Speaker 1: Well, it was around ninety ninety five and my partner
Speaker 1: at the time was a foreign exchange podcast.
Speaker 2: He would have thought that after more than six months
Speaker 2: of investigations in a podcast series where Hams McLaren's shell
Speaker 2: shocked victims they bare their pain, we'd heard it all.
Speaker 2: But with Hamish, there's always more. We published our last
Speaker 2: episode three months ago, and the human wreckage caused by
Speaker 2: this one man continues to wash up. This first story
Speaker 2: goes all the way back to nineteen ninety five, almost
Speaker 2: a quarter of a century ago, when this woman and
Speaker 2: her partner whom we'll call Mark, got tangled up with Hamish.
Speaker 1: And it was around the time in Australia where the
Speaker 1: foreign exchange system was changing and they were getting with
Speaker 1: his people and putting computers to save money, and he
Speaker 1: was one of well a lot of foreign exchange brokers.
Speaker 1: It became entrenched at the time, and as part of
Speaker 1: his refrenchment sediment, he got a payout which would sort
Speaker 1: of tied us over for a few months.
Speaker 2: Even back then, Hamish had an innate ability, like a
Speaker 2: pig to a truffle, to sniff out a redundancy. Hamish
Speaker 2: proposed a business idea that they import fish and besh
Speaker 2: de mayor see cucumbers from Tonga and the Pacific Islands
Speaker 2: to sell to wealthy Asians in Sydney and China. Neither
Speaker 2: of them had any expertise in fish, but Hamish convinced
Speaker 2: Mark that it was a good idea. He also convinced
Speaker 2: him to put up all the money. Turned up to
Speaker 2: meetings with the Rollics on his wrist, a Swedish model
Speaker 2: on his arm, but never a wallet in his pocket.
Speaker 1: So we paid to the meal, and after it I
Speaker 1: said to my partner, I really.
Speaker 3: Don't like this guy.
Speaker 1: There's something about him. I don't find him.
Speaker 3: I don't like it.
Speaker 1: He did talk to talk, and he did seem to
Speaker 1: have a basic knowledge of what he was talking about
Speaker 1: to the degree where I couldn't fault it because I
Speaker 1: didn't have a better knowledge, so I kind of had
Speaker 1: to go with what It was. Same in terms of
Speaker 1: importing laws, exporting rules, where you get things from how
Speaker 1: you important.
Speaker 2: Nonetheless, they all flew off to Tomma Hamish with his
Speaker 2: Swedish girlfriend and they spent weeks supposedly setting up the business.
Speaker 2: Their tongue in business partner's name was Tavita Hamish would
Speaker 2: later steal that name as well. Mark paid for everything, hotels, flights,
Speaker 2: the wages of fishermen. Hamish's promises of money never eventuated.
Speaker 2: Things turned sour. Money went missing. When they flew back
Speaker 2: to see Sidney. Mark's Mercedes Bends had been stolen. Hamish
Speaker 2: had had the keys. They reported it to police. The
Speaker 2: car was eventually found abandoned in a parking station with
Speaker 2: a wad of finds under the wipers. Mark blew his redundancy.
Speaker 2: Hamish disappeared.
Speaker 1: I just thought it was a run off creek. I
Speaker 1: didn't think this was going to be the beginning of
Speaker 1: a beautiful career for him. And then I thought the
Speaker 1: name of your podcast, and I would I know who
Speaker 1: the health Hamish is, And it all just sort of
Speaker 1: came to me in a blinding inspiration with Jerk is
Speaker 1: the same Urk And so I googled images and it's
Speaker 1: the same guy.
Speaker 2: And what a beautiful career it would be for Hamish.
Speaker 2: At least he would go on for a quarter of
Speaker 2: a century driving porsches, opening gyms, hiring private jets, buying
Speaker 2: mansions by mountain and by see wooing beautiful women. He
Speaker 2: never wanted to sleep with all of it with other
Speaker 2: people's money. And then he disappear, leaving a trail of
Speaker 2: busted lives and broken marriages.
Speaker 3: And he was alwayes thinking, oh, this is this wido
Speaker 3: called Hamish that blew into my life. And now I
Speaker 3: know just like the extent of a conning and corruption
Speaker 3: that went on.
