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Speaker 3: This episode contains occasional course language.
Speaker 4: The first thing about Leslie Minuchian that caught my brother's
Speaker 4: attention was her American accent. The second thing my American
Speaker 4: file brother was attracted to was Leslie's wild story about
Speaker 4: why she left Hawaii.
Speaker 5: Some bad people in Hawaii were trying to attack her,
Speaker 5: you know, because that frauded her and we're trying to
Speaker 5: do bad stuff to her, and her mom and dad
Speaker 5: sent her to Europe to escape them.
Speaker 4: According to Leslie, she had been run off the island
Speaker 4: by murderous locals. A lot of people heard different versions
Speaker 4: of the story.
Speaker 6: I remember her saying something about she had to crawl
Speaker 6: up in a dark bathroom.
Speaker 4: Was something about some cash. She was like hiding under
Speaker 4: a table and these guys looking somewhere and she was
Speaker 4: trying to call her dad and she got on the
Speaker 4: wrong side of the local mafia.
Speaker 7: She witnessed.
Speaker 4: She might have got beaten up, murder or she got
Speaker 4: home invaded at a house or something like that.
Speaker 2: They're going to kill me tonight, dad.
Speaker 3: Criminals got on this chartered airplane.
Speaker 5: Parents had a paper and private jet to come get
Speaker 5: her before the mafia killed her.
Speaker 4: So this story about Hawaii, after everything that happened to
Speaker 4: my brother Greg, he started to think about how it
Speaker 4: might be a fat yarn. He wanted to know what
Speaker 4: really happened, So we figured he had write to the
Speaker 4: Hawaiian police and ask if they knew anything. Greg might
Speaker 4: have been watching a bit too much Hawaii five Oh
Speaker 4: or Magnum Pi when he wrote this letter, because he's
Speaker 4: dialed up the drama.
Speaker 5: I find myself in a murky world of con artists
Speaker 5: and swindlers. We are battling them and I will find
Speaker 5: out the truth. Any information, advice, maybe a point in
Speaker 5: the right direction, would be invaluable.
Speaker 4: Normally cops don't go giving out details to letter writing
Speaker 4: busybodies like you can't just write a letter to the
Speaker 4: police asking them to hand over documents because you're curious
Speaker 4: about someone's past. But maybe whoever got that letter was
Speaker 4: moved by Greg's quest for justice, because whoever read Gregg's
Speaker 4: letter sent back a thick Manila envelope. What Greg found
Speaker 4: in that envelope was relief.
Speaker 5: Finally I had something that was real and genuine and
Speaker 5: could cast light on her, her character and what she
Speaker 5: was really about.
Speaker 4: Inside the envelope were copies of police reports, including detectives notes,
Speaker 4: and witness statements. The reports suggested that Greg wasn't alone.
Speaker 4: He wasn't the only person who had been burnt by
Speaker 4: Leslie Minuchian. I'm Ollie Ward's and this is snowball. Does
Speaker 4: the name Leslie Minuchian mean anything to you?
Speaker 8: Oh, you've bet never forget her.
Speaker 5: She's a sociopath.
Speaker 9: She wanted me to come to Hawaii with her and
Speaker 9: help her open this fucking bar.
Speaker 10: That's the cool spot because it was one of the
Speaker 10: biggest venues here on Mollie.
Speaker 6: It just started getting shittier and shittier.
Speaker 8: He was brock. She took every fucking thing out.
Speaker 10: I just kept tiding about if screw you, this is
Speaker 10: your karma, and I just kept grabbing every bit of money.
Speaker 8: He's a manipulative con artist. He loves what she's doing.
Speaker 4: She just loved it. By writing to the Hawaiian State Police,
Speaker 4: Greg was able to get back this fat Manila folder
Speaker 4: that I've got in my hand. It contained these couple
Speaker 4: of reports that I'm looking at now, which show there
Speaker 4: was at least two people pissed off enough to file
Speaker 4: police complaints against Leslie, and there's detective notes, witness accounts.
Speaker 4: It's pretty detailed. Under the suspect is listed Leslie Ruth Minouchian, adult,
Speaker 4: white female citizen, thirty four years old, height five seven,
Speaker 4: weight one hundred and sixteen pounds, so that's about fifty kg,
Speaker 4: brown eyes, brown hair, fair complexion, unemployed and no local address.
Speaker 4: There's allegations in here of check fraud, lots of tantalizing intel.
Speaker 4: This one is filed by a guy called Jorge Herdi,
Speaker 4: and so I've just googled him and I've found a
Speaker 4: picture of him on a modeling site. He's got shaggy
Speaker 4: blonde hair, blue eyes, surfy looking kind of guy, and
Speaker 4: the only other thing I can find about him is
Speaker 4: a pretty empty linked in account, and it says that
Speaker 4: he works at a hostel in Santa Catarina, Brazil. I'm
Speaker 4: pretty nervous about getting in touch. All of this stuff
Speaker 4: in Hawaii happened back in the early two thousands. I
Speaker 4: don't even know if he'll remember Leslie. Plus it's kind
Speaker 4: of hard to explain who I am and what I'm
Speaker 4: doing too. But I've got to give him a buzz
Speaker 4: to find out what he remembers. See Georges, heardi see
Speaker 4: no nobla Portuguese. Yeah, I speak for Guese. I speak
Speaker 4: in English. You speak English. Yeah, I'm looking for Georges Herdy.
