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Speaker 3: This episode contains occasional course language, and we've used some
Speaker 3: voice actors to bring emails to life. The last time
Speaker 3: my brother saw Leslie Minouchian, she was getting on a plane.
Speaker 3: He thought she was just taking a holiday to see
Speaker 3: her family in the US. But just before Leslie turned
Speaker 3: to go through the gate, she said those words, the
Speaker 3: snowball was about to hit you.
Speaker 4: And Greg was so shell shocked.
Speaker 5: We didn't really know what that meant. No, well, how
Speaker 5: would manifest itself? What snowball?
Speaker 3: Within a couple of months, my parents had lost more
Speaker 3: than a million dollars, their home and their retirement, and
Speaker 3: Greg was heartbroken. As paperwork surfaced from the failed Dragonfly Cafa.
Speaker 3: Dad started to find some hectic stuff that didn't make sense.
Speaker 3: Leslie Minuchi and had left behind a trail of clues
Speaker 3: about what she had done, and the more my Dad discovered,
Speaker 3: the more obsessed he got about investigating. Dad even sort
Speaker 3: of turned himself into a sixty something year old hacker,
Speaker 3: and he eventually uncovered a web of deception so strange
Speaker 3: that it's kind of funny. Welcome to Unravel season four.
Speaker 3: I'm Molly Wards and this is Snowball.
Speaker 6: I need to clear this up.
Speaker 3: Don't call yourself Houdini.
Speaker 5: Held it up to the light and everything merged.
Speaker 7: That person has a border placed on it.
Speaker 8: It's just like a finger and it it's a big
Speaker 8: metal phone.
Speaker 3: It's so weird. That is weird. It is weird.
Speaker 9: Oh my fucking gosh, are you serious? We pointed that out?
Speaker 5: What buck God.
Speaker 3: When Leslie left Forever the Dragonfly Cafa had only been
Speaker 3: open for five months, Dad and Greg could finally look
Speaker 3: at the books.
Speaker 10: Felt like it was a bit of a relief that
Speaker 10: she was out of the way so we could start
Speaker 10: trying to work out what the fuck was going on.
Speaker 3: What Greg and Dad found wasn't pretty. The Dragonfly was
Speaker 3: in serious debt. If the business didn't get turned around quickly,
Speaker 3: the whole thing would collapse. My family pulled together to
Speaker 3: save the Dragonfly. Mum worked as a waitress, my dad
Speaker 3: behind the counter. My brother Simon and his chef mates
Speaker 3: were in the kitchen.
Speaker 8: When Mum and Dad came up. I just remember it
Speaker 8: being like whoa, and then whoa, but and then after
Speaker 8: like two or three woes. As the woes went keep
Speaker 8: on getting worse. Even though they were getting worse, it
Speaker 8: wasn't really a surprise. You're like, I wonder what the
Speaker 8: next woe is going to be.
Speaker 3: They tried their best to turn things around, but the
Speaker 3: business debts weren't getting paid down fast enough. Mum, dad
Speaker 3: and Greg were worried and they didn't want to do
Speaker 3: anything wrong, so they voluntarily handed control of the business
Speaker 3: to administrators, some suits from Auckland, whould do whatever they
Speaker 3: needed to for the debts to be repaid. It was
Speaker 3: the administrators who ended up pulling the pin. The cafe,
Speaker 3: gift shop, and the house were all sold. The bank
Speaker 3: also got my family home, the house I grew up in.
Speaker 3: The day Mum and Dad were told it was all over,
Speaker 3: they went for a walk along the beach.
Speaker 5: That was a terrible time. And we were walking along
Speaker 5: the beach looking at this pew de cauetward tree and
Speaker 5: in a way sort of jokingly saying, there's a lot
Speaker 5: of foliage up there. It will be sort of where
Speaker 5: the proof we could live under this tree. We sat
Speaker 5: down on the wharf walkworth and had a little cry
Speaker 5: about it.
Speaker 4: We both sunk to our knees and sat on the wolf.
Speaker 4: We cried. We just were destroyed. We went angry. We
Speaker 4: were just destroyed.
Speaker 3: To make things worse, the global economy was going into meltdown.
Speaker 10: It was a parallel with the world economy at that
Speaker 10: time as well in the United States.
Speaker 4: Housing market has spread across the international.
Speaker 5: Stock markets around the world, embracing for a potential melt or.
Speaker 3: It just has a sharp his average and not just
Speaker 3: down the road, but right now. The Dragonfly wasn't worth
Speaker 3: what Leslie had bought it for just a few months ago.
Speaker 3: Selling it all, even including our house, didn't cover the
Speaker 3: more than one point five million dollar alone. The debt
Speaker 3: to kiwibank was short, about one hundred and fifty grand
Speaker 3: My parents had less than nothing. My Auntie Robin and
Speaker 3: Uncle Merv renovated their basement so my parents could move in.
Speaker 4: If we hadn't had the backing of families, our families,
Speaker 4: I don't know where we would have ended up.
Speaker 3: Mum and Dad even went to ask if they were
Speaker 3: eligible for any welfare payments.