Speaker 2: Yes, this woman's encounter with Hamish came two decades after
Speaker 2: his tongue on adventures. This woman was working in investment
Speaker 2: management and private equity in Sydney when she got an
Speaker 2: email from a friend.
Speaker 3: I got an email saying, Hey, a guy called Hamish
Speaker 3: who I know. He's got multi billion dollar hedge fund
Speaker 3: and he wants to his strength and works with Lisa
Speaker 3: Hoe and he wants to start he wants to start
Speaker 3: a private equity fund. But anyway, we met for dinner
Speaker 3: at the Penderlino restaurant in the Strand Arcade with myself,
Speaker 3: Hamish and a lady called. But he was always saying
Speaker 3: to ask that if we do set up this fun
Speaker 3: you guys all need to put in money to demonstrate
Speaker 3: our commitments. And now I know what I know, I
Speaker 3: realize how ridiculous that sounds.
Speaker 2: Hamish would always arrive in a luxury vehicle. He referred
Speaker 2: to them as his look back cars.
Speaker 3: And you know, Hamish was always you know, talking about
Speaker 3: you know, he's rather surfing, his love of running. You know,
Speaker 3: he always had these brand new Porsches.
Speaker 2: He called them.
Speaker 3: He's a book back cars. I said, why are you
Speaker 3: call them a look back home? Because you know, whenever
Speaker 3: I walk away, you know, I look back at the
Speaker 3: car and feel good about the fact that, you know,
Speaker 3: I've got such a nice car or something like that.
Speaker 3: So then it was like, oh, what loooks back car
Speaker 3: has you got today, Hamish? And it was always range
Speaker 3: over a Porsche or something like that.
Speaker 2: But she became suspicious. She asked to see the details
Speaker 2: of his investment scheme on paper.
Speaker 3: I asked to see his investmentment around him and I
Speaker 3: was just a piece of junk. And as soon as
Speaker 3: I read that document, I thought, right, the next time
Speaker 3: we go to lunch, I'm in a confront him.
Speaker 2: She went to a lunch meeting with her two friends.
Speaker 2: She told Hamies she thought his proposal was rubbish, that
Speaker 2: she didn't believe there are any actual investors in his fund.
Speaker 3: And I remember looking at spaces and both of them
Speaker 3: completely fighted with Hamish. They sort of looked at me
Speaker 3: as though I was the crazy one. I said, God,
Speaker 3: not it.
Speaker 2: That was the last she heard from Hamish. The other
Speaker 2: woman at the table wasn't so fortunate. Like so many others,
Speaker 2: she fell under Hamish's spell.
Speaker 3: Hamish developed a relationship with and gave him a million
Speaker 3: dollars from her super funds.
Speaker 2: The woman lost all her money, her marriage disintegram. She
Speaker 2: was too embarrassed to go to the police. We contacted her.
Speaker 2: She sent an email saying, my family and I do
Speaker 2: not wish to be involved. All the best with your publication.
Speaker 2: Hames was never charged with this fraud, nor for dozens
Speaker 2: of others amounted to many tens of millions of dollars,
Speaker 2: But as we know, after decades of models and look
Speaker 2: back cars, he finally ran out of gas in July
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. Police arrived at his bond Bai apartment and
Speaker 2: led him away in handcuffs. He's been in jail ever since,
Speaker 2: much of it in Sydney's Long Bay, awaiting a verdict,
Speaker 2: having been charged with stealing seven and a half million
Speaker 2: dollars from fifteen victims. After all these years, the bill
Speaker 2: has finally come due, So how long does he deserve
Speaker 2: for these final pages from an epic life of deceit?
Speaker 4: So I think there's often an argument that custodial sentences
Speaker 4: should be used fairly sparingly for white collar offenders, largely
Speaker 4: because they're not seen to pose the type of immediate
Speaker 4: threat to society that violent offenders are.
Speaker 2: We checked back in with Professor Clinton Free, the corporate
Speaker 2: crime expert from the University of Sydney. You heard from
Speaker 2: him earlier in this series.
Speaker 4: But I think it's also a trap to think of
Speaker 4: white color offenders as a homogeneous group. And I think
Speaker 4: there's a huge world of difference between what your average
Speaker 4: guarden variety fraud offender might get as a sentence and
Speaker 4: what someone who commits the sort of premeditated, ruthless, prolonged
Speaker 4: defending that Hamish McLaren has perpetrated here.
