately or
Speaker 3: call us and talk about your situation.
Speaker 1: I've had one of these letters before, but never one
Speaker 1: that says my account is overdrawn by one point six
Speaker 1: million dollars. The funny thing is is this letter actually
Speaker 1: arrived a few months after Dan decided to stop spending.
Speaker 1: That's the reason the account was overdrawn, because he was
Speaker 1: no longer transferring cash from one account to the other.
Speaker 1: The stress would have been crazy. Dan's eye started to twitch,
Speaker 1: and his friend and crewmember Evano, remembers seeing him a
Speaker 1: few nights before Dan decided to pull the pin.
Speaker 4: I think it was a mixture of the party, not
Speaker 4: so much the drugs, but just drinking a lot of
Speaker 4: alcohol all the time.
Speaker 2: It sort of, Yeah, it got.
Speaker 4: To him a little bit, and I could see the
Speaker 4: pressure was starting to get to him. Something something had
Speaker 4: had ticked. He was a bit more moody. He'd get
Speaker 4: angry really quickly. And this was unlike Dan Locke. He's
Speaker 4: one of the most easy gun blocks you'll ever meet.
Speaker 4: So yeah, there was there was pressure getting to him,
Speaker 4: that's sure.
Speaker 1: Were you then the nightdow and decided that it was over?
Speaker 4: No, I was the night he decided. I was in
Speaker 4: in my grada. Yeah, I was with him the weekend prior,
Speaker 4: which would have only been a few days prior. So,
Speaker 4: but yeah, I wasn't with him at the time.
Speaker 1: How'd you find out he was stopping?
Speaker 4: I'd called him and and this was a few days later,
Speaker 4: And yeah, he wasn't wasn't a partying or anything like that.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 4: A little bit, a little bit down and dumps.
Speaker 1: I'd say, yeah, yeah, a bit depressed, just just a touch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, he I think the full weight of what
Speaker 4: he'd done was coming was coming on his shoulders.
Speaker 1: I mean, we talk about this amazing time that he
Speaker 1: had and you had, and you know the other crew
Speaker 1: that were with with you guys. He's pretty anxious.
Speaker 4: Then, anxious about what what would happen. Yeah, he looked
Speaker 4: he knew he was probably going to jail.
Speaker 1: Had he talked about that with you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, this at this point he had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So by this stage, you know what's going on.
Speaker 4: By this stage I had known.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it was fairly late on the piece that
Speaker 4: I actually found out the full extent of it. But yeah,
Speaker 4: by this stage, I definitely knew what was going on. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I remember the night before, the night before I decided
Speaker 3: to give up, give it up, we were talking and
Speaker 3: I was we're sort of talking about how much you know,
Speaker 3: because it was very big that we were going to
Speaker 3: like I was going to go to jail, and we're
Speaker 3: sort of talking about it at the table. How long
Speaker 3: are you're going to go How long do you reckon
Speaker 3: you'll go to jail for sort of thing? And I
Speaker 3: was saying, like maybe ten years. I don't know it's
Speaker 3: pretty you know, it's got pretty out of hand.
Speaker 1: And how much were an indent by that stage?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like I think I think of that one
Speaker 2: boy six. Yeah, this lady over her.
Speaker 3: She comes to me later and she's like, I heard
Speaker 3: you're going to go to jail for all this. Like
Speaker 3: we're you know, in some residential sweet somewhere and everyone's
Speaker 3: having a great time, and you know, I was just
Speaker 3: having a private conversation with a couple of mates. She goes, look,
Speaker 3: I've had a great day. I want you to think
Speaker 3: about this in jail, and she basically grabs me. And
Speaker 3: she didn't I'm not going to say I was sexually assaulted,
Speaker 3: but but she grabbed me and pretty much like had
Speaker 3: had her away with me.
Speaker 2: Right then and there.
Speaker 3: During the time that she was doing that, she was
Speaker 3: like it almost turned her on in a way. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure, but she like was just saying to me repeatedly,
Speaker 3: think about this when you're in jail. Think about this
Speaker 3: when you're in jail. It was a bit of a
Speaker 3: like psycho moment, but also it seemed like a nice
Speaker 3: ending point, like I was just like, yeah, okay, you
Speaker 3: know what, right, this is all getting a bit bit
Speaker 3: nutso so I'm like, yeah, I think this is it.
