Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's Jake here. We're hard at work on the
Speaker 2: next season of deep Cover, and trust me, it's a
Speaker 2: story you won't want to miss. But in the meantime,
Speaker 2: we wanted to bring you another show, this time by
Speaker 2: the Unravel podcast team at ABC Australia, that explores a
Speaker 2: story of outrageous deception. It's called Snowball, and for the
Speaker 2: next few weeks we'll be sharing that podcast right here.
Speaker 2: Snowball follows journalist Ali Wards as he unravels the wild
Speaker 2: story of his own family was taken in and taken
Speaker 2: down by a charming con woman from California, and he
Speaker 2: tries to find out where she is. Now we're talking
Speaker 2: financial ruin, shattered trust, and a mystery that stretches out
Speaker 2: across continents and decades. It's got all the twists and
Speaker 2: turns you'd expect from a high stakes crime thriller, only
Speaker 2: it's all true. If you love deep Cover for the
Speaker 2: detailed reporting, the unexpected characters, and the way that the
Speaker 2: truth slowly unspools, Snowball will absolutely pull you in. Starting
Speaker 2: November three, you can hear episodes of Snowball right here. Okay,
Speaker 2: here's a preview.
Speaker 3: My brother married an American corn artist.
Speaker 4: I find myself in a murky world of corn artists
Speaker 4: and swindlers. This isn't the kind of story you would
Speaker 4: expect to happen to a pretty average Kiwi family like mine. Oh,
Speaker 4: I was just gobsmaked as too, what's going on here?
Speaker 1: I just remember it being like, whoa.
Speaker 3: She had the dark, vivacious.
Speaker 1: And then whoa a surface skin and look to here,
Speaker 1: and then it's like two or three woes. She's a sociopath.
Speaker 1: It wasn't really a surprise. You're like, I wonder what
Speaker 1: the next one is going to be?
Speaker 3: What happened cost us everything?
Speaker 4: I held it up to the light and everything merged.
Speaker 3: In the end, my parents lost more than a million dollars.
Speaker 2: We had been done.
Speaker 3: Mum and Dad ended up homeless.
Speaker 1: We just were destroyed.
Speaker 4: It all started when my bro Greg was a backpacker
Speaker 4: in London.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's very bubbly, affavescent personality. He met Leslie Minuchian.
Speaker 3: She has a laugh that.
Speaker 4: Could you know you hear it across the room.
Speaker 3: A confident, charismatic Californian.
Speaker 1: Well, let's throw in there.
Speaker 4: Kim Kardashian look alike, sophisticated female.
Speaker 3: Operative she knew as at the work people ready to
Speaker 3: woo me as well. Greg was wooed. I was an
Speaker 3: American a file, so he brought his American dream girl
Speaker 3: home to New Zealand. When you married someone, you feel
Speaker 3: like you really know them.
Speaker 4: Within a few months, Leslie had taken off to the
Speaker 4: US and none of us ever saw her again. I
Speaker 4: was living overseas when all of this went down. I
Speaker 4: normally work at an Australian radio station helping other people
Speaker 4: tell stories. Now I'm going to investigate the story of
Speaker 4: my own.
Speaker 3: It was. It was so weird, smuggled out of Armenia.
Speaker 3: What well explain? That's weird?
Speaker 4: It is weird. And as I start digging through what happened,
Speaker 4: weird doesn't even really cover it.
Speaker 3: You got on the wrong side of the local mafia,
Speaker 3: she witnessed.
Speaker 1: She might have got beaten murder, or she got home
Speaker 1: invaded at a house or something like that. They're going
Speaker 1: to kill me tonight, Dad and the CRIMINALSS got on
Speaker 1: this chartered airplane.
Speaker 2: Parents had to pay for a private jet to come
Speaker 2: get her before the mafia killed her.
Speaker 3: Oh God, there's just so many questions. How did this happen?
Speaker 3: Why did this American woman con my family.
Speaker 2: Why did you do this?
Speaker 3: How did she just get away? Oh?
Speaker 1: Shit, she's done it again.
Speaker 3: Who else does this happen to? Does the name Lislie
Speaker 3: Minuchian mean.
Speaker 1: Anything to you?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: You bet.
Speaker 3: Never forget her.
Speaker 1: This woman's a bit kind of like, you know, not
Speaker 1: what she claims to.
Speaker 3: Be, and that was her allure. You just followed her.
Speaker 1: I don't think she ever thought she would actually get caught.
Speaker 3: It just started getting shadier and shadier. I got home.
Speaker 4: There was a bong load, a martini and a blow job,
Speaker 4: and I just didn't think about it.
Speaker 2: I f a ask you, this is your karma?
Speaker 3: And who really is Lislei Minuchian? Like a part of
Speaker 3: me believes that she's just like, oh, the scammer of
Speaker 3: really broken person. You'll never really know what was real
Speaker 3: or not.
Speaker 4: To find answers, I'll have to get past her big
Speaker 4: shot lawyer to the stars.
Speaker 3: Can you believe this jerk?
Speaker 1: Oh? My fucking god, as your lawyer, I am starting
Speaker 1: to make threats.
Speaker 3: Also, are you serious?
Speaker 4: And I'm going to travel across the world to track
Speaker 4: Leslie down?
Speaker 1: What are we getting ourselves into?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm running stand by.
Speaker 4: I'm only wards and I want you to come with
Speaker 4: me for the new season of Unravel.
Speaker 1: It's about to hit you.
Speaker 4: This time things really do get personal.
Speaker 3: Join me for Snowball.
Speaker 4: Okay, I see a subscribe to Unravel, the ABC's award
Speaker 4: winning true crime podcast. She's getting in a car wherever
Speaker 4: you're hearing this now getting or on the ABC listener.
Speaker 2: If you can't wait to find out what happens Binge
Speaker 2: episodes of deep Cover presents Snowball early and ad free
Speaker 2: with a Pushkin Plus subscription. Find Pushkin Plus on the
Speaker 2: deep Cover show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin
Speaker 2: f M, slash plus