Speaker 1: What would unfold in the next few minutes would go
Speaker 1: down as the third biggest heist ever in Victorian history.
Speaker 1: He says, I've seen a photo, obviously implying that other
Speaker 1: bad guys took the gold and buried it. But he
Speaker 1: thinks he knows where it might be. In a big
Speaker 1: antique desk in the house at Hawthorne, officers find a
Speaker 1: semi automatic handgun, a couple of pieces of gold, and
Speaker 1: more cut up number plate. This is where listeners the
Speaker 1: plot thickens. I'm Andrew Ruhle. This is life and crimes
Speaker 1: right back at the start of the COVID pandemic. A
Speaker 1: very good heist unfolded in Melbourne, in the heart of
Speaker 1: the city. It didn't get a lot of attention until
Speaker 1: arrests were made and the truth was discovered. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: not here to say that every heist of money or
Speaker 1: gold or whatever or jewelry has an inside man. I
Speaker 1: don't want to claim that because that might be wrong
Speaker 1: in some cases. But in this case there clearly was
Speaker 1: an inside man, but it wasn't obvious at the time.
Speaker 1: What happened was on a Monday morning, April or twenty seventh.
Speaker 1: I think it was of twenty twenty, so he just
Speaker 1: a few weeks into the pandemic, which began in March.
Speaker 1: A man pushing a trolley comes to a building in
Speaker 1: Colin Street in the city. That very ordinary looking building
Speaker 1: houses the Melbourne Gold Company. He's pushing a trolley. He's
Speaker 1: dressed in tradey gear. He's wearing a COVID mask, which
Speaker 1: was a given of course at that time, perfect for
Speaker 1: stopping infection or cross infection, but even better to mask
Speaker 1: you from other people so they can't tell who you are.
Speaker 1: He presses the intercom and says he's got a delivery.
Speaker 1: Once he gets inside, he pulls out a pistol and
Speaker 1: he orders the gold company employee that has opened the
Speaker 1: door to take him into the office. Now, the man
Speaker 1: who let the fake tradeing in was Daniel Ead who
Speaker 1: was employed by the Melbourne Gold Company. He takes him
Speaker 1: up to the seventh floor where they've got gold and
Speaker 1: cash stored. What would unfold in the next few minutes
Speaker 1: would go down as the third biggest heist ever in
Speaker 1: Victorian history. And what Daniel ad would tell the police
Speaker 1: a little while later was that this man tied him up,
Speaker 1: pointed a gun at him, threatened him said, show us
Speaker 1: where the money is, showing me where the gold is,
Speaker 1: and then the robber proceeded to get hold of the
Speaker 1: cash and the jewelry and the gold. There was something
Speaker 1: like twenty eight key loads of gold. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of ounces, at about three and a half thousand dollars
Speaker 1: an ounce. There was also more than seven hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in cash, and I think there was also jewelry.
Speaker 1: He loads all that up and he leaves, and of
Speaker 1: course he leaves Daniel D, the employee, still tied up
Speaker 1: in the building on the seventh floor. It's only when
Speaker 1: two customers come to the store a little while later
Speaker 1: that Daniel D is untied and can raise the alarm.
Speaker 1: Initially police thought about three million dollars worth of gold
Speaker 1: and cash had been taken. Of course, it was a
Speaker 1: little bit more when armed crime squad detectives arrived on
Speaker 1: the scene. Uniform police were already there, but they were
Speaker 1: dealing with another incident just nearby. There'd been an incident
Speaker 1: at a bank just down the street. Now it just
Speaker 1: shows you you can have good luck or you can
Speaker 1: have bad luck. And in this day April onod twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. The crooks, who had almost the perfect wrought
Speaker 1: had some bad luck. You can imagine what would happen
Speaker 1: when our offender pushes his way out of the building
Speaker 1: with his with his trolley, with his high of his
Speaker 1: vest and goes over towards a white ute that he's got.
