Speaker 1: Lizzie definitely wanted to be somebody that was seen. She
Speaker 1: was very charismatic in Lizzie Maulder is a c p
Speaker 1: A in exclusive Laguna Beach, dazzling small business owners far
Speaker 1: and wide. And she came in and she said all
Speaker 1: the right things. She had the right look. She had
Speaker 1: this really great front office with ocean views. It was beautiful.
Speaker 1: And she had this placard on the wall that said
Speaker 1: she went to Pepperdine. Oh so she had like a
Speaker 1: degree on the wall, a degree from Pepperdine with her
Speaker 1: name on it. Pretty soon, Lizzie Maulder starts doing the
Speaker 1: books for the ultra high end salon powered by Toni
Speaker 1: and Guy in Newport Beach. She always let you know
Speaker 1: how great she was, how much money she made, how
Speaker 1: she just was so busy. But what she kept on
Speaker 1: selling to us was what you guys are a small business.
Speaker 1: I can handle you. And not long after that the
Speaker 1: chaos kicks in. She said the direct deposit was set up.
Speaker 1: It never happened. My staff called me saying the electricity
Speaker 1: is off, and I'm like what we had run out
Speaker 1: of all the money and thousand dollar check came out.
Speaker 1: The count the credit card didn't go down, so she
Speaker 1: was supposed to use that ten grant to pay down
Speaker 1: the credit card. And literally days after that incident, a
Speaker 1: desperate phone call from Lizzie Mulder's husband Jesse blows a
Speaker 1: gigantic hole in who everyone thinks Lizzie Mulder really is.
Speaker 1: And he said, it looks like she's been stealing money
Speaker 1: from you, and she's been doing it for about a
Speaker 1: year and a half. Apparently there's a detective there that's
Speaker 1: been looking into her. He was crying and he said,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm gonna do. We have these
Speaker 1: two little girls, and I'm just I'm afraid and I'm
Speaker 1: sad for them because their mother has done this, and
Speaker 1: she's done it to several businesses that I'm finding. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Walton and this is Queen of the Khan The
Speaker 1: O C Savior Episode two. It's totally fine. Laguna Beach
Speaker 1: is not only a wealthy city and a breathtakingly beautiful city,
Speaker 1: but it's got a really low crime rate. There's only
Speaker 1: an average of one murder reported every year and seventeen
Speaker 1: robberies for a city of almost twenty five thousand people.
Speaker 1: That's not bad. At all. But there's one type of
Speaker 1: crime that's egregiously under reported and underinvestigated in Laguna Beach,
Speaker 1: and that's fraud. So when you work the fraud desk,
Speaker 1: which is what I was assigned, that's the that's the
Speaker 1: death that nobody wants. Why is that? Today he's a
Speaker 1: sergeant in the Seal Beach Police Department, but back in
Speaker 1: Jordan Moracian is a fraud detective for Laguna Beach p D.
Speaker 1: Fraud is you're essentially a an accountant with a batche
Speaker 1: It's a thinking man's game. Correct, It's like chess. There's
Speaker 1: no blood at the crime scene, there no prints. It's
Speaker 1: like numbers. Numbers, numbers follow the money. Yeah, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a lot harder to do. It is hard to do
Speaker 1: because you're dealing with people who either a or smarter
Speaker 1: than you, or be think they're smarter than you. So
Speaker 1: it's a very complicated web, especially with the ability to
Speaker 1: wire money, internet, credit cards, identity thapp There's so many
Speaker 1: pieces that go into fraud. It's hard to find the
Speaker 1: right evidence to get a conviction. Correct. Detective Miraqian is
Speaker 1: a muscular guy in his forties, clean cut, with piercing
Speaker 1: blue eyes, a real g I Joe type in the
Speaker 1: overarching fight of good versus evil. Miracian is the epitome
Speaker 1: of the good guy. To me, though, and I think
Speaker 1: to all victims of con artists, he's a freaking superhero.
Speaker 1: They say, in my line of work, you shouldn't take
Speaker 1: things personal, but I made it personal just the arrogance
Speaker 1: of Lizzie Moulder. It made it easier for me to
Speaker 1: go after her because I just didn't like her. By
Speaker 1: the time Lizzie Moulder's husband, Jesse, calls to warn the
Speaker 1: salon that his wife is stealing from them, Detective Mirackian
Speaker 1: has already been looking into Lizzie for months. It was
Speaker 1: listed on my thirty one cases that I was already
Speaker 1: investigating Jesus one cop as in us getting thirty one
Speaker 1: cases one detective. Now most of those are cases that
Speaker 1: we close out immediately. You know, someone stole my credit
Speaker 1: card and used it at Target. Did the bankery in virtue? Yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: then you're no longer a victim. That's a good point.