Speaker 3: Please okay you I mean please.
Speaker 4: Hello Georges. Yes, yes, my name is Ollie Ward's and
Speaker 4: I'm just wondering, are you the same Georges that used
Speaker 4: to live in Hawaii in about two thousand and four.
Speaker 4: You used to go there a lot, so I've had
Speaker 4: trouble getting I'm just wondering if you if the name
Speaker 4: Leslie Minouchian means anything to you.
Speaker 9: Oh, the scammer.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of glad to hear him say that, the scammer.
Speaker 4: I'm onto something, Georges says him Leslie in Oceanside, California.
Speaker 9: Leslie was a very charming like she you know, I
Speaker 9: had a way too, Can I get into your good side?
Speaker 9: Like seeing nice things about me, like what a good
Speaker 9: looking man I was. And she had the hearts for
Speaker 9: me and this and that and the other, and she
Speaker 9: kind of started dating and that was the whole thing
Speaker 9: that she wanted me to come to Hawaii with her
Speaker 9: and help her open this fucking bar.
Speaker 4: George's story already sounds familiar. It starts out with Leslie
Speaker 4: hooking up with a guy and next thing, he's involved
Speaker 4: in the grand opening of a hospitality business. George's wasn't
Speaker 4: the only person Leslie recruited for her Hawaiian plan. Leslie
Speaker 4: was working at a restaurant in California and became friends
Speaker 4: with some of the others who worked there.
Speaker 10: She and I became friends, so she would invite me
Speaker 10: over to her house in San Diego and Oceanside, and
Speaker 10: she had a beautiful home. She had a lot of
Speaker 10: toys with the doom buggies and you know, beautiful yard
Speaker 10: with a pond, and you know, she was my manager
Speaker 10: at the restaurant that I was working at.
Speaker 4: Trinity found that her ambitions matched up with Lislie's.
Speaker 10: She and I had the same ideas of entrepreneurship, of
Speaker 10: wanting to fulfill opening up a restaurant, bar night lifestyle.
Speaker 10: And it was kind of like friendship instantaneously because she
Speaker 10: kind of had that aura where she's a very smooth
Speaker 10: speaking person, where she can make everything seem perfect.
Speaker 4: Trinity looks like someone who would be at home at
Speaker 4: the beach some died here, straight talking vibe. She had
Speaker 4: spent lots of time in Hawaii and had always wanted
Speaker 4: to go back there, so she had an idea for Leslie.
Speaker 10: She wanted to do it within Oceanside, and I kept
Speaker 10: telling her, no, there's you know, there's too many restaurants here.
Speaker 10: You're going to be such a small fish in this
Speaker 10: big pond, you know. And so I kept telling her
Speaker 10: that I have lived in Maui prior to and that
Speaker 10: I had a lot of connections here in Hawaii. And
Speaker 10: one day she said, Okay, let's go, let's do it,
Speaker 10: and so I said, okay, let's do it. Let's go.
Speaker 4: Trinity wasn't the only person ready to follow Leslie out
Speaker 4: to the islands.
Speaker 10: We were like her little ducklings.
Speaker 4: Following behind her, Georgia and a couple of others jumped
Speaker 4: on the bandwagon.
Speaker 10: And all the stories that she had, you know, put
Speaker 10: into our heads as to what we were going to
Speaker 10: be doing.
Speaker 4: They headed to Maui, the second biggest of the Hawaiian islands.
Speaker 4: They ended up in a place called Lehina. There's heaps
Speaker 4: of tourists. If you've been to Maui, you probably went
Speaker 4: to Lehina with its still blue water protected by a reef.
Speaker 4: The main street is called Front Street, with restaurants, bars,
Speaker 4: and souvenir shops. Amongst those was an old bar that
Speaker 4: had been closed. It looked like the perfect spot to
Speaker 4: open a new business.
Speaker 10: It's like a ten thousand square foot venue, and I
Speaker 10: have a lot of connections, so I started making phone calls,
Speaker 10: got in there, we got the lease on the building.
Speaker 10: Being a bartender for nineteen years, I had a wonderful
Speaker 10: connection with the liquor Commission, so I was able to
Speaker 10: get the liquor license and stated as well, I was
Speaker 10: creating network of people for her to be welcomed here
Speaker 10: in Maui.
Speaker 4: More and more people were drawn into Leslie's Hawaiian vision.
Speaker 4: One of them was a British backpacker called Will. He
Speaker 4: was in his early thirties and looking to set himself
Speaker 4: up in the island life. He's a Northerner with long
Speaker 4: hair and a laid back attitude.
Speaker 1: When I met Leslie, she had all these fantastic ideas
Speaker 1: of what was going to happen, and it seemed to
Speaker 1: fall so into line with the things that I wanted
Speaker 1: to do as well. I've really fallen on my feet.
Speaker 1: I mean everyone almost saying the same thing. It all
Speaker 1: hinged on Leslie's word of things, and it was all
Speaker 1: sun together by dreams.
