Speaker 1: Oh, strap in, That's all I can say. Strap in
Speaker 1: because this is a doozy. This is an episode you
Speaker 1: will not be able to pause, or get out of
Speaker 1: the car or start doing something else. Tracy Hall one
Speaker 1: of the last actual victim of Hamish McLaren and he
Speaker 1: is the what do you call the source of a
Speaker 1: podcast called who the Hell is Hamish? And it was
Speaker 1: a huge podcast, like people were sending it to each other.
Speaker 1: Listen to this, my god, this is Australian guys.
Speaker 2: Happened in Australia.
Speaker 1: Tracy is in that podcast. But she's now doing her
Speaker 1: own press tour because she's written a book about herself
Speaker 1: and her part. You will still probably want to buy
Speaker 1: the bookcase I do. I want to know more about
Speaker 1: this incredible woman, because she's not just the victim that
Speaker 1: you think is the victim. I mean, no one is
Speaker 1: the victim. But you think scammers, You think old people
Speaker 1: on the phones, you know, who still have landlines like
Speaker 1: you know, and media. Tracy touches on this media used
Speaker 1: to make us think that way. You know, so many
Speaker 1: people are being scammed these days in so many different ways.
Speaker 1: The media has changed, and thank god it has. She
Speaker 1: mentions that as well.
Speaker 2: You will.
Speaker 1: I think really love the questions that I ask because
Speaker 1: she answers the things that I wanted to know. So
Speaker 1: I asked her the things that I wanted to know
Speaker 1: that I know you want to know as well. My
Speaker 1: producer was the same, if we want to know these things,
Speaker 1: you all want to know these things too, So please
Speaker 1: enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Let me know what you think.
Speaker 1: Give her a follow on Instagram. Tracy Hall in the
Speaker 1: show notes, we will have a link to her socials
Speaker 1: or her book by the book, Why wouldn't you support
Speaker 1: this beautiful person?
Speaker 2: Here's Tracy Hall. Well, this is such an interesting story.
Speaker 1: Like I just watched the documentary because I have a
Speaker 1: podcast and I do two EPs a week. I don't
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts a lot because it's work, right, So
Speaker 1: I am a more of a visual gal. And my
Speaker 1: best friend, she is a podcast queen, and this was
Speaker 1: one she really wanted me to listen to.
Speaker 2: Who the Hell is Hamish?
Speaker 1: And I did start it, and I must say it
Speaker 1: was quite interesting, but like I said, I'm not that
Speaker 1: into podcasts. So I was so excited when I saw
Speaker 1: that Channel seven had done a documentary and you were
Speaker 1: in it. So I want to start at the start,
Speaker 1: and the documentary is about a man called Hamish McLaren.
Speaker 2: You were his last victim.
Speaker 1: Also just written a book which we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about later, but let's start at the beginning. Here's a
Speaker 1: con man and he swindled people out of money. You
Speaker 1: were his last victim. When did you meet him? So?
Speaker 3: I met a man by the name of Max Devita
Speaker 3: in early twenty sixteen on a dating app. I'd been
Speaker 3: separated from my husband for about a year and I
Speaker 3: thought I was ready to get back into the dating scene,
Speaker 3: and you know, I wanted to meet someone to spend
Speaker 3: some time with to you know, you know, someone that
Speaker 3: had the same sort of ideas about life as me,
Speaker 3: the same values and morals and like doing the same
Speaker 3: things as me. And it was slim pickings, to be honest.
Speaker 3: It was quite demoralizing in a lot of ways. And
Speaker 3: of course, when you know, Max Devita showed up and
Speaker 3: he had you know, a megawatt smile and National Geographic
Speaker 3: blue eyes and great chat, great banter. We connected really
Speaker 3: quickly and we built a relationship over the next sixteen months.
Speaker 3: It was based on shared values and liking the same
Speaker 3: things we loved the ocean, we loved running, and we
Speaker 3: just sort of hung out and he told me he
Speaker 3: was a chief financial officer for a family office in Sydney,
Speaker 3: and I knew a little bit about what that was.
Speaker 3: And then over the you know, over the next sixteen months,
Speaker 3: we just sort of built built our relationship and it
Speaker 3: was very you know, close, a very intimate relationship.
Speaker 4: We were talking about our future.
Speaker 3: The weekend before he was arrested, we were looking at
Speaker 3: properties in Byron Bay, thinking about, you know, our what
Speaker 3: the next ten years of our life might look like.
Speaker 3: And yes, so it was a pretty a pretty deep
Speaker 3: relationship that by that point. And it was in July
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen. I woke up one morning to a crime
Speaker 3: stop his video online of a man being arrested outside
Speaker 3: of his apartment in Bondai for swindling people out of
Speaker 3: millions of dollars, and his face was blurred out. But
Speaker 3: you know, there was not a shadow of a doubt
Speaker 3: that that was my boyfriend, Max Devita. Except it wasn't
Speaker 3: Max Devita, it was Hey Mish McClaren.