Speaker 1: As complicated as fraud is, fraud is also if you're lazy,
Speaker 1: which some detectives are, fraud is a good place to
Speaker 1: hide because you can take a ton of cases and
Speaker 1: close them out. You never have to really do anything,
Speaker 1: and you don't do meeting and it looks like your
Speaker 1: clothing cases. You know, go to target, pull the video,
Speaker 1: post the video somewhere and and everybody's happy. The bank
Speaker 1: doesn't care that they reimburse their client. The client got
Speaker 1: the money back in their account. Nobody cares except the
Speaker 1: bad guy. It just gets away. Bad guy gets away,
Speaker 1: and and bad guys in the fraud game and white
Speaker 1: collar crimes get away every single day. It makes more
Speaker 1: sense to commit white collar crime than it does to
Speaker 1: go in and rob a liquor store or bank, because
Speaker 1: you're you're probably not going to get prosecuted. And I'm
Speaker 1: guessing Lizzie Mulder knows that and it's actually planning on it.
Speaker 1: What she's not planning on, though, is her husband Jesse
Speaker 1: calling her victims off to warn them. Geneva Mendoza was
Speaker 1: stunned when her business partner Lauren got that call from
Speaker 1: Jesse explaining that his wife, Lizzie Mulder is robbing them blind.
Speaker 1: And what are you thinking as this is you're hearing
Speaker 1: all this? I said, I I effing knew it. I
Speaker 1: don't want to say, you can say I I yeah,
Speaker 1: I literally that's what I said. Just was shaking my
Speaker 1: head and I was fuming, and Lauren was crying, and
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just our dynamic anyway. So I was
Speaker 1: so upset, so immediately I just started acting, and I
Speaker 1: started going through our accounts and I start going through
Speaker 1: check by check by check, I had found forty seven checks.
Speaker 1: And then when we all when we went really went
Speaker 1: through it, um, it was seventies seven checks. When all
Speaker 1: was said and done, how much money did she get
Speaker 1: from you? But that theft doesn't happen all at once.
Speaker 1: In the same way that my con artist, the Irish heiress,
Speaker 1: scams me out of nearly a hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: little at a time, Lizzie Malder does the exact same
Speaker 1: thing to the Newport Beach salon. It was so chaotic
Speaker 1: every two weeks, it gave me so much anxiety to
Speaker 1: even go into work. Remember the payroll problem where every
Speaker 1: two weeks the salon's employees were supposed to get their
Speaker 1: paychecks deposited into their bank accounts by a d P
Speaker 1: their company. Lizzie supposedly hires to do payroll every two weeks.
Speaker 1: It never happened. She would even set us emails saying, see,
Speaker 1: they said that it was set up, and we would
Speaker 1: get all these emails from a DP. But I'm using
Speaker 1: quotation because you thought it was from a DP. Yeah
Speaker 1: it was, yes, So she would create emails from a
Speaker 1: DP from all kinds of people, setting saying like showing
Speaker 1: proof that she did talk to these people. She would
Speaker 1: show the full email threads of back and forth, and
Speaker 1: these people never existed. So it was just a way
Speaker 1: again for us to kind of shut up and like go, okay,
Speaker 1: well I don't know what's going on. So then we
Speaker 1: would call on our behalf and say that's what I
Speaker 1: would do. I would would say, Lauren, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: call a DP and see what's going on without Lizzie,
Speaker 1: you know. And they would say, nope, we haven't talked
Speaker 1: to anybody. And I'm like, really, why I have an email? Well,
Speaker 1: we don't see any emails on our end, And I said, well,
Speaker 1: how do what are we gonna do to get this
Speaker 1: direct deposit set up? And they said we have to
Speaker 1: do a B and C. So of course I had
Speaker 1: to go through Lauren. Lauren asked Lizzie, where's this document
Speaker 1: that we need? You know, So it just became this
Speaker 1: whole thing where she had to get looped back in,
Speaker 1: and then that's what would create the whole thing again.
