Latest / History Dark / The Man Who Conned His Girlfriends out of Millions _ King Con_ The Life and Crimes Of Hamish McLaren

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The Man Who Conned His Girlfriends out of Millions _ King Con_ The Life and Crimes Of Hamish McLaren · History Dark

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: With Hamish, no lie is ever too big. This is
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the biggest con man in Australian history.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Hamish scammed in excess of $ 60 million.
• 0:11
  Speaker 3: When we think about what motivates somebody like Hamish, it
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: boils down to greed.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: He just wants money.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: It wouldn't matter if the victim had $ 5 or $ 5 million.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: He just wanted what you had.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: With Hamish's victims, everything starts off fantastic. You're best friends.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: You feel like you're on to a winner.
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: I met Hamish online on a dating app. Charismatic. Intelligent.
• 0:38
  Speaker 5: Funny.
• 0:39
  Speaker 6: Very friendly.
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: A little bit flash.
• 0:42
  Speaker 7: He made you feel special.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Hamish used different professions. He changed his name. He changed
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: his look.
• 0:49
  Speaker 8: I believed he was telling me the truth and had
• 0:51
  Speaker 8: no reason to think otherwise.
• 0:53
  Speaker 9: He used to always say, your family are not going
• 0:56
  Speaker 9: to let you end up with nothing.
• 1:00
  Speaker 10: Within two weeks, the money was in my account. But
• 1:02
  Speaker 10: it didn't stay in my account very long.
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: It wasn't there a day.
• 1:06
  Speaker 5: It was millions and millions of dollars just moving around
• 1:09
  Speaker 5: over these pages.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: This wasn't just simple theft. He embedded himself in people's
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: lives and then blew them up.
• 1:19
  Speaker 8: He was lying in a bed next to me, pretending
• 1:22
  Speaker 8: to love me, and in his head, he is plotting
• 1:25
  Speaker 8: to destroy me.
• 1:27
  Speaker 10: He stopped answering his phone completely, and then.
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: It all started to get really scary.
• 1:31
  Speaker 6: He's a very cruel man. Very sick man, I think.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Everybody that Hamish came across was a potential target. They
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: didn't realise that they were standing face-to-face with a potential psychopath.
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: I had no idea what was real and what was not.
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: Who the fuck is Hamish?
• 1:51
  Speaker 11: Hamish was a con man of the highest order.
• 2:02
  Speaker 7: He ripped people off over an almost.
• 2:03
  Speaker 6: 30-year career all around the world.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: This wasn't just about theft for Hamish. He embedded himself
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: in people's family or their friendship circle and then would
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: just demolish their lives in the process.
• 2:34
  Speaker 8: I had been separated from my husband for over a year.
• 2:36
  Speaker 8: I was getting used to being a single mum, working hard,
• 2:42
  Speaker 8: and I was looking to meet someone and.
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: potentially start a relationship.
• 2:51
  Speaker 8: I came across a profile of a man by the
• 2:54
  Speaker 8: name of Max on a dating app.
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: He said he worked in banking and.
• 2:59
  Speaker 8: There were a series of photos of him.
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: There was no description. It was just Max, 41.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Tracy Hall, very much the picture of a successful Sydney businesswoman.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: She wasn't wanting to rush into anything. She had her
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: guard up, certainly, when she encountered Max as Hamish was
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: positioning himself.
• 3:42
  Speaker 8: The first date that Hamish and I went on, he
• 3:45
  Speaker 8: was very attentive, listened, He was very interested in what
• 3:52
  Speaker 8: was going on for me and there was never really
• 3:55
  Speaker 8: any awkward silences or anything like that. So when you
• 3:58
  Speaker 8: first meet someone, that's always a really good sign, I think.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: And we had a really good laugh.
• 4:11
  Speaker 10: So I met Hamish through a very good friend who
• 4:15
  Speaker 10: had investments with him. My first impression of Hamish was
• 4:19
  Speaker 10: that he was very charming and he was very professional.
• 4:23
  Speaker 10: Head to toe in a Tom Ford suit.
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: I thought he was the real deal.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: As is the way with a lot of Hamish's victims,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Hamish was actually introduced to Karen by a friend and
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: this friend talked him up and that immediately gained some trust.
• 4:51
  Speaker 10: He told me that he had his own investment company
• 4:55
  Speaker 10: and that he was a broker. First of all, I'll
• 5:04
  Speaker 10: never forget this, he walked into my kitchen and went,
• 5:10
  Speaker 10: And that has always stayed with me because he was
• 5:13
  Speaker 10: really impressed with the house. He was really, really interested
• 5:18
  Speaker 10: to know if I had a mortgage and how much
• 5:21
  Speaker 10: I paid for the house. He took many phone calls
• 5:26
  Speaker 10: while he was on the first visit and talked openly
• 5:29
  Speaker 10: about deals and trades. He sounded like he was a
• 5:35
  Speaker 10: very busy man, actually.
