Speaker 1: If I'm going to find Alan's missing forty nine million dollars,
Speaker 1: I need to understand more about the man himself. Had
Speaker 1: he done something like his safe World scheme before? Who
Speaker 1: was he, what was he like and how did he
Speaker 1: get his start? Looking into someone's past is a tricky undertaking,
Speaker 1: as I'm about to learn, and I had no idea
Speaker 1: what I was in for and how far back. Unraveling
Speaker 1: the mystery of Alan Metcalf goes.
Speaker 2: Inn.
Speaker 3: He killed me A nine sixty nine and a car accent.
Speaker 1: This is Gary Avis. Gary might be eighty years old now,
Speaker 1: but he remembers it all vividly, the dirt road where
Speaker 1: he and his then colleague Alan Metcalf should have died.
Speaker 1: We're speaking over the phone, so it's not a great recording.
Speaker 3: We told him at least four times to stop the
Speaker 3: car or we're going to get out of the car,
Speaker 3: and that's when he rolled up. I mean, it's a
Speaker 3: lot of fun rolling a car in the middle central
Speaker 3: Australia with nobody around in two hundred CA's from the
Speaker 3: nearest down.
Speaker 1: Did you think you were going to die in that moment?
Speaker 3: Didn't that time to think a bloody thing? Roll five times?
Speaker 3: Had ended up on its roof.
Speaker 1: Alan and Gary were working together as life insurance salesman
Speaker 1: at amp in Mount Isa in Queensland's northwest Outback, a
Speaker 1: tiny Australian town even tinier back then. The cause of
Speaker 1: the accident was simple. Alan was in his early twenties
Speaker 1: and he was starting to make some serious money. Recently,
Speaker 1: he'd bought a new car. His little Volkswagen Beetle was
Speaker 1: upgraded to a VIP Valiant.
Speaker 3: Also doing Alan, This car's too powerful for the speed
Speaker 3: you were doing. You've never had a big car like this.
Speaker 1: Alan was newly married to Mary. The young husband was
Speaker 1: in a rush because he'd promised his wife he'd be
Speaker 1: home in time for dinner. We should have died, but
Speaker 1: they didn't. In fact, Alan Metcalf was just getting started.
Speaker 1: He was about to launch his earliest recorded scale, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be his last. I'm Alex Turner Cohen, a
Speaker 1: finance and investigative reporter from newstock com do AU, and
Speaker 1: you're listening to The Missing forty nine Million. This is
Speaker 1: episode two genesis. Alan and Gary were down that lonely
Speaker 1: road visiting a client. The papers in their work briefcase
Speaker 1: went flying everywhere. After the crash, glass shattered all over them.
Speaker 1: They tried to set the car on fire, the only
Speaker 1: way they could think to draw attention as the desert
Speaker 1: darkened around them. But Gary said it was the hardest
Speaker 1: thing he'd ever attempted to do, and eventually he and
Speaker 1: Alan just gave up. It took three hours for another
Speaker 1: car to find them, and the police drove them home
Speaker 1: to Mount Isa. They kept working at amp, but it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the last time Gary crosspaths with Alan metcalf
Speaker 1: or her his name around town for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 3: Mount Oz is a raw town, a rough town. Most
Speaker 3: of the pubs had a bearfisted fighting champion. It was
Speaker 3: an exciting town to be in as a young black,
Speaker 3: and people were making a lot of money, serious money.
Speaker 3: I mean five hundred and eighty bucks a week in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty six is a lot of money. Allan was
Speaker 3: caught up in that sort of hype.
Speaker 1: Gary's right, it was a lot of money like making
Speaker 1: nine thousand dollars a week in today's world. In Allan's
Speaker 1: own words from a video uploaded to vimeo discussing his past, he.
Speaker 4: Said Mount Isaza was an interesting place because there was
Speaker 4: great job opportunities.
Speaker 5: That's what attracted people, and there was good money to
Speaker 5: be made in Mount Isa.
Speaker 1: Alan grew up in Cannes, in Queensland's tropical north, but
Speaker 1: he moved to Mount Isa for a mining job and
Speaker 1: married Mary in nineteen sixty five. He was around nineteen
Speaker 1: years old and she was about seventy. He became a
Speaker 1: salesman at AMP shortly after, which is how Gary Avis
Speaker 1: met him. Years later he'd be peddling the safe Worth product,
Speaker 1: but then he was selling life insurance and he was
Speaker 1: really good at his job, too good. In a eulogy,
Speaker 1: Mary had this to say.