Speaker 1: So you got a phone call from or did you
Speaker 1: call the police to say that's my boyfriend?
Speaker 3: What had actually happened was we'd just gotten back from
Speaker 3: Byron Bay and I hadn't heard from him in about
Speaker 3: twenty four hours, which was very, very unusual, and I
Speaker 3: ended up after a very sleepless night and scouring the
Speaker 3: internet looking for friends and family to connect with to
Speaker 3: try and find out if something had happened. I ended
Speaker 3: up very early the next morning calling Bondi Police and
Speaker 3: asking them to do a wellness check on him, yep,
Speaker 3: because I just knew something was wrong, and they were
Speaker 3: off doing a wellness check on him, and a girlfriend
Speaker 3: of mine sent me the link to the video and
Speaker 3: that is when I found out that he'd been arrested.
Speaker 3: So that's obviously why he wasn't answering my calls.
Speaker 2: So that was the crime Stop A video.
Speaker 4: That was the crime Stop A video.
Speaker 3: And I called back Bondi Police and I said, well,
Speaker 3: you don't need to do a one's check on him
Speaker 3: because he's not dead. He's been arrested. And they said, yes,
Speaker 3: we know that now, but the name of the person
Speaker 3: that you gave us, the address and his age, everything
Speaker 3: you gave us about that man is not the man
Speaker 3: that lives there. And I said, well, who is it
Speaker 3: you know who who, like, who is this man? And
Speaker 3: they said, we can't tell. You need to contact the
Speaker 3: detectives working on the case. And that's when I spoke
Speaker 3: to the head detective who had arrested him. And then
Speaker 3: you know, the dealings with the police started at that point.
Speaker 3: So I went up and spent pretty much the next
Speaker 3: three weeks with the police unraveling the previous eighteen months
Speaker 3: of my life.
Speaker 1: Tracy, can I just first, I'm so sorry that this
Speaker 1: has happened to you, like to anyone, but like, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at a human, a beautiful woman who you know,
Speaker 1: we were just talking off air quickly about your daughter,
Speaker 1: and so I'm assuming he knew your daughter, you're a
Speaker 1: single mom.
Speaker 3: Yes, of course, I mean after nearly eighteen months, he
Speaker 3: definitely knew her. The relationship built quite slowly because I
Speaker 3: didn't really want to infuse a new person in my life.
Speaker 4: With most women died.
Speaker 1: Yep, you have to learn, you have to earn that trust,
Speaker 1: don't you, for a partner before you bring a child in,
Speaker 1: which is the most appropriate way to do a relationship
Speaker 1: I think in person.
Speaker 2: And that would have been absolutely huge for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was, and it took a long time for
Speaker 3: me to introduce her. So the time that we spent together,
Speaker 3: I guess it's fair to say, was fairly limited because
Speaker 3: I have majority care of my daughter, so I would
Speaker 3: see him when she was with her dad. But over
Speaker 3: you know, eighteen months, that is a long time to
Speaker 3: go out with somebody, And of course she would hear
Speaker 3: him on the phone a lot because we would talk
Speaker 3: all the time, and they built a bit of a
Speaker 3: relationship through that, and then by kind of you know,
Speaker 3: the moving into over a year after we met and
Speaker 3: started going out, we took family holidays up to Byron Babe.
Speaker 3: My mom came along, like my mom came and stayed
Speaker 3: with us. He met my family, So yeah, they did
Speaker 3: have a relationship in the end, but it was mostly
Speaker 3: it was a few holidays and then you know, the
Speaker 3: rest of the time we spent together was religious when
Speaker 3: I had that space, you know, on my own. So
Speaker 3: it was funny actually, Eve because when Hamis she was
Speaker 3: arrested and everything just fell apart around me. I made
Speaker 3: a decision really early on that there'd be no tears
Speaker 3: at the dinner table, okay, and that I wouldn't discuss
Speaker 3: it with her. She was really young at the time,
Speaker 3: she was like six or six and a half or something,
Speaker 3: and it's very hard to explain a non compliant superinnuation
Speaker 3: fund and a con man who swindled people out of
Speaker 3: millions of dollars to a six year old. And I
Speaker 3: didn't want to worry her and life had to go on,
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't want for all the part and
Speaker 3: you know, it's just me at home.
Speaker 4: With her, so I just had to keep her ghost.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a blessing in a sense because that kept
Speaker 3: me going a lot of the time. But you know,
Speaker 3: and I don't know if it was the right decision,
Speaker 3: but it's kind of funny now in retrospect because we.
Speaker 4: Just carried on.
Speaker 3: There were no tears at the dinner table. And it
Speaker 3: wasn't until about eight or nine months after he'd been
Speaker 3: arrested that we were in the bathroom one night, you know,
Speaker 3: doing the nightly shower routine, and she says to me, O, Mum,
Speaker 3: we haven't heard from Max in a while, and I.
