Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule his Life and Crimes. Today we're talking
Speaker 1: to our friends in Sydney. We're talking to a particular
Speaker 1: friend in Sydney. Alex Turner Cohen has been investigating an
Speaker 1: extraordinary alleged con by a man called Alan Metcalf. And
Speaker 1: I don't want to say too much about Alan Metcalf
Speaker 1: at a minute, because Alex has been looking into his
Speaker 1: activities going back at least several decades, and she has
Speaker 1: uncovered an extraordinary story which is eye popping, to say
Speaker 1: the least. Without further ado, let's talk to Alex Turner
Speaker 1: Cohen about her work in revelations about Alan Metcalf.
Speaker 2: Master con Man, thanks for having me, Andrew.
Speaker 1: Who is Alan Metcalf? How did you start working on
Speaker 1: his activities?
Speaker 2: I mean, I've been investigating him for a year and
Speaker 2: it's still hard to say who exactly he was, but
Speaker 2: you know so much we've come up with over this investigation.
Speaker 2: He started off seeming like a successful businessman from the
Speaker 2: Gold Coast who found a secret code to artificial intelligence
Speaker 2: while he was reading the Bible, and he convinced people
Speaker 2: that he found this tech that was going to revolutionize
Speaker 2: the global economy and take over Google. But then when
Speaker 2: we looked a bit deeper, it actually turned out he
Speaker 2: wasn't quite as a successful businessman as he claimed, and
Speaker 2: he actually had a history of fraud and deception and
Speaker 2: tax dodging that dated all the way back to the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties when he was just a young man starting out.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so that's I guess. One of the questions
Speaker 2: we try to answer was who is this guy? Is
Speaker 2: he a businessman that's just made a mistake, or is
Speaker 2: he someone that set out to defraud people?
Speaker 1: How did he come to your attention.
Speaker 2: I'd write a lot about dodgy people, scammers, and so
Speaker 2: does my colleague, my boss actually, and she was going
Speaker 2: on some extended leave and actually received a tip off
Speaker 2: about this, and it was just kind of a few
Speaker 2: lines saying, I've lost my money. Is there anything you
Speaker 2: can do about this? So she passed it on to
Speaker 2: me before she went away, and I wasn't really sure
Speaker 2: how interesting it was going to be. You know, maybe
Speaker 2: it was someone who just lost a few thousand dollars
Speaker 2: to a really kind of obvious fraud star. But then
Speaker 2: when we looked into it, it's it turned out to
Speaker 2: be at a really, really elaborate scheme. And when I
Speaker 2: asked this man if he knew how much had been
Speaker 2: lost altogether, he said it was about forty nine million dollars.
Speaker 2: So that's when my ears started to prick up.
Speaker 1: Right, that got your attention, that magic figure forty nine million.
Speaker 1: It called me a skeptic. But if someone said to me,
Speaker 1: they have this wonderful money making scheme and it involves
Speaker 1: reading a secret code embedded in the Bible, I would
Speaker 1: immediately think this is ridiculous. All this is a con or,
Speaker 1: this is somebody who's kidding themselves. You know, they're delusial.
Speaker 1: What would make people think that was a wonderful start
Speaker 1: to a financial investment, a secret code deciphered from the Bible?
Speaker 2: I know, I mean, it does sound ridiculous, and I'm
Speaker 2: to be honest, the first time that someone told me that,
Speaker 2: I did laugh, which was maybe not as sympathetic as
Speaker 2: I should have been in the moment. But what was
Speaker 2: interesting was he started on that kind of selling point,
Speaker 2: you know, in the two thousands, in the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: when we were in the midst of a tech boom
Speaker 2: and an it boom, and people were looking for the
Speaker 2: next big thing and a lot of the people that
Speaker 2: he gave that spiell to were, you know, were of
Speaker 2: that kind of religious background. But what's interesting is a
Speaker 2: lot of the investors who put money in who were
Speaker 2: not religious were not actually given that sound bite. They
Speaker 2: weren't given that spill until they'd already give away their money.