Speaker 6: Just before he turned twenty one, he was approached by
Speaker 6: the AMP Society and he became Australasia's top salesman. Three
Speaker 6: years in a row. He broke all sales records, which
Speaker 6: he held for over a decade or even longer. Keep
Speaker 6: in mind that mat iSER had a population of twenty
Speaker 6: five thousand people, and yet he still beat all these records,
Speaker 6: writing in excess of seven and a half million dollars
Speaker 6: in whole of life policies.
Speaker 1: But Gary doesn't see how he never impressed me.
Speaker 3: He was nowhere near the top sales in Australia got
Speaker 3: nowhere near he wouldn't be in the top fifty. I
Speaker 3: think I know what he did. He probably signed up
Speaker 3: what they call temstans, these people that don't exist.
Speaker 1: So essentially he was selling insurance to dead people and
Speaker 1: he was pocketing a hefty commission in the process.
Speaker 3: So like he probably got to check out to Highlight,
Speaker 3: or he may not.
Speaker 1: Someone else who knew Alan, who preferred to remain anonymous,
Speaker 1: explain to me how it works. We're using a voice actor,
Speaker 1: but these are his words.
Speaker 2: You would go to a local cemetery, a Nudge cemetery
Speaker 2: or pick a cemetery, and you'd literally write the person's
Speaker 2: name down. And back in those days, the insurance companies
Speaker 2: would pay like two or three years commission to the
Speaker 2: insurance agent for having signed someone on an insurance policy.
Speaker 2: So using your own money, you could give a thousand
Speaker 2: dollars to the insurance company and they would give you
Speaker 2: three thousand back. So a lot of dead people were
Speaker 2: for udulently registered as owners of insurance policies.
Speaker 1: AMP did not respond to requests for comment. While trying
Speaker 1: to find out more about Alan and his involvement in
Speaker 1: tombstone scams, I come across an expert who can help.
Speaker 7: My name's Clinton Free, and I'm a professor here at
Speaker 7: the University of Sydney Business School.
Speaker 1: Professor Free has researched con artists and fraud for a
Speaker 1: long time and he's noticed some common and disturbing traits
Speaker 1: among offenders. We talk in his office and swap stories
Speaker 1: about some of the interesting characters we've come across through
Speaker 1: our work.
Speaker 7: I think some really interesting research in this space refers
Speaker 7: to something called the dark triad of personality traits, and
Speaker 7: those things are narcissism, machiavelianism, and psychopathy. And there's research
Speaker 7: which shows that con artists or scammers tend to have
Speaker 7: a much more elevated sense of the dark triad personality traits.
Speaker 7: And narcissism refers to grandiosity, selfishness, importance of their self image.
Speaker 7: Machiavelianism is that capacity to manipulate and convince others gain
Speaker 7: other people's confidence for your own benefits. And psychopathy is
Speaker 7: just a lack of empathy, so not being alert or
Speaker 7: attendant to other people's plights and being very self oriented
Speaker 7: in the way that one thinks. And I think where
Speaker 7: we see those sort of personality traits come together, we
Speaker 7: see a very effective scammer, a very effective con artist.
Speaker 7: But I think there's a category of white collar offenders
Speaker 7: who where there's a lack of empathy for victims, where
Speaker 7: there's grandiosity, and when there's a sort of exceptional ability
Speaker 7: to manipulate others and gain their confidence and trust, that
Speaker 7: is incredibly potent and dangerous in our society.
Speaker 1: So you've obviously been doing a lot of work in
Speaker 1: white collar crime for many, many years, and you actually
Speaker 1: mentioned that you'd heard the name Alan metcalf before through
Speaker 1: your work. So could you tell me a bit about that,
Speaker 1: because that kind of came as a shock to me,
Speaker 1: But I thought, maybe it's a really small world, or
Speaker 1: maybe he's been on some kind of radar for a while.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So, as part of a research project that I was
Speaker 7: working on with a colleague, we had some research assistants
Speaker 7: review internet sources for the names of people who had
Speaker 7: received either custodical sentences or who'd been the subject of
Speaker 7: inquiries or court cases going back several decades, because we
Speaker 7: were trying to identify people who we might be able
Speaker 7: to speak to. And one of the things we did
Speaker 7: come across was Allen's name in Hansart where he'd been
Speaker 7: identified as perpetrating a variety of scams, so he was
Speaker 7: named publicly. So we had this sort of list which
Speaker 7: we whittled down, and what we tried to do was
Speaker 7: move from that to talk to people inside prisons. And
Speaker 7: obviously Alan wasn't in the latter category, so we never
Speaker 7: went forward there. But he certainly was someone who has
Speaker 7: been known and cited in Parliament as being associated with whitechrime.