Speaker 2: I think this is the end.
Speaker 3: So I announced it to the guys. I said look.
Speaker 3: The next day, I said, look, I'm going to stop
Speaker 3: doing the transfer.
Speaker 2: To no, Like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: You know, it's been a couple of guys were like, look,
Speaker 3: it's fair enough. Do whatever you want to do, like
Speaker 3: it's it's been a journey. It's been amazing and we'll
Speaker 3: never forget it. And then yeah, old mate was like, hey,
Speaker 3: like you got to keep going, but you can't stop now,
Speaker 3: Like like I think he said, don't be soft, like
Speaker 3: just kid like it was crazy individual anyway.
Speaker 1: Are you still friends with old mate now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like are still friends? I don't really see him,
Speaker 3: but but like I can sider him a friend. He's like,
Speaker 3: you gotta do it, you got to do it, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, look, I can't do it anymore.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: Like you see this high, like it's getting worse. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to do it anymore.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: I've decided I'm not going to go overseas. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to do it anymore. I'm going to stop. That night,
Speaker 3: I opened up internet banking and I just logged on
Speaker 3: and then I just gave the laptop to the to
Speaker 3: all the guys, like just passed it around and said,
Speaker 3: if you want to transfer any money anywhere else, just
Speaker 3: do it. I don't want to know about it. I
Speaker 3: don't care, but if you want to do it, just
Speaker 3: do it now. And that's it. I don't even know
Speaker 3: if they did. I'm not sure. You know, Quite often
Speaker 3: the loudest person in the room is like, once they've
Speaker 3: got to transfer it to their account.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, I don't know about that, you.
Speaker 3: Know, so you know, you find out who's a bit
Speaker 3: soft in the end. But yeah, I was done.
Speaker 1: I was done.
Speaker 2: So I went to sleep. It was weird not going
Speaker 2: to the ATM.
Speaker 1: It was like, that's first night for four months.
Speaker 2: To one. I was like, you can still go, you
Speaker 2: can still go, you can still keep me gun. There's
Speaker 2: still part of me. Guy, I was still to a tin.
Speaker 1: This is like a drug addiction, right, yeah, gambling addiction,
Speaker 1: Like this is cold turkey.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah. So yeah, so I ultimately just just stopped
Speaker 2: doing it.
Speaker 3: And then I know the ship would He hit the
Speaker 3: fan at the bank the next day, probably because the
Speaker 3: accounts went into into debit by millions.
Speaker 5: And Dan decides to go cold Turkey, just cut off
Speaker 5: the cash stat and he now has over one point
Speaker 5: six million dollars in debt on his account and no
Speaker 5: job to pay it off.
Speaker 1: So what does he do?
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, what can you do? I mean it
Speaker 2: was I had a little bit of money left, and.
Speaker 1: What's a little bit of money?
Speaker 3: Well, I had some some money, like in an account
Speaker 3: that wasn't a National Australia Bank account, and I had
Speaker 3: about eighty thousand dollars in a Hilton laundry back that
Speaker 3: I decided to check in to the height and I thought,
Speaker 3: I'll just put the eighty thousand dollars in the bathtub
Speaker 3: and I'll just live each day until I thought about
Speaker 3: being caught, and I was like, it's pretty like they're
Speaker 3: probably going to send you know, the heavies half to me.
Speaker 3: They'll know where I am sort of thing. So I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: I'll just yeah, I'll just wait for them to come.
Speaker 3: But I don't want to pick me up, but you know,
Speaker 3: like mum's house or a friend of mine's house, Like
Speaker 3: I'll just run a hotel room and I'll just stay there,
Speaker 3: you know, like a you know, a modest you know,
Speaker 3: three hundred dollars a night deal room. It's just still
Speaker 3: pretty nice.
Speaker 1: With a barath tub full of money.
Speaker 3: With a bathtub full of money, but like eighty grand
Speaker 3: in the bottom of one of those bath tubles, it
Speaker 3: doesn't look much.
Speaker 1: I'll take your word for it.
Speaker 3: I didn't really have many people with me during that time,
Speaker 3: because I thought I was just going to get picked up.
Speaker 3: Like I still had a few friends that like stayed
Speaker 3: over and stuff, but we didn't even know, like they
Speaker 3: didn't even know the extent of what happened. But I
Speaker 3: didn't really know them before. So it was like it
Speaker 3: wasn't like, no, I'm just going to draw the connection
Speaker 3: with them because I didn't really have a connection.