Speaker 1: When he sees police around the street, he must have thought,
Speaker 1: oh my god, they're already onto me. But apparently he
Speaker 1: kept his cool and he just walked over to a
Speaker 1: white ute and he calmly unloads boxes and bags or
Speaker 1: whatever into it, and then he heads off. But this
Speaker 1: other incident was a stroke of luck for the police
Speaker 1: because fearing that the other bank incident might escalate, safe
Speaker 1: city cameras were moved to the location, and that provided
Speaker 1: Crimes God detect this with a fortunate breakthrough. So the
Speaker 1: incident down the street meant that some of the cameras
Speaker 1: that are used for security around the streets were swung
Speaker 1: into that area, and this gave them footage of cars
Speaker 1: and movement that they otherwise might not have had. Now
Speaker 1: I'm in debted to my colleague John Kaylor, who has
Speaker 1: written this story recently was published in the Sunday Herald Sun,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was one of the more interesting
Speaker 1: high stories we've seen for a long time, and I
Speaker 1: proposed to steal some of John's most excellent material with
Speaker 1: his blessing, because he's explained it very well. Now, the
Speaker 1: police officer who's ended up telling this story in retrospect
Speaker 1: to John Kaylor is Detective Sergeant Mark Walsh. Clearly one
Speaker 1: of the most interesting cases he's worked on. So Detective
Speaker 1: Sergeant Walsh says this to Kaylor, it just happened to
Speaker 1: be the same time that this offender was doing the
Speaker 1: arm robbery. The camera captures the offender going back to
Speaker 1: his car. Sergeant Walsh said, we wouldn't have had identification
Speaker 1: on the car straight away if the other job, that is,
Speaker 1: the other bank job hadn't happened. So we look at
Speaker 1: the CCTV and it is of this man getting into
Speaker 1: a white hold in Colorado and it's completely stock standard.
Speaker 1: I thought it had to be a fleet car or
Speaker 1: a higher car, and then we noticed two little stickers
Speaker 1: in the windscreen on the side window. I took a
Speaker 1: guest they were likely to be bar coats, and I
Speaker 1: knew Budget scan in and scan out their higher cars.
Speaker 1: So we contacted all the higher car companies because the
Speaker 1: car had stolen plates on it, and all of them
Speaker 1: said they didn't use hold In Colorado's bumma. So hitting
Speaker 1: a dead end, the detectives headed out to where the
Speaker 1: number plates were stolen. Another dead end. There were no
Speaker 1: fingerprints and no CCTV footage. This is at premises where
Speaker 1: people have had their number plates stolen. Detective Sergeant Walsh says,
Speaker 1: I just thought, humor me, We'll go to a few
Speaker 1: of the higher car companies around here and double check.
Speaker 1: So the first one we go to is Budget in Camberwell,
Speaker 1: and I'll pull into the driveway and sure enough there's
Speaker 1: this Holden Colorado sitting there being cleaned. The person we
Speaker 1: spoke to initially just made the call off their own
Speaker 1: knowledge without properly looking into it. They only have four
Speaker 1: of them in the country, and three of them are
Speaker 1: used in the minds. What he means there is that
Speaker 1: when they'd initially checked with Budget, the person they took
Speaker 1: into a Budget said, oh, no, we haven't got any
Speaker 1: of those Holden Colorados, which was almost true. Basically in
Speaker 1: Melbourne they don't have any hold In Colorados. There's only
Speaker 1: four of that particular model in the country. Three of
Speaker 1: them are up in the mines and only one is
Speaker 1: in Melbourne, so that answer was almost true, but not quite.
Speaker 1: There was one in Melbourne and guess what, the crook
Speaker 1: had hired it and that's where the crook came undone.