Speaker 4: At one stage we went to see if we could
Speaker 4: get a flat to live in and work an Incomebrihige
Speaker 4: is so hard to deal with. We had a young
Speaker 4: lady of about twenty one. I'm only guessing it twenty
Speaker 4: She said to us, said what are we going to do?
Speaker 4: And she said, I don't know.
Speaker 3: You just got to sort it.
Speaker 4: And we've lived with that saying ever since, it's been
Speaker 4: quite good.
Speaker 3: If you don't know, you just saw that. If this
Speaker 3: was a hard time for my parents, it was even
Speaker 3: harder for Greg. He had to watch Mum and Dad
Speaker 3: get turfed out of our family home.
Speaker 10: The house that you know we all sort of spent
Speaker 10: twenty odd years as a family was well in the past.
Speaker 10: Everyone was split. I was off. I don't know where
Speaker 10: I was. I think I was flanning in Mount Eden.
Speaker 10: Simon had gone his way. Mum and Dad were living
Speaker 10: at someone else's house as well.
Speaker 3: And while all this was happening, he was coming to
Speaker 3: terms with the fact that his marriage was over. Did
Speaker 3: you miss her? I mean, like, you know, yeah I did.
Speaker 10: I sort of thought that maybe we things could be
Speaker 10: worked out and she had come back down, But then
Speaker 10: each week it got more and more out of the
Speaker 10: realms of possibilities.
Speaker 3: And does she know about everything that happened? I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't even know if she knows that the house
Speaker 3: got sold and everything.
Speaker 10: I think I probably yelled at who went on the
Speaker 10: phone and said a few things like.
Speaker 3: That, and.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yep, but obviously not the whole She didn't live it,
Speaker 10: did she, So she wouldn't know.
Speaker 3: But would it even be fair to say it was
Speaker 3: all Leslie's fault anyway? After all, my parents kicked in
Speaker 3: money to a business venture that failed. Like Dad said,
Speaker 3: they stuck their neck out, it didn't pay off. They
Speaker 3: weren't forced to back Leslie's loan. It would be fair
Speaker 3: to say that my parents and Greg were naive to
Speaker 3: put so much into the deal just on trust. They
Speaker 3: made a bad call investing in the Dragonfly, and in
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, people all over the world were
Speaker 3: going bankrupt. But as my dad found out, This was
Speaker 3: no ordinary business failure. After everything that could be sold
Speaker 3: was gone, KII Bank sent Dad a bunch of all
Speaker 3: the documents. While this was happening, I was still living overseas.
Speaker 3: But now that I'm back and end zed, I've finally
Speaker 3: heard the crazy story about what happened when Dad started
Speaker 3: digging through that box of documents. When Kiwibank loaned one
Speaker 3: point five million dollars to Leslie, one of their conditions
Speaker 3: was Leslie had to prove she rarely had that big
Speaker 3: trust fund she always talked about. Because she was an
Speaker 3: equal partner, a guaranteur of the loan along with Greg
Speaker 3: and my parents, she was supposed to be taking on
Speaker 3: the risk of the investment alongside them. In the box
Speaker 3: of stuff from Kiwibank, there was a document Leslie had
Speaker 3: given them showing her trust fund had more than five
Speaker 3: million US dollars locked up in it. It was a
Speaker 3: statement from Bank of America.
Speaker 5: The Bank of America's statement was crucial to the bank
Speaker 5: recognizing that Leslie had funds to be able to sustain
Speaker 5: the business.
Speaker 3: Dad hadn't seen any of this when the deal was done.
Speaker 3: Leslie had her own dealings with Kiwibank, but as soon
Speaker 3: as he found this Bank of America's statement, he could
Speaker 3: tell it looked dodgy. Looking at the statement now, it's
Speaker 3: pretty sketchy. The numbers on the closing balance of more
Speaker 3: than five million sort of trail off on a slight angle.
Speaker 3: The ins and outs of the transactions don't even add
Speaker 3: up properly. The closing balance is wrong by six hundred
Speaker 3: and sixteen dollars. There's heaps of empty lines. It looks
Speaker 3: like a photocopy. It's not signed or stamped by anyone.
Speaker 3: But for Dad, things didn't raally fall into place until
Speaker 3: he stumbled on something else Leslie had left behind. When
Speaker 3: Mom and Dad moved out of our house and closed
Speaker 3: up the Dragonfly, my aunties and uncles helped pack up
Speaker 3: everything they could keep, furniture, mum's china plates that we
Speaker 3: never used. It was all squashed into a small suburban
Speaker 3: storage unit, tight square tin walls like a shed, with
Speaker 3: boxes backed to the roof.
Speaker 5: Sometimes I'd go to the store and sort of reminisce
Speaker 5: about how it was with my own stuff around me,
Speaker 5: and I was just kort of sitting in this little
Speaker 5: storeroom with all of our household goods. Everything was there
Speaker 5: totally packed in and for some reason, I was just
Speaker 5: going through the drawers of this chest of draws and
Speaker 5: I found a Barclay Bank statement, and then I found
Speaker 5: a copy of the America Bank of America statement, and
Speaker 5: they looked similar. I put one on top of the
Speaker 5: other and held it up to the light and everything merged.
Speaker 5: The wording was the same, same font, same size, the
Speaker 5: barcode on it was the same, and that sort of
Speaker 5: locked it in. She had actually produced the Bank of
Speaker 5: America's statement by modifying the Barclay Bank statement.
