WEBVTT - BONUS EPISODE: Chasing the missing $49 million 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:06.000 I'm Andrew Rule his Life and Crimes. Today we're talking 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:09.240 to our friends in Sydney. We're talking to a particular 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:14.720 friend in Sydney. Alex Turner Cohen has been investigating an 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:20.400 extraordinary alleged con by a man called Alan Metcalf. And 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:22.400 I don't want to say too much about Alan Metcalf 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:26.159 at a minute, because Alex has been looking into his 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:31.200 activities going back at least several decades, and she has 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:36.440 uncovered an extraordinary story which is eye popping, to say 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:39.560 the least. Without further ado, let's talk to Alex Turner 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:45.599 Cohen about her work in revelations about Alan Metcalf. 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:48.479 Master con Man, thanks for having me, Andrew. 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:53.239 Who is Alan Metcalf? How did you start working on 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:54.640 his activities? 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:56.920 I mean, I've been investigating him for a year and 0:00:56.960 --> 0:00:59.800 it's still hard to say who exactly he was, but 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.520 you know so much we've come up with over this investigation. 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:06.640 He started off seeming like a successful businessman from the 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:10.640 Gold Coast who found a secret code to artificial intelligence 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:13.880 while he was reading the Bible, and he convinced people 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.840 that he found this tech that was going to revolutionize 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:21.119 the global economy and take over Google. But then when 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:23.800 we looked a bit deeper, it actually turned out he 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:27.160 wasn't quite as a successful businessman as he claimed, and 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:30.640 he actually had a history of fraud and deception and 0:01:31.040 --> 0:01:33.760 tax dodging that dated all the way back to the 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:37.039 nineteen sixties when he was just a young man starting out. 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:39.640 So yeah, so that's I guess. One of the questions 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:41.920 we try to answer was who is this guy? Is 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:45.440 he a businessman that's just made a mistake, or is 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:48.120 he someone that set out to defraud people? 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:50.480 How did he come to your attention. 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:54.880 I'd write a lot about dodgy people, scammers, and so 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:58.400 does my colleague, my boss actually, and she was going 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:01.280 on some extended leave and actually received a tip off 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:03.680 about this, and it was just kind of a few 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:06.960 lines saying, I've lost my money. Is there anything you 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:08.960 can do about this? So she passed it on to 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.560 me before she went away, and I wasn't really sure 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:14.560 how interesting it was going to be. You know, maybe 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:17.040 it was someone who just lost a few thousand dollars 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:20.639 to a really kind of obvious fraud star. But then 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:23.240 when we looked into it, it's it turned out to 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:26.040 be at a really, really elaborate scheme. And when I 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:29.079 asked this man if he knew how much had been 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.320 lost altogether, he said it was about forty nine million dollars. 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.079 So that's when my ears started to prick up. 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:39.880 Right, that got your attention, that magic figure forty nine million. 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:43.360 It called me a skeptic. But if someone said to me, 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:48.320 they have this wonderful money making scheme and it involves 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:54.400 reading a secret code embedded in the Bible, I would 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:59.679 immediately think this is ridiculous. All this is a con or, 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:04.000 this is somebody who's kidding themselves. You know, they're delusial. 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:08.640 What would make people think that was a wonderful start 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:14.240 to a financial investment, a secret code deciphered from the Bible? 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:17.799 I know, I mean, it does sound ridiculous, and I'm 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:21.760 to be honest, the first time that someone told me that, 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:24.920 I did laugh, which was maybe not as sympathetic as 0:03:24.960 --> 0:03:27.920 I should have been in the moment. But what was 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:31.880 interesting was he started on that kind of selling point, 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:34.360 you know, in the two thousands, in the early two thousands, 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:36.880 when we were in the midst of a tech boom 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:39.400 and an it boom, and people were looking for the 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:42.720 next big thing and a lot of the people that 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:47.000 he gave that spiell to were, you know, were of 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:50.480 that kind of religious background. But what's interesting is a 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:54.040 lot of the investors who put money in who were 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.440 not religious were not actually given that sound bite. They 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:00.880 weren't given that spill until they'd already give away their money. 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:04.840 So for the people who were atheists or just non believers, 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:07.480 they weren't actually told that this code was found in 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:11.000 the Bible. They were just told he discovered this amazing 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:15.080 breakthrough in artificial intelligence. And it was only later on 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.160 that they realized it had a bit more of a 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.520 ludicrous background to it than they first realized. 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:24.440 Okay, so he didn't hit them with this up front. 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:27.920 This somehow crept into the conversation later. Does it strike you, 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:30.520 and this is a very general question before we return 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.960 to the particular, does it strike you that a lot 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:39.720 of people are uncommonly vulnerable to suggestions that out there 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:45.200 there is this incredibly good invention or technique or knowledge 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:48.159 or revelation that will make them rich. 