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Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule his Life and Crimes. Today we're talking

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Speaker 1: to our friends in Sydney. We're talking to a particular

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Speaker 1: friend in Sydney. Alex Turner Cohen has been investigating an

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Speaker 1: extraordinary alleged con by a man called Alan Metcalf. And

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Speaker 1: I don't want to say too much about Alan Metcalf

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Speaker 1: at a minute, because Alex has been looking into his

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Speaker 1: activities going back at least several decades, and she has

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Speaker 1: uncovered an extraordinary story which is eye popping, to say

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Speaker 1: the least. Without further ado, let's talk to Alex Turner

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Speaker 1: Cohen about her work in revelations about Alan Metcalf.

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Speaker 2: Master con Man, thanks for having me, Andrew.

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Speaker 1: Who is Alan Metcalf? How did you start working on

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Speaker 1: his activities?

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Speaker 2: I mean, I've been investigating him for a year and

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Speaker 2: it's still hard to say who exactly he was, but

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Speaker 2: you know so much we've come up with over this investigation.

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Speaker 2: He started off seeming like a successful businessman from the

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Speaker 2: Gold Coast who found a secret code to artificial intelligence

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Speaker 2: while he was reading the Bible, and he convinced people

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Speaker 2: that he found this tech that was going to revolutionize

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Speaker 2: the global economy and take over Google. But then when

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Speaker 2: we looked a bit deeper, it actually turned out he

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Speaker 2: wasn't quite as a successful businessman as he claimed, and

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Speaker 2: he actually had a history of fraud and deception and

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Speaker 2: tax dodging that dated all the way back to the

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Speaker 2: nineteen sixties when he was just a young man starting out.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, so that's I guess. One of the questions

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Speaker 2: we try to answer was who is this guy? Is

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Speaker 2: he a businessman that's just made a mistake, or is

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Speaker 2: he someone that set out to defraud people?

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Speaker 1: How did he come to your attention.

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Speaker 2: I'd write a lot about dodgy people, scammers, and so

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Speaker 2: does my colleague, my boss actually, and she was going

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Speaker 2: on some extended leave and actually received a tip off

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Speaker 2: about this, and it was just kind of a few

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Speaker 2: lines saying, I've lost my money. Is there anything you

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Speaker 2: can do about this? So she passed it on to

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Speaker 2: me before she went away, and I wasn't really sure

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Speaker 2: how interesting it was going to be. You know, maybe

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Speaker 2: it was someone who just lost a few thousand dollars

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Speaker 2: to a really kind of obvious fraud star. But then

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Speaker 2: when we looked into it, it's it turned out to

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Speaker 2: be at a really, really elaborate scheme. And when I

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Speaker 2: asked this man if he knew how much had been

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Speaker 2: lost altogether, he said it was about forty nine million dollars.

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Speaker 2: So that's when my ears started to prick up.

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Speaker 1: Right, that got your attention, that magic figure forty nine million.

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Speaker 1: It called me a skeptic. But if someone said to me,

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Speaker 1: they have this wonderful money making scheme and it involves

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Speaker 1: reading a secret code embedded in the Bible, I would

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Speaker 1: immediately think this is ridiculous. All this is a con or,

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Speaker 1: this is somebody who's kidding themselves. You know, they're delusial.

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Speaker 1: What would make people think that was a wonderful start

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Speaker 1: to a financial investment, a secret code deciphered from the Bible?

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Speaker 2: I know, I mean, it does sound ridiculous, and I'm

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Speaker 2: to be honest, the first time that someone told me that,

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Speaker 2: I did laugh, which was maybe not as sympathetic as

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Speaker 2: I should have been in the moment. But what was

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Speaker 2: interesting was he started on that kind of selling point,

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Speaker 2: you know, in the two thousands, in the early two thousands,

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Speaker 2: when we were in the midst of a tech boom

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Speaker 2: and an it boom, and people were looking for the

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Speaker 2: next big thing and a lot of the people that

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Speaker 2: he gave that spiell to were, you know, were of

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Speaker 2: that kind of religious background. But what's interesting is a

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Speaker 2: lot of the investors who put money in who were

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Speaker 2: not religious were not actually given that sound bite. They

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Speaker 2: weren't given that spill until they'd already give away their money.