Speaker 1: So are you trying to protect others?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what we said all along, like I'm going
Speaker 3: down for this and I'm not expecting anyone else.
Speaker 2: Like it was sort of a thing.
Speaker 3: I was like, well, I've got the card and i
Speaker 3: know what we can do, and I've got to give
Speaker 3: money to all you guys because you're not going to
Speaker 3: get prosecuted for it I am, and then hopefully you
Speaker 3: guys will look after me down the track. You know,
Speaker 3: hopefully that that'll be the you know, and you know
Speaker 3: with some people that was on it, and with other
Speaker 3: people it wasn't. So you know, I was like sort
Speaker 3: of I was sort of like hedging my bets in
Speaker 3: a way. You know, if you give you know, if
Speaker 3: you give six people an amount of money, then someone's
Speaker 3: going to like, you know, you know, one out of
Speaker 3: six is going to come back and go, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: I remember you gave me that one day. I'm going
Speaker 3: to help you out now sort of thing. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: I was the only one going down for it. I
Speaker 3: certainly wasn't going to talk about it with anyone else.
Speaker 3: But yeah, then the craziest thing of the whole thing happened,
Speaker 3: and no one came.
Speaker 2: Nothing. You can hear anything from anyone, No.
Speaker 1: Cops, no nothing, no bank nothing, no phone call nothing.
Speaker 3: The only phone call I got was the VIP manager
Speaker 3: from the betting accounts, Hey, damn, why don't you come
Speaker 3: back and have a bet. Even when I was on bail,
Speaker 3: I used to get those calls like all you know,
Speaker 3: two years later, even when the story was in the media,
Speaker 3: people from betting companies ringing saying when are you going
Speaker 3: to put your next to positive insane. It's like, do
Speaker 3: you guys read the news.
Speaker 1: So you're not getting caught anytime soon. No one's calling,
Speaker 1: cops aren't arriving at your door.
Speaker 3: No one did anything, so don't understand why. I've got
Speaker 3: to make contact with him somehow. But it's not an
Speaker 3: easy thing to do. You can't just go in and
Speaker 3: talk to the talent.
Speaker 2: She doesn't know or he doesn't know. So I went
Speaker 2: into a NAB branch and I called the house phone.
Speaker 3: I said, look, there's been some weird transactions on my accounts.
Speaker 2: I'm in the bank and I'm.
Speaker 3: Talking to the first person I get met, putting me
Speaker 3: on and on hold, on hold, on hold, and then eventually,
Speaker 3: after twenty minutes, I get through this guy named Bernie.
Speaker 3: Bernie was like, you're all like your school principal type,
Speaker 3: you know, like very you know, gets on the phone.
Speaker 3: He says, we won't be giving you any more more money.
Speaker 2: And I'm pretty sure you know why.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, yeah, well I didn't ask for any
Speaker 3: more money number one and number two, Yeah, I was
Speaker 3: wondering what's going on with that, you know, because it's
Speaker 3: been a little while. And he said, well, it's a
Speaker 3: matter for the police now. And I think I said,
Speaker 3: I don't know why, but I think I said, oh sorry.
Speaker 3: I think I said really sorry or something. He said, well, sorry,
Speaker 3: he's not going to cut it. You're going to jail
Speaker 3: for a long time. Then he said something that sort
Speaker 3: of hurted me a bit. He said, you've ruined your
Speaker 3: life now, and I sort of thought, his life.
Speaker 2: Are you talking about? You don't know any about me.
Speaker 3: I reckon, you've ruined your life because you worked at.
Speaker 2: A bank for forty years, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: each of their own mate.
Speaker 3: Basically, you're in a lot of trouble now. It's police investigation.
Speaker 3: We can't talk to you.
Speaker 2: Goodbye. So I was like, okay, well.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling? At that stage, I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, my I.
Speaker 2: Didn't get the twitchy I back.
Speaker 3: I lost the twitchy ice straight away, which I was
Speaker 3: real happy about.