Speaker 1: Hansard is the official parliamentary record. Following Clinton's lead, I
Speaker 1: discovered that Allan's time as a salesman was indeed mentioned
Speaker 1: there nearly twenty years later by Queensland MP Jeff Smith,
Speaker 1: part of Labour's Townsville branch. He said Allan was recognized
Speaker 1: as amp's top salesman by routing the system, but that
Speaker 1: the insurer woke up to it after customers didn't pay
Speaker 1: their fees when they fell due.
Speaker 9: The AMP undoubtedly had grounds for civil and perhaps other action,
Speaker 9: but because of its embarrassment and the potential loss of
Speaker 9: goodwill due to the inevitable unfavorable publicity, the AMP simply
Speaker 9: cut its losses and its ties with mister metcalf.
Speaker 1: That transcript from nineteen eighty five, which a colleague of
Speaker 1: mine has read out, is still accessible today. Jeff's scathing
Speaker 1: speech to Parliament has helped me piece together what Alan
Speaker 1: did next. He didn't leave Mount ol straight away, even
Speaker 1: after the Tombstone scandal.
Speaker 9: With the advantage of some inside knowledge, he managed to
Speaker 9: discover certain license and permit expiry dates, and as Minus
Speaker 9: tend to be casual about such matters, he was able
Speaker 9: to move in and register certain holdings in his own name.
Speaker 9: The original and rightful owners would then be obliged to
Speaker 9: negotiate a financial sediment with him to regain possession.
Speaker 1: Jeff liken this to a modern day version of claim jumping,
Speaker 1: something where people would take plots of land during the
Speaker 1: gold Rush. It would be in today's terms like stealing
Speaker 1: a domain name off the Internet as it expires and
Speaker 1: then holding it to ransom. But that wasn't all.
Speaker 8: He was coorforded and then a strong self promoter, and
Speaker 8: he told himself very.
Speaker 1: Well, that's Murray Byrd, an expert on the history of AFL.
Speaker 1: When he was writing a book on it a decade ago,
Speaker 1: he met Alan to find out more about the early
Speaker 1: days of the sport in regional Queensland, Alan had become
Speaker 1: involved in the mining town's emerging afi else In his
Speaker 1: spare time, his sales skills were put to good use
Speaker 1: trying against sponsors for the team. Years later, Allan would
Speaker 1: set up a website describing his own pass in Mount iSER.
Speaker 1: He claimed he was the founder and secretary of the
Speaker 1: mount Is Australian Football League and the North Australian Football Championships.
Speaker 1: That's simply not true, according to Murray.
Speaker 7: Definitely wasn't the faner of the mount Is completely he didn't. No,
Speaker 7: he wasn't the fan of the Northern Stroane Football League which.
Speaker 8: Was just a really a one off carnival, as he.
Speaker 7: Played a part in the promotion of that and the
Speaker 7: genesis of the idea of it. But yeah, I could
Speaker 7: be so for sure about being the founder. I think
Speaker 7: he's stretching in a bit to say he's the founder
Speaker 7: of that as well.
Speaker 1: Alan worked as a sports journalist. Jeff Smith said that
Speaker 1: Alan went on to launch his own paper in Mount
Speaker 1: Isa called The Advertiser.
Speaker 9: It is sufficient to say that the paper closed and
Speaker 9: Metcalf left town with the investors in the Advertiser looking
Speaker 9: for their money. He then moved on to Townsville.
Speaker 1: Their shift to coastal Queensland happened in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: By then Alan and Mary had their young son, Clayton.
Speaker 9: In tow Metcalf went into a publishing business that produced
Speaker 9: magazines entitled Rugby League North and Townsville Woman. Both the
Speaker 9: ventures eventually folded, with a number of supplies and printing
Speaker 9: firms still being owed substantial sums of money. Metcalf's projects
Speaker 9: are widely different, and they bear little relationship to each other.
Speaker 9: I am sure that the whole thing is suspect.
Speaker 1: Jeff Smith, who launched this stinging attack on Allen's business
Speaker 1: activities in Parliament, is still alive. He's ninety years old.
Speaker 1: I knew it was a massive long shot, but I
Speaker 1: really wanted to talk to him. I contacted Labor headquarters
Speaker 1: to see if they had any way of getting in touch,
Speaker 1: and I even managed to track down a home phone
Speaker 1: number for him.