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Speaker 2: So for the people who were atheists or just non believers,

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Speaker 2: they weren't actually told that this code was found in

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Speaker 2: the Bible. They were just told he discovered this amazing

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Speaker 2: breakthrough in artificial intelligence. And it was only later on

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Speaker 2: that they realized it had a bit more of a

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Speaker 2: ludicrous background to it than they first realized.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so he didn't hit them with this up front.

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Speaker 1: This somehow crept into the conversation later. Does it strike you,

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Speaker 1: and this is a very general question before we return

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Speaker 1: to the particular, does it strike you that a lot

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Speaker 1: of people are uncommonly vulnerable to suggestions that out there

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Speaker 1: there is this incredibly good invention or technique or knowledge

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Speaker 1: or revelation that will make them rich.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would I would say that that

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Speaker 2: kind of ability to fall for that kind of idea

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Speaker 2: that you know, I get rich quick scheme is probably Parlily,

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Speaker 2: what's keeping me busy every day in the newsroom writing

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Speaker 2: about these kind of scammers and con artists. But I

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Speaker 2: guess another interesting thing in many cases I cover, including

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Speaker 2: this one, is I think you're more likely to believe

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Speaker 2: in something like this and not do those proper background

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Speaker 2: checks depending on who's actually approaching you. A lot of

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Speaker 2: people it was, you know, a friend of twenty years

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Speaker 2: or a brother, a cousin. Because what was smart about

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Speaker 2: it was this Alan metcalf Fellow was able to convince

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Speaker 2: one person very well, and then from there they did

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Speaker 2: all the convincing for him, and it kind of bypassed

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Speaker 2: those normal checks that you do in a case.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so he would be able to get almost like

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Speaker 1: an unknowing secret agent inside other people's family networks or

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Speaker 1: friendship networks exactly her do it for him. As we've

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Speaker 1: seen in other cases down here there were there was

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Speaker 1: a big scame based on racing that came out of

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Speaker 1: Victoria but was nationwide, and it seemed to be the

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Speaker 1: same thing that a few people who had apparently enriched

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Speaker 1: themselves then genuinely went around saying, how good is this?

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Speaker 1: I turned fifty grand into five hundred and look at

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Speaker 1: my new car, look at my swimming pool, look at

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Speaker 1: my new house. And so those people's friends said, where

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Speaker 1: do I sign up? And they became sort of spookers

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Speaker 1: for the actual con man. And they didn't know that

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Speaker 1: they were spooking for a con because they thought they'd

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Speaker 1: made money, because the con men actually paid them, and

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Speaker 1: paid them handsomely in order to bait the trap for

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Speaker 1: one hundred hours.

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Speaker 2: It's very clever because then you're getting people out there

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Speaker 2: who are trustworthy and have those in built networks to

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Speaker 2: do the convincing for you, which yet sounds like that

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Speaker 2: case you just talked about.

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Speaker 1: That similar thing. There were all these cons a sort

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Speaker 1: of later underneath, regardless of what the mechanics of the

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Speaker 1: fraud is. That's the way they work. They spread like

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Speaker 1: a virus, don't they. They spread them like virus in

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Speaker 1: a behalf or something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there was one man, as an example, someone literally

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Speaker 2: did use it a scriptor that the people who got

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Speaker 2: on board kind of spread the damage to other people

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Speaker 2: in this Safe World that's the name of the software

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Speaker 2: he was selling. The Safe World's Alan Metcalf case. But

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Speaker 2: there was one man who put in one and a

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Speaker 2: half million dollars of his own money, and then he

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Speaker 2: was so convinced about it that it was going to

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Speaker 2: take off and make them all rich that he actually

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Speaker 2: got four hundred and fifty other people to sign up

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Speaker 2: from this kind of smallish country town in western Australia.

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Speaker 2: So that was I guess that was the ultimate in

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Speaker 2: sprooking that idea. Someone from her background who never scammed

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Speaker 2: anyone before, the.