Speaker 3: This might not have been the first time Leslie had
Speaker 3: made good use of a photocopier. Last episode, we heard
Speaker 3: someone say that Leslie had admitted to twinking out, photocopying
Speaker 3: and faking up her driving record, but this took it
Speaker 3: to another level. It looked like she had faked up
Speaker 3: a bank statement showing the balance of her trust fund.
Speaker 5: That was a fundamental wow moment for me. That was
Speaker 5: the ultimate and fraudulent activity when you present that to
Speaker 5: a bank and they accept it. I was sitting there
Speaker 5: on the stall just looking at the stuff, and it
Speaker 5: was a moment where suddenly everything seemed to fall into place.
Speaker 5: We had been done.
Speaker 3: Dad couldn't believe this hadn't been picked up, and honestly
Speaker 3: I can't either. Some people have suggested to me that
Speaker 3: Leslie would distract people with flirting, but I wondered if
Speaker 3: it was really possible. With all these professionals like at
Speaker 3: the bank, could they be influenced by that kind of thing?
Speaker 3: I asked Dad what he thought.
Speaker 5: Well, I think she certainly pursued that line with a
Speaker 5: lot of people, including the bank people. One of them, Mike,
Speaker 5: is quite astounded to see her give him a big
Speaker 5: gobby kiss. What do you mean at gobby mouth to
Speaker 5: mouth job? As we were leaving a meeting.
Speaker 3: Gobby means something different in Australia. Anyway, when my parents
Speaker 3: figured all this out, they knew that it was time
Speaker 3: to go to the bank and show them the fake
Speaker 3: documents that had been under their noses the whole time.
Speaker 3: Mom and Dad went to Kiwibank's head office in Wellington.
Speaker 4: So this guy said, look, you said, I know it's
Speaker 4: bad news, but you got to go home and live
Speaker 4: with it. And I got so angry. I said to him,
Speaker 4: you are talking about a family that have no home,
Speaker 4: and you're telling us to walk out of here. And
Speaker 4: by this stage David had presented the form showing the
Speaker 4: fraud and how easy it was to pick up, and
Speaker 4: he actually said to these manage men, he said, look
Speaker 4: at it. He said, I found it. He said, your
Speaker 4: janitors should have found it. Why didn't you find it?
Speaker 3: And what did they say? Oh?
Speaker 4: Ah?
Speaker 5: They were totally embarrassed, very very embarrassed about this. And
Speaker 5: I suddenly realized that I was in command here, and
Speaker 5: I can remember saying, now, we'll go home now, but
Speaker 5: we'll reconvene the meeting tomorrow. All right, tomorrow afternoon, I'll
Speaker 5: present you with my claim and we'll see where we
Speaker 5: go from there, right, And he said okay, So off
Speaker 5: we went, and we went off to pub and had
Speaker 5: a rub and coke and a lot of laughter because
Speaker 5: we thought, ah, fastards, we've got them. Well, it didn't
Speaker 5: quite turn out that way.
Speaker 3: Kii Bank did initially offer some compensation to Mum and Dad,
Speaker 3: but later the offer was retracted. The bank's lawyers had
Speaker 3: decided that they didn't owe Mum and Dad anything. Mum
Speaker 3: and Dad had been relying on the bank to make
Speaker 3: sure Leslie's finances were sound, but the bank basically said
Speaker 3: that they should have been doing their own checks. I
Speaker 3: wanted to talk to Kii Bank about all this, but
Speaker 3: they just said we do not comment publicly on specific
Speaker 3: consumer issues and won't be doing so in this circumstance.
Speaker 3: The person my mum and dad would usually get to
Speaker 3: help with this kind of thing was their lawyer of
Speaker 3: twenty five years. This lawyer had helped them to buy
Speaker 3: their house and help Dad set up as party higher business.
Speaker 3: But they could talk to him because back when Leslie
Speaker 3: was still in New Zealand, before this fraud had been discovered,
Speaker 3: the lawyer dumped Dad.
Speaker 5: My lawyer rang and told me he had a conflict
Speaker 5: of interest situation. He was dealing with Leslie and he
Speaker 5: was dealing with us, and he saw the two starting
Speaker 5: to split apart.
Speaker 3: Did you find that ominous? You're the longest client in
Speaker 3: the scenario. Why are you going?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 5: I did think that was a bit odd. Then I
Speaker 5: thought he was obviously armored with Leslie. She was the future.
Speaker 5: We were the present, but not so much the future.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: Not knowing where else to turn, Mum and Dad took
Speaker 3: all the documents to their local member of parliament, a
Speaker 3: guy called Rodney Hyde, and it just so happened that
Speaker 3: Rodney Hyde had quite a profile. He was the leader
Speaker 3: of a political party called Act. And he didn't just act,
Speaker 3: he also danced. The Honorable Rodney Hyde was a surprisingly
Speaker 3: popular contestant on New Zealand's Dancing with the Stars.
Speaker 4: Up next Rodney Hyde And after that first fox trot,
Speaker 4: the question is has he got a little cheeky chut
Speaker 4: chacha left in.