Speaker 2: So for the people who were atheists or just non believers,
Speaker 2: they weren't actually told that this code was found in
Speaker 2: the Bible. They were just told he discovered this amazing
Speaker 2: breakthrough in artificial intelligence. And it was only later on
Speaker 2: that they realized it had a bit more of a
Speaker 2: ludicrous background to it than they first realized.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he didn't hit them with this up front.
Speaker 1: This somehow crept into the conversation later. Does it strike you,
Speaker 1: and this is a very general question before we return
Speaker 1: to the particular, does it strike you that a lot
Speaker 1: of people are uncommonly vulnerable to suggestions that out there
Speaker 1: there is this incredibly good invention or technique or knowledge
Speaker 1: or revelation that will make them rich.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would I would say that that
Speaker 2: kind of ability to fall for that kind of idea
Speaker 2: that you know, I get rich quick scheme is probably Parlily,
Speaker 2: what's keeping me busy every day in the newsroom writing
Speaker 2: about these kind of scammers and con artists. But I
Speaker 2: guess another interesting thing in many cases I cover, including
Speaker 2: this one, is I think you're more likely to believe
Speaker 2: in something like this and not do those proper background
Speaker 2: checks depending on who's actually approaching you. A lot of
Speaker 2: people it was, you know, a friend of twenty years
Speaker 2: or a brother, a cousin. Because what was smart about
Speaker 2: it was this Alan metcalf Fellow was able to convince
Speaker 2: one person very well, and then from there they did
Speaker 2: all the convincing for him, and it kind of bypassed
Speaker 2: those normal checks that you do in a case.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he would be able to get almost like
Speaker 1: an unknowing secret agent inside other people's family networks or
Speaker 1: friendship networks exactly her do it for him. As we've
Speaker 1: seen in other cases down here there were there was
Speaker 1: a big scame based on racing that came out of
Speaker 1: Victoria but was nationwide, and it seemed to be the
Speaker 1: same thing that a few people who had apparently enriched
Speaker 1: themselves then genuinely went around saying, how good is this?
Speaker 1: I turned fifty grand into five hundred and look at
Speaker 1: my new car, look at my swimming pool, look at
Speaker 1: my new house. And so those people's friends said, where
Speaker 1: do I sign up? And they became sort of spookers
Speaker 1: for the actual con man. And they didn't know that
Speaker 1: they were spooking for a con because they thought they'd
Speaker 1: made money, because the con men actually paid them, and
Speaker 1: paid them handsomely in order to bait the trap for
Speaker 1: one hundred hours.
Speaker 2: It's very clever because then you're getting people out there
Speaker 2: who are trustworthy and have those in built networks to
Speaker 2: do the convincing for you, which yet sounds like that
Speaker 2: case you just talked about.
Speaker 1: That similar thing. There were all these cons a sort
Speaker 1: of later underneath, regardless of what the mechanics of the
Speaker 1: fraud is. That's the way they work. They spread like
Speaker 1: a virus, don't they. They spread them like virus in
Speaker 1: a behalf or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was one man, as an example, someone literally
Speaker 2: did use it a scriptor that the people who got
Speaker 2: on board kind of spread the damage to other people
Speaker 2: in this Safe World that's the name of the software
Speaker 2: he was selling. The Safe World's Alan Metcalf case. But
Speaker 2: there was one man who put in one and a
Speaker 2: half million dollars of his own money, and then he
Speaker 2: was so convinced about it that it was going to
Speaker 2: take off and make them all rich that he actually
Speaker 2: got four hundred and fifty other people to sign up
Speaker 2: from this kind of smallish country town in western Australia.
Speaker 2: So that was I guess that was the ultimate in
Speaker 2: sprooking that idea. Someone from her background who never scammed
Speaker 2: anyone before, the.