Speaker 3: The number you have called is not connected.
Speaker 4: Please check the number.
Speaker 5: This be calling again.
Speaker 2: Not connected.
Speaker 10: To check the number before calling again.
Speaker 1: Looking for another lead to help me understand who Alan was.
Speaker 1: Something caught my eye in his speech. Jeff said that
Speaker 1: another politician had mentioned Alan metcalf in Parliament before him.
Speaker 1: So I went to the library and dug through the
Speaker 1: archives and what I found next honestly gobsmacked me. It
Speaker 1: was blinking at me in black and white from the screen.
Speaker 11: Quite frankly, mister Metcalfe is one of the greatest convent
Speaker 11: to have resided in North Queensland.
Speaker 1: That was a voice actor reading out the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four handsard transcript of Kenneth Mechlagott, another labor politician from
Speaker 1: Townsville who went on to become the Queensland Health Minister.
Speaker 11: I'm very concerned about mister Metcalf's record in business, very
Speaker 11: concerned about this is one of the greatest conments.
Speaker 1: As well as Alan's track record of scamming at AMP
Speaker 1: and his failures in the publishing world. Kenneth also plugged
Speaker 1: another hole for me about Alan's early years. Alan had
Speaker 1: attempted a political career with the Nationals, an Australian political
Speaker 1: party known to represent farmers and other regional voters. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to Kenneth Mcalligott, but unfortunately he passed
Speaker 1: away in twenty twenty one. There was one thing I
Speaker 1: could easily fact check to see who was lying, Kenneth
Speaker 1: or Allen. Kenneth claims that.
Speaker 11: Allan stood for election in the seat of Townsville South
Speaker 11: in nineteen eighty and made no impression on the vote
Speaker 11: of the sitting member, mister Alex Wilson, But.
Speaker 1: On Allan's own profile, he claims he was narrowly beaten
Speaker 1: in this election. I find the election results. Now it's
Speaker 1: time to bring in an.
Speaker 12: Expert testing one two three.
Speaker 13: My name is Jessica Wang and I work at NCA Newswire, so.
Speaker 12: We used to work together. Jess is a good friend
Speaker 12: of mine. She's a great journo. And can you tell
Speaker 12: me a bit about what you do at NCI newswiy
Speaker 12: So what do you specialize in there?
Speaker 13: I cover state politics for New South Wales. I'm sort
Speaker 13: of a cross You're across the other states as well,
Speaker 13: just as part of the job.
Speaker 12: That we're looking into. So Alan Metcalf, he's this colorful
Speaker 12: character from Queensland. I'd be looking to him for about
Speaker 12: a year now, and he was actually running in an
Speaker 12: election campaign in the seat of Townsville in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 12: So he says on his profile that he lost by
Speaker 12: a tiny margin in the seat of Townsville. You know,
Speaker 12: it was like a hare's length that he lost by.
Speaker 12: But another politician who spoke in parliament about it said
Speaker 12: that Alan lost by landslide. He lost by a country mile.
Speaker 12: So I don't want to put any pressure on you, jests,
Speaker 12: but in some ways the whole podcast could hinge on you,
Speaker 12: because this is the moment where I can realize if
Speaker 12: Allan is a bit of a truth teller or not
Speaker 12: so much. So I might just show you the results
Speaker 12: of the election, and I just want you to tell
Speaker 12: me straight away what your first thoughts are. Analyze it
Speaker 12: as a political journalist. So you're looking at the document
Speaker 12: right now.
Speaker 1: Did Alan Metcalf lose by a huge amount or by
Speaker 1: a tiny as he claims.
Speaker 13: Well, looking at what I have here, he only got
Speaker 13: twenty five point five percent of the votes, whereas the
Speaker 13: winning candidate, Alex Wilson from Labor, he got forty eight
Speaker 13: point nine percent with the votes, so you can tell
Speaker 13: that he wasn't even close to winning from a numbers
Speaker 13: point of view. So the candidate who won got six
Speaker 13: six hundred and sixty seven votes, whereas Ala Metcalf got
Speaker 13: three four hundred and eighty one. If you'd look at
Speaker 13: the two party preferred vote, Ala Metcalf was on forty
Speaker 13: two point four percent and Alex Wilson got fifty seven
Speaker 13: point six percent, you couldn't even say that he turned
Speaker 13: the seat. He sort of helped the National sort of
Speaker 13: clawback more ground in the seat because Labor won with
Speaker 13: the swing of six point six percent. That means that
Speaker 13: Labor essentially got six point six percent more of the
Speaker 13: votes so than before in that essentially increased their ground
Speaker 13: by six point six percent in the area. But yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 13: he wasn't anywhere close to winning.