Speaker 5: Him dancing the chut cha? Or Rodney Hyde and Crystal
Speaker 5: Stewart please take to the floor.
Speaker 3: Mum and Dad felt like they were finally getting somewhere
Speaker 3: because Rodney Hyde took a keen interest in their case.
Speaker 3: Rodney wrote a strongly worded letter to the bank suggesting
Speaker 3: that their lax checking of Leslie's documents was negligent and
Speaker 3: asked them to reverse their position, but the bank didn't budge.
Speaker 3: The only other thing my parents could do was report
Speaker 3: the whole thing to the police.
Speaker 7: You have reached the New Zealand Police non emergency line.
Speaker 3: Dad had a couple of meetings with Auckland's top fraud cop,
Speaker 3: a Welshman.
Speaker 7: So I'm Mahal Jones, I'm a detective respect at the
Speaker 7: moment at the time when this file came in. I
Speaker 7: was the acting detective senior sergeant in charge of Auckland
Speaker 7: City Fraud Squad as it was then. Certainly, if the
Speaker 7: suspect we were in New Zealand, it would be something
Speaker 7: that we would have allocated and looked at. Unfortunately, with
Speaker 7: her already having left the country ex standard practice at
Speaker 7: that point that we wouldn't take it any further. It's
Speaker 7: unfortunate that by the time this fraud, you know, or
Speaker 7: the likely forward was realized, she was already well gone.
Speaker 7: But what we did do is ensure that that person
Speaker 7: has a border that placed on them, so if they
Speaker 7: were to re enter the country, I would get a
Speaker 7: notification and at that point we would look at the
Speaker 7: filer game.
Speaker 3: Unless Leslie came back to New Zealand, the cops wouldn't
Speaker 3: do anything. By skipping the country, Leslie could leave it
Speaker 3: all behind. Is it any part of the practice as
Speaker 3: well to sort of let the US authorities know that
Speaker 3: they've done something like that.
Speaker 7: I'd only do that if I really expecting to transfer
Speaker 7: a file that had sufficient evidence on it to warrant
Speaker 7: an investigation. In America, a lot of fraud files is
Speaker 7: to get to that level you actually need to speak
Speaker 7: to the suspect. Because you're looking at bank accounts, a
Speaker 7: handwriting samples to get to that point. It's quite a
Speaker 7: long road.
Speaker 3: It seems like kind of a loop. With Leslie gone,
Speaker 3: they couldn't investigate her, but without an investigation in New Zealand,
Speaker 3: they couldn't tell the US. Therefore, no one was going
Speaker 3: to investigate. But what all this meant was pretty simple.
Speaker 3: Even if Leslie had committed blatant fraud, she was gonna
Speaker 3: get away with it. As Dad and the administrators kept
Speaker 3: investigating what happened at the Dragonfly, they found more shady surprises.
Speaker 3: One of the administrators somehow found out that Leslie had
Speaker 3: been hit with charges relating to check fraud in the US,
Speaker 3: and she had a conviction. Dad also found records showing
Speaker 3: something really dodgy. Not long after he had put an
Speaker 3: eye watering seventy five grand in an account for Leslie
Speaker 3: to set up the Dragonfly, she sent over twenty grand
Speaker 3: to her parents in the US, and that was before
Speaker 3: the business had even opened. Greg tried to confront Leslie
Speaker 3: about all this, but according to Greg, she continued to
Speaker 3: blame the failure of the Dragonfly on Mum and dad
Speaker 3: and Greg meddling in the business. Mum and dad wanted
Speaker 3: answers from Leslie's parents. They tried calling, and then Leslie's dad,
Speaker 3: Andrew replied by email, this isn't his real voice.
Speaker 11: I felt it would be better to respond to you
Speaker 11: via email as I have difficulty most of the time
Speaker 11: understanding the key we accent, and I apologize for that.
Speaker 11: We are extremely sorry for the situation everyone is in.
Speaker 11: Betty has been praying for a turnaround of the situation,
Speaker 11: and we all do care about your welfare and success.
Speaker 3: But he goes on to say stuff like the cafe
Speaker 3: should never have been sold.
Speaker 11: We feel that you should have received advice from at
Speaker 11: least three or four different experts. There are many brokers
Speaker 11: out there that at least would have given you the
Speaker 11: option to refinance. Your main concern seems to be that
Speaker 11: Leslie was not properly regretful of her contributions to the
Speaker 11: failure of the business. However, I am not sure what
Speaker 11: gave you this impression. As far as our empathy for you,
Speaker 11: it is more than you realize.
Speaker 3: He sees they don't appreciate my mom and dad blaming
Speaker 3: the loss of their home on Lesley.
Speaker 11: You are an adult who has had your own businesses
Speaker 11: in the past, and you must have known the risk
Speaker 11: involved in this type of business.
Speaker 3: Fear enough, Dead new the risks. But based on Leslie
Speaker 3: saying she had her trust fund to back everything up,
Speaker 3: here's the strange thing. It seems like Betty and Andrew
Speaker 3: think Leslie's trust fund is real, or at least they're
Speaker 3: trying to convince my parents it's real.