Speaker 4: Just had a while.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, yeah, he's just been really busy. Rabe
Speaker 3: like it's so good. I think he's just been super busy.
Speaker 3: And she's like okay, and she moved on. And that's
Speaker 3: the joy of children, right, because they just they're so
Speaker 3: tangled up in their own world. And of course she
Speaker 3: was very young, and in that moment, I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: I've done a pretty good job of hiding this.
Speaker 2: That of protecting her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you really did protect her, which you did a
Speaker 1: really good job, because you know, a lot of people,
Speaker 1: we're just fallible people, but a lot of people are
Speaker 1: selfish in that way that you know. Such great parents
Speaker 1: are those ones who really do think about the ramifications
Speaker 1: of something that may be so devastating, how that would
Speaker 1: impact a child and trying to explain it or them
Speaker 1: even just seeing you and really being quite fearful of
Speaker 1: you reacting in certain ways. I want to just go
Speaker 1: back to that moment that you found out and the
Speaker 1: next ensuing three weeks, the betrayal that you must have felt, like,
Speaker 1: can you just take me there to I mean, to
Speaker 1: put it bluntly, you were sleeping with this man. You
Speaker 1: were sleeping with the enemy. You gave him the most
Speaker 1: intimate parts of yourself. You, I imagine, would tell him the
Speaker 1: most intimate thing about yourself. You were vulnerable, you trusted him,
Speaker 1: you relied on him in certain ways for certain things
Speaker 1: depended on him. You thought he was a good guy,
Speaker 1: You thought, you know, you'd found a really great person
Speaker 1: to share a future with, and then you find out
Speaker 1: that he is a freaking sociopath. Like, I'm so freaking angry.
Speaker 1: He just lies and lies and lies, like I can't
Speaker 1: I can't understand. Can you take me there? What was
Speaker 1: that like for you?
Speaker 3: I mean, first of all, it was disbelief, because, like
Speaker 3: you said, this is a man that you know, would
Speaker 3: lie in bed next to me at night and when
Speaker 3: I couldn't sleep, he would, you know, he would talk
Speaker 3: to me until I fell asleep. We shared everything, and
Speaker 3: I wholeheartedly believed that he had my best interests at heart.
Speaker 3: And so to wake up one morning and find that
Speaker 3: he's a not the person you think he is, that's
Speaker 3: a very discombobulating thing for your brain to cope with,
Speaker 3: because it was, you know, the person that I loved
Speaker 3: and the person that I was building a future with,
Speaker 3: and the person that I felt like was my person
Speaker 3: and had my back and saw me actually didn't exist,
Speaker 3: didn't exist, No.
Speaker 1: Like, how do you compartmentalize that? As like, were you
Speaker 1: a mess? Like you or you much?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: I remember you saying in the docor you when you
Speaker 1: spoke to the detective, like you had to go and vomit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I felt a lot of physical reaction during during those
Speaker 3: weeks and months afterwards.
Speaker 4: I'm not a big person.
Speaker 3: I'm a small framed person, and I lost six kilos
Speaker 3: in three weeks. I could not eat, I could not sleep,
Speaker 3: I could not rest until I knew how it all
Speaker 3: fit together. And I think in terms of compartmentalizing, it
Speaker 3: was like a death. So the man that I loved
Speaker 3: and the man that I was building my future with
Speaker 3: died in that moment because he actually didn't really exist.
Speaker 4: In the first place.
Speaker 2: So he was dead and gone.
Speaker 4: He was dead and gone. But it's weird and you
Speaker 4: actually grieve that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was grief around that, But then I felt
Speaker 3: bad for grieving because it wasn't real person. So confusing
Speaker 3: for me. But you know those you know those moments
Speaker 3: where you go, oh, just call them and tell them that,
Speaker 3: or just because you know, you get into these habits
Speaker 3: and it becomes part of your life. And in those
Speaker 3: weeks afterwards, I'd be like, ohll just call Max.
Speaker 4: Oh shit, yeah, okay name I know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So yeah, that was that was really hard, and
Speaker 3: I think part of it for me was and this
Speaker 3: is the thing I've realized. The thing about our brains
Speaker 3: is we don't like unfinished stories, and we either make
Speaker 3: up the ending so that we can rest, or we
Speaker 3: remain in this state of complete confusion. And and you know,
Speaker 3: you just can't rest until you've got the ending or
Speaker 3: you've got the pieces of the puzzle. And during those
Speaker 3: weeks and months afterwards, it was very, very difficult for
Speaker 3: me to get information about the last eighteen months of
Speaker 3: my life. So obviously I could research him and what
Speaker 3: he'd done previously because I had his real name now,
Speaker 3: but the police really couldn't tell me very much other
Speaker 3: than you know, go through my experience. They couldn't release
Speaker 3: any information about other victims legally legally, how frustrating.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then of course his family of are very tight
Speaker 3: lip they wouldn't talk to me, friends, etc.