Speaker 1: So once the police had established that this was the case,
Speaker 1: Budget told the police that the carab been hired out
Speaker 1: the afternoon before the robbery and have been brought back
Speaker 1: about two hours after the time, so basically it has
Speaker 1: to be it. So the police start looking closer. The
Speaker 1: car had been hired out in the name of an
Speaker 1: Asian female, but inquiries hit another dead end. She's got
Speaker 1: no involvement, she's got no criminal history. She's out in
Speaker 1: a really nice house in Hawthorne, Sergeant Moss said her partner,
Speaker 1: Karl Kachami. He's a finance teacher at Deacon University. He
Speaker 1: owns a second house on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, which
Speaker 1: is a mansion, and he owns an antique shop. He
Speaker 1: just doesn't fit the profile of an arm robber at all.
Speaker 1: So the police have got nothing, but the pressure is
Speaker 1: on due to the fact that this is Victoria's third
Speaker 1: biggest heist in history. It's worth millions, and they know
Speaker 1: that they've got to get hold of somebody for doing it.
Speaker 1: They know that the cash is going to vanish and
Speaker 1: that the gold can be quickly melted down, so the
Speaker 1: pressure is on to act. They follow this Carl Kachami
Speaker 1: because they can. There's no other lead that they've got.
Speaker 1: It seems that the Colorado car ute leads to him,
Speaker 1: so they follow him. They just want to see if
Speaker 1: he talks to anybody or what he does. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're out there planning a heist, maybe learn from this
Speaker 1: what not to do. He goes to Bunnings and he
Speaker 1: buys some long PVC pipes, which police think is a
Speaker 1: little bit strange, but it's hard to know. Depends what
Speaker 1: he wants to do with it. Then he stops near
Speaker 1: his mansion in Fitzroy and he dumps some stuff in
Speaker 1: a rubbish bin, which of course always interests police or
Speaker 1: private detectives or anybody else. The investigators go and look
Speaker 1: in the bin and the only thing of value was
Speaker 1: a cut up number plate, which would seem to be
Speaker 1: of great value, you'd think. Sergeant Welsh says, there was
Speaker 1: the letter S on each of them. We just thought
Speaker 1: it was a bit dodgy. The letters matched where the
Speaker 1: letters on the stolen number plates would be. Then we
Speaker 1: watched as he took these PVC pipes into his mansion
Speaker 1: in Fitzroy. We just thought we're going to have to
Speaker 1: grab him because we have nothing else. The trailer is
Speaker 1: going to go cold unless we try and do something
Speaker 1: to try and get back the cash and the goal.
Speaker 1: So they grab him, and Carl Kachami quite calm. He's
Speaker 1: a lecturer, he's forty eight years old. He's a cool customer.
Speaker 1: He denies any involvement. The police are puzzled because this
Speaker 1: guy's really well spoken, he's smart. He's sitting there saying, yep,
Speaker 1: I hired that car, but I just moved some antiques
Speaker 1: from my store. I'm not sure why you've arrested me.
Speaker 1: I just want to be as helpful as possible. So
Speaker 1: we're sitting in this interview room and he's giving us
Speaker 1: a story that was plausible but still a bit odd.
Speaker 1: Well you would think that, wouldn't you. If he's dropping
Speaker 1: cut up number plates around the place, that would be
Speaker 1: a bit odd. During the interview, police execute a search
Speaker 1: warrant on Carl's house in Hawthorne. The nice house with
Speaker 1: the nice partner, the one who hired the ute. She's
Speaker 1: probably totally innocent, I have to say. And in a
Speaker 1: big antique desk in the house at Hawthorne, officers find
Speaker 1: a semi automatic handgun, a couple of pieces of gold,
Speaker 1: and more cut up number plate. This is where listeners
Speaker 1: the plot thickens. Detectives have their tails up, do they what?
Speaker 1: Carl then tells them a story that yes, I hired
Speaker 1: the car. I did it for money, and when they
Speaker 1: finished doing the arm robbery, they gave me bits of
Speaker 1: gold and told me to hang on to the firearm
Speaker 1: and return the car. So his story is one of
Speaker 1: those classic things with a few touches of truth in it,
Speaker 1: just enough to skate over the big porky. He's saying,
Speaker 1: I got the car, but I did it for other people,
Speaker 1: and they did all the bad things and they just
Speaker 1: gave me a little bit of pocket change for my help.