Speaker 1: So every two weeks she would rush in because the
Speaker 1: direct deposit wasn't there. Of course it wasn't there because
Speaker 1: she wasn't doing it. She created that drama herself. Yes,
Speaker 1: so she can come in and write manual checks to
Speaker 1: the staff, yes, but what was she was doing was
Speaker 1: she would do this entry into the ADP platform and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't save so all the taxes were still left
Speaker 1: in our account. The staff thought their taxes were being
Speaker 1: taken out and documented, but they were just receiving a
Speaker 1: manual check. So at least they got paid with their
Speaker 1: taxes were left in our account. And what Lizzie did
Speaker 1: with that extra money which was sitting there, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a substantial amount of money. She would write
Speaker 1: these checks that would say income tax payments, and at
Speaker 1: any time we had two checks a month because of
Speaker 1: all these payroll checks. It creates a lot of confusion.
Speaker 1: Once in a while, I would see a payroll or
Speaker 1: an income tax payment check and she said, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was just going to pay the taxes, and that made
Speaker 1: sense to you, of course, like, you know, why would
Speaker 1: I doubt that. Of course it's going to pay the
Speaker 1: tax it's got to be going to the I R S. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But lo and behold, she had created a bank account
Speaker 1: called income tax Payments, and so she was just you know,
Speaker 1: taking the money that way, and that was all the
Speaker 1: staffs taxes. If you, like most of us, don't totally
Speaker 1: grasp how payroll tax his work, let me break it
Speaker 1: down for you because that confusion is a big part
Speaker 1: of why Lizzie Scam worked. Here, your employer withholds a
Speaker 1: portion of your paycheck and holds onto that money in
Speaker 1: order to pay taxes to the government on your behalf.
Speaker 1: Those payments for things like Social Security, Medicare, income tax,
Speaker 1: et cetera, get tallied into the W two forms you
Speaker 1: used to follow your taxes. But at Geneva Salon, none
Speaker 1: of those payments were being made to the government. They
Speaker 1: were being made to Lizzie's phony company. And you don't
Speaker 1: have to be a c p A to understand that
Speaker 1: is a big problem. So come time for you know,
Speaker 1: getting the W two's out, the first set that they
Speaker 1: got was completely off. They were very wrong, and they
Speaker 1: were all numbers based on what Lizzie had phonally created.
Speaker 1: It's like she just randomly went through and created a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of numbers and they were not accurate because
Speaker 1: so it took a lot of time and and a
Speaker 1: lawyer to get it all compiled. That whole scam that
Speaker 1: she created where she pretends to be doing your payroll
Speaker 1: with the direct deposit was just a way for her
Speaker 1: to get those income tax payment checks into her own account.
Speaker 1: But that's not the only way Lizzie Mulder tricks money
Speaker 1: out of the salon. Remember the blackout. My staff calls
Speaker 1: me saying the electricity is off, and I'm like what.
Speaker 1: So I start looking on my phone for Edison's number
Speaker 1: and I get a numbers started calling in and it
Speaker 1: was very muffled. It sounded really strange. You know, this
Speaker 1: is Edison calling. We heard that you got your electricity
Speaker 1: shut off. We wouldn't do that. You're actually on auto pay,
Speaker 1: so there's no reason why that would happen. This is
Speaker 1: this is a fraudulent action. So what was the real story?