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Speaker 1: Retired wet farmer, thoroughly decent father and grandfather, steady as

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Speaker 1: she goes, I've earned a dishonest dollar in his life,

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Speaker 1: Trusted by everyone, he becomes the one who's leading the

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Speaker 1: charge and takes all his friends, neighbors and relatives over

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Speaker 1: the edge.

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Speaker 2: And then he's the one kind of left to blame

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Speaker 2: in a way as well.

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Speaker 1: And they become so involved in it. I imagine that

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Speaker 1: psychology is they get so tied up in it that

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Speaker 1: they insist that it's legit, even when it starts to

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Speaker 1: be clear to some observers that it cannot be legit

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Speaker 1: that person digs in because they have invested all their

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Speaker 1: credibility in it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of it's a psychological phenomenon actually, which

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Speaker 2: we looked into this thing called sunk cost fallacy, where

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Speaker 2: if you put a bit of money in something and

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Speaker 2: then you put a bit more in, you're more convinced

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Speaker 2: that this could be something, and you're more likely to

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Speaker 2: just not accept that it was a scam as well.

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Speaker 2: So that's been a lot of people involved in this

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Speaker 2: scheme who still to this day are still insisting that

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Speaker 2: maybe it could take off, even though Alan Metcalfe has

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Speaker 2: died and the technology has no one knows where it is.

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Speaker 2: There's rumors that it's in the Cayman Islands, but they're

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Speaker 2: still insistent that it could take off and they could

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Speaker 2: become millionaires overnight.

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Speaker 1: There was once a long time ago, the legend of

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Speaker 1: Lassider's Lost Reef, and the back in the good old,

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Speaker 1: bad old days, a lot of people thought that Lassider's Reef.

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Speaker 1: He was a Lassider was an explorer type searcher for gold,

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Speaker 1: and he'd gone off into the desert in Australia, out

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Speaker 1: in you know, South Australia, Western Australia, and the story

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Speaker 1: went that he'd found this ridge full of valuable minerals

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Speaker 1: and valuable stuff and it was going to yield millions

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Speaker 1: of dollars or pounds in those days, and that he'd

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Speaker 1: perished on the way back, and for decades people went

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Speaker 1: looking for Lassiter's lost reef. And I think there is

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Speaker 1: something that people call Lassiterus syndrome, and that is that,

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Speaker 1: you know, this belief that out there, somewhere there's something

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Speaker 1: wonderful waiting. And I've heard it used about not just

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Speaker 1: about money, but about wildlife. They say that people who

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Speaker 1: believe that you can go to Tasmania and look long

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Speaker 1: enough and hard enough, you'll find Tasmanian tigers, the thylo scene,

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Speaker 1: which is almost certainly extinct. But there's this Lassitus syndrome

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Speaker 1: that makes people think. Some people think that that it's

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Speaker 1: out there, and the fact that they talk about it

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Speaker 1: to their friends and fellow enthusiasts is an echo chamber

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Speaker 1: that makes them believe more strongly and to resist any

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Speaker 1: other arguments against it. Is that a sort of a

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Speaker 1: linkage with what you found with the Metcalf case.

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Speaker 2: Yes, that definitely. It almost feels like people were like

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Speaker 2: they were expecting that there was you know, no matter

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Speaker 2: what kind of red flags came their way, they just

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Speaker 2: always kept kind of rationalizing it. You know, like there

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Speaker 2: was this kind of group of true believers, and to

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Speaker 2: this day, some of them still believe it's going to

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Speaker 2: turn into you know, this magical technology platform carpet right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, it's probably hard to explain because it's

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Speaker 1: probably not able to be explained because it's probably not logical.

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Speaker 1: But can you just, for our listener's sake, explain a

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Speaker 1: sort of a mud map of the con a mud

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Speaker 1: map of the of the scheme that he proposed.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so well, he claimed that he had this technology

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Speaker 2: platform that was going to be like a combination of Google, Amazon, PayPal, eBay, YouTube,

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Speaker 2: kind of all the big names that were kind of

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Speaker 2: buzzwords that you could throw around back in the two thousands.

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Speaker 2: But he claimed it was going to be bigger and better.