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:51.440 Yeah, I mean I would I would say that that 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:56.279 kind of ability to fall for that kind of idea 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:59.279 that you know, I get rich quick scheme is probably Parlily, 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.360 what's keeping me busy every day in the newsroom writing 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:06.520 about these kind of scammers and con artists. But I 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:10.680 guess another interesting thing in many cases I cover, including 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:14.920 this one, is I think you're more likely to believe 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:17.680 in something like this and not do those proper background 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:21.760 checks depending on who's actually approaching you. A lot of 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:25.600 people it was, you know, a friend of twenty years 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:30.279 or a brother, a cousin. Because what was smart about 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:33.360 it was this Alan metcalf Fellow was able to convince 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:37.240 one person very well, and then from there they did 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:40.560 all the convincing for him, and it kind of bypassed 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:42.760 those normal checks that you do in a case. 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:48.280 Okay, so he would be able to get almost like 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:53.479 an unknowing secret agent inside other people's family networks or 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:57.040 friendship networks exactly her do it for him. As we've 0:05:57.080 --> 0:06:01.159 seen in other cases down here there were there was 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:04.280 a big scame based on racing that came out of 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:07.960 Victoria but was nationwide, and it seemed to be the 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:11.800 same thing that a few people who had apparently enriched 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:15.919 themselves then genuinely went around saying, how good is this? 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:19.280 I turned fifty grand into five hundred and look at 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:21.279 my new car, look at my swimming pool, look at 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:26.280 my new house. And so those people's friends said, where 0:06:26.279 --> 0:06:29.960 do I sign up? And they became sort of spookers 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:33.480 for the actual con man. And they didn't know that 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.839 they were spooking for a con because they thought they'd 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:39.920 made money, because the con men actually paid them, and 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:44.359 paid them handsomely in order to bait the trap for 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:45.359 one hundred hours. 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:48.960 It's very clever because then you're getting people out there 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.120 who are trustworthy and have those in built networks to 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:55.719 do the convincing for you, which yet sounds like that 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:57.040 case you just talked about. 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:59.720 That similar thing. There were all these cons a sort 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:04.520 of later underneath, regardless of what the mechanics of the 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:07.800 fraud is. That's the way they work. They spread like 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:10.160 a virus, don't they. They spread them like virus in 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:11.280 a behalf or something. 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:14.960 Yeah, there was one man, as an example, someone literally 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:17.640 did use it a scriptor that the people who got 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:20.040 on board kind of spread the damage to other people 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:23.800 in this Safe World that's the name of the software 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:27.000 he was selling. The Safe World's Alan Metcalf case. But 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:29.120 there was one man who put in one and a 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.440 half million dollars of his own money, and then he 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:34.800 was so convinced about it that it was going to 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:37.680 take off and make them all rich that he actually 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:41.160 got four hundred and fifty other people to sign up 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.760 from this kind of smallish country town in western Australia. 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:48.360 So that was I guess that was the ultimate in 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:52.520 sprooking that idea. Someone from her background who never scammed 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:54.040 anyone before, the. 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:59.240 Retired wet farmer, thoroughly decent father and grandfather, steady as 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:02.240 she goes, I've earned a dishonest dollar in his life, 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:06.520 Trusted by everyone, he becomes the one who's leading the 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:10.720 charge and takes all his friends, neighbors and relatives over 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:11.320 the edge. 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:14.160 And then he's the one kind of left to blame 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:15.240 in a way as well. 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:18.600 And they become so involved in it. I imagine that 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:21.360 psychology is they get so tied up in it that 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:27.800 they insist that it's legit, even when it starts to 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.320 be clear to some observers that it cannot be legit 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:35.680 that person digs in because they have invested all their 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:37.120 credibility in it. 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:41.960 Yeah, it's kind of it's a psychological phenomenon actually, which 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:45.080 we looked into this thing called sunk cost fallacy, where 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:47.440 if you put a bit of money in something and 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:49.920 then you put a bit more in, you're more convinced 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:53.280 that this could be something, and you're more likely to 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:55.760 just not accept that it was a scam as well. 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:58.680 So that's been a lot of people involved in this 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:02.600 scheme who still to this day are still insisting that 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:05.920 maybe it could take off, even though Alan Metcalfe has 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:09.400 died and the technology has no one knows where it is. 