• 5:49
  Speaker 9: We actually met Hamish through our eldest granddaughter. He's always jovial,
• 5:56
  Speaker 9: could speak to people about anything and everything.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Lorraine and Peter Really sweet, retired couple, such dedicated grandparents.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Two of their grandchildren were born with disabilities. One died
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: very early in their life, another died as a teenager.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: They took on a lot of parenting responsibilities. It was
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: really clear that they found it really important to support
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: their family however they could.
• 6:32
  Speaker 9: 2004, Peter had an accident at work.
• 6:39
  Speaker 12: I was involved in a truck rollover and Loss of
• 6:43
  Speaker 12: a memory and three bleeds to the brain.
• 6:46
  Speaker 9: I can always remember the neurosurgeon saying to me, forget
• 6:50
  Speaker 9: the man you married because he's a different person altogether.
• 6:54
  Speaker 6: And he was and still is. We had four.
• 7:00
  Speaker 9: Years of trying to survive and then Pete got a
• 7:05
  Speaker 9: good payout.
• 7:08
  Speaker 6: He would have known that Peter.
• 7:11
  Speaker 9: His memory wasn't as good and I think that's where it.
• 7:17
  Speaker 6: Started to go downhill.
• 7:23
  Speaker 12: He saw me as an easy target and as soon
• 7:26
  Speaker 12: as he sees something like that he's just straight on.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Everybody that Hamish came across from his perspective was a
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: potential target.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: He saw them as an opportunity to exploit.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: Whereas from their perspective, they didn't realize that they were
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: standing face to face with a potential psychopath.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Hamish was born on the 29th of March, 1970. He
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: attends a private school called Pittwater House on Sydney's northern beaches.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: This is a pretty quiet, you know, family-oriented, beach-focused place.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: part of Australia. The people who were friends with him
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: when he was a teenager all said that he was
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: a pretty nice, well-to-do guy, liked hanging out with his friends,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: had a bit of a fractured relationship with his father.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: He always felt that his dad didn't approve of him.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: He finished school in year 10, he didn't complete year 12.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: We do know that he moved out of home. He
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: said at the time that it was because of a
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: falling out with his father. After school in the 1980s,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Hamish was a ski instructor at Silver Star, which is
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: a ski hill in Canada. It's difficult to identify the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: exact starting point when Hamish's con began, but we know
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: it goes back a long time. Hamish got his start
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: in the finance industry in the 1990s as a trainee,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: share trading, on the Sydney Futures Exchange.
• 9:11
  Speaker 13: So my first recollection of Hamish was there's multiple flash, fancy,
• 9:18
  Speaker 13: very expensive cars, but certain stories didn't make sense.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Joe Cross was one of the people who encountered Hamish
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: early on in his career as a trader. Joe's company
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: covered people's trades, and when it came time to pay up,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: there was something called a margin call. Hamish had a
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: margin call for $ 400, 000. He needed to get Joe the
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: money by close of business on a Wednesday. By Friday night,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Hamish still hadn't paid up. Joe was threatening to shut
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: down the account first thing Monday morning.
• 10:01
  Speaker 13: I get this phone call on saturday night the fella
• 10:04
  Speaker 13: downstairs said listen there's a visitor here for you joe
• 10:07
  Speaker 13: his name's hamish hamish watson's his name i opened the
• 10:12
  Speaker 13: door and said what's going on He was carrying a
• 10:16
  Speaker 13: garbage bag. He said, I told you I'd give you
• 10:19
  Speaker 13: the money.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Well, here it is.
• 10:21
  Speaker 13: It was just under $ 400, 000 in cash. And no-one had
• 10:27
  Speaker 13: ever paid me a margin call in cash. And he
• 10:34
  Speaker 13: opened up his jacket and he showed me a handgun.
• 10:40
  Speaker 13: The only place I've ever seen money like that was
• 10:43
  Speaker 13: at the racetrack. The bookies had a lot of cash.
• 10:45
  Speaker 13: Obviously criminals had a lot of cash. So I have
• 10:49
  Speaker 13: no idea where he got it from.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: One of the first forays for Hamish into larger scale
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: crime came in the late 1990s when he stopped being
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: a trader and started what he called a fund with
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: one of his friends.