Speaker 1: So we weren't on auto pay. Lizzie actually used a
Speaker 1: service that was a phone service where you can change
Speaker 1: your voice, you can change the number, you can say
Speaker 1: the number is coming from whatever. So Lizzie had googled
Speaker 1: Edison's number and she found that generic number and put
Speaker 1: that in as the call number for me, and she
Speaker 1: disguised her voice saying whatever she needed to say. And
Speaker 1: so of course I looked it up and it went
Speaker 1: straight to Edison's website. It was Edison's. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: Edison's phone number. Yeah. An app. Yeah, it's like some
Speaker 1: kind of app or something that you can pay I
Speaker 1: don't know, five dollars or something to disguise your voice
Speaker 1: and do phony calls. And I'm sure she did that
Speaker 1: for the bank, you know, now now that I think
Speaker 1: about it, she probably did it for any of the
Speaker 1: other vendors that we talked to, because there was a
Speaker 1: lot of times we would have let me get Lizzie
Speaker 1: on the phone and the call would drop, you know,
Speaker 1: for different different various it is on the phone. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're talking to a vendor who you think is
Speaker 1: a vendor, but it's really Lizzy pretending to be the
Speaker 1: vendor using this voice change. Yes. And then another thing
Speaker 1: happened with where they called Aauren, and it was some
Speaker 1: southern accent. It was a Southern woman accent that called
Speaker 1: Lauren for another some some kind of thing that we
Speaker 1: had a bill pay, you know, and kept on saying like,
Speaker 1: it's totally fine. And that's a statement that Lizzie would
Speaker 1: always say, it's totally fine. So even though the voice
Speaker 1: is different, Lauren knew that that's the way that Lizzie
Speaker 1: would say that. That's her catchphrase, it's totally fine. So
Speaker 1: at that point Lauren was like, yeah, that's weird. But
Speaker 1: never in a million years would you think, oh, that's
Speaker 1: Lizzie with a voice changing technology. No, even when when
Speaker 1: Jordan told us that, we said, oh, okay, that makes sense,
Speaker 1: but it just it was weird. I thought that she
Speaker 1: called a service and had an actor called or something,
Speaker 1: but it was actually her. So the depths of deception,
Speaker 1: she knows no bounds. And that's certainly not news to
Speaker 1: Detective Jordan Miracian. She was using voice skising technology where
Speaker 1: she would call people with a voice like as a male.
Speaker 1: And how did you find this out? Did you witness
Speaker 1: her do that or you found the app on her phone?
Speaker 1: We found the app um during the search. Warrant for
Speaker 1: her phone. But we had a number of victims say,
Speaker 1: you know, he spoke to someone at the I R
Speaker 1: S and they spoke to someone at the bank. Yes,
Speaker 1: it sounded like a weird voice, but it was a man,
Speaker 1: and it sounded like Lizzie Moulder because we all have
Speaker 1: certain dialect, like certain phrases gave her away that tipped
Speaker 1: people off, like wait a minute, it's a different voice,
Speaker 1: but that's a Lizzie phrase. Huh yeah, God, because Mike
Speaker 1: on artists impersonated people with texts and emails and she
Speaker 1: created this whole life. She was best friends with Jennifer Aniston.
Speaker 1: She had an inherance coming in and she's barristers in
Speaker 1: Ireland or sending her emails up. But it was all her.
Speaker 1: But she never had the uh skill set to use
Speaker 1: voice changing software to actually talk to people as a
Speaker 1: different as different people. But that Lizzie Moulder like one
Speaker 1: up there on that Geneva and Lauren get sucked into
Speaker 1: the whole Lizzie Mulder run around bait and switch scam
Speaker 1: for two years. Money Airmark to pay the electric bills,
Speaker 1: pay vendors and pay taxes gets diverted into Lizzie's bank accounts. Instead,
Speaker 1: she steals nearly three hundred thousand dollars from the salon
Speaker 1: that way, but in reality, the salon ends up losing
Speaker 1: much much more. Not only did she take that cash
Speaker 1: from us, that was actually you know, for various vendors.
Speaker 1: Like I said, there's lines of credit all over the place.
Speaker 1: We ended up having to take another two fifty dollars
Speaker 1: and loans to pay all these big things, you know,
Speaker 1: pay the bank back, pay all the taxes. We had
Speaker 1: to send all that to ADP, what to send it
Speaker 1: to I R S, Social Security, you know, everything that
Speaker 1: you have on your check. We had right big checks
Speaker 1: to that. It's what happened as a result of what
Speaker 1: storey extra money, all the extra money we had to
Speaker 1: take loans out, and that we have, you know, another
Speaker 1: two dollars of debt, new debt on top of not
Speaker 1: having any money. That's not money that we could use
Speaker 1: for putting back into the business. That's just staying afloat,
Speaker 1: you know. And then we have to pay that money back,
Speaker 1: and then we start losing staff because they don't trust us,
Speaker 1: so then it's even harder to make that money back.
Speaker 1: So we end up being basically slaves to our business
Speaker 1: because we just we have to earn enough money to
Speaker 1: provide for our staff and provide for ourselves and pay
Speaker 1: it all back. It's it's going to take the span
Speaker 1: of our lease truly to pay back what Lizzie stole
Speaker 1: from us. And it's just insane to go through that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and it's it's part of our story.