Speaker 2: Clinton Free has spent years interviewing white collar criminals in jile.
Speaker 4: The Sentencing Bench Book, which is published by the Judicial
Speaker 4: Commission of New South Wales, sets out five factors for
Speaker 4: determining the objective seriousness of an offense, and I think
Speaker 4: Hamish has to be at the extreme end of the
Speaker 4: continuum on all five things. So the first is the
Speaker 4: amount of money involved, So in this case it's almost
Speaker 4: eight million dollars from multiple victims. The length of time
Speaker 4: over which the offending took place is significant, it's over
Speaker 4: multiple years. The motive for the crime doesn't appear to
Speaker 4: be need, and it doesn't appear to be impulsive. It's greed.
Speaker 4: The level of planning and sophistication is very significant, and
Speaker 4: the breach of trust which is attendant in the crime
Speaker 4: is extremely significant. So on that basis, I think this
Speaker 4: has to be at the extreme end of sort of
Speaker 4: a sentence for fraud.
Speaker 2: The maximum sentence for a fraud of this nature is
Speaker 2: ten years for each charge, And as Clinton Free says,
Speaker 2: if Hamius McLaren doesn't get the maximum, who would.
Speaker 4: What we know is that it's very rare for a
Speaker 4: fraud offender to get a sentence of an excess of
Speaker 4: a decade in your so far as there are examples
Speaker 4: of it, but it's rare. But I think in this
Speaker 4: case would seem to me that he'd be at that
Speaker 4: extreme end that we would expect to see something ten
Speaker 4: years and beyond. Potentially in mitigation, I guess he's got
Speaker 4: the fact that there's a guilty plea.
Speaker 2: It took decades for homies to be charged. What this highlights,
Speaker 2: the professor says, is how far the police and the
Speaker 2: financial regulators are behind the criminals when it comes to fraud.
Speaker 4: I think it's the boom industry and crime fraud, and
Speaker 4: if you think about things like cyber fraud and breaches
Speaker 4: of cybersecurity, these areas where I think there's enormous concern
Speaker 4: and there has to be questions raised about the ability
Speaker 4: of police to grow to deal with that sort of
Speaker 4: growth in that criminal category. I think investment has happened
Speaker 4: in the police.
Speaker 2: Force, but not at the rate that it needed to happen.
Speaker 4: I would say it's hard to argue that it has
Speaker 4: happened at the rate that it needs to happen. I think,
Speaker 4: especially when you start to push into that sort of
Speaker 4: cyber area, which is the top of most organizations fears
Speaker 4: at the moment, the resourcing around the police and that
Speaker 4: is problematic.
Speaker 2: The only safe place for someone like Hamish McLaren for
Speaker 2: the public is behind bars. Clinton Free reckons there's something
Speaker 2: sociopathic and compulsive about Hamish. Fraud is in his makeup.
Speaker 4: It's hard to look at that pattern of offending and
Speaker 4: come to a different conclusion. I think, you know, it's
Speaker 4: over such a prolonged period of time, there's multiple vulnerable victims.
Speaker 4: It's replicated, you know, many many times over. It's hard
Speaker 4: to think that there isn't some element of sort of
Speaker 4: sociopath in the thinking. I think the thing that's just
Speaker 4: dumbfounded me and people I've spoken to I've also listened
Speaker 4: to the podcast is just the scale of his offending,
Speaker 4: you know, where the fact that this is just replicated
Speaker 4: over such a long period of time, over lot of
Speaker 4: different geographies, So just the pure scale of it is
Speaker 4: mind blowing.
Speaker 2: Greg Bearer, This podcast Who the Hell Is Hamish is
Speaker 2: brought to you by the Australian newspaper Hamish. Mcfarran's reckoning
Speaker 2: has finally arrived and so we'll go back to where
Speaker 2: we begin this podcast in a cab with Tracy Hall
Speaker 2: on the drive down from Sydney's Northern Beaches. In April
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, Tracy Hall talked for the first time with
Speaker 2: a charming man called Max de Vita. Max never existed
Speaker 2: and today she's off to see the man who invented him.