• 11:16
  Speaker 14: Initially, when I first met Hamish, he was Hamish Watson. That's,
• 11:20
  Speaker 14: you know, the only name I was ever aware of.
• 11:23
  Speaker 14: He would maintain eye contact, he would lean in, he
• 11:27
  Speaker 14: would shake your hand, and he would actually make you
• 11:31
  Speaker 14: feel very special.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: This is an important moment in Hamish's career, for want
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: of a better word. This is where he's completely given
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: up any kind of legitimate trading in a market, and
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: he's just going full on with a con. They were
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: looking around for people to invest in this fund. And
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: so the first place he went looking was family and friends.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately for them, it didn't end well.
• 11:59
  Speaker 14: The figures that were sort of bandied about with regard
• 12:01
  Speaker 14: to what the fund would return was sort of, you know,
• 12:03
  Speaker 14: from memory 10 to 12% a month and obviously compounding.
• 12:08
  Speaker 7: I invested approximately $ 220, 000.
• 12:10
  Speaker 14: You know, I was thinking that, you know, I'd almost
• 12:12
  Speaker 14: be able to live on what I was going to
• 12:15
  Speaker 14: get back.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Hamish was reporting fantastic returns in this fund, so Dominic
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: naturally decided to cash out. This is always where it
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: gets complicated with Hamish.
• 12:30
  Speaker 14: He was telling me dates as to when I'd be
• 12:32
  Speaker 14: paid some money, which was sort of moving around, and
• 12:34
  Speaker 14: I remember getting a bit frustrated, thinking, you know, what's
• 12:36
  Speaker 14: the big deal here? I want to take some money out. But,
• 12:39
  Speaker 14: you know, rather than a finite date where money would
• 12:41
  Speaker 14: be transferred into your account, it was sort of shifting.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: It all came to a head with an unwelcome call
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: from a friend who knew all the players.
• 12:51
  Speaker 14: The way I found out that everything with regard to
• 12:54
  Speaker 14: Hamish was not as it seemed was when I got
• 12:56
  Speaker 14: the phone call from my friend telling me basically that
• 13:00
  Speaker 14: things were not as they seemed and it looked like
• 13:04
  Speaker 14: Hamish was a con man. I initially panicked. I remember
• 13:10
  Speaker 14: just feeling sick in the pit of my stomach. Obviously,
• 13:13
  Speaker 14: immediate terror because all I could think of was whether
• 13:16
  Speaker 14: I was going to get my money back.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: It was one of Hamish's earliest cons, and Dom was
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: lucky that he had some powerful friends in his corner
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: who would go into bat for him and help him
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: get his money back.
• 13:28
  Speaker 14: Who knows whether or not Hamish just said, yeah, give
• 13:31
  Speaker 14: him his money back. I don't know, but I got
• 13:33
  Speaker 14: my money back.
• 13:39
  Speaker 7: I would think.
• 13:40
  Speaker 14: Once you're outed, you would go, hey, I think it's
• 13:42
  Speaker 14: time to change my vocation. Hamish just pretty much, I
• 13:48
  Speaker 14: think he dyed his hair colour, right? Lost a tonne
• 13:51
  Speaker 14: of weight, moved to Bondi and picked up where he
• 13:55
  Speaker 14: left off.
• 13:55
  Speaker 7: Because that was his MO.
• 13:57
  Speaker 14: And so he was able to start and do what
• 13:59
  Speaker 14: he did all over again. There would be people around
• 14:04
  Speaker 14: the world who Hamish has affected.
• 14:09
  Speaker 7: And they would be in the hundreds. They would be
• 14:12
  Speaker 7: in the hundreds.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Yep, for sure. Hamish's business partner, they alleged Hamish had
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: stolen $ 11 million from this fund, this scam. He spent
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of time, energy and money chasing Hamish through
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the courts to no avail. There was no consequences for Hamish.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: He was able to slip the net, leave the country,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: go on offending elsewhere. Over the years, Hamish had some
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: pretty big scores. There are allegations that Hamish was able
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: to rip off... A well-established family in regional Australia for
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: $ 7 million. A case in Canada for $ 2 million. There's
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: even a group in Hong Kong says that he took
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: $ 6 million. And he's suddenly starting to present himself as
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: someone who knows Tom Cruise, who was hiring private jets,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: was buying his friends skidoos and jet skis, host lavish
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: parties in Canada and America and England. Those trappings also
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: gave the illusion of someone who was successful and that
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: he was making lots of money.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: He started off doing those corporate frauds, but he moved
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: away from that type of investment scam. He started to
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: target individuals, which were an easier mark for him. So
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: he moved from individual to individual and that became his
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: modus operandi.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: So if we break down the features of a good,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: skillful con artist, they tend to be quite intuitive. So
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: they're good at reading people, good at finding those vulnerabilities quickly.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: They also tend to be quite charismatic. Con artists generally
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: tend to be very good listeners. But of course, there's
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: also devious tactics behind this. A con artist is also
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: trying to find out how much money an individual has,
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: how potentially susceptible or gullible they might be.