Speaker 1: Speaking in Parliament, Kenneth also added this as a final
Speaker 1: comment on Allan's political career.
Speaker 11: I am aware of a strong rumor that circulated in
Speaker 11: Townsville to the effect that mister Metcalf owed the National
Speaker 11: Party seventeen thousand dollars as a result of that campaign.
Speaker 11: I place credence on the veracity of that rumor, because,
Speaker 11: as honorable members will recall, that campaign was a very
Speaker 11: expensive one to be candid. Allan Metcalf could not have
Speaker 11: paid for it.
Speaker 1: The National Party wouldn't give me a comment on any
Speaker 1: of this. The political chapter of his life behind him,
Speaker 1: Alan moved on. By now, it was well into the eighties.
Speaker 1: Australia's film scene was thriving and would forge some of
Speaker 1: the all time greats in its crucible like Puberty Blues
Speaker 1: and Crocodile. Dundee and Alan wanted in on the action.
Speaker 8: I awak and recollect Metcalfe was going to turn Towns
Speaker 8: Fall into the new Hollywood of Australia. He intended to
Speaker 8: make it the film capital of the world.
Speaker 1: This is Bob Bleasdale, an editor who worked with Alan
Speaker 1: on a TV series set in northern Queensland called Big
Speaker 1: Fish down Under.
Speaker 9: Like I had just slowly.
Speaker 7: Fish, This line is fifteen feet long and weighs more than.
Speaker 12: A metrical time.
Speaker 2: Back.
Speaker 7: Is a big game fishing a contested fact with the
Speaker 7: biggest game.
Speaker 9: Fishing, White Shop.
Speaker 1: Alan was the executive producer, so it fell to him
Speaker 1: to pull the funding together.
Speaker 8: It was the first, the very first fishing videos that
Speaker 8: produced out of Australia for their time, the old very
Speaker 8: big budget, so it was a amount of money he raised.
Speaker 8: I don't know how much it was. I know farmers
Speaker 8: were definitely is the main source of revenue on the
Speaker 8: Big Fish down Under. Definitely came. Farmers were worthy investors
Speaker 8: because they would occasionally throw into one of every now
Speaker 8: and then were dropping to the edits week to have
Speaker 8: a chat and see that his money was still being
Speaker 8: put to good news.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty the government introduced something known as the
Speaker 1: TENBA tax offset. It meant if you invested any money
Speaker 1: in the Australian film industry you got a one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty percent tax deduction on all of it. You
Speaker 1: also got a fifty percent tax holiday on any profits made.
Speaker 1: This might sound boring, but what it meant was money,
Speaker 1: lots of it.
Speaker 8: It really said film industry going bananas. There was money
Speaker 8: coming from every where.
Speaker 1: Bob is right. Between nineteen eighty and eighty eight, nearly
Speaker 1: a billion dollars was invested in Australia's film industry. Peter
Speaker 1: will is a designer who worked with Alan in Townsville
Speaker 1: and he saw how Alan convinced people to invest the
Speaker 1: film bombs.
Speaker 4: But you know you've written off the attacks for the year.
Speaker 12: Yeah, so you still are. It's still ahead.
Speaker 4: To the product. Gay look as a matter where the
Speaker 4: film goes well not. It just saved yourself fifty thousand
Speaker 4: dollars in tax.
Speaker 1: This isn't a great recording, but what Peter's saying is
Speaker 1: that Alan's pitch to investors was simple. No matter how
Speaker 1: the film performed, they would get a massive tax right off,
Speaker 1: so they'd be silly not to give him their money.
Speaker 4: I think he took a lot of leeway out of
Speaker 4: the generous film brand scheme that was going on at
Speaker 4: the time. I think he profited handsomely.
Speaker 1: Peter spotted Alan around town driving me a gold plated
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six Fordlando, which he was surprised about because
Speaker 1: he knew Alan was a family man. I start looking
Speaker 1: into the tax benefit scheme that Alan used to encourage
Speaker 1: investors into the movie business. Our newspaper article in the
Speaker 1: Australian Financial Review had a withering view on the whole thing.