Speaker 11: Unfortunately, she does not have the freedom to access her
Speaker 11: trust fund for any amounts to help the Dragonfly with
Speaker 11: the financial distress it was in. Leslie does not have
Speaker 11: control of this trust fund, nor do we. I want
Speaker 11: to reiterate that we do not want to be involved
Speaker 11: in any way whatsoever and would appreciate being left out
Speaker 11: of this situation. Sincerely, Andrew.
Speaker 3: Despite the evidence that shows Leslie sending money to Andrew,
Speaker 3: when my dad reached out to them, it was pretty
Speaker 3: clear they didn't want a bar of the whole situation.
Speaker 3: Leslie warned Greg not to send the documents to her parents,
Speaker 3: but then Mum and dad did exactly that. They emailed
Speaker 3: Betty and Andrew with attachments showing evidence of fraudulent documents
Speaker 3: and money transfers to them in the US.
Speaker 5: Andrew and Betty some facts. Shortly after the bank loan
Speaker 5: for the business and startup funding was obtained, Leslie transferred
Speaker 5: US twelve five hundred dollars to you on the twenty
Speaker 5: fifth of September. Our conclusion is that you both had
Speaker 5: knowledge of what was happening, and we're a party to
Speaker 5: the deceit.
Speaker 3: Not long after my dad sent that email, Leslie wrote
Speaker 3: to Greg asking for a divorce. She said it was
Speaker 3: the last straw. I read some of what Leslie said
Speaker 3: to Greg. He hadn't seen this divorce letter in over
Speaker 3: a decade, Like I just want to read some of
Speaker 3: this letter to you. It says, dere Greg, I'm filing
Speaker 3: for dissolution of our marriage and would appreciate your signature
Speaker 3: as soon as possible. I am sorry that things have
Speaker 3: ended this way.
Speaker 10: It's just all crap.
Speaker 3: There's one particular paragraph here, which is I am sorry
Speaker 3: that now you will never really know what was real
Speaker 3: or not? Oh, what was real or not? But I
Speaker 3: kept asking and pleading not to push and allow me
Speaker 3: to do things on my terms.
Speaker 12: And allow me to do things on my terms, but
Speaker 12: you just didn't trust me enough to let me finish
Speaker 12: what I started.
Speaker 2: I didn't run from the mask.
Speaker 12: I laughed because I was not going to set back
Speaker 12: and be told what to do by your family. I
Speaker 12: did not work with people up in my face making demands.
Speaker 10: She's a sociopath. She's trying to kill the lily, blame
Speaker 10: other people, manipulation. So what I make of that is
Speaker 10: just total crap.
Speaker 3: To be honest, what do you think she meant by
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, you will never really know what was real
Speaker 3: or not.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so that's the I guess. When you marry someone
Speaker 10: you want to you feel like you really know them.
Speaker 10: So to have her say that was quite tough because
Speaker 10: it actually shows that she was holding out. She said,
Speaker 10: you know you don't really know me. Well, she was
Speaker 10: the one preventing me from knowing. And when I think,
Speaker 10: I recall when I read that, I thought of Hawaii
Speaker 10: and all of the stories from there, and I thought
Speaker 10: to myself, I've just become the new Hawaii. Hawaii was
Speaker 10: a mystery. Now in New Zealand's a mystery, and now
Speaker 10: the storm's gone somewhere else.
Speaker 3: My dad still had heaps of questions, like was Leslie's
Speaker 3: trust fund real? She seemed to have faked the proof
Speaker 3: she gave to the bank. But the weird thing was
Speaker 3: Kiwebek also had other documents and even people who seem
Speaker 3: to have vouched for the existence of this trust fund.
Speaker 3: Some attuney called Eric t. Weiss Esquire head written to
Speaker 3: the bank saying.
Speaker 13: This letter is confirmation that Leslie R. Minooki and receives
Speaker 13: five thousand US dollars per month allowance for the rest
Speaker 13: of her life from a trust fund set up by
Speaker 13: her grandfather.
Speaker 3: So who is this guy, Eric t weiss Esquire. Well,
Speaker 3: according to his letterhead, he worked at a place called
Speaker 3: the Colonial Trust Company in Newport Beach, California.
Speaker 14: No, I do not know an Eric t. Weiss and
Speaker 14: my name is Walter Barr. I'm chairman of Colonial Trust Company,
Speaker 14: which is a South Carolina State chartered trust company. We
Speaker 14: have offices in Spartanburg, Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston, South Carolina.
Speaker 14: We have no branches outside of South Carolina. And that
Speaker 14: was confusing to be carl Trust or on the Bank
Speaker 14: America statement. That old statement looks wrong to me. We
Speaker 14: certainly are a Colonial Trust company. Have had no dealings
Speaker 14: with either the wife's individual or the Moniquin, and I
Speaker 14: don't think these were anything we would have had anything
Speaker 14: to do with.
Speaker 3: So the only company of that name that was open
Speaker 3: then has never heard of Leslie or Eric t Weiss esquire,
Speaker 3: so who is he? Dad went looking for him, and
Speaker 3: he did find an American lawyer named Eric t Weiss.
Speaker 3: He sent him a fax. They still love fax machines
Speaker 3: in the US. Dad was pretty worked up about what
Speaker 3: had happened, so this facsy scent was intense.