Speaker 2: That was a big issue for me anyway. So I
Speaker 2: went back to the hotel.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, well, yeah, it's at least I've learned something, right,
Speaker 3: it's police investigation now.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Come Eventually after that called to the bank from the
Speaker 1: house phone, chatting with Bernie. You'd expect cops to bust
Speaker 1: down the door of the hyats and find Dan in
Speaker 1: his hotel robe, eating and drinking with eighty K and
Speaker 1: Cash sitting in the hotel bath. Keep them all civilian outside.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3: So anyway, one month goes past, I run out of
Speaker 3: money in the bath stump. So I'm like, you know
Speaker 3: that that kind of backfired because I thought I'd be
Speaker 3: arrested here and I, okay, well now I'm just going
Speaker 3: to go catch it. So I went to a few
Speaker 3: friends and you know.
Speaker 2: Hey, me, how are you going still here? Oh? Dad?
Speaker 2: Dance back O great.
Speaker 3: So, you know, just did the normal suburban stuff. You know,
Speaker 3: I had barbies and you know, that sort of thing
Speaker 3: just killed a bit of time.
Speaker 1: Are these the crew? Some of the crew that you
Speaker 1: were hanging.
Speaker 3: With, some of them are not really like more other friends? Yeah,
Speaker 3: people I met during the time and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: I lost some friends, but I made it made a
Speaker 3: few as well. So yeah, so I was just sort
Speaker 3: of hanging out with them and then yeah, I think
Speaker 3: three months ago is past and still nothing. So I'm
Speaker 3: just like, well, what am I supposed to do?
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll just go back and get a job.
Speaker 1: So did you see a lawyer in this time at all?
Speaker 3: I saw a lawyer to a sort of ask, but
Speaker 3: most lawyers said to me, just just.
Speaker 2: Shut up about it. I don't don't even worry about it.
Speaker 1: How did you pay for the lawyer?
Speaker 3: Well, my eventual lawyer, I paid with the money in
Speaker 3: the other account, which was the NAB money. So eighty grand.
Speaker 1: So hang on, you're paying a lawyer too, hopefully get
Speaker 1: you out of not going to jail for taking money
Speaker 1: from the NAB. With the money from the NAB.
Speaker 3: He didn't ask where the cash came from either. It's
Speaker 3: interesting anyway. Yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: What I did.
Speaker 1: So three months goes past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, three months goes past, and so I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: I might as well just get.
Speaker 2: A job, get back on the horse, so to speak.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so I started working in a place called Ringwood,
Speaker 3: a place called bos Sammy, I don't think it's there anymore,
Speaker 3: but full time job. And then always had you know,
Speaker 3: lingering in my mind, you know.
Speaker 2: Like they're going to tap you on my shoulder sooner
Speaker 2: or later. And yeah, it's sort of.
Speaker 3: It sort of went to the point where I was like,
Speaker 3: maybe I'm just gonna walk away from this and never
Speaker 3: you know, sort of know anything. I think it's just
Speaker 3: gonna it's just gonna go away. But then there was
Speaker 3: a big part of me saying, well, you can't just
Speaker 3: walk away from something like this. I mean, they're gonna
Speaker 3: they're going to catch up with you eventually. They're just
Speaker 3: taking their sweet time, you know, And I suppose that's
Speaker 3: all I've got. You know, all I've got is to
Speaker 3: just hang me out for a little bit and let
Speaker 3: me sort of you know, uh stew on the window
Speaker 3: so to speak, you know, like something like that.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, so I went back to work.
Speaker 3: And that was fine for about I mean that would
Speaker 3: have been towards the end of twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: It really feels like Dan has just gone back to
Speaker 1: normal life. Months have passed, no police knocking on doors,
Speaker 1: no calls from the bank, no jail. I mean, it
Speaker 1: feels like Dan has gotten off scot free. Sure, he's
Speaker 1: got one point six million dollars overdrawn on his accounts
Speaker 1: that have been closed by the NAB, but that's about
Speaker 1: the worst of it. Dan gets a job at a
Speaker 1: restaurant and starts working again like he did back in
Speaker 1: Wangarata before the glitch happened.
Speaker 3: So I worked there twenty eleven into twenty twelve. In
Speaker 3: December twenty twelve, I get to work one day and
Speaker 3: the manager has left. I was like a supervisor, and
Speaker 3: the managers left the keys on the on the table,
Speaker 3: his keys on the table with a little note saying,
Speaker 3: you know, I can't there been a problem with people
Speaker 3: getting paid. So I was on a couple of weeks pay,
Speaker 3: and then there was kitchen staff. There were only a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks pay. And so I just got left
Speaker 3: this restaurant where the staff hadn't been paid.