• 16:16
  Speaker 9: Pete and I and a couple of friends were going
• 16:18
  Speaker 9: out for a meal and they happened to be in
• 16:21
  Speaker 9: the same restaurant and that was the first night that
• 16:24
  Speaker 9: we actually met Hamish.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: So at the time Hamish was married and his teenage
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: stepson was dating Peter and Lorraine Cross's granddaughter. That connection
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: through their granddaughter was all Hamish would have needed to
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: identify them as very vulnerable people. Hamish knew about Peter's
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: brain injury and he knew that as a result, he'd
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: received a pretty generous compensation payout. So what appeared to
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: be a coincidental meeting in a restaurant was actually a
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: carefully and meticulously planned out beginning of the con.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: To me, it almost feels like an animal stalking its prey.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: So he did a lot of background research. He knew
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: facts about them. He knew that they were financially vulnerable.
• 17:13
  Speaker 9: He just said, oh, I think I've got something you
• 17:15
  Speaker 9: really could be interested in. He didn't actually go into
• 17:20
  Speaker 9: it at that stage. He said, oh, and if it's okay,
• 17:23
  Speaker 9: I can come around and see you. So it was
• 17:26
  Speaker 9: about a week later that he did.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: And for Lorraine and Peter, that was their first and
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: fatal mistake.
• 17:40
  Speaker 9: I can remember him coming up the stairs and he
• 17:43
  Speaker 9: stopped and he looked around and he says, wow, this
• 17:45
  Speaker 9: is a nice house. And I just didn't take much
• 17:50
  Speaker 9: notice of it. And then he came over and sat
• 17:52
  Speaker 9: down and he started telling us about some deal with
• 17:56
  Speaker 9: buying shares for 20 cents, but they were actually worth
• 18:01
  Speaker 9: a dollar, which means you're making a lot of money.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: He was very wary of being around people who had
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: a better understanding or could kind of sniff out things.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: And I think it was pretty clever at just weaseling
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: his way into relationships where he knew they weren't going
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: to be able to outsmart him or detect what he
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: was doing.
• 18:23
  Speaker 9: Well, we didn't have a great deal of money actually
• 18:26
  Speaker 9: in the bank that we could just get our hands on,
• 18:29
  Speaker 9: so we decided to use a loan that we had
• 18:32
  Speaker 9: that I hadn't actually cancelled out from when he had
• 18:35
  Speaker 9: his accident.
• 18:36
  Speaker 6: About $ 150, 000.
• 18:37
  Speaker 9: So that's what we decided to do.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Tracey had just started dating Hamish, who she believed was
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: a 41-year-old banker called Max Tevita. Hamish had just begun
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: working on her.
• 19:00
  Speaker 8: We went on a lot of dates before things got
• 19:04
  Speaker 8: serious or intimate. We liked doing the same things. We
• 19:09
  Speaker 8: enjoyed being outside. We enjoyed exercising. We enjoyed being in
• 19:13
  Speaker 8: the ocean.
• 19:15
  Speaker 7: In psychiatric terms, this is called mirroring.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: If you can connect with somebody, if you can make
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: them feel that they're on the same wavelength as you,
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: perhaps you have the same kind of interests and hobbies
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: and opinions, then they're more likely to connect with you.
• 19:30
  Speaker 8: As we spent more and more time together, that became
• 19:32
  Speaker 8: obvious that we just really enjoyed each other's company. Over time,
• 19:38
  Speaker 8: we grew closer and closer and yeah, I grew feelings
• 19:42
  Speaker 8: for him.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: If somebody seems very similar to you, you're more likely
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: to be open and to say, to believing anything they
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: tell you.
• 19:57
  Speaker 8: He essentially became what he knew I would be attracted
• 20:02
  Speaker 8: to so that I would respect him, fall in love
• 20:07
  Speaker 8: with him and.
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: Want to continue to be with him.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: When Karen met Hamish, he was calling himself Hamish McLaren.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: She was newly divorced and she had no money to
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: fix the roof that was leaking. Now, Hamish is brilliant
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: at reading people and so he knew immediately that Karen
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: was desperate.
• 20:36
  Speaker 10: He just kept telling me not to worry.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: I can help you. I know I can help you.