Speaker 1: It's basically what he's saying. I'm just a chump, is
Speaker 1: what he's saying. And the police are like, nah, this
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. The police said, you're probably going to
Speaker 1: jail for this, and people are going to know you've
Speaker 1: got three or four million dollars and you might know
Speaker 1: where it is. And if we don't get it back,
Speaker 1: these issues with safety and people in jail are going
Speaker 1: to know you've got access to this money. Now that
Speaker 1: is a very real threat. You are some sort of
Speaker 1: soft squarehead customer, no friends in jail. You get put
Speaker 1: in jail. Everyone in jail knows why you're there immediately,
Speaker 1: and if they think you have a lot of money
Speaker 1: buried somewhere, it's not going to be very good for
Speaker 1: you because they're all going to be standing over here
Speaker 1: to get the money, and they're going to say, not
Speaker 1: only we're going to break your fingers one by one
Speaker 1: and throw boiling water over you and pull your teeth out,
Speaker 1: whatever it takes, but we'll find out where you live
Speaker 1: and we will make life very difficult for your family
Speaker 1: or your loved ones. And this is a very real threat,
Speaker 1: and that is why the police pointed it out. They
Speaker 1: pointed out the truth to Carl Kacharmi that if he
Speaker 1: went to jail, he was in a world of pain.
Speaker 1: But anyway, for the meantime, he sticks to his story,
Speaker 1: but he's starting to twist things around a bit, and
Speaker 1: he says, look, I've seen a photo of where the
Speaker 1: gold is buried, and I can take you there. His
Speaker 1: memory is starting to come back. He says, I've seen
Speaker 1: a photo, obviously implying that other bad guys took the
Speaker 1: gold and buried it. But he thinks he knows where
Speaker 1: it might be so he can take them there. So
Speaker 1: by this time the police are away. It's ten o'clock
Speaker 1: at night and the boss has had to call the
Speaker 1: detectives back in after a twelve hour shift and tell
Speaker 1: them that they're going for a drive. So they all
Speaker 1: get in a police card, they get maps on their
Speaker 1: iPhones and he leads them to a place called Dollar. Now,
Speaker 1: when he said that, the police thought he was having
Speaker 1: a joke with them, because you know, it's a robbery
Speaker 1: that's worth millions of dollars, and he says he's taking
Speaker 1: them to a place called Dollar. Little did they know
Speaker 1: then that there is a tiny little place in South
Speaker 1: Gippsland called Dollar, and it's up in the hills out
Speaker 1: the back of you know, leaning Gathriell, Cranborough or where.
Speaker 1: When they get there, it's a fair way. When they
Speaker 1: get there, it's one am, it's raining and all they've
Speaker 1: got is their phone, torches. They didn't have real torches,
Speaker 1: which is surprising. You'd think police would have those great, big, long,
Speaker 1: heavy duty torches that they can hit people with. But anyway,
Speaker 1: they've got one shovel and a robart because that's all
Speaker 1: they could rustle up in time. They walk five hundred
Speaker 1: meters across farmland and Carl Kachami points to a rock,
Speaker 1: So the police start digging, and they're on their hands
Speaker 1: and knees and trying to pull away the dirt. They're
Speaker 1: taking it in turns, but they're soaking wet and covered
Speaker 1: in mud. After two hours and about one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty centimeters down out in the old money that's four
Speaker 1: foot one hundred and twenty centimeters one point two meters.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty deep hoole. They find a toolbox, the
Speaker 1: same toolbox as the offender used in the CCTV footage
Speaker 1: of the robbery. When they found the toolbox, the police
Speaker 1: were expecting it to be like the movies, and they
Speaker 1: thought that'd be all full of going gold. As news
Speaker 1: spread about the police being in town, another local contacted detective.