Speaker 1: And you're going to assume management duties essentially.
Speaker 3: Well essentially, yeah, I mean I could have walked away too,
Speaker 3: I guess. But I mean I was like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: surely it's going to you know, surely they can't just
Speaker 3: not pay everyone'nluckily.
Speaker 2: It's going to turn around soon.
Speaker 3: The owners of the place, I got them, I got
Speaker 3: them on the phone eventually, and they said, I was
Speaker 3: just having you know, some cash flow issues. It will
Speaker 3: be sorted soon. Just keep running at the restaurant, you know,
Speaker 3: like everyone got paid. I'm like, okay, we'll keep running
Speaker 3: the restaurant. Sure, So for the next week, we just
Speaker 3: ran the restaurant as normal, and then the next week
Speaker 3: we didn't get paid either, so became sort of apparent
Speaker 3: that they weren't they didn't have any intention of and
Speaker 3: every every dollar that was going through on FPOs on
Speaker 3: the cards was just being that that got paid to
Speaker 3: a bank account that we didn't as a manager of
Speaker 3: that restaurant, I didn't have any access to, so that
Speaker 3: was all going out to a head office. Then just
Speaker 3: these two guys show up I don't nowhere really and
Speaker 3: say I wear from the Collingwood Football Club and we're
Speaker 3: going to buy this restaurant.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, okay, great.
Speaker 3: So I thought, okay, so they're going to they're going
Speaker 3: to buy the restaurant. They seem he was he was
Speaker 3: involved in you know, he looked legit. He was from
Speaker 3: from Collingwood. He said that the club was going to
Speaker 3: buy the restaurant. So I was like, fine, no problem.
Speaker 3: And so we decided as a collective group that we
Speaker 3: would run the restaurant for cash because it was still
Speaker 3: owned by the previous owners. So they said, look, can
Speaker 3: everyone stay on board because we're going to have a
Speaker 3: changeover in a few weeks. And so I thought, well,
Speaker 3: what we'll do is we'll run the restaurant for cash,
Speaker 3: and the whole team agreed, and we'll pay back every
Speaker 3: staff entitlement via cash over the next sort of three weeks,
Speaker 3: so we can at least get some other money back.
Speaker 3: I didn't know whether I was like the cleaner hadn't
Speaker 3: been paid for seven weeks, and like it was it
Speaker 3: was quite a situation like there that the suppliers hadn't
Speaker 3: been paid, so they were all coming in, you know,
Speaker 3: threatening and chop people's legs off and that sort of
Speaker 3: thing if they didn't get paid.
Speaker 2: It was quite a situation.
Speaker 3: It was a bit of a pressure cook but still
Speaker 3: no twitch, right, So I've been through, you know, and
Speaker 3: you know, these this kind of stuff before I find
Speaker 3: out that these guys who said they were from Collingwood,
Speaker 3: very very close with the previous owners.
Speaker 2: And what they're doing is they're phoenix into place.
Speaker 3: So they're basically they're bring in like they're acting like
Speaker 3: they're selling it, but it's really just a just a changeover.
Speaker 3: And then all the debts get wiped and you know,
Speaker 3: anyone who wants to stay on, they go, oh, we're new,
Speaker 3: so you.
Speaker 1: Know, that debt exists, doesn't exist anymore, it exists with
Speaker 1: someone else.
Speaker 2: You'rero three weeks pay.
Speaker 3: Sorry about that, but you know, right. So I learned
Speaker 3: that the guy coming in from Collingwood obviously won't name anyone,
Speaker 3: but the guy coming in from Collingwood, I learned that
Speaker 3: he was a business advisor to the previous owners. So
Speaker 3: they were very very close, Like it didn't take much
Speaker 3: research online to figure that out. So basically I was like, well,
Speaker 3: look if they come in and they sought everything out,
Speaker 3: like I don't have an issue, Like it's fine, you know.
Speaker 3: So they said that you know people people should you know,
Speaker 3: will get paid with the settlement and all that, but
Speaker 3: it was all just a bit of a bit of
Speaker 3: a face. So they employed They were so underprepared that
Speaker 3: they employed me as their manager moving forward under the
Speaker 3: new ownership. So I was like, these guys have just
Speaker 3: done this massive, shonky job. So basically I ran the
Speaker 3: restaurant for them for the next month and a half,
Speaker 3: two months and then after Australia. After Australia, I still
Speaker 3: had the chicken man. He was threatening to cut my
Speaker 3: legs off, so I knew I had to.