Speaker 2: On the first Davy sentence hearing, she's tentative but excited.
Speaker 5: I'm excited. I want it to be over. I mean,
Speaker 5: I've waited.
Speaker 6: Two years for this.
Speaker 5: It's been a long it's been a long two years,
Speaker 5: and it will be just good to have the answer
Speaker 5: and to know where he's going to be for the
Speaker 5: next period of time and just to have that that
Speaker 5: door closed. You know, it's another piece of the puzzle that's.
Speaker 2: Been filled in what what do you want to say happen? Chraz.
Speaker 5: I've thought a lot about this, and I think no
Speaker 5: amount of time is going to be enough for any
Speaker 5: of us to you know, give him his come up
Speaker 5: and of what he's done to everybody. So I don't
Speaker 5: think the number is that important because it's out of
Speaker 5: out control. You know, life would be written, but you know,
Speaker 5: probably not reasonable or realistic. I think it's important that
Speaker 5: you know there's a there's a sentence that reflects the
Speaker 5: magnitude of what he's done and that that's reflected in
Speaker 5: the lives that he is. Yeah damage, yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 5: you know, the court case is very factual. Everything's very factual.
Speaker 5: But when you've been through it and when you meet
Speaker 5: other people who have been through it and you hear
Speaker 5: their stories and listen to everything else that he's done.
Speaker 5: It's the impact on the emotional state of people and
Speaker 5: their life that is the most important. You know, money
Speaker 5: is money, but how it's affected everyone emotionally.
Speaker 1: It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: For Hamish's crimes to be successful, he had to be
Speaker 2: embedded in the lives of his targets. It made the betrayal,
Speaker 2: when it always came, even more hurtful. A number of
Speaker 2: those people he betrayed have since become friends. It's helped
Speaker 2: them sort through the madness of their experience.
Speaker 5: He you know, he manipulated relationships, and you know he
Speaker 5: leveraged emotion to extract money from us over a long
Speaker 5: period of time for his own financial gain. So I
Speaker 5: do understand how it's hard to comprehend, But when you're
Speaker 5: in it, and when you spend a year and a
Speaker 5: half or two years, or however long it is in
Speaker 5: Beck's case it was five with somebody, these things happen
Speaker 5: very slowly and they creep up on you. And to
Speaker 5: be able to discuss that with somebody else that's been
Speaker 5: through it, that understands and doesn't judge or doesn't ask
Speaker 5: those questions that you just go, well, of course that's
Speaker 5: what happened, you know. It's there's there's comfort.
Speaker 2: In that when you think of him, what do you
Speaker 2: think of now?
Speaker 5: I find it really hard sometimes because my memories of
Speaker 5: him are of Max Teta.
Speaker 2: Are they're happy memories.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he, by all intents and purposes with you know,
Speaker 5: a fictional character, but a great guy, you know, somebody
Speaker 5: who supported me, somebody who we had similar interests, We
Speaker 5: had great conversations. He was you know, he was very
Speaker 5: much a part of my you know, my life and
Speaker 5: what I was hoping to do moving forward. So those
Speaker 5: memories that I have to compartmentalize that and go, well,
Speaker 5: that's just a fictional character. He just made himself up
Speaker 5: and deceived me for nearly eighteen months and really, in
Speaker 5: my mind construct him as who he is, as Hamish McLaren.
Speaker 2: And so there's a deconstruction going on there and then
Speaker 2: are rebuilding.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I just have to in my mind, I
Speaker 5: have to just go Max Debt it doesn't exist, because
Speaker 5: he doesn't. You know, he's a He's a fictional character
Speaker 5: that was made up to deceive me. Yes, and Hamish
Speaker 5: McLaren I have since come to learn who who he is,
Speaker 5: and through this process with you and the other victims,
Speaker 5: and what I've learned, I'm seeing very clearly who he is.
Speaker 5: Seeing him at the committal hearing when he pleaded guilty.
Speaker 5: That was a really cool moment for me because it
Speaker 5: was the first time I had seen him since he
Speaker 5: was arrested and he was in his prison greens. He
Speaker 5: looked old, he didn't talk, he wouldn't look at us,
Speaker 5: and that was the first time I saw him for
Speaker 5: who he really was. And we got the court fac
Speaker 5: documents that day, which is the first time when I
Speaker 5: felt that I wasn't alone.