• 20:39
  Speaker 10: So you mustn't worry anymore. We're going to fix the roof.
• 20:42
  Speaker 10: You're going to be okay. He asked me, you know,
• 20:48
  Speaker 10: how much I needed. He said, I think I need
• 20:50
  Speaker 10: about $ 200, 000. And he said, well, I think you probably
• 20:55
  Speaker 10: need more than that.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Karen also had a house guest from England staying at
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: the time. He actually witnessed the first meeting between Karen
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: and Hamish.
• 21:06
  Speaker 15: All of a sudden, this fellow with bright bleach blonde
• 21:11
  Speaker 15: hair turned up, was about 40-odd, looked ridiculous and sailed
• 21:16
  Speaker 15: into the kitchen and just started working on his computer.
• 21:22
  Speaker 15: He was very keen to tell us, you know, he
• 21:23
  Speaker 15: worked for Goldman Sachs and that he worked all over
• 21:28
  Speaker 15: the world for them globally, had use of Goldman Sachs jets.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: So Hamish knew exactly how to pitch something. And why
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: would they question it when he's a professional trader, he's
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: living the high life, his scam looks so legitimate.
• 21:44
  Speaker 10: Yeah, after he left that day, I then called my
• 21:52
  Speaker 10: friend and she said, I told him how, you know,
• 21:55
  Speaker 10: how desperate you are and.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: He will help you.
• 21:59
  Speaker 10: When he came back a couple of days later, he
• 22:01
  Speaker 10: almost went, right. I can get you a million dollars.
• 22:07
  Speaker 10: And I said, I don't need a million dollars. He said, well,
• 22:10
  Speaker 10: I hate the banks, so we're going to take a
• 22:13
  Speaker 10: million dollars and I'm going to make that money work
• 22:16
  Speaker 10: for you. I said, the loan repayments on a million
• 22:21
  Speaker 10: dollars is a lot of money. He said, no, no,
• 22:23
  Speaker 10: you don't have to worry about the loan repayments. Container
• 22:28
  Speaker 10: 8 will take care of that. And that's a company
• 22:33
  Speaker 10: that he... traded under the name of, and he said
• 22:37
  Speaker 10: Container 8 will take care of those payments.
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: It would all come out of the fund.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Hamish had the ability to adapt his scams depending on
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: the victim. In some cases, the scams would draw out
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: over a long period of time. In other cases, it
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: was quite short.
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: He came back about five days later.
• 22:59
  Speaker 10: He said, I can get you this money and... You
• 23:03
  Speaker 10: just need to sign these forms. Within two weeks, the
• 23:06
  Speaker 10: money was in my account from the first day I
• 23:08
  Speaker 10: met him. But it didn't stay in my account very long.
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: It wasn't there a day.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Karen's story is very typical of what happened with Hamish's victims.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Everything starts off fantastic. You're best friends. He's giving you
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: great financial advice. He's really going to set you up.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: You feel like you're on to a winner. Within days,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: she had this loan She used the $ 200, 000 to fix
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: up her house. Hamish took the extra $ 800, 000 out of
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: her bank account and said, I'll invest it for you.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Don't worry, it's going to be fantastic. And I'll keep
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: repaying your mortgage so that you can stay here. Hamish
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: had siphoned off almost a million dollars from Karen's bank accounts,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: but he was looking for his next scam. He followed
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Karen and Henry to England. It opened up a whole
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: world of rich pickings.
• 24:04
  Speaker 10: Within a week of being in England, there was a
• 24:08
  Speaker 10: race meeting in Newmarket, and he met a couple of
• 24:11
  Speaker 10: guys there, and by the end of the day, he'd
• 24:15
  Speaker 10: secured himself an apartment in Belgravia in London, where he
• 24:19
  Speaker 10: never paid the rent, and he also leased a Range Rover,
• 24:24
  Speaker 10: and he never paid the lease on that, and then
• 24:26
  Speaker 10: he just tried to get into everyone's pockets over there.
• 24:38
  Speaker 15: I introduced him to friends of mine that worked in
• 24:41
  Speaker 15: the city, to friends of mine that work in property
• 24:44
  Speaker 15: and real estate. He would go there already being faultlessly
• 24:49
  Speaker 15: researched on them as individuals, their company, what they do,
• 24:54
  Speaker 15: so that when he got there, he could be exactly
• 24:57
  Speaker 15: the person that they wanted him to be.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Hamish was keeping all of his connections in London warm,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: particularly anyone with access to millions of dollars or in
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: that high money set in London. Evan is a financial
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: consultant in London, and he was asked to check out
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Hamish for a friend who Hamish was sniffing around.