Speaker 4: So I was.
Speaker 3: Trying to finish a jigsaw puzzle in my mind so
Speaker 3: I could put it to bed, but I couldn't because
Speaker 3: no one I couldn't get the information. And I think
Speaker 3: that was what was really difficult for me. And it
Speaker 3: wasn't until we until I spoke to Greg bar Up,
Speaker 3: who was the journalist from The Australian who did the
Speaker 3: podcast Who the Hell is Hamish's? Things really started to
Speaker 3: become clear. So I lived in that world for.
Speaker 4: Over a year.
Speaker 2: Oh that's long.
Speaker 4: It was a long time.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, I was single parenting at
Speaker 3: the same time, you know, I had lost all of
Speaker 3: my financial security, every piece of savings, all of my
Speaker 3: career superannuation, any shares I had, and I had my
Speaker 3: monthly salary, and I had a you know, it's not
Speaker 3: lost on me that I had a really good job,
Speaker 3: but I also worked really hard and I couldn't lose
Speaker 3: my job. So I was just working my ass off
Speaker 3: during that time, just like I've got to keep my job.
Speaker 4: I can't lose my job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because that was the only financial security that I had.
Speaker 3: So there was all of this stuff going on as well,
Speaker 3: and at the same time, I'm just trying to kind
Speaker 3: of figure out this parallel universe that I'd been living
Speaker 3: in for the last eighteen months.
Speaker 1: I did kind of put it out there to a
Speaker 1: few people who had listened to the podcast, what would
Speaker 1: you want to know if you could ask her a question?
Speaker 1: I had one person say something that was really offensive
Speaker 1: to me, but a really valid question, and I answered it.
Speaker 2: So I'll tell you what I answered to me.
Speaker 1: But because it was offensive to me, she didn't mean
Speaker 1: it in but she couldn't help it, she said, I
Speaker 1: just She goes, I don't want to be victim blame me,
Speaker 1: but I just want to know how stupid can you
Speaker 1: be to give someone your money? And I answered. He'd
Speaker 1: been with her for a year, never talked about her
Speaker 1: money ever, and when he asked her, if this is correct,
Speaker 1: please correct me if it's not. When he asked her,
Speaker 1: do you have a self managed super fund? And she
Speaker 1: said no, he was like, well you sure, because you
Speaker 1: make a lot more interest in. He's a CFO, so
Speaker 1: he's been going to work with her every morning. He
Speaker 1: goes off to his office and she goes off to
Speaker 1: her office. So I know bankers, I know stockbrokers. If
Speaker 1: someone that I've known for over years to me, Evie,
Speaker 1: have you ever thought about, you know, maximizing your money,
Speaker 1: Like that's what I do.
Speaker 2: I could help you.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, here's my super fund because I don't
Speaker 1: know how to do that. That's how easily it can happen,
Speaker 1: like we all know people in banking, in money, someone
Speaker 1: who has and you just I mean, out of one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of people, you've got one percent who's going
Speaker 1: to be con men.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I have so much to say about
Speaker 3: this because and first of all, i'd say, you know,
Speaker 3: when it all happened, the victim blaming probably came from me, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the most, very quickly and the most. And how did
Speaker 3: I let this happen?
Speaker 4: Pretty much?
Speaker 3: Nothing anyone could say to me that I haven't already
Speaker 3: said to myself.
Speaker 4: But what I do know after all of this time.
Speaker 3: And it's been many, many years, is that they're you know,
Speaker 3: it's very difficult to describe the insidious nature of this
Speaker 3: type of crime and the coercive control and the grooming
Speaker 3: that happens over a very long period of time that
Speaker 3: gets you to that point. So when the media, you know,
Speaker 3: and to be honest, currently the media doing a fantastic
Speaker 3: job at all of this, you know, this kind of narrative.
Speaker 3: But previously the media would do these sensationalized stories like
Speaker 3: you know, vulnerable divorcee loses life savings to con man
Speaker 3: in you know, another country or whatever it might be.
Speaker 3: And you see those sensational headlines and you flick past
Speaker 3: them because you think, what an idiot. I'd never do that,
Speaker 3: and I was one of those people. But what I
Speaker 3: what I want to do in bringing this story forward
Speaker 3: is help educate people like your friend who and in
Speaker 3: fairness to her, I probably would have said something like
Speaker 3: that as well. But what we know about you know
Speaker 3: the function and the these types of relationships where there
Speaker 3: is so much grooming and so much coercive control. In
Speaker 3: my case it was financial coercive control. Is that if
Speaker 3: Hamish had knocked on my door one day and said
Speaker 3: handover is super new savings trace enough I go, I
Speaker 3: one hundred percent never would have done it. This is
Speaker 3: a man who weaseled his way into my life over
Speaker 3: a period of nearly a year and a half. He
Speaker 3: pretended to be somebody else. He completely deceived me on
Speaker 3: all levels, both an emotional and a professional level. The
Speaker 3: number of conversations that we had about finances, about his
Speaker 3: line of work, about what he was investing for some
Speaker 3: of the wealthiest families in Australia, the different strategies, the
Speaker 3: prices of God. I would overhear conversations with people that existed.