Speaker 1: It's a sad but inevitable observation that some of the
Speaker 1: greatest acts of creativity associated with the local film industry
Speaker 1: involved no actors, no directors, and certainly no cameras. These
Speaker 1: creations came from men in plush city officers whipping up
Speaker 1: film projects out of thin air, eagerly adding up their
Speaker 1: fees and dreaming up ever more tenuous methods of using
Speaker 1: films to raise money. The article also referred to it
Speaker 1: as a time on a tax dodge. Peter says he
Speaker 1: couldn't agree more and.
Speaker 4: There was abused, would abuse people making shit movies and
Speaker 4: they were never released or just bomb.
Speaker 1: Alan went on to try to make thirteen more films,
Speaker 1: The Kalkadoons and The Crocodile Man feature among them, but
Speaker 1: it's unclear if they ever got off the ground. Looking back,
Speaker 1: Peter has some choice words about Alan.
Speaker 4: He was a shyster so used cars Hausman but the
Speaker 4: swagger of one. But he was organizing investors, but I
Speaker 4: think a lot of money disappeared.
Speaker 1: Another person I spoke to worked with Alan on the
Speaker 1: Big Fish Down Under series but wanted to remain anonymous,
Speaker 1: so we'll call him Liam.
Speaker 10: He was a mix of Trump, God and Musk, an
Speaker 10: incredible networker.
Speaker 1: Liam says Alan had a big falling out with a
Speaker 1: key financial backer because he was spending too much money
Speaker 1: on marketing. They never financed one of Allen's films.
Speaker 10: Again, I have heard that a Queensland film editor person
Speaker 10: still talks about unpaid times.
Speaker 1: One well known filmmaker, Malcolm Florence, was named as someone
Speaker 1: Allan owed money to but Malcolm has passed away and
Speaker 1: his wife didn't want to be involved in this podcast.
Speaker 7: I think we ordinarily associate the eighties, especially in Queensland,
Speaker 7: with a more lax regulatory regime.
Speaker 1: That's Professor Clinton Free again the White Collar Crime Expert,
Speaker 1: to give you a bit of an insight into the
Speaker 1: jungle Alan was playing in at the time.
Speaker 7: I think for anyone who is alive through that period,
Speaker 7: the Fitzgerald Inquiry in Queensland in the late nineteen eighties
Speaker 7: is really a strong marker in the regulatory consciousness of
Speaker 7: this country. Revealed huge corruption of police politicians at the
Speaker 7: at the highest level, and I think that is the
Speaker 7: reality that our regulators have been strengthened considerably.
Speaker 1: Peter remembers it very well firsthand.
Speaker 4: Queensland was corrupt. They were seriously twenty times.
Speaker 1: And he says Alan made the most of.
Speaker 4: It, being founded by the corruption and corrupt Ellen was
Speaker 4: like a piganlad.
Speaker 1: This was the era when Queensland was under the control
Speaker 1: of Joe Bielki Peterson. He was at the center of
Speaker 1: the corruption scandal and Alan knew him personally. Here's Mary
Speaker 1: talking about it at Allan's funeral.
Speaker 6: He went on to National Party Management Committee with Joe
Speaker 6: Bijokie Peterson for ten years.
Speaker 1: Bilk Peterson resigned as the state's premiere in the wake
Speaker 1: of the corruption inquiry, which ended the National Party's thirty
Speaker 1: two years stranglehold in Queensland. Three former ministers and the
Speaker 1: police commissioner were also jailed. So what did Alan do
Speaker 1: once that house of cards collapsed? Fast forward to the nineties.
Speaker 1: When I started this investigation, the first thing I did
Speaker 1: was a litigation search on Alan, which is where I
Speaker 1: checked to see if he's ever been taken to court.
Speaker 1: Nothing came up. He was squeaky clean, pure, it seemed.
Speaker 1: Months later, though, I had another thought. Alan had been
Speaker 1: operating long before the Internet, so maybe his case hadn't
Speaker 1: been digitized. Through a series of clunky search engines on
Speaker 1: the court's website and a lot of back and forth
Speaker 1: emails with the court registry, I hit the jackpot. I
Speaker 1: found three civil court cases against him, two from the
Speaker 1: same individual and one from the Bank of New Zealand.
Speaker 1: The company's name had actually been misspelled, so it read
Speaker 1: as the Bank of nez Zealand. But then I hit
Speaker 1: another roadblock. I got this email from the Queensland Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: The file you were seeking has unfortunately been destroyed. In
Speaker 1: line with the Public Records Act two thousand and two
Speaker 1: and general retention and destruction schedules, the files are destroyed
Speaker 1: twelve years after the last action on the file. It
Speaker 1: had been a lot longer than twelve years, but I
Speaker 1: was desperate this would fill the missing years in Alan's life.