Speaker 1: Get him the chicken man being the one that sold
Speaker 1: chickens to the restaurant. Yeah okay, yeah, happily named the
Speaker 1: chicken man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the chicken man. He was like he was scary.
Speaker 3: Actually during this time that the Ringwood magistrates caught right,
Speaker 3: used to come over for lunches. So the magistrates and
Speaker 3: stuff came over and one of them asked me one day,
Speaker 3: why are you running the restaurant for cash? And I
Speaker 3: told him the whole situation. I was like, oh, this
Speaker 3: is going on, you know, and anyway, so you know
Speaker 3: it's very interesting, right right.
Speaker 2: And so we got the sheriff showing up.
Speaker 3: You know, like all this will be in the records.
Speaker 2: It's not like I'm making it up.
Speaker 3: Like the the sheriff was there trying to collect money,
Speaker 3: you know, all that sort of thing. Australia after Australia
Speaker 3: Day Weekend, Big weekend.
Speaker 1: I went, this is two thousand and thirteen, twenty thirty.
Speaker 3: You guys need to be taught a lesson, right, So
Speaker 3: I took all the money out of the safe to
Speaker 3: pay the chicken man. I needed cash, so I took
Speaker 3: like twenty one thousand dollars out of the safe. After
Speaker 3: Austraight day weekend, and I gave the chicken man ten
Speaker 3: grand and then I took some of the staff out.
Speaker 2: For a like goodbye meal, and then I just I
Speaker 2: just split.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have done that unless I did, you know,
Speaker 3: unless I had the thing happened with the card, like,
Speaker 3: it's sort of like I'd already.
Speaker 2: Crossed the line.
Speaker 3: So I was just like, well, you know, I know this
Speaker 3: is not going to be looked upon in a very
Speaker 3: good light, and I know this.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, Yeah, they're.
Speaker 3: Just going to dress it up and say it was
Speaker 3: just struck theft, but everyone who works there knows what
Speaker 3: the story was. I got to talk to the people
Speaker 3: who work at the restaurant, and afterwards they were running
Speaker 3: around like heaveless chucks and didn't know what to do.
Speaker 2: And that is exactly what I wanted them to do.
Speaker 3: I wanted them to freak out and feel what it's
Speaker 3: like to lose something, so maybe they wouldn't be so
Speaker 3: quick in the future to try fuck people over just
Speaker 3: for the sake of a dollar.
Speaker 1: Everyone I speak to about Dan, or at least anyone
Speaker 1: that likes him, says that he's an honest bloke who
Speaker 1: has a deep sense of injustice and doesn't like any
Speaker 1: of the little guys being fucked over. Dan hates the
Speaker 1: banks and the big guys and it's about looking after
Speaker 1: the little guy. So at this point, Dan's living in
Speaker 1: in Queensland. No police have contacted him, and it's been
Speaker 1: over two years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're getting to about two years.
Speaker 1: Two years since you had one point six million dollars
Speaker 1: o to the National Australia Banks. Yeah, and no one's
Speaker 1: called you crickets. Nothing, not a miscall to an old number,
Speaker 1: the email to your mum because she possibly was next
Speaker 1: to king.
Speaker 3: I used to open Internet banking and check it all
Speaker 3: out and.
Speaker 1: Still show that you're Yeah, it.
Speaker 3: Was just just show that they wrote the dead off.
Speaker 3: They just wrote it off, and yeah, it just it
Speaker 3: just the accounts were just open as normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could have just gotten away with it that stage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could have just but I didn't have any
Speaker 3: idea if that was if they were going to come
Speaker 3: one day.
Speaker 2: So for me, that wasn't enough.
Speaker 3: I couldn't get my I couldn't get my sanity back.
Speaker 1: You're still anxious at this point. No twitching eye, but yeah,
Speaker 1: twitch was pretty bad.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the point is that I didn't, Like, there's
Speaker 3: no point where I was like, oh, this is going
Speaker 3: to be okay, Like I'm just going to be all
Speaker 3: right here, Like like if it didn't happen to you,
Speaker 3: you could probably just go, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why don't you just walk away?