Speaker 4: Really, it sounds like Leslie has always been someone that
Speaker 4: can work out what people want and talk to that
Speaker 4: a dream reflector. Leslie rented a house in a nice
Speaker 4: neighborhood for some of the people working for her to
Speaker 4: live in. There were lots of bedrooms and a separate
Speaker 4: cottage out back.
Speaker 1: There was no furniture in there. It had been explained
Speaker 1: to me that Leslie was waiting for a shipping container
Speaker 1: or something to arrive. That I had all the furniture
Speaker 1: for the house. The girls were all really nice, and
Speaker 1: they were all raring to go with the club idea.
Speaker 2: We'll be right.
Speaker 4: Back on promises of getting paid. Once the bar took off,
Speaker 4: Leslie's squad got to work. They had a lot to do.
Speaker 1: It had been closed up for a long time. I
Speaker 1: think russ had been the only thing in and out
Speaker 1: of the place. It needed a hell of lots of
Speaker 1: work doing to it. They had sort of grassroof type
Speaker 1: of foods that were just black with dust many years.
Speaker 1: It was a filthy mess.
Speaker 4: Lesley's Brazilian boyfriend, Georgia, was redoing the bars Interia.
Speaker 9: We had to pull out a lot of trash out
Speaker 9: of there, repaint everything, and basically start from scratch. And
Speaker 9: she had a whole bunch of people working for her, painters,
Speaker 9: people that would do like you know, would work or
Speaker 9: whatever just to get the place ready to go.
Speaker 4: Another of Lesley's recruits was Leahina local Layane.
Speaker 6: She told us that, you know, she had all this
Speaker 6: funding and then that she needed our help. What I
Speaker 6: remember is busting my butt for hours, day after day
Speaker 6: for her. Nurse would pay me like one hundred two
Speaker 6: hundred dollars every now and again.
Speaker 1: And Leslie was almost like a little celebrity in Lahina,
Speaker 1: so everyone was sort of bowing at her feet. Kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and we were enjoying it. Everyone was very helpful.
Speaker 4: With some elbow grease from all sorts of people. Lislie's
Speaker 4: bar started looking pretty good. She named it the Breakwater.
Speaker 4: It almost looked like the dream was coming true.
Speaker 10: Oh, that's pretty awesome. There was a front and bar
Speaker 10: with tables, and then also an outdoor seating area, and
Speaker 10: then as you walked towards at the back, you have
Speaker 10: more of a nightclub where you can actually close off
Speaker 10: the doors from the front side so that you can
Speaker 10: have the full nightclub aspect.
Speaker 1: The club opened and we're doing really well. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of interest from the locals, people queuing around
Speaker 1: the block a couple of times to get in. On
Speaker 1: the opening night, it was really really busy. There were
Speaker 1: local bands playing, It was packed, and it was a
Speaker 1: really good atmosphere.
Speaker 10: It was a cool spot because it was one of
Speaker 10: the biggest venues here on Melli. It was the newest
Speaker 10: thing happening, and it was great. A lot of the time,
Speaker 10: when you have nothing and somebody has something and they
Speaker 10: make it seem like such this beautiful painted picture, you
Speaker 10: try to believe in.
Speaker 4: That the story about Hawaii. It makes me think about
Speaker 4: the Dragonfly CAFA in New Zealand and everyone who helped
Speaker 4: Lislie open it, Greg Simon, my parents. It's like the
Speaker 4: same story, just on a different island. Because just as
Speaker 4: the dreamy picture Lislie paints starts to become a reality,
Speaker 4: things begin to fall apart.
Speaker 1: There was a chef that she chosen to take over
Speaker 1: the kitchen work, and it was a really nice guy
Speaker 1: who was putting everything into it. It made some really
Speaker 1: nice hamburgers as samples that have been given out at
Speaker 1: the bar, and he got good ideas. But the fridges
Speaker 1: were filled with these hamburgers, but they were never able
Speaker 1: to be sold because of the grease trap, never get
Speaker 1: and emptied.
Speaker 4: I don't know what a grease trappers, but it sounds
Speaker 4: gross and it needed empty in Apparently it needed an
Speaker 4: expensive reef. It too to get a liquor license, Leslie
Speaker 4: told the liquorboard the grease trap had been upgraded, but
Speaker 4: will rickins that was never done.
Speaker 1: That was the health code violation that stopped the kitchen
Speaker 1: from ever opening up.
Speaker 4: So after a pretty good start at the bar, the
Speaker 4: breakwater became a shambles. Will sees their electricity got cut off.
Speaker 1: There were anti moskitail candles on the tables instead of
Speaker 1: any light in. People were starting to wonder what was going.
Speaker 4: On without air conditioning. The bar was baking hot too.
Speaker 1: We were buying bags of vice from the local shop,
Speaker 1: filling cool box is full of beers, but Leslie was
Speaker 1: still trying to sell her little dreams.
Speaker 4: I'm starting to recognize pieces of the story. Leslie once
Speaker 4: told me that electricity got cut off at the breakwater
Speaker 4: because she got on the wrong side of the bouncer
Speaker 4: who had a cousin in the power company. So the
Speaker 4: power did get cut off, but Will in Trinity think
Speaker 4: it was for a more obvious reason.