Speaker 3: I still don't know who these people are, but I
Speaker 3: could hear them on the other end of the phone
Speaker 3: talking about the closing price of gold, what happened in
Speaker 3: the French election, how that's impacting the US economy, what
Speaker 3: investments were doing. What you know, he would send me,
Speaker 3: And these are just a few examples, just to paint
Speaker 3: the picture. But he would send me an email every
Speaker 3: week every Friday that he purportedly wrote to all of
Speaker 3: his investors that was pages and pages long about what's
Speaker 3: happening in the market and the stocks and how they've
Speaker 3: traded them, and what's happening with the investments, and what
Speaker 3: the predictions are. He had Bloomberg monitors set up in
Speaker 3: his apartment that he tinkered on the whole time. There
Speaker 3: were official well they were fake, but he had, you know,
Speaker 3: forged official documents of the investments that he was doing
Speaker 3: for me, pages and pages long, showing me the different
Speaker 3: trades and what it started at, what it ended at,
Speaker 3: you know. And these are just a few examples of,
Speaker 3: you know, the way in which he created this movie.
Speaker 3: I guess you could say that you know by the
Speaker 3: time he asked me about my superannuation and how many
Speaker 3: you know, how much I was paying in fees and
Speaker 3: that he could do better for me. I had this
Speaker 3: confirmation that he was exactly who he said he was.
Speaker 3: Just this is the death by a thousand cuts. This
Speaker 3: is the coeresive control. This is the you know, the
Speaker 3: deceit to get me to a point where I, one
Speaker 3: hundred percent, without a shadow of a doubt, believed that
Speaker 3: A he had my best interests at heart, and B
Speaker 3: he was the perfect person to help me be financially
Speaker 3: independent for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there really wasn't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been a better person because you were
Speaker 1: with this person and they had your best interests.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ideally this situation would end so differently for so many
Speaker 1: other people. This particular story is quite an anomaly because
Speaker 1: you know, most people who were in the money sector legit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this was truly bad luck.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: And you know, I often think you know, people who
Speaker 3: run small businesses or you know, I've worked in marketing
Speaker 3: for twenty five years, and people that sort of say
Speaker 3: things and come to me and ask questions. I would
Speaker 3: offer them advice and offer to help them do their marketing,
Speaker 3: for example, and someone would look at me and go Okay,
Speaker 3: we'll she's been working in marketing for twenty five years.
Speaker 4: It should be a great person to do it. Now.
Speaker 3: I don't have an ill in tent, so that's the difference.
Speaker 3: But the grooming that happens in these types of things
Speaker 3: that you don't realize because it is death by a
Speaker 3: thousand cuts, yes, you know, and I think that's what
Speaker 3: I'm really keen for people to understand that, you know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't happen in the way that you think it
Speaker 3: does in a two minute clip that you might see
Speaker 3: on the Current Affair program.
Speaker 1: And now you've written a book, I'm assuming that the
Speaker 1: is too pronged for you advice to give, you know,
Speaker 1: a warning, but also quite cathartic. Yeah, yeah, what was
Speaker 1: it like going through it all again?
Speaker 3: The book is broken into three parts, so there's a before,
Speaker 3: during it, and after, and so each of those sections
Speaker 3: described my life in that moment in time, so it's memoir.
Speaker 3: So the before part is really sets the scene of
Speaker 3: who I am as a person once happened to me
Speaker 3: in my life, and without giving any spoilers, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot had happened in my life before before I
Speaker 3: even met Hamish, so I lost my dad when he
Speaker 3: was fifty three, very quickly to Lakemia. I very soon
Speaker 3: after lost my best friend's husband died at thirty one
Speaker 3: in his sleep. We ran away to India together to
Speaker 3: deal with that. So that was fabulous. And then you know,
Speaker 3: I got married and had a bay and then my
Speaker 3: mum got breast cancer when my daughter was five weeks old,
Speaker 3: so I went through my maternity leave, you know, with
Speaker 3: her doing that. And then I had a miscarriage, and
Speaker 3: then I had a divorce, and you know, a lot happened,
Speaker 3: and the reason a lot happened, that's a lot, and
Speaker 3: it's not to dwell on those things. And it's written
Speaker 3: very you know, there's a lot of humor in there
Speaker 3: as well. But essentially what that does is set the
Speaker 3: scene for who I'm as a person. I've dealt with grief,
Speaker 3: I've dealt with despair, I've dealt with heartache. And then
Speaker 3: of course it goes into a lot of detail about
Speaker 3: my relationship with Hamish, how we met, how we built that,
Speaker 3: and I needed seventy five thousand words to explain the
Speaker 3: insidious nature of what happened, and so we go through
Speaker 3: all of that, and then of course the after section
Speaker 3: is what happened after he was you know, he was
Speaker 3: arrested and then sentenced and the podcast finished, and what
Speaker 3: you're left with is a life that you have to
Speaker 3: put back together. And I think it was a really
Speaker 3: nice roundout because, you know, I had built up a
Speaker 3: level of resilience and strength and I knew that even
Speaker 3: though it was one of the worst things that's ever
Speaker 3: happened to me. It was horrific, it wasn't the worst,
Speaker 3: and I knew that.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was pretty bad, but wowid yeah.