Speaker 1: And that's what I try to say to anybody that
Speaker 1: if you have something that you might be embarrassed about
Speaker 1: because you were vulnerable and somebody took advantage of you,
Speaker 1: you have to get the word out. You have to
Speaker 1: tell people because you could be saving somebody else from
Speaker 1: the same thing. And I know for a fact that
Speaker 1: this has whatever we've said has resonated for somebody, and
Speaker 1: they've said that sounds familiar from something that I've gone
Speaker 1: through with my bookkeeper or my whatever they are. The
Speaker 1: red flags are all the same. Yep, All con artists
Speaker 1: are using the exact same playbook, only the names and
Speaker 1: places change. But scamming the salon isn't what puts Lizzie
Speaker 1: Mulder on the radar of the Laguna Beach Police Department.
Speaker 1: In fact, by the time Detective Jordan Miracium starts investigating
Speaker 1: the salon scam in he's already knee deep untangling a
Speaker 1: wide array of Lizzie's cons based on other victims complaints.
Speaker 1: This is the first interview I've done where I've been
Speaker 1: able to really talk about all the things involved in
Speaker 1: this case. And it all starts in October when a
Speaker 1: man by the name of j Avery and his wife
Speaker 1: Marla walk into Laguna Beach p D. And everybody thought
Speaker 1: we were crazy when we would tell them what happened.
Speaker 1: So many people made me feel like I was nuts.
Speaker 1: But that's how it started. I catch up with a
Speaker 1: couple over zoom. They're living in Utah. Now is it
Speaker 1: a zoom for us and it's just a podcast or
Speaker 1: wild people be able to see? Oh no, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just audio. I mean the zoo is so we can
Speaker 1: look each other in the eye and talk. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But if ever a couple should be seen, it's these two.
Speaker 1: They look like they stepped out of a fashion magazine.
Speaker 1: Jay Avery tall, tanned and tatted, his wife Marla, a
Speaker 1: former Playboy model, though their movie star good looks seemed
Speaker 1: to have zero sway when they try to report what
Speaker 1: happened to police, and we went to a number of
Speaker 1: police stations trying to get them to take the case.
Speaker 1: I called the police station in Napa Valley or wherever
Speaker 1: St Helena. That just was going all around. Detective Moraqian
Speaker 1: explains that turning scam victims away at police stations is
Speaker 1: actually a very common occurrence. He had already come into
Speaker 1: the Gonna Beach Police department prior to me taking over
Speaker 1: the fraud desk. He'd been there before, and they sent
Speaker 1: him away. They sent him away. Um, that's what they
Speaker 1: did to me. It's like Jesus well, because Jay was
Speaker 1: it was not that unlike any other fraud victim. He
Speaker 1: walked in with a box of paperwork and said this,
Speaker 1: this person is stealing from me. And when you're a detective,
Speaker 1: or even when you're a beat cop, you know, assigned
Speaker 1: a patrol, most of the time it's the result of
Speaker 1: a bad business deal, which most of the time is
Speaker 1: a civil matter. And that's exactly what the cop told me.
Speaker 1: It's a civil matter. This is the criminal matter. You
Speaker 1: gave her the money, go to civil court. Good luck, right,
Speaker 1: And they told Jay the same thing they did. I
Speaker 1: heard he tried multiple times he did. If memory serves
Speaker 1: he had been in, in and out of the police
Speaker 1: station at least three times, and then the four of
Speaker 1: time he comes in. So the fourth time he comes in,
Speaker 1: you know, I had a routine where I would get
Speaker 1: there early and leave a little bit early so I
Speaker 1: could miss traffic and go to the gym, which is
Speaker 1: where I'm coming from today. And he walks in and
Speaker 1: he says, I need to speak to the fraud detective.
Speaker 1: And I happened to walk right by him when he
Speaker 1: said that, so I looked at him and said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's me. He's standing there with his then fiance Marla,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I need to talk to you. You know,
Speaker 1: there was something about him. I just I felt like
Speaker 1: I needed to hear his story. So we went back
Speaker 1: and we sat down and talked. And how amazing is
Speaker 1: that though you're walking out, you're not even listening. You hear, oh,
Speaker 1: I need to speak to the fraud detective, and you're like,
Speaker 1: that's me. And most people in your position would have
Speaker 1: ignored that because you're going home, you're going to the gym.