Speaker 1: Retired wet farmer, thoroughly decent father and grandfather, steady as
Speaker 1: she goes, I've earned a dishonest dollar in his life,
Speaker 1: Trusted by everyone, he becomes the one who's leading the
Speaker 1: charge and takes all his friends, neighbors and relatives over
Speaker 1: the edge.
Speaker 2: And then he's the one kind of left to blame
Speaker 2: in a way as well.
Speaker 1: And they become so involved in it. I imagine that
Speaker 1: psychology is they get so tied up in it that
Speaker 1: they insist that it's legit, even when it starts to
Speaker 1: be clear to some observers that it cannot be legit
Speaker 1: that person digs in because they have invested all their
Speaker 1: credibility in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of it's a psychological phenomenon actually, which
Speaker 2: we looked into this thing called sunk cost fallacy, where
Speaker 2: if you put a bit of money in something and
Speaker 2: then you put a bit more in, you're more convinced
Speaker 2: that this could be something, and you're more likely to
Speaker 2: just not accept that it was a scam as well.
Speaker 2: So that's been a lot of people involved in this
Speaker 2: scheme who still to this day are still insisting that
Speaker 2: maybe it could take off, even though Alan Metcalfe has
Speaker 2: died and the technology has no one knows where it is.
Speaker 2: There's rumors that it's in the Cayman Islands, but they're
Speaker 2: still insistent that it could take off and they could
Speaker 2: become millionaires overnight.
Speaker 1: There was once a long time ago, the legend of
Speaker 1: Lassider's Lost Reef, and the back in the good old,
Speaker 1: bad old days, a lot of people thought that Lassider's Reef.
Speaker 1: He was a Lassider was an explorer type searcher for gold,
Speaker 1: and he'd gone off into the desert in Australia, out
Speaker 1: in you know, South Australia, Western Australia, and the story
Speaker 1: went that he'd found this ridge full of valuable minerals
Speaker 1: and valuable stuff and it was going to yield millions
Speaker 1: of dollars or pounds in those days, and that he'd
Speaker 1: perished on the way back, and for decades people went
Speaker 1: looking for Lassiter's lost reef. And I think there is
Speaker 1: something that people call Lassiterus syndrome, and that is that,
Speaker 1: you know, this belief that out there, somewhere there's something
Speaker 1: wonderful waiting. And I've heard it used about not just
Speaker 1: about money, but about wildlife. They say that people who
Speaker 1: believe that you can go to Tasmania and look long
Speaker 1: enough and hard enough, you'll find Tasmanian tigers, the thylo scene,
Speaker 1: which is almost certainly extinct. But there's this Lassitus syndrome
Speaker 1: that makes people think. Some people think that that it's
Speaker 1: out there, and the fact that they talk about it
Speaker 1: to their friends and fellow enthusiasts is an echo chamber
Speaker 1: that makes them believe more strongly and to resist any
Speaker 1: other arguments against it. Is that a sort of a
Speaker 1: linkage with what you found with the Metcalf case.
Speaker 2: Yes, that definitely. It almost feels like people were like
Speaker 2: they were expecting that there was you know, no matter
Speaker 2: what kind of red flags came their way, they just
Speaker 2: always kept kind of rationalizing it. You know, like there
Speaker 2: was this kind of group of true believers, and to
Speaker 2: this day, some of them still believe it's going to
Speaker 2: turn into you know, this magical technology platform carpet right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, it's probably hard to explain because it's
Speaker 1: probably not able to be explained because it's probably not logical.
Speaker 1: But can you just, for our listener's sake, explain a
Speaker 1: sort of a mud map of the con a mud
Speaker 1: map of the of the scheme that he proposed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so well, he claimed that he had this technology
Speaker 2: platform that was going to be like a combination of Google, Amazon, PayPal, eBay, YouTube,
Speaker 2: kind of all the big names that were kind of
Speaker 2: buzzwords that you could throw around back in the two thousands.