• 25:29
  Speaker 16: We knew him in London as Hamish Maxwell. He said
• 25:32
  Speaker 16: he was doing high-frequency trading for Goldman Sachs. I told
• 25:37
  Speaker 16: him that I know a lot of people in this
• 25:39
  Speaker 16: specific department at Goldman Sachs who would surely know him
• 25:43
  Speaker 16: if he'd ever had any affiliation with Goldman Sachs. And
• 25:51
  Speaker 16: at that moment, he started perspiring and excused himself, and
• 25:55
  Speaker 16: he said he needed to leave to get to his
• 25:58
  Speaker 16: next meeting. He realized, to his credit, frankly, that he
• 26:03
  Speaker 16: couldn't sit there for another minute without getting caught in
• 26:06
  Speaker 16: a lie.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Only days after running away from that meeting, it emerged
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: that Hamish had been telling some very tall tales about
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: his financial wizardry.
• 26:20
  Speaker 16: He had made $ 75 billion.
• 26:23
  Speaker 17: In a single year.
• 26:24
  Speaker 16: In fact, he was talking about numbers that exceeded the
• 26:27
  Speaker 16: entire profitability of the entire U.S. banking sector. So the
• 26:31
  Speaker 16: numbers just didn't make any sense. So he was relying
• 26:34
  Speaker 16: on people just not checking or not comprehending the scale
• 26:38
  Speaker 16: of those numbers. Obviously, he did not stand.
• 26:41
  Speaker 7: Up to scrutiny.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: With Hamish, no lie is ever too big. And if
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: one doesn't work, he just tries the next one. For Tracy,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: things with Max were going really well. And over time,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: he started to reveal more about his past. But unfortunately,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: none of it was real.
• 27:08
  Speaker 8: So one of our first dates, we had agreed to
• 27:12
  Speaker 8: go up to Palm Beach for the day. Then we
• 27:14
  Speaker 8: decided to walk up to the lighthouse. You know, as
• 27:19
  Speaker 8: we're up there and we're sitting on a rock and
• 27:21
  Speaker 8: looking out at the view, he dropped into conversation that
• 27:25
  Speaker 8: he would one day like to get married up the
• 27:29
  Speaker 8: top of Baron Joey Headland at the lighthouse. And he said,
• 27:34
  Speaker 8: I feel happy here because this is where my.
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: Parents' ashes are scattered.
• 27:38
  Speaker 8: And he had told me very early on that his
• 27:41
  Speaker 8: parents had died in a plane crash when he was six.
• 27:45
  Speaker 8: If he ever got married, that's where he'd want to
• 27:46
  Speaker 8: get married because he'd want his.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: Parents to be there with him. I think it was a.
• 27:53
  Speaker 8: Way for him to make me feel closer to him.
• 27:56
  Speaker 8: I don't know, I guess I'll never know that.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: He's invented incredible and terrible fantastical stories about his family.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: That twin brother that Hamish ran over in the driveway
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: of the house and killed him at the age of nine,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: His mother had an affair and his dad murdered the
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: person that his mum was having an affair with. There's
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: just violent, terrible fractures in his childhood with things that
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: he came back to. I think that there is something
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: inherently broken in there with Hamish. That he can't relate
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: to people.
• 28:45
  Speaker 8: Hamish told me he was the chief investment officer for
• 28:48
  Speaker 8: a family office in the city, managing money on behalf
• 28:52
  Speaker 8: of wealthy families. So he made all of the investment
• 28:55
  Speaker 8: decisions surrounding those funds. He'd toddle off to work on
• 29:01
  Speaker 8: a Monday morning and would go into the city together
• 29:03
  Speaker 8: and he'd have his Tom Ford suit on and he'd
• 29:05
  Speaker 8: be ready to go do his day of, you know,
• 29:08
  Speaker 8: investment banking. I believed he was going into the office.
• 29:12
  Speaker 8: He was running a team of people. He had analysts.
• 29:15
  Speaker 8: He had a boss that he spoke about a lot, Anna.
• 29:19
  Speaker 8: He told me which street the office was located in.
• 29:22
  Speaker 8: He sent me photos from that office. He spoke at
• 29:26
  Speaker 8: length about people in the office, what they ate for lunch,
• 29:30
  Speaker 8: what they spoke about, what investments were happening, where they
• 29:34
  Speaker 8: went for drinks after work. I took it on face value.
• 29:37
  Speaker 8: I believed he was telling me the truth. and had
• 29:40
  Speaker 8: no reason to think otherwise.