Speaker 10: At this point, she hadn't paid her electric bill, so
Speaker 10: from my understanding, she was running her electricity off of
Speaker 10: a generator.
Speaker 4: Literally. Around this time, Leslie and her workers were all
Speaker 4: evicted from the house they lived in. Will suspected that
Speaker 4: Leslie wasn't paying the rent.
Speaker 1: We got evicted on New Year's Eve and I had
Speaker 1: to move into the club. So I was in the
Speaker 1: offices at the bike I put a bed in there
Speaker 1: and a fridge and wavya while Leslie was in a
Speaker 1: pool house she's rented at the side of her big house.
Speaker 4: People had been working on the project in return for
Speaker 4: free rent, little bits of cash, and promises that they'd
Speaker 4: be sordid when the breakwater took off, But now they
Speaker 4: started to realize they might never see the money they
Speaker 4: were owed. Words spread quickly that things were broken at
Speaker 4: the breakwater.
Speaker 10: This town is very small. We caught the cook and
Speaker 10: it wireless, so everyone talks to everyone about everything, so
Speaker 10: it's very easy to find out what people are doing
Speaker 10: when you're not even within the same area as them.
Speaker 6: Slowly but surely, people were dropping. Things started getting really
Speaker 6: shady at one point because every time we tried to
Speaker 6: ask her for money and she didn't have it. And
Speaker 6: I still have bills to pay, I have children defeed.
Speaker 4: Eventually, Leane did manage to get some of their wages
Speaker 4: out of Lesley, which was more than most.
Speaker 10: I was never paid a dollar. I was able to live.
Speaker 10: I guess you can say rent free for a month,
Speaker 10: but if that is restitution for everything that I did
Speaker 10: to get her to have this ten thousand square foot venue,
Speaker 10: to get the chef in line, for her to get
Speaker 10: the music in line, for her to get the sign
Speaker 10: person involved, for her I liquor license. I did it all,
Speaker 10: but no, I was never paid one penny, not one.
Speaker 4: And people weren't just saying they didn't get paid. There
Speaker 4: were also allegations of stolen chicks and credit cards. Leslie's
Speaker 4: Surphy boyfriend, Georgia's, had been living with her. Then he
Speaker 4: went home to Brazil on holiday, and.
Speaker 9: Shortly after I realized that she had already picked up
Speaker 9: my check book and went to town on it. You know, literally,
Speaker 9: she had like fake checks sent out to the whole
Speaker 9: fucking city under my name. I couldn't believe. It was
Speaker 9: actually pretty much sucked into that whole thing. It's like
Speaker 9: a movie.
Speaker 4: Georgia went to the police and told them that Leslie
Speaker 4: had ridden out nine checks totaling over thirteen thousand dollars
Speaker 4: from his account.
Speaker 9: And she was just like, oh, I'm gonna pay that.
Speaker 9: My father's gonna pay you. It's like, I don't believe
Speaker 9: one single word you say to me anymore, you know,
Speaker 9: after what you've done. And apparently she just kept on
Speaker 9: on a roll.
Speaker 4: From this other police report I've got from Hawaii, it
Speaker 4: does look like Leslie might have been on a roll.
Speaker 4: This second report is filed by a guy called Scott.
Speaker 4: Scott's police report says that Leslie needed a place to crash,
Speaker 4: and so he offered her a room at his. The
Speaker 4: report also says quote they were intimate, but only a
Speaker 4: few days later Scott noticed some strange charges on his
Speaker 4: credit card. Scott's a sort of wily looking entrepreneur guy.
Speaker 4: He's got gray hair, and in the one photo I
Speaker 4: can find of him online, he's rocking a checkered vest
Speaker 4: I managed to get his phone number through a furniture
Speaker 4: company he owns in Washington State. Hello, yeah, today, is
Speaker 4: that Scott?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Oh that's great. Okay, Scott, Look, this might be a
Speaker 4: little bit of a strange call, so please just hang
Speaker 4: in there for a moment. But I'm just wondering if
Speaker 4: you used to live in Hawaii in around two thousand
Speaker 4: and four.
Speaker 8: Yeah, uh huh.
Speaker 4: Does the name Leslie Minukian mean anything to you?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 8: You bet.
Speaker 4: Never forget her. It's not good that Leslie might have
Speaker 4: scammed more people, but I'm glad I'm on the right trail.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of relieved to find someone else. And even
Speaker 4: though this all happened like fifteen years ago, Scott remembers
Speaker 4: everything straight away.
Speaker 8: She took my credit cards, went and charged all that
Speaker 8: money on him. And then I got called by the
Speaker 8: credit card company on a charge and I says, no,
Speaker 8: I didn't make that charge. You know, I knew it
Speaker 8: was her because it was all restaurant related supplies and
Speaker 8: different things to open that restaurant. But I mean, she
Speaker 8: was stealing. But when I contacted the police, she was
Speaker 8: so slick.
Speaker 4: Leslie said Scott gave her permission to use his credit
Speaker 4: card and to buy things for the breakwater. She says
Speaker 4: Scott wanted a relationship, but when she turned him down,
Speaker 4: he started making accusations. Scott says, that's all lies.