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Speaker 1: Okay, bigger than Google.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, bigger than Google, Bigger and better than all of

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Speaker 2: them because of this AI code he discovered. And what

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Speaker 2: was quite clever was a big strategy for him was

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Speaker 2: getting like he would actively encourage people and even monetarily

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Speaker 2: incentivize them to approach friends and family so they'd get

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Speaker 2: bonus shares and you know, they'd get discounts and that

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Speaker 2: kind of thing. And so as a result, if he

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Speaker 2: got just ten people on board. It spread to twenty

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Speaker 2: and then it spread to forty, you know, kind of

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Speaker 2: that kind of effect. But throughout he was also you know,

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Speaker 2: using he was kind of playing off on the names

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Speaker 2: of certain people too. So he had some church leaders

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Speaker 2: who were involved and he'd name dropped them. He had

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Speaker 2: quite a big, well known sporting star involved, Michael Blake,

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Speaker 2: who played for Manly in the eighties. He even put

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Speaker 2: some of these people on his advisory board, so then

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Speaker 2: he could say, well, look, I've got Michael Blake on

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Speaker 2: the advisory board. We've got this American reporter from you

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Speaker 2: know who's a sports reporter. He's working with us. We've

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Speaker 2: got this employee from HP who's very good at tech.

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Speaker 2: He's endorsed it, right. And then when you started to

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Speaker 2: look into it, you know, some of these people were

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Speaker 2: no longer involved with the business. Some of them, like

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Speaker 2: Michael Blake, one of the victims we've spoken to, said

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Speaker 2: that he didn't really know much about technology, so having

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Speaker 2: him on the advisory board didn't really mean much in

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Speaker 2: that way. And then you know, sending them updates saying,

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Speaker 2: you know, oh, the we're going to float on the

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Speaker 2: sheer market in six months, and then when the six

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Speaker 2: month mark came, Oh, it's going to be another six months.

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Speaker 2: We just need another five million. And that went on

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Speaker 2: for ten years until he died.

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Speaker 1: Basically, isn't it wonderful? And because he could clip the

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Speaker 1: ticket of any money that was floating around, he could

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Speaker 1: get his fingers on at least some of it, and

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Speaker 1: he would He made a living and probably presumably a

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Speaker 1: handsome living, just shuffling money back and forth and taking

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Speaker 1: some of it. Is that right? Did it? Governess of

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Speaker 1: a round robin? So that he robbed Pai to pay

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Speaker 1: Paul was an element of the ponsi about this.

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Speaker 2: No, So that's what was interesting. There was actually no

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Speaker 2: one ever got any return at all. There was no

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Speaker 2: It was because it was all built around once its

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Speaker 2: floats on the stock market, you'll get your money will

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Speaker 2: times by one hundred and fifty, like it'll increase one

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Speaker 2: hundred and fifty times the amount. So as a result,

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Speaker 2: until that point when it floated on the stock market,

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Speaker 2: he didn't actually have to live up to those promises

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Speaker 2: and give anyone any money. But yes, so they just

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Speaker 2: kind of direct transferred their money to him, and he

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Speaker 2: had a US bank account and an Australian bank account

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Speaker 2: set up and then from that point the money. No

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Speaker 2: one ever knew what happened to the money. He never

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Speaker 2: sent any financial reports, and he was doing a lot

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Speaker 2: of traveling. Him and his wife would often go overseas,

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Speaker 2: all in the name of doing business, but it's hard

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Speaker 2: to know for sure. And then you know, he certainly

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Speaker 2: wasn't working another job. This was certainly completely bankrolling their lifestyle.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is he's a master at hosing down

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Speaker 1: people's expectations at the same time as he kept those

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Speaker 1: expectations alive, Yeah, saying you will, it will pay off eventually,

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Speaker 1: but not today. He was very good at doing that

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Speaker 1: for several states in that.

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Speaker 2: Right balance, I guess, and he was a mastermind at that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, delayed gratification. Now his wife is still alive, Mary. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and Mary and miss Metcalfe married in nineteen sixty five

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Speaker 1: in Queensland, I think, is that right?

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Speaker 2: Yes, that's correct, And there.