Speaker 3: You know, But if you're going to live in the
Speaker 3: same town, be in the same country, like you would.
Speaker 2: Have thought eventually that have to come.
Speaker 3: But I think that's just a reflection of how.
Speaker 2: Banks do business. Then they're willing to just write it
Speaker 2: off and just send it away like that's it never happened.
Speaker 1: Pretty embarrassing for you too, I know.
Speaker 2: I don't think they're capable of embarrassment.
Speaker 1: Right. A company can't feel embarrassment because it's a company. Right. However,
Speaker 1: there are people who will be going like there would
Speaker 1: have been meetings where someone's gone, on, what do we
Speaker 1: do about this? Yeah, like there's a right off department.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, yeah, for sure, right that have gone, oh
Speaker 1: well one point six million bucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: Here we make about no police contact. A couple of
Speaker 1: years later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nothing nothing.
Speaker 1: So what do you do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, I can't I can't sit in
Speaker 3: front of you and say I was completely of sound mind.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Why I did this, but I just didn't. I thought, well,
Speaker 3: a good way maybe to get some closure would be
Speaker 3: to contact the media and tell them my story and say, hey, look,
Speaker 3: you know now, I didn't think that the media would
Speaker 3: drum it up as much as they did, like they really, like,
Speaker 3: you know, went overboard.
Speaker 2: On the whole thing.
Speaker 3: But all I wanted to do, because I couldn't get
Speaker 3: any answers, was I just wanted to know the status
Speaker 3: of the investigation. Well, first of all was their one
Speaker 3: And second of all, I just want to know the
Speaker 3: status because you know, like I'm I'm ready to go.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not a dumb guy. That's pretty naive though,
Speaker 1: to not think the media is going to make this
Speaker 1: a story Like I knew.
Speaker 3: I knew what they what they do, but I didn't
Speaker 3: know that there. I didn't know their quest for the
Speaker 3: truth would be yeah, so so blurry.
Speaker 1: We've established the Dan is no mastermind, and he has
Speaker 1: made some pretty dumb decisions, and in this decision to
Speaker 1: use the media as his way of getting some sort
Speaker 1: of resolution to the glitch. Twenty fourteen and you're in
Speaker 1: the city morning Herald your story you said it wasn't
Speaker 1: that great story, it was missing a few facts and whatever.
Speaker 1: Alsably beaten up a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, you know they I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: not in charge of like the content direction and the
Speaker 3: Sydney Morning Herald or the Good Weekend, you know. So
Speaker 3: they say, oh, can we, you know, take your photo
Speaker 3: of you in a suit? I'm like, yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: can we put you on a private jet?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure, okay whatever. You know.
Speaker 3: So, but they run this story and it looks like
Speaker 3: I'm like having a big like gloat about it.
Speaker 1: All. You're the Wolf of Wall Street.
Speaker 3: Well you know, like yeah, the ding go of Colin Street.
Speaker 1: In the next episode of The Glitch, Dan's decision to
Speaker 1: use the media to get caught pays off in the
Speaker 1: strangest of ways.
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to get like, I'm just trying to
Speaker 3: get caught for something that seems it seems.
Speaker 2: Hard to get caught for at this point.
Speaker 3: But you'd think that if you stole me your goals
Speaker 3: from a bank, if I was an America, I would have.
Speaker 2: Been in jail. Like in forty five.
Speaker 1: Seconds, you go to Australia's best crime reporter. Yeah, Adam Jack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that article from Adam was posted on August nine,
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. You started the Magic Card in feb of
Speaker 1: twenty eleven. Yeah, that's a long time between drinks, so
Speaker 1: to speak.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely, Like I was picturing like I'm going to
Speaker 3: meet someone, I'm going to have a son or a daughter,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to be one years old and the
Speaker 3: cops are going to knock on the door and go,
Speaker 3: yeah you know that things, you have an over, You're gone.
Speaker 1: That's next time on the Glitch. If you're enjoying the
Speaker 1: Glitch and have some questions for Dan, here's your chance
Speaker 1: to come on the podcast in episode eight and ask
Speaker 1: Dan anything. Just send us an email with your question
Speaker 1: and your contact details to the Glitch at podshape dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the Glitch one word at pod shape PO D
Speaker 1: s h A p e dot com.