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Hamish clearly didn't have empathy for his victims, but he
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: was actually very good at giving the impression that he cared.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: Hamish was very much in the lives of his victims.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: He would socialize with them. He would spend time with
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: their families. He was even doing this after the scams
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: had started and whilst they were going on. So I
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: think he has a lack of compassion. He is quite
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: cunning and he is manipulative. But it also shows to
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: me that he has a high level of confidence in
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: his own ability to pull off the scams.
• 30:22
  Speaker 9: Hamish used to invite us down and we would stay
• 30:26
  Speaker 9: with him in Sydney.
• 30:29
  Speaker 6: We'd go out to good restaurants, beautiful meals, you know,
• 30:31
  Speaker 6: wine and all this sort of thing.
• 30:33
  Speaker 9: You know, we ended up becoming very close friends and
• 30:37
  Speaker 9: enjoying each other's company. Each time that we went down,
• 30:41
  Speaker 9: he was to show us what was going on with
• 30:44
  Speaker 9: our investments, et cetera.
• 30:46
  Speaker 6: That was a quick little thing on the.
• 30:51
  Speaker 7: Computer.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: He knew exactly what documentation looks like. And because of
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: his experience, he was able to lay that out in
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: a very professional way. The documentation looks legitimate. Obviously, there's
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: a lot of trust in him. They had no experience
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: with dealing with criminals.
• 31:25
  Speaker 9: He invited us around to his place and he just
• 31:28
  Speaker 9: said to us that we were up to three million
• 31:33
  Speaker 9: just off our 150,000.
• 31:34
  Speaker 6: And I was a bit dumbfounded and didn't look at it.
• 31:40
  Speaker 7: I said, oh, really?
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Hamish never went for it all at once with his victims.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: With Peter and Lorraine having earned their trust, he asked
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: for more. He convinced them to give him their retirement savings,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: their superannuation, the nest egg that was supposed to set
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: them up for the rest of their life.
• 32:00
  Speaker 9: We thought, well, we might as well pull our money
• 32:02
  Speaker 9: out of our MLC super.
• 32:06
  Speaker 6: And give it to him and do better with it.
• 32:10
  Speaker 6: I think, from memory, about $ 1 million... 500 or something.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: He knew exactly what he was doing and it netted
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: him a massive payday.
• 32:25
  Speaker 10: Most of my friends are in racing back in England.
• 32:31
  Speaker 10: Around May, June, there's a lot of horse race meetings
• 32:35
  Speaker 10: and he got himself along to a few of those.
• 32:38
  Speaker 10: Then there was Roy Laskett and he hired his top
• 32:41
  Speaker 10: hat and came to the races, and then sort of
• 32:44
  Speaker 10: became one of the lads. At that race meeting, he
• 32:48
  Speaker 10: got himself invited onto the private jet to holiday with
• 32:52
  Speaker 10: the boys.
• 33:01
  Speaker 15: After Royal Ascot, he had been invited by friends of
• 33:04
  Speaker 15: mine on a jet to Ibiza. I went on the
• 33:07
  Speaker 15: trip as well. He spent the four days with us
• 33:14
  Speaker 15: at a friend of mine's house. All of a sudden
• 33:17
  Speaker 15: he said he lost all of his credit cards, left
• 33:19
  Speaker 15: them at home. So I had to lend him the
• 33:22
  Speaker 15: money while he was there. He would disappear on those
• 33:27
  Speaker 15: trips for a lot of the day and he would
• 33:31
  Speaker 15: stay back at the villa while we all went out
• 33:33
  Speaker 15: for lunch. He would stay back at the villa, apparently working.
• 33:36
  Speaker 15: Why would he come on a trip like this if
• 33:37
  Speaker 15: he had to work all the time? Nothing really, none
• 33:40
  Speaker 15: of the dots connected.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: After the trip to Ibiza, the cracks were really starting
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: to show.
• 33:51
  Speaker 15: When I'd come back from Ibiza, I just said to Karen, Karen,
• 33:55
  Speaker 15: you need your money back.
• 33:57
  Speaker 7: This guy is not straightforward. He just tells massive lies.
• 34:01
  Speaker 15: He says he's got all this money, all these cars,
• 34:04
  Speaker 15: yet he can't find 500 quid to bring on holiday
• 34:07
  Speaker 15: to Ibiza. I said, if he can't get money like that, Karen,
• 34:11
  Speaker 15: you've got no chance with your money.
• 34:16
  Speaker 10: And that completely threw me into a spin.
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: I said, what do you mean?
• 34:19
  Speaker 10: He said, he's just not who he says he is.
• 34:22
  Speaker 10: You know, he said, just things that don't add up.