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Speaker 1: They were they had some young couple and I think

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Speaker 1: was it rural Queensland? Where was that? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: So they He was born in Cannes in the tropical

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Speaker 2: north and then they got married and were living in

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Speaker 2: Mount Isa really kind of outback mining Town, Queensland.

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Speaker 1: And what brought them together. Do we know anything about

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Speaker 1: the sort of No.

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Speaker 2: We don't know too much. They were quite young at

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Speaker 2: the time. He was about nineteen, she was about seventeen. Really, yeah,

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Speaker 2: so because it was you know, back back in those days.

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Speaker 2: She did say that she had prayed for a husband

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Speaker 2: who would be a visionary and then Alan Metcalf came

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Speaker 2: along and he was certainly a visionary in a way.

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Speaker 2: He had a strong vision for how to take money

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Speaker 2: off people.

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Speaker 1: He must be a good talk and charismatic.

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Speaker 2: Yes, definitely. He's been described as gift of the gab,

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Speaker 2: silver tongued and you can see it all the way

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Speaker 2: back to when he was, you know, in his twenties

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Speaker 2: when he was scamming people. He was involved in a

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Speaker 2: mining racket. He was taking names off tombstones and scamming

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Speaker 2: an insurance company and pocketing a commission.

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Speaker 1: Do you understand how the mechanics that scame It's a beauty,

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Speaker 1: but do you understand how that worked? Because I'm not sure.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well so how it would work with my understanding

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Speaker 2: is he was employed by an insurance company AMP and

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Speaker 2: he would go to a cemetery and take names off

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Speaker 2: the tombstones, sign them up as clients. By putting his

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Speaker 2: own money in, ah, he would get a commission that

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Speaker 2: would actually be worth him putting that money in, because

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Speaker 2: it would be more.

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Speaker 1: The commission's more than the deposit.

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Speaker 2: So the commission he'd get like forgetting his clients, it

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Speaker 2: would be worth more than that initial fee that he

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Speaker 2: paid out of his own pocket. And then he just

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Speaker 2: stopped paying the fees because the person was dead.

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Speaker 1: And also he'd put in a ten pounds initial payment

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Speaker 1: on behalf of dead guy, but the commission on that

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Speaker 1: might have been twenty pounds or whatever. So yeah, he'd

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Speaker 1: profit on each one. Well, God bless him. He went

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Speaker 1: he robbed the insurances, which is in this country. Some

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Speaker 1: people might think that was a little bit like bush ranging,

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Speaker 1: fair enough.

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Speaker 2: But it was more of a victimless crime than what

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Speaker 2: he went on to do later.

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Speaker 1: Yes, you'd think so. And anything known about Mary, who's

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Speaker 1: still alive, and we wish her well, and she's a

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Speaker 1: poor widow woman, and we don't say anything bad about Mary,

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Speaker 1: but I have to say she was a beautiful bride,

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Speaker 1: very handsome woman, and obviously very trusting and loving. What

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Speaker 1: do we know about Mary apart from that, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So I mean what you've described there is a little

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Speaker 2: different to what some of the shareholds.

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Speaker 1: Oh is that right?

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Speaker 2: I guess part of the issue is that when her

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Speaker 2: husband died, the business didn't actually shut down. So Mary

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Speaker 2: inherited the business from Allan and was, you know, she

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Speaker 2: had to deal with this acic investigation. So when Alan died,

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Speaker 2: right in the middle of his death, they were actually

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Speaker 2: being investigated by the federal government and so it was

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Speaker 2: kind of left to Mary to deal with that situation.

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Speaker 2: So she got in a little bit of trouble through

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Speaker 2: her role as running the company from that. So, yeah,

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Speaker 2: Mary was definitely left kind of holding some of the

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Speaker 2: babies that Alan had left behind, left like the mess

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Speaker 2: he kind of left her with.

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Speaker 1: You've investigated this length. Tell us what some of the

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Speaker 1: things you did. Where did it lead you this unraveling

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Speaker 1: this excellent story.

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Speaker 2: A lot of the investigations has been kind of traveling

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Speaker 2: around Australia, going to Queensland a fair bit for this investigation.

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Speaker 2: We also went to that rural town in Western Australia

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Speaker 2: where the bulk of people were scammed. We also found

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Speaker 2: links to the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.