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:12.760 There's rumors that it's in the Cayman Islands, but they're 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:15.680 still insistent that it could take off and they could 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:17.320 become millionaires overnight. 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:22.000 There was once a long time ago, the legend of 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.840 Lassider's Lost Reef, and the back in the good old, 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:29.400 bad old days, a lot of people thought that Lassider's Reef. 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.800 He was a Lassider was an explorer type searcher for gold, 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:35.520 and he'd gone off into the desert in Australia, out 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:40.240 in you know, South Australia, Western Australia, and the story 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:44.280 went that he'd found this ridge full of valuable minerals 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:49.079 and valuable stuff and it was going to yield millions 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:52.040 of dollars or pounds in those days, and that he'd 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:56.240 perished on the way back, and for decades people went 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.400 looking for Lassiter's lost reef. And I think there is 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.719 something that people call Lassiterus syndrome, and that is that, 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:06.559 you know, this belief that out there, somewhere there's something 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.160 wonderful waiting. And I've heard it used about not just 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:13.880 about money, but about wildlife. They say that people who 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:17.040 believe that you can go to Tasmania and look long 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:21.760 enough and hard enough, you'll find Tasmanian tigers, the thylo scene, 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:27.080 which is almost certainly extinct. But there's this Lassitus syndrome 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:31.160 that makes people think. Some people think that that it's 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:33.160 out there, and the fact that they talk about it 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:38.320 to their friends and fellow enthusiasts is an echo chamber 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:43.200 that makes them believe more strongly and to resist any 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:46.000 other arguments against it. Is that a sort of a 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:48.760 linkage with what you found with the Metcalf case. 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:53.560 Yes, that definitely. It almost feels like people were like 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:57.199 they were expecting that there was you know, no matter 0:10:57.280 --> 0:10:59.720 what kind of red flags came their way, they just 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:04.880 always kept kind of rationalizing it. You know, like there 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:07.880 was this kind of group of true believers, and to 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:11.920 this day, some of them still believe it's going to 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:16.600 turn into you know, this magical technology platform carpet right. 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:20.280 Yeah, I know, it's probably hard to explain because it's 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:25.440 probably not able to be explained because it's probably not logical. 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:29.360 But can you just, for our listener's sake, explain a 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:32.000 sort of a mud map of the con a mud 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:34.679 map of the of the scheme that he proposed. 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:39.440 Yeah, so well, he claimed that he had this technology 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:47.599 platform that was going to be like a combination of Google, Amazon, PayPal, eBay, YouTube, 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:49.960 kind of all the big names that were kind of 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:52.880 buzzwords that you could throw around back in the two thousands. 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:55.600 But he claimed it was going to be bigger and better. 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:57.400 Okay, bigger than Google. 0:11:57.720 --> 0:11:59.840 Yeah, bigger than Google, Bigger and better than all of 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:03.960 them because of this AI code he discovered. And what 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:07.720 was quite clever was a big strategy for him was 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:12.960 getting like he would actively encourage people and even monetarily 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:17.960 incentivize them to approach friends and family so they'd get 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:22.200 bonus shares and you know, they'd get discounts and that 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:26.680 kind of thing. And so as a result, if he 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:29.600 got just ten people on board. It spread to twenty 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:32.080 and then it spread to forty, you know, kind of 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:37.240 that kind of effect. But throughout he was also you know, 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:39.600 using he was kind of playing off on the names 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:43.840 of certain people too. So he had some church leaders 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:47.000 who were involved and he'd name dropped them. He had 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:50.960 quite a big, well known sporting star involved, Michael Blake, 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:55.720 who played for Manly in the eighties. He even put 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:57.920 some of these people on his advisory board, so then 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:00.200 he could say, well, look, I've got Michael Blake on 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:04.199 the advisory board. We've got this American reporter from you 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:07.280 know who's a sports reporter. He's working with us. We've 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:11.520 got this employee from HP who's very good at tech. 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:13.960 He's endorsed it, right. And then when you started to 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:16.960 look into it, you know, some of these people were 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:19.720 no longer involved with the business. Some of them, like 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:23.040 Michael Blake, one of the victims we've spoken to, said 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:27.080 that he didn't really know much about technology, so having 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:29.920 him on the advisory board didn't really mean much in 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.720 that way. And then you know, sending them updates saying, 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:35.920 you know, oh, the we're going to float on the 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:38.800 sheer market in six months, and then when the six 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:41.160 month mark came, Oh, it's going to be another six months. 0:13:41.160 --> 0:13:43.640 We just need another five million. And that went on 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:46.000 for ten years until he died. 