Speaker 1: So I found an email address for someone named as
Speaker 1: the person who suit Alan and fired something off. Within
Speaker 1: an hour, he called me back, Hi.
Speaker 2: Alex, this is calling you. Sent me an email today
Speaker 2: at eleven fifty six am in relation to Alan. Metcalf I,
Speaker 2: am who took Alan to court in nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: and happy to discuss the issues with you.
Speaker 1: He didn't want me to use his real name or voice,
Speaker 1: so we'll call him Brody and this is a voice
Speaker 1: actor relaying his words.
Speaker 2: Alan was promoting his business. It was called the Harp Exchange.
Speaker 2: You've got to realize that at the time there was
Speaker 2: no Internet. The web browser that we see today didn't exist.
Speaker 2: So the Heart Brokerage Exchange was basically a business. It's
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of computers linked together around the world,
Speaker 2: and if you were to buy or sell any businesses
Speaker 2: anywhere in the world, you'd express your interest on the
Speaker 2: HARP Exchange. So if you wanted to buy a business,
Speaker 2: you can go my name's Alex and I'm a mechanic
Speaker 2: in Indonesia and put it there and you could buy
Speaker 2: and sell businesses. But to do this you had to
Speaker 2: be a HARP member.
Speaker 1: Sound eerily familiar to Safe Worlds. Brody thought so too.
Speaker 2: When you sent me this email out of the blue.
Speaker 2: It's like a bolt of lightning, because I never had
Speaker 2: to think about Clayton or Alan or Mary for many years.
Speaker 2: So I searched you in news Corp. And lo and behold,
Speaker 2: you've written the whole article one Alan, I read the
Speaker 2: article and this and you know what, if you replace
Speaker 2: that company name with HARP, it's literally just a repeat.
Speaker 1: There was another similarity with Safe Worlds that he also
Speaker 1: realized while reading my article.
Speaker 2: No one bought equity into the business. No one lent
Speaker 2: money to the business in any form of debt. So
Speaker 2: no equity was issued and no debt was issued. But
Speaker 2: the selling point of the business was you became a
Speaker 2: member of the exchange. So when you pay the twenty
Speaker 2: thousand or the twenty five thousand dollars. You're not getting
Speaker 2: a bond or security, and you're not getting equity or
Speaker 2: a share certificate. You're getting a certificate that says you're
Speaker 2: a member of this exchange. But it's not debt and
Speaker 2: it's not equity. So that's how Alan was able to
Speaker 2: circumvent operation law. For lack of a better word, that's
Speaker 2: how he was able to operate in the gray area.
Speaker 2: Because if someone said, Allan knows me money, then the
Speaker 2: question is where's the loan, where's the loan document? Well,
Speaker 2: there was no loan document. My jaw dropped when I
Speaker 2: read this article because I didn't know that this happened.
Speaker 2: I'm literally reading it line by line what you wrote,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of like, this is exactly hot, different names,
Speaker 2: different investors. Instead of being a member of HARP, they've
Speaker 2: issued this worthless equity that's not registered. If I just
Speaker 2: summarize him, i'd call him a sophisticated swindler.
Speaker 1: Alan approached Brody when he was looking for investors in
Speaker 1: his HARP business.
Speaker 2: One day, Alan came to me and said, look, they
Speaker 2: need I think it was either twenty thousand or twenty
Speaker 2: five thousand. It doesn't seem like a lot of money today,
Speaker 2: but twenty five thousand dollars was the equivalent of probably
Speaker 2: a quarter of an apartment or some sort of house.
Speaker 2: Alan said, I just need this money to help with
Speaker 2: the business, and you know, pay it back. And what
Speaker 2: I can do is you can be a member of HARP.
Speaker 2: I think I waited two years and no repayment was forthcoming.
Speaker 2: Then I made the decision that I need to seek
Speaker 2: legal advice. Maybe I was the lucky one back in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three when I actually had correspondence where he
Speaker 2: said he would repay the money.
Speaker 1: Brody took Alan to court and won the case, with
Speaker 1: the judge ordering Allan to pay back the twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Brody had to sue Allan a second time
Speaker 1: when the repayments briefly stopped, but in the end he
Speaker 1: managed to recover it. All I also reached out to
Speaker 1: the Bank of New Zealand, who also sued Alan, but
Speaker 1: they declined to comment, citing privacy reasons. Brody and I
Speaker 1: keep talking, and he remembers something else he'd forgotten about Alan.