Speaker 3: But I knew that if I could get through those
Speaker 3: other things, then I could get through this. And I
Speaker 3: just had to you know, I had to give it time.
Speaker 3: I had to give it some energy. I had to
Speaker 3: be very self compassionate, Like there was so many things
Speaker 3: that I'd learned from the before part of my life
Speaker 3: that helped me with the after. And I don't think
Speaker 3: you need to be swindled by a conman to feel
Speaker 3: intense levels of grief, betrayal, heartache, trauma. We're all going
Speaker 3: through things, right, and hopefully the story acts as a
Speaker 3: bit of a beacon of hope for anybody going through
Speaker 3: a tough time that you know there is there is
Speaker 3: a tomorrow, There is hope, You're going to be okay,
Speaker 3: but it just takes time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's really big of you to say some
Speaker 1: and understand that, you know, have that kind of perspective,
Speaker 1: because you know, they say your health is the most
Speaker 1: important thing, and mental health is also a really big thing,
Speaker 1: and that would have been so affected if nothing physical
Speaker 1: or in your medical health, that mental health would have
Speaker 1: been so incredibly crushed and sick. But just going back
Speaker 1: to what I wanted to ask before, because he mentioned
Speaker 1: that during that year the family were tight lived. I
Speaker 1: remember in the documentary you had met his brother, his
Speaker 1: brother in law, his brother in law, and he'd called
Speaker 1: him handbone and then he quickly you know, when you
Speaker 1: said what is what he was call you hanmdbone because
Speaker 1: his name, you know, Max to you, he was like,
Speaker 1: oh it was a skinny little kid and need to
Speaker 1: put hand on the bone. Like it was just so
Speaker 1: good at what he did, like so fast, sociopathically, pathologically
Speaker 1: lying incredibly good. I mean, if anything, part of me
Speaker 1: goes paying a little bit of money because of how
Speaker 1: hard he.
Speaker 2: Works at his sociopathy.
Speaker 1: But I totally do not believe that in any way no,
Speaker 1: but the tight lipners. So what were you trying to
Speaker 1: get from them? And why wouldn't they talk to you?
Speaker 3: I think, you know, in some respects, you know, they
Speaker 3: were team Hamish, right. Really, really, what's family, right?
Speaker 1: So they they were not completely and utterly ashamed of
Speaker 1: this horendous man.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure they were, but you know, how
Speaker 3: he's back. I guess it's family. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe they were concerned about talking to people, talking to
Speaker 3: the police. I don't I don't actually know the answers
Speaker 3: because I never really really spoke to them. I did
Speaker 3: have a call one day from his niece who somehow
Speaker 3: got my number, and she called me and she said,
Speaker 3: I've just spoken to Hamish and you know, he wants
Speaker 3: to see if he can get your money back. And
Speaker 3: there was I can't remember the exact I was in it.
Speaker 3: I was in a it was very not a very
Speaker 3: good place, but I do remember she said, Hamish wants
Speaker 3: me to tell you to go for a swim in
Speaker 3: the ocean and just wash it all off trace And
Speaker 3: I just I staid to her on the phone, are
Speaker 3: you for fking real? Like this man has just completely
Speaker 3: financially and emotionally flattened me. I am a single mum.
Speaker 3: I have no idea what's happening. No one will talk
Speaker 3: to me, and you're telling me to go for a
Speaker 3: swim in the ocean and wash it all off, like
Speaker 3: go for yourself, Like, honest, how was she?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think I guess in her thirties, that's right, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: I never I never met her.
Speaker 2: But but she's an adult herself. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 2: I don't so HiT's wind.
Speaker 3: He was.
Speaker 2: He was devoting everyone.
Speaker 1: He was grooming his entire family, like obviously you know
Speaker 1: he had family visiting him or because he was on bail,
Speaker 1: but on remand.
Speaker 3: Was he No, he never got bail. So this was
Speaker 3: one of the fantastic things that because that was why
Speaker 3: he was a flight risk, of course, and they had
Speaker 3: enough evidence over the time that they were investigating him
Speaker 3: when they arrested him that they were very confident that
Speaker 3: he wouldn't get bail, which is what they wanted. So
Speaker 3: he was arrested that day after we got back from
Speaker 3: Bayern Bay and he has never been out since.
Speaker 2: And he's due for parole six is.