Speaker 2: Tracy's getting on with her life. She's now able to
Speaker 2: joke about what happened. She tells me that one of
Speaker 2: her friends met her new boyfriend. He asked him to
Speaker 2: produce one hundred points of identification.
Speaker 5: I have been really nervous that this day would be
Speaker 5: delayed again, and you know, it's a big thing to
Speaker 5: have hanging over all of our heads for two years,
Speaker 5: and I haven't been able to sleep very well this week.
Speaker 5: It's just on my mind. I'm thinking about it. And yeah,
Speaker 5: texts came through saying that it's all systems go and
Speaker 5: it's not going to be delayed. And I decided to
Speaker 5: go for a long run and then aswim in the
Speaker 5: ocean yesterday, just almost as a middle finger up to
Speaker 5: Hamish because he you know, my experience with him was
Speaker 5: he loved that stuff, and he loved the ocean, and
Speaker 5: he loved running. And I wanted to do something that
Speaker 5: he couldn't and it made me so grateful for my
Speaker 5: freedom and the fact I can lie in bed straight
Speaker 5: at night and you know, thinking about where he is
Speaker 5: and where he deserves to be. And yeah, that was
Speaker 5: that was something I just wanted to do to lift
Speaker 5: my expirits yesterday.
Speaker 2: The one burning question she still has is where is
Speaker 2: all that money.
Speaker 5: We still don't know where the bloody hell the money is,
Speaker 5: you know, in all of these so much money, and
Speaker 5: it's not just this case, in everything that we know,
Speaker 5: and it's somewhere.
Speaker 2: On the first day of McLaren Sant's hearing a week ago,
Speaker 2: Judge Jim Charteris was asking the same question. He did
Speaker 2: a quick calculation and found that in the six years
Speaker 2: covering Hamish's charges, five point four million dollars was missing.
Speaker 2: More than nine hundred thousand dollars a year. The judge
Speaker 2: remarked that the only person who knew where the money was, Hamish,
Speaker 2: had chosen not to take the witness stand. The day
Speaker 2: did not go well for Hamish. A letter he wrote
Speaker 2: saying how sorry he was was read to the court.
Speaker 2: The judge said he appeared to be a late convert
Speaker 2: to contrition, con man, he said, might not necessarily be
Speaker 2: a curable condition. He never once locked eyes with his
Speaker 2: victims in the court, including his ex wife beck Roe,
Speaker 2: and his ex girlfriend Tracy Hall, and the seventeen year
Speaker 2: old girl Jane with whom he had a predatory affair.
Speaker 2: Jane had flown down for the sensing and said she'd
Speaker 2: come back again to see the job.
Speaker 6: Done, just to see it through, you know, having gone
Speaker 6: through this whole process, and not just the process over
Speaker 6: the last few months, but the process of the impact
Speaker 6: that he just had on my life and all of
Speaker 6: our lives. Not to see it through, I think I
Speaker 6: would regret that.
Speaker 2: How did you feel about him not even looking around
Speaker 2: and kind of acknowledging on your looking in your direction.
Speaker 6: Is that not in keeping with his nature? It's all
Speaker 6: a bravado front. He's not strong, He's not powerful. He
Speaker 6: doesn't wield any power over any of us. He's a
Speaker 6: coward and that's all it is. And without the money
Speaker 6: and without those showy Bravado fronts, he's nothing. And I
Speaker 6: think that was so in keeping with his nature.
Speaker 2: As Jane says, coward is in Hamish's DNA. After the
Speaker 2: first day of his hearing, he'd applied to a PVI
Speaker 2: video link when the judge was to deliver his sentence.
Speaker 2: But the judge was having none of this. He ordered
Speaker 2: Hamish to the dock. There was now nowhere to hide.
Speaker 2: Hamish's lies, which fuelled him for decades, were now bearing
Speaker 2: down on him like an out of control limited edition
Speaker 2: runaway Mercedes McLaren. As the victims filed into the public gallery,
Speaker 2: there was a carnival air, like a public stoning. Some
Speaker 2: of those involved had given their kids the day off
Speaker 2: school so they could witness this moment, accompanied by their grandmas.