Speaker 2: He would spend time traveling between Brisbane and the United States,
Speaker 2: so he did travel a lot.
Speaker 1: Alan, Mary and their son were also living in a
Speaker 1: penthouse overlooking the Brisbane River in the prestigious inner city
Speaker 1: suburb of South Bank.
Speaker 2: I think that penthouse. I'm going to get the numbers wrong,
Speaker 2: but I think he paid something like a million dollars
Speaker 2: back in nineteen eighty five eighty six. So one million
Speaker 2: dollars today only gets you a three bedroom apartment, but
Speaker 2: like in those days, you got the entire penthouse.
Speaker 1: Later I checked this out and he wasn't far off.
Speaker 1: Property records show that Alan and Mary bought the four
Speaker 1: bedroom penthouse in nineteen eighty seven for eight hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars. They sold it six years later for
Speaker 1: one point one five million, not a bad return on
Speaker 1: their investment. The year of the apartment sale, nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: three was a busy time for Allan. Not only was
Speaker 1: he dealing with his court case and selling the plush
Speaker 1: family home, but he was also trying to rebuild Russia
Speaker 1: after death of the Soviet Union. Allan claimed on his
Speaker 1: profile that humanitarian aid workers and the mayor of Moscow
Speaker 1: asked him to inspect the Russian privatization program and proposed
Speaker 1: some advice. Because of his e commerce background. Liam, his
Speaker 1: ex colleague from the movie industry, stays sporadically in touch
Speaker 1: with Alan.
Speaker 10: He says in the nineties he broke it to deal
Speaker 10: with Russia.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's the reason Liam wanted to stay anonymous,
Speaker 1: meaning we've got a voice actor to read his word.
Speaker 10: The last thing I need is one hundred and fifty
Speaker 10: kilo Russian knocking down my door.
Speaker 1: Alan claimed he worked extensively in Russia and that his
Speaker 1: business idea could be a digital Marshall plan that would
Speaker 1: kickstart the Russian economy. Unfortunately, there's not much more I
Speaker 1: was able to find out about Alan's time in Russia.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen nineties, Alan launched another company, and
Speaker 1: this was called Safeworld's Australia.
Speaker 12: And New Zealand.
Speaker 1: The company actually went public and was on the Australian
Speaker 1: Stock Exchange which was called the NSX back then being
Speaker 1: publicly listed when Alan was able to raise new money
Speaker 1: from selling shares. But it also came with a load
Speaker 1: of regulatory issues, including the need to file public accounts
Speaker 1: and communicate with shareholders. But Alan was unable to deliver
Speaker 1: the product or give shareholders proper updates. In the end,
Speaker 1: he had to resign as director. Safeworlds merged with another
Speaker 1: company and it was renamed E Business Systems. This company
Speaker 1: of officially went into liquidation in twenty twelve. A small
Speaker 1: amount of money was repaid to its investors. One person
Speaker 1: involved in the project told me, I would have preferred
Speaker 1: not to have met Alan Metcalf, and so there you
Speaker 1: have it. Alan's genesis, the life story of a man
Speaker 1: who rolled from fraudstar to tax dodger, to con artists,
Speaker 1: to liar and then failed business executive. But as far
Speaker 1: from over, Alan wasn't done with Safe Worlds yet. He
Speaker 1: was about to launch his latest iteration that would kickstart
Speaker 1: my year long investigation. I'm your host, Alex Turner Cohen,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to the Missing forty nine million next time.
Speaker 5: He was like a medieval monk who had claimed to
Speaker 5: have discovered angelic script, the language of angels, as if
Speaker 5: it was something new, so that.
Speaker 10: One, this is just crazy.
Speaker 8: I can't do it.
Speaker 5: He was comparing himself to people like Edison and Ironsky,
Speaker 5: you know, and people that are discovered penicillin, and you know,
Speaker 5: like he was making a comparison with he had just
Speaker 5: as a normalman had discovered this lure of thought.
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Speaker 1: Turner Cohen. Nina Young is the executive producer, sound design
Speaker 1: and editing by Tiffany Dimack. Our editorial director is Dan Box.
Speaker 1: Grant McAvaney is our legal advisor, and Kerrie Warren is
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Speaker 1: voice actors Andrew Bucklow, Andy Bellez, Rick Wilson and David
Speaker 1: tan