Speaker 8: The police. They told me that I was full of it,
Speaker 8: and she convinced them that I was lying. I couldn't
Speaker 8: believe it, and so a few more days passed by,
Speaker 8: somebody else called the police and told them that she
Speaker 8: had done something to them similar, So then they believed me.
Speaker 4: The cops had actually done a criminal history check on Leslie,
Speaker 4: and this background check must have fired the cops up
Speaker 4: because it showed that Leslie had form. They found out
Speaker 4: Leslie had been arrested for stuff like writing bad checks
Speaker 4: in San Diego, California, only seven months earlier. Leslie had
Speaker 4: ended up pleading guilty to burglary related to check fraud.
Speaker 4: She was even on a three year suspended sentence from
Speaker 4: that when all this went down in Hawaii. And that
Speaker 4: wasn't all. Leslie left behind in California. In a newspaper archive,
Speaker 4: I found some ads notifying Leslie she was being sued.
Speaker 4: I tracked down the guy who sued her. The reason
Speaker 4: I'm calling is just because I am interested in your
Speaker 4: running with Leslie.
Speaker 3: Mountains, the Leslie Leslie thing.
Speaker 4: It turns out the sky Mike Templin is the guy
Speaker 4: with the June Buggies and the nice place where Leslie
Speaker 4: was living before she went to Hawaii. And like a
Speaker 4: lot of people who have hooked up with Lislie, he's
Speaker 4: got a story. Is now all right time?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's okay, okay, I just don't like to relive it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: sorry to drag as you can imagine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Mike's a tour guide and he's walking around an
Speaker 4: amusement park while we talk.
Speaker 3: We did live together, a notion side. That's when she
Speaker 3: was hiding my mail, you know, like my credit card
Speaker 3: statements and saying that she was paying for them while
Speaker 3: meanwhile she was just racking up everything she could on
Speaker 3: my credit cards after I found some receipts with my
Speaker 3: credit card numbers on them, you know, with her signature,
Speaker 3: you know, bottles of champagne, you know, two hundred dollars dinners.
Speaker 3: She would take a limousine to a nail salon and
Speaker 3: spend five hundred dollars at a nail salon on my
Speaker 3: credit cards without me knowing, never authorized once to use anything.
Speaker 4: Zero sounds like a lot of cash on nail salons.
Speaker 4: Must have been some sweet, many pities. Mike says. Hawaii
Speaker 4: was Leslie's escape plan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she literally packed up and wamp, I'll pay you back.
Speaker 3: Don't worry. I'll start this restaurant and send you back money.
Speaker 3: Oh like, oh my god. So yeah, she was gone.
Speaker 4: I've got copies of the documents from Mike's court case
Speaker 4: against Leslie. They show while Leslie was in Hawaii, she
Speaker 4: kept promising to pay Mike back. In his statement to
Speaker 4: the court, Mike says he believed she'd pay him back
Speaker 4: because he loved her. Leslie kept sending him checks that bounced,
Speaker 4: all from a closed account. Then she sent Mike a
Speaker 4: receipt showing she had transferred him thirty one grand Lizlie
Speaker 4: added a handwritten note to the transfer receipt, Mike.
Speaker 11: Marry Axnez, I've thrown in an extra six thousand dollars
Speaker 11: by yourself, some nice. This is from my trust fund
Speaker 11: and could take up to eight working days.
Speaker 4: Bit cheeky by yourself, something nice. But the money never arrived.
Speaker 4: That receipt turned out to be fake. It's another one
Speaker 4: where the numbers trail off on an angle. Maybe they
Speaker 4: have twink and photocopies in Hawaii too. Leslie didn't show
Speaker 4: up or respond to the court, and they ruled in
Speaker 4: favor of Mike. She was ordered to pay him more
Speaker 4: than sixty five thousand dollars. But even though deck collectors
Speaker 4: were assigned to the case, Mike says he's never seen
Speaker 4: a cent.
Speaker 3: I would love to see her right And how.
Speaker 4: So, by the time Leslie was setting up the breakwater
Speaker 4: in Hawaii, she was on a suspended sentence and she
Speaker 4: was about to be sued for racking up tens of
Speaker 4: thousands of dollars on someone else's credit card. With that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff goinging on, why didn't the cops just
Speaker 4: arrest Leslie? At the bottom of the police reports filed
Speaker 4: in Hawaii. It says referred to the Prosecutor's office for
Speaker 4: review and prosecution. So it seems like the police were
Speaker 4: keen to lay charges, but neither of these police reports
Speaker 4: went anywhere. I tried to get to the bottom of
Speaker 4: what happened, and it seems like maybe it was a
Speaker 4: bureaucratic stuff up. The Maui Prosecutor's office say they never
Speaker 4: got the reports from the police. So then I spoke
Speaker 4: to the top cop who should know what happened.
Speaker 12: My name is Tivoli Famu and I am the chief
Speaker 12: of Police for the Maui County Police Department. Here in
Speaker 12: a way, I'm not sure what happened, but now everything
Speaker 12: is computerized, so it's automatic, but back then it was
Speaker 12: not computerized. A copy goes to our record section, and
Speaker 12: then another copy goes to the Prosecutor's office. How what
Speaker 12: happened to the case? I can't give you an answer
Speaker 12: to that.