Speaker 2: But he claimed it was going to be bigger and better.
Speaker 1: Okay, bigger than Google.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bigger than Google, Bigger and better than all of
Speaker 2: them because of this AI code he discovered. And what
Speaker 2: was quite clever was a big strategy for him was
Speaker 2: getting like he would actively encourage people and even monetarily
Speaker 2: incentivize them to approach friends and family so they'd get
Speaker 2: bonus shares and you know, they'd get discounts and that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. And so as a result, if he
Speaker 2: got just ten people on board. It spread to twenty
Speaker 2: and then it spread to forty, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: that kind of effect. But throughout he was also you know,
Speaker 2: using he was kind of playing off on the names
Speaker 2: of certain people too. So he had some church leaders
Speaker 2: who were involved and he'd name dropped them. He had
Speaker 2: quite a big, well known sporting star involved, Michael Blake,
Speaker 2: who played for Manly in the eighties. He even put
Speaker 2: some of these people on his advisory board, so then
Speaker 2: he could say, well, look, I've got Michael Blake on
Speaker 2: the advisory board. We've got this American reporter from you
Speaker 2: know who's a sports reporter. He's working with us. We've
Speaker 2: got this employee from HP who's very good at tech.
Speaker 2: He's endorsed it, right. And then when you started to
Speaker 2: look into it, you know, some of these people were
Speaker 2: no longer involved with the business. Some of them, like
Speaker 2: Michael Blake, one of the victims we've spoken to, said
Speaker 2: that he didn't really know much about technology, so having
Speaker 2: him on the advisory board didn't really mean much in
Speaker 2: that way. And then you know, sending them updates saying,
Speaker 2: you know, oh, the we're going to float on the
Speaker 2: sheer market in six months, and then when the six
Speaker 2: month mark came, Oh, it's going to be another six months.
Speaker 2: We just need another five million. And that went on
Speaker 2: for ten years until he died.
Speaker 1: Basically, isn't it wonderful? And because he could clip the
Speaker 1: ticket of any money that was floating around, he could
Speaker 1: get his fingers on at least some of it, and
Speaker 1: he would He made a living and probably presumably a
Speaker 1: handsome living, just shuffling money back and forth and taking
Speaker 1: some of it. Is that right? Did it? Governess of
Speaker 1: a round robin? So that he robbed Pai to pay
Speaker 1: Paul was an element of the ponsi about this.
Speaker 2: No, So that's what was interesting. There was actually no
Speaker 2: one ever got any return at all. There was no
Speaker 2: It was because it was all built around once its
Speaker 2: floats on the stock market, you'll get your money will
Speaker 2: times by one hundred and fifty, like it'll increase one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty times the amount. So as a result,
Speaker 2: until that point when it floated on the stock market,
Speaker 2: he didn't actually have to live up to those promises
Speaker 2: and give anyone any money. But yes, so they just
Speaker 2: kind of direct transferred their money to him, and he
Speaker 2: had a US bank account and an Australian bank account
Speaker 2: set up and then from that point the money. No
Speaker 2: one ever knew what happened to the money. He never
Speaker 2: sent any financial reports, and he was doing a lot
Speaker 2: of traveling. Him and his wife would often go overseas,
Speaker 2: all in the name of doing business, but it's hard
Speaker 2: to know for sure. And then you know, he certainly
Speaker 2: wasn't working another job. This was certainly completely bankrolling their lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is he's a master at hosing down
Speaker 1: people's expectations at the same time as he kept those
Speaker 1: expectations alive, Yeah, saying you will, it will pay off eventually,
Speaker 1: but not today. He was very good at doing that
Speaker 1: for several states in that.