Speaker 1: But you felt something. You felt like an urgency from
Speaker 1: him or an energy from him, Like what what made
Speaker 1: you decide to let me talk to this guy. I
Speaker 1: mean candidly, I have a full sleeve, so I have
Speaker 1: tattoos all over. I saw his ink and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's some nice ink like that was my first reaction
Speaker 1: when I saw, Yeah, he pulled down his sleeve because
Speaker 1: he was on duty and they have to cover up
Speaker 1: the tattoos and looking at us. So he pulled down
Speaker 1: his sleeve and showing me his tattoos. That vividly remember
Speaker 1: that part of the conversation. There was just some kind
Speaker 1: of aura about him. He's a very charismatic dude. Um,
Speaker 1: we're about the same age. And uh, I just I
Speaker 1: felt bad for him. I wanted to at least hear
Speaker 1: him out and not make him feel like we didn't care.
Speaker 1: At that point, you didn't think there was any crime.
Speaker 1: Now at that point, I thought, you know, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna listen to this guy. I'm gonna deliver the
Speaker 1: bad news that it's a bad business deal. Good look
Speaker 1: in civil corp. Look in civil cork. Go get an attorney.
Speaker 1: You're probably not gonna win a dime. Have a nice day. Regardless,
Speaker 1: Jay and Marlaw are beyond grateful that Detective Iraqian even
Speaker 1: seems interested in their case at all, because no one
Speaker 1: else is. The truth of the matter is, without your tattoos,
Speaker 1: you would have gone to the police ten more times
Speaker 1: and nothing would have been done. Nothing would have happened. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's not long after talking to Jay and Marla
Speaker 1: that Detective Iraqian figures out one possible reason police keep
Speaker 1: turning them away. The problem that Jay was running into
Speaker 1: is he was telling people that he was a recovering addict. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was an opialid addict for for years, and I
Speaker 1: was open about my addiction. And then why why this
Speaker 1: kind of happened to me? I mean, I'm not ashamed
Speaker 1: of it by any means. So when you tell a
Speaker 1: cop who is salty jaded, yeah, you think yeah, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you brought it on yourself. You know, I don't have
Speaker 1: time for those people are dead somewhere. I gotta go
Speaker 1: deal with that. Correct. But on that day, back in
Speaker 1: January of s is clean and sober for almost three years.
Speaker 1: As he starts telling Detective Miraqian about his ordeal with
Speaker 1: Lizzie Mulder probably lost a couple of million over like
Speaker 1: a seven year period. Wow, Yeah, this was like a
Speaker 1: low time in your life. Yeah, because I went, you know,
Speaker 1: from maybe not ever really having to worry about money
Speaker 1: again too. Oh no, what am I gonna do? And
Speaker 1: I felt like a failure. I felt, you know, just lost.
Speaker 1: I got to a place to where I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: if I really wanted to continue moving forward with life,
Speaker 1: you know, as a victim of a con myself, I
Speaker 1: know that feeling all too well, and I've since learned
Speaker 1: it's exactly the way a con artist wants to leave
Speaker 1: you feeling so they can make their escape and you're
Speaker 1: to hurt and devastated to do anything about it. But
Speaker 1: I'm getting ahead of myself. Off, How did Lizzie Maulder
Speaker 1: first enter your life? Jack? So, I was a personal
Speaker 1: trainer for years and I had a client that ran
Speaker 1: a pretty big wealth development company and she ran his books.
Speaker 1: And when I started the wine business, things started to
Speaker 1: pick up a little bit. I needed help with the accounting,
Speaker 1: so he referred her to me, and then that's how
Speaker 1: we met in about two thousand nine. And she was
Speaker 1: a big part of helping me get organize. So you
Speaker 1: were like a trainer, like training guys, like working outlifting
Speaker 1: weight stuff like that. Yeah, And it was one of
Speaker 1: your clients who you were training recommended Hey, I know
Speaker 1: this great c p A. Lizzie Maulder. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And what business was your client in? And he was
Speaker 1: a pretty big wood developer, so it was a pretty
Speaker 1: legit referral. So Jay starts moving away from being a
Speaker 1: personal trainer in the gym to owning and operating a winery.