Speaker 4: Whatever happened, the Hawaiian police didn't arrest Leslie and they
Speaker 4: didn't prosecute her. So at least those police reports have
Speaker 4: told me a lot about what happened, And after reading
Speaker 4: them heaps of times on their own, I realized that
Speaker 4: putting them together like jigsaw pieces, reveals a picture of
Speaker 4: how Leslie briefly kept afloat in Hawaii. It looks like
Speaker 4: this is how things worked. It's like a rob Peter
Speaker 4: to pay Paul's situation, or make that Robed Scott to
Speaker 4: pay George. According to the police reports, Leslie had some
Speaker 4: money stolen from Scott transferred to George, but some of
Speaker 4: George's money was allegedly stolen to pay other people back.
Speaker 4: It goes around in circles. It's like a house of cards,
Speaker 4: but even Flimsia a house made with IOUs ridden on barnapkins.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 4: As it all went down, Scott actually went into investigator
Speaker 4: mode himself, and he had another interesting thing to tell me.
Speaker 4: Scott had tracked down Leslie's parents, Betty and Andrew, and
Speaker 4: told them what he thought was going on.
Speaker 8: I don't know what the hell their deal is because
Speaker 8: I got ahold of them and told them what their
Speaker 8: daughter was doing, and they would I don't believe you.
Speaker 4: Throughout this whole thing, I've been wondering how much of
Speaker 4: Leslie's antics Betty and Andrew really know. So it seems
Speaker 4: that they knew about some of these allegations from Hawaii,
Speaker 4: but maybe Leslie was lying to them too. In any case,
Speaker 4: Scott is angry at Betty and Andrew as well.
Speaker 8: They know exactly what she's doing. They know all of it,
Speaker 8: you know. I don't know how much a part they
Speaker 8: are of it, but they know exactly what this girl's doing.
Speaker 4: Hearing about Leslie's parents reminded me that I should give
Speaker 4: my own mom and dad an update. They've always wondered
Speaker 4: whether other people have had similar experiences with Leslie. So
Speaker 4: I called them and told them about all the stories
Speaker 4: I've been hearing, and I asked Dad what he thought
Speaker 4: about Leslie's parents potentially being aware of this stuff.
Speaker 13: I just feel the same basically that Leslie's been, if
Speaker 13: you like, nurtured into continuing by her parents. They're obviously
Speaker 13: not necessarily agree with what she does, but they sort
Speaker 13: of do by not condemning it.
Speaker 4: I asked Mum how she felt knowing that there were
Speaker 4: other victims out.
Speaker 7: There, sickened, but also a bit vindicated that we're not
Speaker 7: as dumb as we thought we were because other people
Speaker 7: have said, oh no, we would have known when I
Speaker 7: meet her. I knew she was no good. I knew
Speaker 7: it when I meet her. This we were wanting to
Speaker 7: tell us I knew, I knew, and it makes you
Speaker 7: feel really dumb and angry. Makes me feel vindicated that
Speaker 7: we're not dumb, that we were so powerfully used. The
Speaker 7: power that she has is amazing.
Speaker 4: It turns out there was one more report from the
Speaker 4: Hawaiian police. Leslie went to them to file a report
Speaker 4: of her own. The police wrote down her account of
Speaker 4: a break in at her house. This report says, upon
Speaker 4: her return to her residence at about twenty one hundred hours,
Speaker 4: she observed everything in her room thrown about. The door
Speaker 4: was open and removed from her jewelry box a two
Speaker 4: point five carrot diamond ring valued at twenty thousand dollars,
Speaker 4: white guest watch valued at about two hundred dollars, and
Speaker 4: also a point five carrot diamond airing. Also observed a
Speaker 4: knife was put in one of the pillowcases on her bed.
Speaker 4: Nothing than that. Who knows how much of this is true?
Speaker 4: I mean, the police report says there was no evidence
Speaker 4: associated with this case and they never got hold of
Speaker 4: any receipts showing that Leslie actually owned this expensive stuff
Speaker 4: she said was stolen by the time she got to London,
Speaker 4: Leslie was telling a story about men with knives entering
Speaker 4: her house while she hit under the bed. There is
Speaker 4: one element of Leslie's story about Hawaii that does hold up, though.
Speaker 4: When Leslie told the story, she always said that she
Speaker 4: fled the island fearing for her life, and from the
Speaker 4: people who've been talking to it turns out that's kind
Speaker 4: of right. By the time the breakwater folded, Leanne says
Speaker 4: people were out to get Leslie.
Speaker 6: She's definitely made a lot of enemies that wanted the
Speaker 6: money that they were promised, but especially like where I'm from,
Speaker 6: and it is a community, and I'll say, you know, Honora,
Speaker 6: She's burned so many people that even people that weren't
Speaker 6: directly affected monetarily by her. I was to the point
Speaker 6: where I probably, you know, wanted to punch her in
Speaker 6: the face. Unfortunately I ever had a chance.