Speaker 2: As a possible mitigating circumstance, McLaren's defense team said he
Speaker 2: may be autistic, but the strengths were dubious.
Speaker 7: Mister McLaren's actions over a number of years have demonstrated
Speaker 7: the callous disregard for the multiple victims of his fraudulent offenses,
Speaker 7: most of whom lost substantial sums of money if they're
Speaker 7: not their life for savings. In this respect, I'm of
Speaker 7: the opinion mister McLaren's actions were likely driven by greed
Speaker 7: and efficient personality trays rather than any overt mental illness
Speaker 7: or mental disorder.
Speaker 2: Remorse is a key consideration in determining a jailed sense
Speaker 2: of course, HAMI said he was sorry. The judge was
Speaker 2: having none of it.
Speaker 7: Regrettably, I've come to the view that mister McLaren is
Speaker 7: not remorseful. Mister McLaren is sorry for no one other
Speaker 7: than himself.
Speaker 2: He needed to make an example of him.
Speaker 7: The punishment, by a sense of sentence of imprisonment has
Speaker 7: real bite as a deterrent to others. In the case
Speaker 7: of white color crime, it's often a choice. Why color
Speaker 7: crime freely made by well educated people from privileg's background.
Speaker 7: It's prompted by greed.
Speaker 2: The offending was exacerbated by his close association with his victims.
Speaker 7: Accept the offender abused his position of trust in relation
Speaker 7: to every offense. I accept he cunningly planned and organized
Speaker 7: this serious criminal activity. The offenses were committed for financial gain.
Speaker 7: The only mitigating feature is that he has pleaded guilty.
Speaker 7: I accept he continue to engage in this behavior even
Speaker 7: though he was brought to bankruptcy by one of the victims.
Speaker 7: The extent of his criminal activity makes a finding of
Speaker 7: good character for his first offense of very little Bay.
Speaker 2: After a long career as a criminal lawyer and a judge,
Speaker 2: it just happened to be judged Charteris's very last day
Speaker 2: on the bench. He was not to be rushed. For
Speaker 2: two hours, he poured over the evil deeds of Hams
Speaker 2: McLaren and how he deceived and damaged each of his victims.
Speaker 2: On his final day of judgment, his focus was on
Speaker 2: the victims. His assessment was methodical and damning.
Speaker 7: I will that now deal with the individual assessments as
Speaker 7: regards the offenses against miss now Rattle. The offensa took
Speaker 7: five hundred and sixty four thousand dollars a sentence of
Speaker 7: four years and six months as appropriate. The sequence one
Speaker 7: mister and missus Picard four hundred and thirty four thousand
Speaker 7: dollars three hundred and twenty thousand dollars each of those
Speaker 7: matters four years imprisonment. Mister Hilliard Senior and Junior two
Speaker 7: hundred and fifteen thousand dollars three years and nine months,
Speaker 7: three hundred thousand dollars four years imprisonment. Nicole Moses eight
Speaker 7: hundred and twenty thousand dollars six years imprisonment. Tracy Hall
Speaker 7: was three hundred and seventeen thousand dollars four years imprisonment.
Speaker 7: Mister Carl and Miss Danyee. Their loss was thirty three thousand,
Speaker 7: two hundred and seventy dollars eighteen months imprisonment. Mister and
Speaker 7: missus Cross five hundred twelve thousand, five hundred four years
Speaker 7: and six months, one million dollars six years and nine months,
Speaker 7: two hundred thousand dollars three years and nine months. Lisa Hoe,
Speaker 7: which was eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars six years imprisonment.
Speaker 7: Tracy Marrock, the forty six year old unemployed person due
Speaker 7: to medical issues nine hundred and eighty thousand dollars six
Speaker 7: years imprisonment, was sixty nine thousand dollars two years imprisonment
Speaker 7: who Julie Sullivan was one hundred thousand dollars two years
Speaker 7: and three months. Miss Lowe who was fifty eight years
Speaker 7: of age and unemployed six hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 7: three hundred thousand dollars four years after the plea of
Speaker 7: guilty for Section seventy six, lastly dealing with the proceeds
Speaker 7: of crime in a sum of more than seven seven
Speaker 7: point six million dollars seven and a half years imprisonment
Speaker 7: after the plea of guilty. That's said, if.