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:50.520 Basically, isn't it wonderful? And because he could clip the 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:52.839 ticket of any money that was floating around, he could 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:56.160 get his fingers on at least some of it, and 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:59.400 he would He made a living and probably presumably a 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:03.240 handsome living, just shuffling money back and forth and taking 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:05.199 some of it. Is that right? Did it? Governess of 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:07.760 a round robin? So that he robbed Pai to pay 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:10.319 Paul was an element of the ponsi about this. 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:13.079 No, So that's what was interesting. There was actually no 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:16.400 one ever got any return at all. There was no 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:19.160 It was because it was all built around once its 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:21.960 floats on the stock market, you'll get your money will 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:25.080 times by one hundred and fifty, like it'll increase one 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:28.120 hundred and fifty times the amount. So as a result, 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:30.520 until that point when it floated on the stock market, 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:33.720 he didn't actually have to live up to those promises 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:37.520 and give anyone any money. But yes, so they just 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:40.760 kind of direct transferred their money to him, and he 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.360 had a US bank account and an Australian bank account 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.600 set up and then from that point the money. No 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:48.400 one ever knew what happened to the money. He never 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:53.560 sent any financial reports, and he was doing a lot 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:57.160 of traveling. Him and his wife would often go overseas, 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:00.680 all in the name of doing business, but it's hard 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:04.680 to know for sure. And then you know, he certainly 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:10.480 wasn't working another job. This was certainly completely bankrolling their lifestyle. 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:15.480 Yeah, so this is he's a master at hosing down 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:19.440 people's expectations at the same time as he kept those 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:24.120 expectations alive, Yeah, saying you will, it will pay off eventually, 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:27.600 but not today. He was very good at doing that 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:29.400 for several states in that. 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.600 Right balance, I guess, and he was a mastermind at that. 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:38.600 Yeah, delayed gratification. Now his wife is still alive, Mary. Yeah, 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.200 and Mary and miss Metcalfe married in nineteen sixty five 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:43.960 in Queensland, I think, is that right? 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:46.160 Yes, that's correct, And there. 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:48.840 They were they had some young couple and I think 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:51.120 was it rural Queensland? Where was that? Yeah? 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:54.880 So they He was born in Cannes in the tropical 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:58.960 north and then they got married and were living in 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:04.600 Mount Isa really kind of outback mining Town, Queensland. 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:07.520 And what brought them together. Do we know anything about 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:09.240 the sort of No. 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.320 We don't know too much. They were quite young at 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:17.240 the time. He was about nineteen, she was about seventeen. Really, yeah, 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:20.520 so because it was you know, back back in those days. 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:23.360 She did say that she had prayed for a husband 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:26.480 who would be a visionary and then Alan Metcalf came 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:28.640 along and he was certainly a visionary in a way. 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:31.760 He had a strong vision for how to take money 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:32.320 off people. 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:37.360 He must be a good talk and charismatic. 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:40.800 Yes, definitely. He's been described as gift of the gab, 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:44.320 silver tongued and you can see it all the way 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:46.560 back to when he was, you know, in his twenties 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:49.920 when he was scamming people. He was involved in a 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:54.720 mining racket. He was taking names off tombstones and scamming 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:57.240 an insurance company and pocketing a commission. 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:01.480 Do you understand how the mechanics that scame It's a beauty, 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:04.520 but do you understand how that worked? Because I'm not sure. 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:08.560 Yeah, well so how it would work with my understanding 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:13.439 is he was employed by an insurance company AMP and 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:16.560 he would go to a cemetery and take names off 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:20.520 the tombstones, sign them up as clients. By putting his 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:23.919 own money in, ah, he would get a commission that 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:26.600 would actually be worth him putting that money in, because 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:27.560 it would be more. 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:29.960 The commission's more than the deposit. 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:33.920 So the commission he'd get like forgetting his clients, it 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:36.280 would be worth more than that initial fee that he 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:39.080 paid out of his own pocket. And then he just 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:41.400 stopped paying the fees because the person was dead. 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:46.280 And also he'd put in a ten pounds initial payment 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.239 on behalf of dead guy, but the commission on that 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:52.800 might have been twenty pounds or whatever. So yeah, he'd 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:55.880 profit on each one. Well, God bless him. He went 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:03.280 he robbed the insurances, which is in this country. Some 0:18:03.320 --> 0:18:06.280 people might think that was a little bit like bush ranging, 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:07.000 fair enough. 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:09.600 But it was more of a victimless crime than what 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:10.600 he went on to do later. 