Speaker 5: Sir, you may wonder who it is that is writing
Speaker 5: to you. The fact is you probably know much much
Speaker 5: much more about me than I know about you. I
Speaker 5: wish to address this imbalance, so I think it is
Speaker 5: time to lay some cards on the table.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, the language is somewhat accusatory, and I
Speaker 6: guess in reading the letter, the first thing that comes
Speaker 6: to my mind is that somebody has been wronged using
Speaker 6: my name and rightfully believes that the person who wronged
Speaker 6: them is me. My name is Eric t Weiss. I'm
Speaker 6: a practicing attorney in the state of Michigan. One thing
Speaker 6: I've learned since, you know, when I was a very
Speaker 6: young child, is that your reputation is perhaps the most
Speaker 6: important thing to you, and so just trying to put
Speaker 6: pieces together, realizing that I need to clear this up
Speaker 6: as soon as possible and that help this person essentially,
Speaker 6: rather than going to become.
Speaker 3: An adversary, Sir, this Eric t Weiss joined my dad's hunt.
Speaker 3: Now they were all looking for Eric t Weiss esquire.
Speaker 6: Being an attorney. As long as I've been an attorney,
Speaker 6: there are there are ways to find out names of
Speaker 6: attorneys where they practiced throughout.
Speaker 14: The United States.
Speaker 6: There is an Eric L. Wise in Atlanta, Eric Georgia
Speaker 6: Wise in Eric Jersey City, Eric in Iwis, and Eric.
Speaker 3: But there just wasn't any sign of another era Eric T.
Speaker 3: Wise anyway Lavinia, and an Eric G.
Speaker 6: Wise in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Much to my surprise, I am
Speaker 6: the only Eric Tys practicing law in the United States.
Speaker 3: It's strange because can We Bank told Dad they had
Speaker 3: spoken to Eric t Weiss. He had given his phone
Speaker 3: number and seed to Cole if the bank needed anything else.
Speaker 3: Apparently they did. Cole Eric T Wess verified the existence
Speaker 3: of this trust fund. So who was on the other
Speaker 3: end of that phone call?
Speaker 6: There was a phone number that I was able to
Speaker 6: do a reverse check of the number online and was
Speaker 6: able to contermine that it came out of California. The
Speaker 6: number is the home number for Andrew R. And Betty R.
Speaker 6: Minukian of California. And then I concluded that perhaps Eric
Speaker 6: t wise to fake Eric t Weiss was really Andrew R. Minukian.
Speaker 3: The phone number for Eric t Weiss's esquire given to
Speaker 3: Kiwi Bank was actually just the phone number for Leslie's parents' house.
Speaker 3: And that wasn't all. Eric had another illusion to reveal.
Speaker 3: Eric knew he shared a name with someone famous. He
Speaker 3: sort of casually mentioned to Dad that Eric Weiss was
Speaker 3: also the real name of the great escape artist, Harry Houdini.
Speaker 9: Lady and gentleman, Oh my fucking god, are you serious?
Speaker 14: Who pointed that out?
Speaker 3: Back when Dad was learning all of this stuff, He
Speaker 3: didn't share it with my brothers. So I told Simon
Speaker 3: about Eric t Weiss and the Great Houdini.
Speaker 9: Okay, so that's that's bizarre.
Speaker 3: If you don't call yourself Houdini, you know when you're
Speaker 3: doing your fraud.
Speaker 8: Well, no, it's it's it's beautiful. She's just taking the
Speaker 8: fucking pass, mate. So that makes me a lot more angrier. Well,
Speaker 8: I didn't know that. Yeah, that totally changed the game
Speaker 8: for me. Really, yeah, that's quite calculated, and like, I
Speaker 8: don't know, It's just like a finger, isn't it. It's
Speaker 8: a big It's a big metal finger that's fucking out there.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: I was just gobsmacked as too. What's going on here?
Speaker 5: How could this be? It was just one of those
Speaker 5: moments where I can't figure it out, and I actually
Speaker 5: still can't.
Speaker 3: This whole Eric t Weiss thing added a new layer
Speaker 3: to the mystery. Dad was keen to get to the
Speaker 3: bottom of who was in on the scam, who wasn't,
Speaker 3: and how it all worked. More clues turned up leaving
Speaker 3: in a hurry and under the pretense that she'd be back.
Speaker 3: Leslie had left a lot of stuff around the house
Speaker 3: at the Dragonfly, nothing valuable, mostly clothes, but there was
Speaker 3: a diary and a few documents, and this one piece
Speaker 3: of paper that had a word clearly scrawled on it.
Speaker 3: When Dad saw it, he had an idea. He knew
Speaker 3: that Leslie had been using his laptop to access her email,
Speaker 3: and it kept prompting him to put in a password,
Speaker 3: so he thought, maybe I'll just try this, and incredibly
Speaker 3: it worked. All of a sudden, he had access to
Speaker 3: the inner workings of Leslie's world.
Speaker 5: Being able to look at her emails, I can tell
Speaker 5: you there was an awful lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 5: I have to say that there were thousands of emails.
Speaker 5: It wasn't any fraudulentcy on my part. I acquired a
Speaker 5: past word, and while I didn't tell her I was
Speaker 5: looking at them, it did give me an awful lot
Speaker 5: of information.
Speaker 3: So did you save her emails?