Speaker 1: The locals described a man that they had seen looking
Speaker 1: puzzled and staring into a malways looking for directions to
Speaker 1: Dollar and when one of the locals asked this guy
Speaker 1: why was going there, he replied to do some digging.
Speaker 1: Now the police checked CCTV and realized that the mystery
Speaker 1: man that is described them and that they then saw
Speaker 1: on CCTV in South Gippsland was in fact the gold
Speaker 1: dealer manager Daniel Ead. Now this is the guy who
Speaker 1: at the start of our story is the poor chap
Speaker 1: who's been robbed. He's been tied up and robbed at
Speaker 1: the gold company in Colt Street. Guess what he's out
Speaker 1: there looking to dig up the gold, which would suggest
Speaker 1: that he knew all about it. Was not only a
Speaker 1: party to the scheme, he was the author of the scheme.
Speaker 1: The police knew that Parol Karl Kochami wouldn't have done
Speaker 1: this alone. But it was only at this point that
Speaker 1: the police are able to link Daniel d into the
Speaker 1: cunning plot. And Sergeant Well says this, when you first
Speaker 1: look at c c t V, you're looking at the
Speaker 1: offender and stuff. But when we looked at the footage
Speaker 1: back again, we noticed what Daniel was doing. That is
Speaker 1: this time the police are looking at the victim, the
Speaker 1: supposed victim of the robbery, and when they study his
Speaker 1: actions during the robbery, they say it's only slight. But
Speaker 1: as Carl comes through the door, he meaning Daniel motions
Speaker 1: for him, meaning Karl, to pull the firearm out. He
Speaker 1: just makes a slight tilt of his head. And then
Speaker 1: there's another point where he's emptying out the cash and
Speaker 1: Daniel motions his head pointing to the other side of
Speaker 1: the room. And where was he pointing and Carl doesn't
Speaker 1: pick up on it. He's pointing at a safe where
Speaker 1: there's another six million dollars in cash and gold. Or
Speaker 1: can you believe that they haven't rehearsed their plot properly?
Speaker 1: And our mate, our amateur robber, our amateur fake robber,
Speaker 1: has managed to miss six million in gold and cash
Speaker 1: and get away with about half that much. Dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.
Speaker 1: So a raid on Karl Kuchami's Fitzroy property revealed the
Speaker 1: PVC pipes. They contained three hundred thousand dollars in cash.
Speaker 1: Another three hundred and thirty three thousand dollars in cash,
Speaker 1: believed to be Daniel EAD's share, remained missing. When the
Speaker 1: game was up, the police went back to Carl and
Speaker 1: asked him why he did it, and he said it
Speaker 1: was all to do with COVID. He said he turned
Speaker 1: his Fitzroy mansion into a twelve bet accommodation that he
Speaker 1: was renting out to UNI students and when COVID hit,
Speaker 1: all international students went home. So then his rental income
Speaker 1: was lost and the house needed a lot of renovations
Speaker 1: and stuff. And his part in this plot, this fake
Speaker 1: robbery was the fund renovations of that old place. When
Speaker 1: it finally went to court in twenty twenty one, the
Speaker 1: inside man, Daniel Ead was sentenced to five years and
Speaker 1: nine months in prison with a non parole period of
Speaker 1: three years and nine months. That's almost four years. But
Speaker 1: the fake bandit, Karl Kachami was clearly thought to be
Speaker 1: the minor partner in this wrought, and he was sentenced
Speaker 1: to four years in prison with a non parole period
Speaker 1: of two years. And so Karl has been out and
Speaker 1: about for quite a while, a sadder and wiser real
Speaker 1: estate vs Because presumably he lost his excellent job of
Speaker 1: teaching at Deacon University. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes
Speaker 1: 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 Heroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew
Speaker 1: Rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts
Speaker 1: sold at news dot com dot au. That is all
Speaker 1: one word news podcasts sold. And if you want further
Speaker 1: information about this episode, links are in the description.