Speaker 2: Right balance, I guess, and he was a mastermind at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, delayed gratification. Now his wife is still alive, Mary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Mary and miss Metcalfe married in nineteen sixty five
Speaker 1: in Queensland, I think, is that right?
Speaker 2: Yes, that's correct, And there.
Speaker 1: They were they had some young couple and I think
Speaker 1: was it rural Queensland? Where was that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So they He was born in Cannes in the tropical
Speaker 2: north and then they got married and were living in
Speaker 2: Mount Isa really kind of outback mining Town, Queensland.
Speaker 1: And what brought them together. Do we know anything about
Speaker 1: the sort of No.
Speaker 2: We don't know too much. They were quite young at
Speaker 2: the time. He was about nineteen, she was about seventeen. Really, yeah,
Speaker 2: so because it was you know, back back in those days.
Speaker 2: She did say that she had prayed for a husband
Speaker 2: who would be a visionary and then Alan Metcalf came
Speaker 2: along and he was certainly a visionary in a way.
Speaker 2: He had a strong vision for how to take money
Speaker 2: off people.
Speaker 1: He must be a good talk and charismatic.
Speaker 2: Yes, definitely. He's been described as gift of the gab,
Speaker 2: silver tongued and you can see it all the way
Speaker 2: back to when he was, you know, in his twenties
Speaker 2: when he was scamming people. He was involved in a
Speaker 2: mining racket. He was taking names off tombstones and scamming
Speaker 2: an insurance company and pocketing a commission.
Speaker 1: Do you understand how the mechanics that scame It's a beauty,
Speaker 1: but do you understand how that worked? Because I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well so how it would work with my understanding
Speaker 2: is he was employed by an insurance company AMP and
Speaker 2: he would go to a cemetery and take names off
Speaker 2: the tombstones, sign them up as clients. By putting his
Speaker 2: own money in, ah, he would get a commission that
Speaker 2: would actually be worth him putting that money in, because
Speaker 2: it would be more.
Speaker 1: The commission's more than the deposit.
Speaker 2: So the commission he'd get like forgetting his clients, it
Speaker 2: would be worth more than that initial fee that he
Speaker 2: paid out of his own pocket. And then he just
Speaker 2: stopped paying the fees because the person was dead.
Speaker 1: And also he'd put in a ten pounds initial payment
Speaker 1: on behalf of dead guy, but the commission on that
Speaker 1: might have been twenty pounds or whatever. So yeah, he'd
Speaker 1: profit on each one. Well, God bless him. He went
Speaker 1: he robbed the insurances, which is in this country. Some
Speaker 1: people might think that was a little bit like bush ranging,
Speaker 1: fair enough.
Speaker 2: But it was more of a victimless crime than what
Speaker 2: he went on to do later.
Speaker 1: Yes, you'd think so. And anything known about Mary, who's
Speaker 1: still alive, and we wish her well, and she's a
Speaker 1: poor widow woman, and we don't say anything bad about Mary,
Speaker 1: but I have to say she was a beautiful bride,
Speaker 1: very handsome woman, and obviously very trusting and loving. What
Speaker 1: do we know about Mary apart from that, Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I mean what you've described there is a little
Speaker 2: different to what some of the shareholds.
Speaker 1: Oh is that right?
Speaker 2: I guess part of the issue is that when her
Speaker 2: husband died, the business didn't actually shut down. So Mary
Speaker 2: inherited the business from Allan and was, you know, she
Speaker 2: had to deal with this acic investigation. So when Alan died,
Speaker 2: right in the middle of his death, they were actually
Speaker 2: being investigated by the federal government and so it was
Speaker 2: kind of left to Mary to deal with that situation.
Speaker 2: So she got in a little bit of trouble through
Speaker 2: her role as running the company from that. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: Mary was definitely left kind of holding some of the
Speaker 2: babies that Alan had left behind, left like the mess
Speaker 2: he kind of left her with.