Speaker 3: That July twenty twenty six, will be nine years and
Speaker 3: he'll be up for parole.
Speaker 2: Then how do we stop it? Yeah, let's sun a petition. No, okay.
Speaker 1: So the family were they there at the trial? I
Speaker 1: wasn't a trial, was it because he pled guilty?
Speaker 4: It was a hearing? Like it was against process. I
Speaker 4: don't know what. Yeah, proper terminal.
Speaker 2: So you were all there.
Speaker 1: I loved the shots of you all out the front,
Speaker 1: holding each other and just being there for each other.
Speaker 4: Like so supportive.
Speaker 2: Are you all still in touch?
Speaker 4: Yeah? We are.
Speaker 3: I hosted a dinner up at Pilloo in Freshwater last
Speaker 3: week and there were ninety five people there and one
Speaker 3: of the other victims, Karen, came.
Speaker 4: Along to support Math.
Speaker 3: Karen Love, Karen Beck, Beck and I still talk a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're definitely definitely in touch, you know, having been connected
Speaker 3: with Beck actually, and this is sort of where after
Speaker 3: that year of just hell, and then Greg started investigating
Speaker 3: and he was fabulous, Like Greg is just the most compassionate, kind,
Speaker 3: empathetic man. And he would call me almost every other
Speaker 3: day as he was working on this project and say,
Speaker 3: oh my god, Trace, You're never gonna believe what I
Speaker 3: found out. And I'm like, okay, give it to me,
Speaker 3: he goes, he's got a wife, like what huh? And
Speaker 3: they obviously they weren't married, they were divorced. And he said,
Speaker 3: did you know he was married? And I said no,
Speaker 3: but nothing surprised with me. And I said, can you
Speaker 3: ask her if it's okay if I contact her?
Speaker 4: And he said, of course. She's an amazing trace.
Speaker 3: Like the thing about this man, he's a complete asshole,
Speaker 3: but god, he's got good taste in women.
Speaker 1: Well, i'd give him that because he did like everyone
Speaker 1: that yeah, yeah, yeah, just you.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and all the other victims as part of
Speaker 3: this case weren't in an intimate relationship. They were more
Speaker 3: in a business type of relationship or friendship. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: friends became friends. Yeah. He was really really good at
Speaker 3: whistling his way in. But when I met Beck, because
Speaker 3: they had been married and there were things that I
Speaker 3: could talk to Beck about that I couldn't talk to
Speaker 3: anyone else about, and you know, that was such that
Speaker 3: was so comforting for me and her and I would
Speaker 3: spend hours and hours and hours on the phone own
Speaker 3: just dissecting you know him, I.
Speaker 2: Guess, and that you needed that.
Speaker 4: It was really helpful for me. It was very healing and.
Speaker 2: Her she would have been really helped by talking to you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: Hearing that she she wasn't the only one who believed
Speaker 1: his bullshit.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, and she's great, she's so much fun.
Speaker 2: Did you get your money back?
Speaker 4: No? No, not one of them. No.
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Why what? What? Where? Why? Well?
Speaker 4: As part of the investigatory why.
Speaker 3: Well, that is the seven point six million dollar question,
Speaker 3: isn't it?
Speaker 2: Literally?
Speaker 3: Look the as part of the investigation, the police reported
Speaker 3: or that part of part of what they put together
Speaker 3: was that there is no money anywhere. There is no
Speaker 3: money in bank accounts in Australia for him, there is
Speaker 3: there is no money. So that was the extent of
Speaker 3: their investigation into the money flow, and they had, you know,
Speaker 3: forantic accountants on it, and they did take us through
Speaker 3: in some detail. I think what happens in these cases,
Speaker 3: and you know, I can't be certain about this, but
Speaker 3: their their job and their remit and what they're incentivized
Speaker 3: to do is to put people like Amish away for
Speaker 3: as long as possible, and they absolutely did that. His
Speaker 3: sentence was actually sixteen years, so he actually was sentenced
Speaker 3: to sixteen years in the initial in the initial Yeah,
Speaker 3: what's the detective's name, Tom Zadravak.
Speaker 2: Tom.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: Tom did say he was told you all were looking
Speaker 2: probably realistically at three years for crime like this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he was so ecstatic when he got the sixteen years.
Speaker 4: He was like a dog with a bone.
Speaker 2: That man.
Speaker 4: He was amazing.