Speaker 4: Lane isn't the only person who felt that way. Trinity,
Speaker 4: the beachy, sporty looking Hawaiian who helped Leslie set up
Speaker 4: the breakwater, well, she definitely did. I mean, this.
Speaker 10: Island, you know, we're all very Aloha made people here.
Speaker 10: I'd seen ninety percent of us, and you do wantto
Speaker 10: others as you want done to yourself. So if someone's
Speaker 10: working there butt off and they have bills to pay
Speaker 10: and you're not paying them, what are they going to do?
Speaker 10: They're going to do something to you.
Speaker 4: The story she told me next kind of shocked me.
Speaker 4: It starts late one night in Lehina. Trinity says she
Speaker 4: was having a night out. Her and her uncle and
Speaker 4: her boyfriend went to see a punk band play. Leahina
Speaker 4: is a small place, so they weren't that far from
Speaker 4: the breakwater. After the band finished, Trinity and her crew
Speaker 4: climbed into a cab to leave, But just as she
Speaker 4: was getting into the cab, she saw Lazie coming out
Speaker 4: of the breakwater.
Speaker 10: I looked over at the bar and I seen her
Speaker 10: coming out, and I said, oh, hang on a minute, mister,
Speaker 10: And he said what the cab driver said, you need
Speaker 10: to stop the cab. So I looked at my uncle
Speaker 10: and I said, hey, man, she's out there. I'm gonna
Speaker 10: go get her. And he said what I said, Are
Speaker 10: you ready? And he said okay. So I jumped out
Speaker 10: of the cab. I ran directly towards her and I
Speaker 10: just punched her directly into her face. She had grabbed
Speaker 10: all of the cover charge money from the front door,
Speaker 10: and so her purse was filled with cash. So when
Speaker 10: I punched her, her purse flew, so her money was
Speaker 10: flying everywhere. Kept telling her, you know, f off, screw you,
Speaker 10: this is your karma, blah blah blah, and I just
Speaker 10: kept grabbing every bit of money I could.
Speaker 4: The brul got bigger as Trinity's uncle started fighting with
Speaker 4: someone in Laizley's crowd.
Speaker 10: One of the cops pulled up, and he's one of
Speaker 10: our local cops, and he said, Trinity, what have you done?
Speaker 10: And I said, I know, you've heard about all of
Speaker 10: the things she's been doing. At this point, he looked
Speaker 10: at me and he said, oh, I know. He said,
Speaker 10: do yourself a favor, get out of here right now.
Speaker 10: I said, okay, So I jumped in the cab and
Speaker 10: we took off. Next morning, I showed up at her door,
Speaker 10: pounding on her door. But from what the neighbor told me,
Speaker 10: that she had been packing stuff in trying to leave,
Speaker 10: and by that day she was completely off of the island.
Speaker 4: And for Leanne, that local from Lehina, she reckons Leslie
Speaker 4: probably wouldn't care about who she hurt. Anyway.
Speaker 6: She is as fake as they come, and she has
Speaker 6: no heart for anyone or no concern for anyone, And honestly,
Speaker 6: her level of care is zero for anyone else outside
Speaker 6: of herself.
Speaker 10: You get what you give care, whether you're in Hawaii,
Speaker 10: you're in California, you're in New Zealand, and wherever, you
Speaker 10: get what you give. And this place will welcome you,
Speaker 10: but it will also throw you and drowned you as
Speaker 10: fast as you make yourself apparent to be who you are.
Speaker 10: And that's what she did, and she's lucky she left.
Speaker 4: So there were parts of Leslie's story about Hawaii that
Speaker 4: were kind of true. It's easier to tell a lie
Speaker 4: when it's built on a truth. I'm learning that as
Speaker 4: I'm starting to understand Leslie's world. But that doesn't make
Speaker 4: Leslie's lies any less damaging, especially as I'm hearing from
Speaker 4: the people who have been hurt by those lies along
Speaker 4: the way, people that remind me of my brother Greg.
Speaker 4: If there's a Greg in this story, it's a local
Speaker 4: restaurant manager named David Parks. He didn't marry Leslie. In fact,
Speaker 4: as far as I can tell, they weren't ever involved
Speaker 4: with each other. Romantically, but in the collapse of the Breakwater,
Speaker 4: David lost out more more than anyone.
Speaker 8: So she hooked up with David pretty much as a
Speaker 8: con artist.
Speaker 4: David was a friend of Scott's.
Speaker 8: She went ahead and found all of his dreams and
Speaker 8: strengths and weaknesses and talked him into quitting his job
Speaker 8: and investing all of his money with her to open
Speaker 8: up this bar.
Speaker 4: David quit his job managing another restaurant for the promise
Speaker 4: of bigger things at the Breakwater. He invested twenty five
Speaker 4: thousand dollars in Leslie's business. David got to work immediately
Speaker 4: alongside the others, including Will.
Speaker 1: Everyone liked him. He was a very junteel guy, very
Speaker 1: humble guy, very honest guy. And I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the main things that Leslie was able to trade
Speaker 1: on is Dave's reputation as being an honest, trustworthy fellow.
Speaker 4: As things started to go bad at the Breakwater, David
Speaker 4: Will tried to keep each other's spirits up.