Speaker 1: It's a dream come true for him. His family's in
Speaker 1: the beer a business, and now using his own money,
Speaker 1: Jay starts Jack Wines, an up and coming label in
Speaker 1: Napa Valley with a bright future. Jay's business model was
Speaker 1: to me rather genius. Detective Miracian is impressed with jay
Speaker 1: savvy and entrepreneurship. He would buy overstocked wine. When they
Speaker 1: make wine, they make too much, so he would buy
Speaker 1: those barrels and rebottle them and relabel them and sell
Speaker 1: them so he never actually had to make wine now,
Speaker 1: he just had to get the extra from others. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a genius idea. It's a great idea. And he
Speaker 1: was doing well well until until a confident blonde with
Speaker 1: a warm smile and convincing pedigree enters the picture. How
Speaker 1: does she come across to you? Outgoing, very pleasant, sharp,
Speaker 1: with the correct response for the questions that I was asking.
Speaker 1: Seemed like a go getter. Was she likable? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: were close. And I lost a lot of friends through
Speaker 1: my addiction, right, A lot of people that I grew
Speaker 1: up with from the age five, six and seven that
Speaker 1: was into that. Right. Jay's drug problem, though, doesn't start
Speaker 1: in the streets. It actually starts in a doctor's office.
Speaker 1: So my drug of choices opiates. It started out after
Speaker 1: a bunch of surgeries. I had about five surgeries in
Speaker 1: two years. Yeah, two hand surgeries and three knee surgeries.
Speaker 1: And were these injuries from like, yeah, from hockey. I
Speaker 1: played hockey grown up and I was a big, you know,
Speaker 1: brawler so to speak. I plagued by injuries the last
Speaker 1: fifteen years that were acquired in my youth. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it started out with perkosets and then it went to
Speaker 1: a drug called opano, which is oxy morphone, and then
Speaker 1: it manifested into full blown haroin addiction for about three years.
Speaker 1: And during those three years in the throes of drug addiction,
Speaker 1: when all of Jay's friends desert him, Lizzie Mulder sticks
Speaker 1: by him in his eyes and even in his wife
Speaker 1: Marla's eyes. She's like family. The impression that I originally
Speaker 1: got was that they kind of like a sister, like
Speaker 1: an older sister type. But when Jay's addiction becomes untenable,
Speaker 1: things change quick. No one really knew that I had
Speaker 1: an opiate problem at that point. I ended up getting
Speaker 1: a d U I in two thousand eleven, which crashed
Speaker 1: my car and sustained some injuries. And then it kind
Speaker 1: of was the cab was out of the bag that hey,
Speaker 1: I in fact have a drug problem. And then at
Speaker 1: that point I've told her I was going to get help,
Speaker 1: and she was very supportive. She was helping me find
Speaker 1: detox is intensive outpatients, and I went to an intensive
Speaker 1: outpatient to do kind of an intake assessment and they
Speaker 1: told me that I needed full blown in patient when
Speaker 1: I gave them my history and what I was currently using.
Speaker 1: So Jay checks himself into rehab and what happens next
Speaker 1: is literally unbelievable. Well, there's so much more about Lizzie
Speaker 1: that goes into the level of diabolical sociopathic behavior. Next time,
Speaker 1: I'm Queen of the con the o C Savior. She
Speaker 1: created a website, she created a numbers, she created a
Speaker 1: guy named Brent Harrison using Spoon software, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm talking to a guy overseas that wants to invest
Speaker 1: into my winery, and really, I'm talking to that woman
Speaker 1: in Orange County that is just scamming me the whole time.
Speaker 1: And it sounded like a man, it did. It sounded
Speaker 1: it sounded just like a man. Lizzie Mulder uses her
Speaker 1: close relationships to her victims to bleed them dry, probably
Speaker 1: lost of and shockingly, most victims refused to believe what's
Speaker 1: happening right in front of their own eyes, and they
Speaker 1: were basically saying, I think You've got the wrong girl.
Speaker 1: Lizzy's sweetheart. I've been at her house and I've met
Speaker 1: her kids and her beautiful family, and you know, she's amazing.
Speaker 1: Queen of the con The O C Savior is a
Speaker 1: production of A y R Media and I Heart Media,
Speaker 1: hosted by Me Jonathan Walton, Executive producers Jonathan Walton for
Speaker 1: Jonathan Walton Productions and Eliza Rosen for A y R Media.
Speaker 1: Written by Jonathan Walton, Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate
Speaker 1: producer Eric Newman. Sound design by Baked ZD Media, Mixed
Speaker 1: and mastered by Cameron Taggy, sound editing, audio and studio
Speaker 1: and engineering by Matt Jacobsen. Legal counsel for A y
Speaker 1: R Media, Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for iHeartMedia. Maya Howard