Speaker 5: I have saved some of them, the ones that were interesting.
Speaker 3: How often would you go in there and look at
Speaker 3: least once a week? So weird? It is weird. It
Speaker 3: is weird. Why how many do you have? Oh?
Speaker 5: I only kept the ones that have great interest, and
Speaker 5: I did little sort of excerpts from them.
Speaker 3: Dad tells me that for about a year he was
Speaker 3: copy pasting the interesting stuff into word documents until the
Speaker 3: past word got changed. I can totally understand why Dad
Speaker 3: did this. The walls had fallen in around him. The
Speaker 3: bank didn't seem to want to act on any of
Speaker 3: this stuff, and neither did the police. He had no
Speaker 3: other way of getting more definitive answers about the extent
Speaker 3: of Leslie's fraud and at this point, neither do I.
Speaker 3: All of the emails Dad saved are in the box
Speaker 3: of documents he's given me. I do feel kind of
Speaker 3: conflicted about this. I could have just left the emails
Speaker 3: in the box and cracked on working things out without them.
Speaker 3: But leaving them in the box would have meant not
Speaker 3: truly understanding what happened, so I decided to read them.
Speaker 3: That means getting a real insight into Leslie's world, as
Speaker 3: we can hear directly from her. This is a bio
Speaker 3: she wrote about herself in an email. I think it's
Speaker 3: for a course application. We've got an actor to read
Speaker 3: Leslie's emails.
Speaker 12: I have always been fascinated with fast things. My closest
Speaker 12: friends would tell you that adrenaline is my best friend.
Speaker 12: I'm always looking for the most extreme high through HELLI
Speaker 12: morning offal desk, kayaking with the glaciers, hiking the backside
Speaker 12: of Half Dell, to scuba diving with the hammerheads of
Speaker 12: the Cocus Islands. I am sad to have a glowing personality,
Speaker 12: and at times I believe this is true because of
Speaker 12: all the great friends that I have. But I see
Speaker 12: myself as shy and guarded as a bartender. The fun,
Speaker 12: crazy people and rushes of mad crowds give me the
Speaker 12: ultimate natural high. I traveled for seven years through fifty
Speaker 12: two countries, mostly alone, meeting people along the way. The
Speaker 12: experience taught me that I am a go getter who's
Speaker 12: a hard working and confident woman. But mostly I am
Speaker 12: a survivor.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: Those last few words are in capital letters. By the way,
Speaker 3: I am a survivor. She'll often emphasize the line in capitals.
Speaker 3: Looking through Leslie's other emails, there's more that sticks out
Speaker 3: to me. There's insight into her relationship with her parents,
Speaker 3: mainly Betty, Leslie's mum. She seems to do most of
Speaker 3: the emailing a lot of the time. Betty seems nice.
Speaker 3: She even asks after my parents, how is everything there?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 3: How are Julie and Dave?
Speaker 1: Please tell them hello for me, love Mom.
Speaker 3: This makes me think maybe they don't know about Leslie's
Speaker 3: tricks in some ways, could they be victims too? Firstly,
Speaker 3: there's just so much admin going on of Leslie trying
Speaker 3: to send money to her mum. It's a constant dance
Speaker 3: of her explaining holdups and sending cash back to her parents.
Speaker 12: I can send you money Western Union. I'm going to
Speaker 12: try to send you a little money first from Greg's account.
Speaker 12: Greg was using my computer the other night while waiting
Speaker 12: for me to call him for a ride, and the
Speaker 12: rabbit ate my computer cord again.
Speaker 3: It seems like while Leslie was spending the Dragonfly startup money,
Speaker 3: she was also keeping up appearances and n zed with
Speaker 3: her mum's credit card. Here's an email from Leslie's mum, Betty.
Speaker 1: Leslie, this is the last time you're going to use
Speaker 1: our credit card. I know you are short of money,
Speaker 1: and that's why I'm giving this to you. But you
Speaker 1: are a grown woman with a husband and a business,
Speaker 1: and we are your poor parents who are in deep
Speaker 1: shit debt.
Speaker 3: So maybe Betty suffers from Leslie's creative approach to money
Speaker 3: management too. But what about Andrew. The phone number provided
Speaker 3: by Eric t Weiss to Kiwibank was their home number,
Speaker 3: but the bank manager reckoned. He called the number and
Speaker 3: spoke to Eric. Could that have been Leslie's dad, Andrew
Speaker 3: playing the role of Eric t Weiss. If things weren't
Speaker 3: strange already. They get a bit sideways from here, because
Speaker 3: for a guy who doesn't seem real Eric t Weiss
Speaker 3: sends a lot of emails, and a lot of them
Speaker 3: are to Leslie's parents.
Speaker 13: Good morning, Andy and Mattie. Hope this email finds you well.
Speaker 13: I have had several lengthy conversations with a banker friend
Speaker 13: of mine, and the paperwork on the trust money that
Speaker 13: Leslie received on your behalf is a very tricky situation.
Speaker 3: I can see these emails from Eric to Lesley's parents
Speaker 3: because they seem to show up in Leslie's account. She's
Speaker 3: c seed or they've been forwarded. Eric writes a lot
Speaker 3: like Leslie. He puts random words in capitals, and he's
Speaker 3: often explaining delays and money transfers to her parents.