Speaker 1: As time was going on, it became more and more
Speaker 1: apparent that Leslie was just lying to everybody, just behind
Speaker 1: had been the whole time. Myself and Dave used to
Speaker 1: lay down the beach in the Daytimes, talking everything through
Speaker 1: and laughing in a way at how much bullshit we
Speaker 1: would pull with.
Speaker 4: But Wills's that laughter was a sad kind of laughter.
Speaker 1: For Dave, it was devastating. It was his life savings
Speaker 1: and his reputation that was being plundered.
Speaker 8: He was broke. She took every fucking thing he had. Okay,
Speaker 8: he was flat broke, But more than anything, he was
Speaker 8: so humiliated. We all told him that he was going
Speaker 8: to get screwed.
Speaker 4: You know, I really wanted to talk to David. I've
Speaker 4: been asking everyone what happened to him. People have told
Speaker 4: me David was totally cut up and his reputation was ruined.
Speaker 4: So he left Hawaii. He went to live with his mum.
Speaker 4: Then one day Scott called me back with some news
Speaker 4: he had found.
Speaker 8: Out Dave did pass away. The people that I talked
Speaker 8: to don't know what it was. My friend that knew
Speaker 8: him that hasn't seen him for quite some time said
Speaker 8: that it was a sudden thing or something that he
Speaker 8: didn't know what the situation was, just the bottom line
Speaker 8: that he was gone.
Speaker 4: So I'm just looking at this statement that David made
Speaker 4: for the police. Now that I know he's no longer alive.
Speaker 4: It seems like this is the only thing I'll ever
Speaker 4: hear from him. It's a statement he made as part
Speaker 4: of Scott's case. He was a witness, and it's recorded
Speaker 4: in here that he stated he is non Minuchian for
Speaker 4: only a few months and regrets ever going into business
Speaker 4: with her. And I've read this witness statement from David
Speaker 4: so many times, but it's really this last line that
Speaker 4: gets me. Says stated he had learned that Leslie is
Speaker 4: a really good talker and can make you believe things
Speaker 4: that are not true.
Speaker 8: She loves sucking a person in, like your brother or
Speaker 8: me or David, and just destroying that person. Those things
Speaker 8: never leave you, you know, they never leave you. She's
Speaker 8: a manipulative con artist that is like a serial killer.
Speaker 8: She loves what she's doing. She just loves it.
Speaker 4: Maybe she does love it. I really just don't know
Speaker 4: at this point. Maybe it's all just sport for her.
Speaker 4: But on the other hand, maybe she's just deluded. Maybe
Speaker 4: she believes that these crazy schemes are going to work
Speaker 4: out and everyone's going to get paid back and everything's
Speaker 4: going to be okay. I just feel like I have
Speaker 4: no idea what's going on inside of her head. I'm
Speaker 4: not sure where Leslie went next, but a year later
Speaker 4: she turns up traveling happily around Europe doing the tourist thing.
Speaker 4: I know where she went, not through her emails, but
Speaker 4: by reading Leslie's old style paper diary. She left it
Speaker 4: in New Zealand. The diary has notes like walking to
Speaker 4: her of Prague, flight numbers and albums she likes like
Speaker 4: Outcasts Speaker Box. Leslie's handwriting is scribbled and often sideways
Speaker 4: on the pages, but the most interesting entry is right
Speaker 4: at the start.
Speaker 11: May three, New York. Eric met George Cloudey Julia Roberts
Speaker 11: private jet from Das.
Speaker 4: Sounds like old mate. Eric t Weiss esquire the lawyer
Speaker 4: who Leslie said represented her. And this was written well
Speaker 4: before any of us had met Leslie, So this Eric
Speaker 4: character has been around for a while. She was just
Speaker 4: writing random, strange stuff about him in her own diary
Speaker 4: as she traveled. Why would Leslie have made a note
Speaker 4: to herself about Eric if he didn't exist, I don't know.
Speaker 4: But it was on these travels that Leslie ended up
Speaker 4: in London, where she met my brother Greg and Eric
Speaker 4: t Weiss would eventually become a fully fledged character in
Speaker 4: this story, convincing enough to full Kiwi Bank into approving
Speaker 4: a one point five million dollar alone. This mysterious Eric
Speaker 4: guy might just be the strangest part of this story.
Speaker 4: He might also be the key to unlocking Leslie's world.
Speaker 4: So next episode, we're going to get well acquainted with
Speaker 4: Leslie's lawyer to the stars. Can you believe this jerk
Speaker 4: Eric t Weiss as your lawyer?
Speaker 11: I am starting to make threats also.
Speaker 4: And it's time for me to go to the United States.
Speaker 4: I'm going to go and find Answers. All right, touchdown, USA,
Speaker 4: I'm going to go and find Leslie.
Speaker 9: What are we getting ourselves into?
Speaker 4: But we've got a muscle curve. It looks like a
Speaker 4: sting ray on Willards. That's next time on snowboard. I
Speaker 4: have to say you've made a pretty unusual choice of snacks,
Speaker 4: But I mean, like, who gets banana chips and beef jerky?
Speaker 12: And I wanted to
Speaker 5: Stay away from sugar