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Speaker 2: But a lot of that information was kind of able

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Speaker 2: to find out by talking to people there or talking

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Speaker 2: to like international journalists, because a lot of that stuff

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Speaker 2: is kind of done remotely anyway. But yeah, it's kind

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Speaker 2: of taken us everywhere, you know, to notorious tax havens,

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Speaker 2: to the US. There was a lot of links to

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Speaker 2: the United States as well, and some exciting possibilities to

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Speaker 2: do with the Tea Party and Donald Trump.

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Speaker 1: What were they? What were those connections or possible connections.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I don't want to spoil the We'll say

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Speaker 2: that Alan will he wanted to be quite strongly tied

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Speaker 2: with the Tea Party and that was coming. That was

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Speaker 2: happening out of time when they were kind of on

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Speaker 2: the rise and when Donald Trump got into power a

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Speaker 2: few years later after that. Obviously, so the fact that

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Speaker 2: so much money has gone missing and so much dark

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Speaker 2: money was going into political campaigns in the US at

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Speaker 2: the time is definitely an avenue we had to explore.

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Speaker 1: Now, Alex, you know, in my time, I've seen a

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Speaker 1: game or two them. We just referred to one or two,

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Speaker 1: but they were big figures, always thrown around, millions of

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Speaker 1: dollars tens of millions or whatever, and people say, where's

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Speaker 1: the money. Well, in the scams that I'm referring to

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Speaker 1: here that I've looked at in the past, it seemed

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Speaker 1: clear to me that there was no one pot of

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Speaker 1: money under someone's pillow or you know, in a box

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Speaker 1: in the ground, or even in an offshore bank account,

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Speaker 1: because in a lot of those other scams, there was

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Speaker 1: a round robin Ponzi thing, and the scammer was actually

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Speaker 1: taking funds from me and twenty other people in order

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Speaker 1: to satisfy some of the investors who were screaming for money.

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Speaker 1: And so if at the end of the day, you know,

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Speaker 1: fifty million had gone missing, there was no way there

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Speaker 1: was actually fifty million in one place. A lot of

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Speaker 1: it had gone sideways to other alleged investors, some of

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Speaker 1: whom had enriched themselves along the way. But in this case,

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Speaker 1: that's what's interesting. In this case, that is not the story.

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Speaker 1: You are actually alleging that the most part of forty

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Speaker 1: nine million dollars is somewhere or has been spent one

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Speaker 1: of the Yeah, but it's either in cash or assets.

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Speaker 1: It somewhere.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what's interesting because we were looking at whether

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Speaker 2: there was a literal kind of pot of goal at

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Speaker 2: the end of the rainbow where it was all being kept. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: The fact that nobody ever saw a return on their

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Speaker 2: investment means that the whole amount it wasn't like it

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Speaker 2: was put back onto investors at all. So we looked

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Speaker 2: at whether he legitimately spent it on business expenses or

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Speaker 2: where else.

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Speaker 1: I legitimately or Yeah. The bottom line is that the

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Speaker 1: missing millions are out there somewhere, and that you've pointed

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Speaker 1: those who want to know towards where it is. And

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Speaker 1: how are people going to listen to your podcast? And

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Speaker 1: what is it.

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Speaker 2: Called so you can listen to this anywhere that you

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Speaker 2: listen to your normal podcasts. It's called The Missing forty

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Speaker 2: nine Million. And we've got five episodes out so far

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Speaker 2: and a new episode is coming out every week.

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Speaker 1: That is wonderful. Alex Turner Curen, you've done good work

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Speaker 1: and we all look forward to listening to that terrific investigation. Congratulations,

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Andrew, thanks for listening. Life and

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Speaker 1: Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia.

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Speaker 1: Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more,

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00:23:22,960 --> 00:23:28,600
Speaker 1: go to Heraldsun dot com dot au forward slash Andrew

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Speaker 1: Rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts

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00:23:34,720 --> 00:23:38,680
Speaker 1: sold at news dot com dot au. That is all

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00:23:38,760 --> 00:23:43,480
Speaker 1: one word news podcasts sold. And if you want further

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Speaker 1: information about this episode, links are in the description No