Speaker 3: And it was one of the biggest sentences for white
Speaker 3: collar crime in New South Wales that we'd ever seen,
Speaker 3: so it was significant. So in that regard, the police
Speaker 3: and Tom and his team did an incredible job and
Speaker 3: I'll be forever grateful for the work that they did
Speaker 3: on that because I know, you know, in talking to Tom,
Speaker 3: how hard it is to prosecute fraud and but I
Speaker 3: guess as part of that, their job is not to
Speaker 3: follow the money, you know, their job is not to
Speaker 3: rest until they find where that money went. Their job
Speaker 3: was to prove the crime and to say that there's
Speaker 3: no money left. So none of the victims got any
Speaker 3: money back. And I guess there's still, you know, this
Speaker 3: unanswered question in my mind that is there actually any
Speaker 3: money out there and there's no one looking for it,
Speaker 3: because of course, when you've lost all your money, you
Speaker 3: don't have the funds or the resources to pay a
Speaker 3: private investigator go looking. So you know, we've just had
Speaker 3: to accept that. But you know, i'd be very interesting
Speaker 3: to see, you know, what happens in a couple of
Speaker 3: years or whatever when when Hamish is out, and whether
Speaker 3: there's access to money anywhere.
Speaker 2: What what's your ideal outcome?
Speaker 3: I have accepted that I will never see that money again,
Speaker 3: and I mean the ideal outcome is that I get
Speaker 3: my money back, but I think that that I think
Speaker 3: that's a very long long shot for any of us
Speaker 3: and Hamish.
Speaker 2: What's your ideal outcome there?
Speaker 3: Look, just that I have nothing nothing to do with
Speaker 3: him ever again. I mean, I would like to hope
Speaker 3: that he there is some level of rehabilitation. What I
Speaker 3: know about him and the type of person he is,
Speaker 3: and over the length of time that he's done what
Speaker 3: he's done globally, don't I don't hold out too much hope.
Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, it's up to him.
Speaker 3: You know, he's the only one that knows what's going
Speaker 3: to happen, and he's the only one that's in control
Speaker 3: of that. I guess For me, I have chosen to
Speaker 3: spend my energy on rebuilding my own life, focusing on
Speaker 3: my daughter, my career, becoming financially stable again, and you know,
Speaker 3: in the in these last few years, expressing what happened
Speaker 3: in the form of a book to make sure that
Speaker 3: not one more person goes through what I went through.
Speaker 2: Good on you, Tracy, thank you for coming on. I
Speaker 2: really appreciate me.
Speaker 4: I love your voice as well.
Speaker 3: You're so calming. You should do meditations. Oh okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: I would totally fall asleep to your voice.
Speaker 4: I mean, flat timer every night.
Speaker 3: I'll not in a creepy way, not a creepy way,
Speaker 3: just like in a really light child relaxed.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: In the anults and I have a think about it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for being so honest, so upfront, vulnerable and
Speaker 1: reliving these parts.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Congratulations on your book. Good luck with the sales of it.
Speaker 1: I really hope you do well. To me, you just
Speaker 1: you just can't trust anyone.
Speaker 2: You know that.
Speaker 1: That's what breaks my heart because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you have to look at your own family
Speaker 1: and friends.
Speaker 2: Who do I trust?
Speaker 1: That could happen to me? So I'm just gonna I
Speaker 1: know that that's a negative thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, say a.
Speaker 3: Butt, Well, I like I definitely see the world differently now, Yeah, good,
Speaker 3: because I you know, I probably you know, I've never
Speaker 3: come across anyone like Hamish before. I don't, I don't
Speaker 3: know anyone like that. But what I would say is
Speaker 3: that Hamish is an outlier.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I.
Speaker 3: Think if you go through the world only looking for
Speaker 3: the red flags, that love and kindness can't exist in
Speaker 3: that world, and that, for me, is a shitty place
Speaker 3: to live and I don't want to live in I
Speaker 3: don't want to live in that world. So I choose
Speaker 3: to believe that he is the outlier. I do think
Speaker 3: that we need to be vigilant. I do think we
Speaker 3: need to be more aware, more critical. I was probably
Speaker 3: not critical enough in my thinking, and not to say
Speaker 3: that I could have critically thought my way out of
Speaker 3: the fact that the man that was, you know, spooning
Speaker 3: me in bed every night was also plotting to destroy me.
Speaker 3: But I think, you know, there's I just want there
Speaker 3: to be an awareness. I know that I won't be
Speaker 3: the last victim. I hope that I am, but the
Speaker 3: let just sometimes just having a little thought in your
Speaker 3: head that there's a level of awareness, not that you're
Speaker 3: looking in everyone like this. But I don't know, I
Speaker 3: choose to believe that the world is a pretty incredible place.
Speaker 3: He is an outlier, he deserves to be where he is,
Speaker 3: and the rest of us, you know, I don't think
Speaker 3: we should go through the world not being trustful, but
Speaker 3: just being curious, a bit more curious.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that that's actually helped me.
Speaker 1: You've helped me.
Speaker 4: I don't want you to feel bad leaving this combo.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, that's my own shit, isn't it that?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: But I really really respect that opinion and that view
Speaker 1: of life, and I really appreciate you saying that. So
Speaker 1: I am just so glad that you are at that
Speaker 1: place in your life because that's where you deserve to be, and.
Speaker 2: I'm really glad that you're there. And we'll just leave
Speaker 2: it at that. Thank you so much, Tracy
Speaker 4: Thanks Avie, so nice to meet you.