Speaker 2: You added up all the sentences for all the crimes,
Speaker 2: he'd have been there for seventy years. But that's not
Speaker 2: how it works. The judge is tasked with delivering accumulative
Speaker 2: total his maximum a minimum sentence.
Speaker 7: Mister McLaren, where you stand well, I pass sentence. In
Speaker 7: my opinion, you conducted yourself as if you would never
Speaker 7: be brought to account. You conducted yourself as you would
Speaker 7: not have that you would not have a judgment day.
Speaker 7: You were mistaken. That judgment day is today. For the
Speaker 7: seventeen matters, I impose an aggregate sentence of sixteen years
Speaker 7: imprisonment with twelve years non paral. You can remove mister
Speaker 7: McLaren from the court.
Speaker 2: The victims left the court to be confronted by a
Speaker 2: bank of TV cameras. This is Glenn Picard, the coal
Speaker 2: mine from Mudgie. He lost more than six hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars and his marriage to Hamish. He was on the
Speaker 2: verge of retirement, but has since gone back down the pits.
Speaker 2: What do you think, imagine?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm very happy with the sentence. Probably probably a
Speaker 8: bit more not thought so, but yeah, very very happy,
Speaker 8: very short aside, and I thought the judge was brilliant.
Speaker 2: How do you feel when that was when you realize
Speaker 2: that he's going away for more than a decade.
Speaker 8: It's emotional, Yeah, it was absollently it was probably just
Speaker 8: relief that it's and very very happy with the sentence.
Speaker 8: Extremely happy with the sentence. A couple of glass.
Speaker 4: Of red wine on it.
Speaker 2: Tracy Hall was in tears.
Speaker 5: It's hard to find the words right now. I just
Speaker 5: feel incredibly emotional and it's just been a really long
Speaker 5: two years and it's just yeah, I feel good.
Speaker 3: Do you feel good?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I feel good. It's a lot higher than what
Speaker 5: I was expecting.
Speaker 2: The front of the media, and then went to a
Speaker 2: cafe for lunch. It was opposite the old Darlinghurst Jail,
Speaker 2: now an art school. The art school featured an exhibition
Speaker 2: entitled Court Stealing the Art of misappropriation. This is beck
Speaker 2: Rosen's taken.
Speaker 9: I had this awful sense of the finality for the
Speaker 9: ladies and you know, all of these people who have
Speaker 9: been rich or financially because while this is like for
Speaker 9: me and the boys so great to see him behind bars,
Speaker 9: I just.
Speaker 7: I hate that.
Speaker 9: It's sort of like is closing a door to where
Speaker 9: is that money? And how can we make these people
Speaker 9: feel better? I mean seeing him go away and run
Speaker 9: down those stairs to go to jail until Levi's thirty
Speaker 9: two hopefully, yeah, is incredible for us. I mean, I'm
Speaker 9: sure he's down there going holyly fuck like. I'm sure
Speaker 9: he wasn't expecting it to go this way, because he
Speaker 9: always said I remember telling him he was going to
Speaker 9: go to jail he as a con man, and I
Speaker 9: remember him just laughing at me and going, Becky, you
Speaker 9: don't know anything. You have no idea what's going to
Speaker 9: I'm going to be sitting on a beach.
Speaker 2: He's karrent Low.
Speaker 10: I went through a range of all emotions, really disbelieve initially,
Speaker 10: and then I don't know where the tears came from,
Speaker 10: and then gratitude to the judge, to the fantastic judge.
Speaker 10: I mean, he actually read it, took the time to
Speaker 10: read it well, and he dotted every iron, crossed every tea.
Speaker 10: And for me to hear the rawness of everyone's statement,
Speaker 10: stuff that I'd never heard from their statements, which was
Speaker 10: not out there until this morning, was really quite emotional.
Speaker 10: But yeah, I think that's closure.
Speaker 2: This is Jane now, a woman of twenty three, for
Speaker 2: just a seventeen year old girl when Hamish began a
Speaker 2: predatory relationship with her.
Speaker 6: Look, I would be lying if I said there wasn't
Speaker 6: a great level of satisfaction in knowing that he's been
Speaker 6: stripped of his freedom for a minimum of twelve years henceforth.