Speaker 1: You've investigated this length. Tell us what some of the
Speaker 1: things you did. Where did it lead you this unraveling
Speaker 1: this excellent story.
Speaker 2: A lot of the investigations has been kind of traveling
Speaker 2: around Australia, going to Queensland a fair bit for this investigation.
Speaker 2: We also went to that rural town in Western Australia
Speaker 2: where the bulk of people were scammed. We also found
Speaker 2: links to the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.
Speaker 2: But a lot of that information was kind of able
Speaker 2: to find out by talking to people there or talking
Speaker 2: to like international journalists, because a lot of that stuff
Speaker 2: is kind of done remotely anyway. But yeah, it's kind
Speaker 2: of taken us everywhere, you know, to notorious tax havens,
Speaker 2: to the US. There was a lot of links to
Speaker 2: the United States as well, and some exciting possibilities to
Speaker 2: do with the Tea Party and Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: What were they? What were those connections or possible connections.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I don't want to spoil the We'll say
Speaker 2: that Alan will he wanted to be quite strongly tied
Speaker 2: with the Tea Party and that was coming. That was
Speaker 2: happening out of time when they were kind of on
Speaker 2: the rise and when Donald Trump got into power a
Speaker 2: few years later after that. Obviously, so the fact that
Speaker 2: so much money has gone missing and so much dark
Speaker 2: money was going into political campaigns in the US at
Speaker 2: the time is definitely an avenue we had to explore.
Speaker 1: Now, Alex, you know, in my time, I've seen a
Speaker 1: game or two them. We just referred to one or two,
Speaker 1: but they were big figures, always thrown around, millions of
Speaker 1: dollars tens of millions or whatever, and people say, where's
Speaker 1: the money. Well, in the scams that I'm referring to
Speaker 1: here that I've looked at in the past, it seemed
Speaker 1: clear to me that there was no one pot of
Speaker 1: money under someone's pillow or you know, in a box
Speaker 1: in the ground, or even in an offshore bank account,
Speaker 1: because in a lot of those other scams, there was
Speaker 1: a round robin Ponzi thing, and the scammer was actually
Speaker 1: taking funds from me and twenty other people in order
Speaker 1: to satisfy some of the investors who were screaming for money.
Speaker 1: And so if at the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty million had gone missing, there was no way there
Speaker 1: was actually fifty million in one place. A lot of
Speaker 1: it had gone sideways to other alleged investors, some of
Speaker 1: whom had enriched themselves along the way. But in this case,
Speaker 1: that's what's interesting. In this case, that is not the story.
Speaker 1: You are actually alleging that the most part of forty
Speaker 1: nine million dollars is somewhere or has been spent one
Speaker 1: of the Yeah, but it's either in cash or assets.
Speaker 1: It somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what's interesting because we were looking at whether
Speaker 2: there was a literal kind of pot of goal at
Speaker 2: the end of the rainbow where it was all being kept. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The fact that nobody ever saw a return on their
Speaker 2: investment means that the whole amount it wasn't like it
Speaker 2: was put back onto investors at all. So we looked
Speaker 2: at whether he legitimately spent it on business expenses or
Speaker 2: where else.
Speaker 1: I legitimately or Yeah. The bottom line is that the
Speaker 1: missing millions are out there somewhere, and that you've pointed
Speaker 1: those who want to know towards where it is. And
Speaker 1: how are people going to listen to your podcast? And
Speaker 1: what is it.
Speaker 2: Called so you can listen to this anywhere that you
Speaker 2: listen to your normal podcasts. It's called The Missing forty
Speaker 2: nine Million. And we've got five episodes out so far
Speaker 2: and a new episode is coming out every week.
Speaker 1: That is wonderful. Alex Turner Curen, you've done good work
Speaker 1: and we all look forward to listening to that terrific investigation. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Andrew, thanks for listening. Life and
Speaker 1: Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more,
Speaker 1: go to Heraldsun dot com dot au forward slash Andrew
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