Speaker 13: Sarah from the accounting office of Sony did leave a
Speaker 13: message with my assistant letting us know that the money
Speaker 13: will be available on Wednesday. They will fed extra cashier's
Speaker 13: check to you to receive by a Thursday.
Speaker 3: Eric also passes on advice to Leslie's parents about what
Speaker 3: to do in some situations, like here, Eric suggests what
Speaker 3: to say to my mom and dad.
Speaker 13: If he starts whining about his present financial situation. Apologize
Speaker 13: for his loss, but state you feel that he should
Speaker 13: have had at least three or four different opinions before
Speaker 13: making this final decision.
Speaker 3: Reading through these emails, something seemed strangely familiar. I started
Speaker 3: to recognize some of the words in this email. Eric
Speaker 3: is talking about how the administrators were called into the Dragonfly,
Speaker 3: and he's saying that my family shouldn't have placed the
Speaker 3: business into voluntary administration. I realized, I've heard that somewhere before.
Speaker 11: We feel that you should have received advice from at
Speaker 11: least three or four different experts.
Speaker 3: Leslie's dad said all the same stuff to my parents
Speaker 3: when he wrote to them.
Speaker 11: There are many brokers out there that at least would
Speaker 11: have given you the option to refinance.
Speaker 3: It seems like he's just rehashing what Eric said to say.
Speaker 13: Just say, there are many brokers out there who would
Speaker 13: have bailed you out for at least six months. Yes,
Speaker 13: maybe had a higher interest rate, but at least they
Speaker 13: would have made it through the winter, so could have
Speaker 13: put the property up for a salement.
Speaker 3: Ugh. I feel like I'm playing a game of pickup sticks,
Speaker 3: just where every stick is actually a thick piece of bullshit. Okay,
Speaker 3: So Eric t Weiss sends advice to Leslie, who forwards
Speaker 3: it to her dad, Andrew. Andrew follows instructions and sends
Speaker 3: all of this bullshit my dad. So it seems like
Speaker 3: Leslie could be using this fake persona Eric t Weiss,
Speaker 3: to get her parents to say whatever she wants them
Speaker 3: to say. If Eric t Weiss is just a character
Speaker 3: Leslie invented, she's at least made him three dimensional. Because
Speaker 3: Eric writes to Leslie like he's updating a friend.
Speaker 13: Hi, Leslie, hope this email finds you well At the moment,
Speaker 13: I'm back in Bangkok, still dealing with legal issues, Leslie.
Speaker 13: I was happy to hear that you made it back
Speaker 13: to the States. I am sorry that things have not
Speaker 13: gone so well for you.
Speaker 3: So is Leslie emailing herself as Eric. What is going on?
Speaker 13: It will be worth it one day, Leslie, Leslie, do not.
Speaker 12: I was happy to.
Speaker 13: Hear that you made it actually secure for life by
Speaker 13: your dad. That hummer you keep talking about.
Speaker 3: If only Leslie used this much imagination running the Dragonfly,
Speaker 3: and if she can pull off such complicated lies, Leslie
Speaker 3: must have had practice. There must be other people that
Speaker 3: have been conned. I need to find them, and I
Speaker 3: know where I have to start. Before Leslie met Greg,
Speaker 3: she was in Hawaii. I have to find out what
Speaker 3: happened there. Luckily Greg's given me a head start. Greg
Speaker 3: knew now that Leslie's story of being run out of
Speaker 3: Hawaii by murderous local mobsters probably wasn't true, So while
Speaker 3: Dad was skulking around in Leslie's emails, Greg was writing
Speaker 3: to the Hawaiian State Police.
Speaker 10: This is obviously not an ordinary crime or set of circumstance,
Speaker 10: but from the normal successful life my family once led,
Speaker 10: I find myself in a murky world of con artists
Speaker 10: and swindlers. We are battling them and I will find
Speaker 10: out the truth. Any information, advice may be a point
Speaker 10: in the right direction, would be invaluable.
Speaker 3: And before long Greg got a reply.
Speaker 10: Checked the letterbox and an interesting looking Manila folder type envelope,
Speaker 10: quite chunky in the letter box and had some US
Speaker 10: postal marks on it, and I thought, wow, this is
Speaker 10: this is going to be interesting.
Speaker 3: So interesting that it's going to help me discover what
Speaker 3: really happened in Hawaii.
Speaker 14: Going to help you.
Speaker 3: Yes, hi, chi phone, it's Ollie Ward's here. The ABC
Speaker 3: journalispits this town is very small.
Speaker 13: We can't cooking it wireless, so everyone talks to everyone
Speaker 13: about everything.
Speaker 3: Does the name Leslie Minoukian mean anything to you?
Speaker 4: Oh, you've bet never forget her.
Speaker 2: I was to the point where I wanted to.
Speaker 14: She had all these fantastic ideas of what was going
Speaker 14: to happen and was all sung together by dreams.
Speaker 8: Really, I don't care whether you're in Hawaii, you're in California,
Speaker 8: you're in New Zealand, or wherever.
Speaker 6: You get what you give the scammer. And she's lucky
Speaker 6: she left.
Speaker 3: That's next time on Snowball.