Speaker 6: And I mean, that's never going to recompense the loss
Speaker 6: that everybody who crossed paths with him felt, But it
Speaker 6: does bring some level of compensation, just the fact that
Speaker 6: he's been held accountable in the very least, and this
Speaker 6: whole facade, this whole world that he created has effectively
Speaker 6: come crashing down.
Speaker 2: She sobbed in the court when the judge was assessing
Speaker 2: the crimes against her grandparents, Lorraine and Peter Cross.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was quite surreal, Like I didn't preempt that
Speaker 6: I would be quite so emotional, but I think it's
Speaker 6: still it's just the shame, the guilt at knowing that
Speaker 6: I was the conduit to his infiltrating my family. You know,
Speaker 6: I was the inn and yeah, he abused that. In
Speaker 6: every way. This whole process has brought forth a period
Speaker 6: of my life that I kept so tightly caged away.
Speaker 6: And there's no end to how free and empowering that is.
Speaker 6: And I you know, since this whole process has started,
Speaker 6: you go through phases of feeling so down and so
Speaker 6: you know, as I keep saying, shame that I've been
Speaker 6: carrying surrounding this, but equally as being this whole the
Speaker 6: sense of empowerment that comes with owning it and facing
Speaker 6: it and having the support network that I now have
Speaker 6: around me and all of this. So thank you.
Speaker 2: Wow, And here's Tracy again.
Speaker 5: And it's such a mix of emotions because in one mindset,
Speaker 5: you're kind of like, no amount of time it's going
Speaker 5: to be long enough. You know, there is no number
Speaker 5: that the judge can hand down that he's going to
Speaker 5: take away any of the pain from any of us
Speaker 5: and anything that we have to face for the rest
Speaker 5: of our lives because of what's happened. But then on
Speaker 5: the flip side, when you look at the law and
Speaker 5: what's you know, what the options are, and you think
Speaker 5: in your head it's going to be a certain amount,
Speaker 5: and then it's kind of double that. Then that feels
Speaker 5: really good. I think the only thing that Hamish's sorry
Speaker 5: about is the fact that he got caught. I think
Speaker 5: he's sorry he got caught. I don't think he is
Speaker 5: sorry about anything that he's done. You know, he didn't
Speaker 5: have the guts to look at anyone, he didn't have
Speaker 5: the guts to make a statement, he didn't have the
Speaker 5: guts to read his own sorry letter out. You know,
Speaker 5: here's a coward. And I think all of those things
Speaker 5: say a lot about a person. To be honest, I'm
Speaker 5: not sure how I could have gotten through the last
Speaker 5: few months, six months without the support of these people.
Speaker 5: You know, they're the only ones that know how it feels.
Speaker 5: And it's very easy from the outside looking in to think, oh,
Speaker 5: I would have never have been in that situation, or
Speaker 5: that never would have happened to me. And the reality
Speaker 5: is it can happen to anyone, and these people understand
Speaker 5: that because it happened to them as well. And yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm not alone, which is always a nice thing to feel.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Tom.
Speaker 2: For years, Conman Hamish McLaren kept the people in his
Speaker 2: life apart lest they start comparing notes. His cons depended
Speaker 2: on chaos and division. And here they are a sample
Speaker 2: of those he deceived, all gathered in the one room
Speaker 2: celebrating his demise. And so who the hell is Hamish?
Speaker 2: That's easy. He's a cheat, a liar, a thief, a predator,
Speaker 2: a low dog of a man. He swapped his tom
Speaker 2: Ford suits for a prison tracksuit. He'll wake tomorrow morning
Speaker 2: to cold porridge. As for where all there's tens of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars ended up, it remains a great mystery.
Speaker 2: But that's a question He's going to be asked every
Speaker 2: day for the next decade or more. His interrogators, however,
Speaker 2: will not be mild men at accountants. With clipboards from
Speaker 2: the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, I'm Greg Bearer. This
Speaker 2: podcast was brought to you by The Australian Newspaper. It
Speaker 2: was produced by Nicholas Adams Jazzbar and the executive producer
Speaker 2: is Eric George. This week's Binus episode is the Swan
Speaker 2: Song of Judge Colin charteris his final words from the
Speaker 2: bench the sentencing of Hamish McLaren. Thank you for listening.