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:14.920 Yes, you'd think so. And anything known about Mary, who's 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:17.600 still alive, and we wish her well, and she's a 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:21.320 poor widow woman, and we don't say anything bad about Mary, 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:24.520 but I have to say she was a beautiful bride, 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:29.800 very handsome woman, and obviously very trusting and loving. What 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:32.520 do we know about Mary apart from that, Yeah. 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:34.800 So I mean what you've described there is a little 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:36.200 different to what some of the shareholds. 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:37.280 Oh is that right? 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:42.080 I guess part of the issue is that when her 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:45.800 husband died, the business didn't actually shut down. So Mary 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:51.119 inherited the business from Allan and was, you know, she 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:54.800 had to deal with this acic investigation. So when Alan died, 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:56.639 right in the middle of his death, they were actually 0:18:56.640 --> 0:19:01.159 being investigated by the federal government and so it was 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:03.480 kind of left to Mary to deal with that situation. 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:06.360 So she got in a little bit of trouble through 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:10.320 her role as running the company from that. So, yeah, 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:12.960 Mary was definitely left kind of holding some of the 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:15.760 babies that Alan had left behind, left like the mess 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:16.920 he kind of left her with. 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:20.040 You've investigated this length. Tell us what some of the 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:23.560 things you did. Where did it lead you this unraveling 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:24.760 this excellent story. 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.640 A lot of the investigations has been kind of traveling 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:33.000 around Australia, going to Queensland a fair bit for this investigation. 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:36.720 We also went to that rural town in Western Australia 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:40.160 where the bulk of people were scammed. We also found 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:43.000 links to the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands. 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:46.280 But a lot of that information was kind of able 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:49.240 to find out by talking to people there or talking 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.879 to like international journalists, because a lot of that stuff 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:56.399 is kind of done remotely anyway. But yeah, it's kind 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:59.800 of taken us everywhere, you know, to notorious tax havens, 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:03.159 to the US. There was a lot of links to 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:08.159 the United States as well, and some exciting possibilities to 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:10.320 do with the Tea Party and Donald Trump. 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:14.000 What were they? What were those connections or possible connections. 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:19.520 Yeah, well, I don't want to spoil the We'll say 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:23.760 that Alan will he wanted to be quite strongly tied 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:26.280 with the Tea Party and that was coming. That was 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:28.280 happening out of time when they were kind of on 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:32.439 the rise and when Donald Trump got into power a 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.800 few years later after that. Obviously, so the fact that 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:39.120 so much money has gone missing and so much dark 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:42.080 money was going into political campaigns in the US at 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:44.880 the time is definitely an avenue we had to explore. 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:49.399 Now, Alex, you know, in my time, I've seen a 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:51.600 game or two them. We just referred to one or two, 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:56.199 but they were big figures, always thrown around, millions of 0:20:56.400 --> 0:20:59.159 dollars tens of millions or whatever, and people say, where's 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:02.760 the money. Well, in the scams that I'm referring to 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:05.359 here that I've looked at in the past, it seemed 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:08.120 clear to me that there was no one pot of 0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:12.200 money under someone's pillow or you know, in a box 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:16.920 in the ground, or even in an offshore bank account, 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:19.840 because in a lot of those other scams, there was 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:25.240 a round robin Ponzi thing, and the scammer was actually 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:29.359 taking funds from me and twenty other people in order 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:32.639 to satisfy some of the investors who were screaming for money. 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:35.119 And so if at the end of the day, you know, 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:38.360 fifty million had gone missing, there was no way there 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.480 was actually fifty million in one place. A lot of 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:46.159 it had gone sideways to other alleged investors, some of 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:49.840 whom had enriched themselves along the way. But in this case, 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:53.280 that's what's interesting. In this case, that is not the story. 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:57.800 You are actually alleging that the most part of forty 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:02.080 nine million dollars is somewhere or has been spent one 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:04.760 of the Yeah, but it's either in cash or assets. 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:05.360 It somewhere. 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.440 Yeah, that's what's interesting because we were looking at whether 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:10.479 there was a literal kind of pot of goal at 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:13.280 the end of the rainbow where it was all being kept. Yeah. 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:15.199 The fact that nobody ever saw a return on their 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:18.639 investment means that the whole amount it wasn't like it 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:22.040 was put back onto investors at all. So we looked 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:26.840 at whether he legitimately spent it on business expenses or 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:27.440 where else. 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:32.040 I legitimately or Yeah. The bottom line is that the 0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:36.400 missing millions are out there somewhere, and that you've pointed 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:40.880 those who want to know towards where it is. And 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:44.520 how are people going to listen to your podcast? And 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:45.120 what is it. 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:48.439