• 34:26
  Speaker 10: He said, you need to get your money.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: At this stage, Karen was getting really concerned that Hamish
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't who he said he was. And meanwhile, Tom Zadrovich,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: an officer with the New South Wales Police Force, was
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: handed a complicated case.
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: At the time of the Hamish investigation, I was a
• 34:47
  Speaker 5: detective senior constable working out of Northern Beach's detective's office.
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: The investigation started after one of the victims reported the
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: matter through to the police. My supervising sergeant had received
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: the job. The initial view was that at first glance
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: maybe it could be perceived as being an investment gone
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: wrong and now an attempt to recoup that money and
• 35:18
  Speaker 5: something that we couldn't be able to prove in the
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: long term. When the financial crime stuff comes in, you
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: need to be patient and be willing to kind of
• 35:28
  Speaker 5: invest the time because it's a lot of work. I
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: just don't want to give it up. I hate just going, yeah, sure,
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: we'll just let this go. Unless I'm 100% certain, I
• 35:38
  Speaker 5: don't like letting it go. The big motivator was the
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: amount of money the initial victim lost, which was in
• 35:45
  Speaker 5: the hundreds of thousands. I knew that there was something wrong.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Only five months after first meeting Hamish in her own kitchen,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: it was starting to dawn on Karen that Hamish wasn't
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: what he put himself up to be. The mortgage repayments
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: that he promised had stopped and Karen was having to
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: chase him every month for money.
• 36:11
  Speaker 10: So every month I had to find around.
• 36:14
  Speaker 7: $ 6, 000.
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: To pay the loan.
• 36:16
  Speaker 10: And we went through a phase of having to pick
• 36:19
  Speaker 10: up money in envelopes from him. I said to Hamish,
• 36:22
  Speaker 10: I cannot go on like this. He said, well, come
• 36:26
  Speaker 10: into the city. Just got to stop at the office
• 36:29
  Speaker 10: and I'll get.
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: You some cash.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: That was one of the last times Karen ever saw Hamish.
• 36:41
  Speaker 10: That's when the money started drying up and then every
• 36:43
  Speaker 10: month was like Grand Hog Day trying to find the repayment.
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: Then it all started to get really scary.
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: One of the victims reported the matter through to the police.
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: The name that they had given was Hamish McLaren. When
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: I started to look him up on the police systems,
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: there was a couple of different identities in there and
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: they were all associated with some form of fraud or theft.
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: The victim had provided a copy of his bank account,
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: so that was the first kind of thing that we
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: started to look at. I put out a blanket request
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: to the major banks to identify anything that could be
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: remotely linked back to Hamish McLaren. I came back to
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: find a ream and a half of paper on my
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: desk for bank statements. It was like an overwhelming feeling,
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: I think. It was like looking at a lot of
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: stuff there that I'm going to have to do. At
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: the same time, it was exciting because I felt like
• 37:54
  Speaker 5: I was onto something.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Karen owed the bank over a million dollars. She was
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: desperately trying to get Hamish to stick to the plan
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: that he'd proposed to her, where he would give her $ 6, 000
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: a month to cover the mortgage. But the mortgage payments
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: had stopped. So it seemed like Hamish was running a
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: short con on Karen. Within months, she stopped hearing from
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: her altogether.
• 38:21
  Speaker 10: The loan didn't get paid one month. There was a
• 38:25
  Speaker 10: letter as well to say that you are in breach
• 38:28
  Speaker 10: of the loan agreement.
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: I felt sick. I didn't sleep a lot.
• 38:35
  Speaker 10: And then he went through a couple of months of
• 38:37
  Speaker 10: pretending to be in Singapore and he was in Bondi surfing.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Hamish had stopped paying the repayments on the million dollars
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: he'd borrowed in Karen's name and then moved into his
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: own account.
• 38:51
  Speaker 10: I used to drive around Bondi looking for him. And
• 38:57
  Speaker 10: then one day a girlfriend of mine in Bondi saw
• 38:59
  Speaker 10: him And she sent me a photograph of him in
• 39:01
  Speaker 10: the butcher shop. And I went to the butcher shop
• 39:04
  Speaker 10: and said, do you know blonde Hamish who surfs?
• 39:07
  Speaker 6: And he went, yes.
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: Have you seen him recently?
• 39:10
  Speaker 10: And they said, yes, he was in the other day.
• 39:11
  Speaker 10: Around about that time, he stopped answering his phone completely.
• 39:18
  Speaker 10: Once I realised that I probably was in trouble, it
• 39:21
  Speaker 10: became just every living minute I was trying to figure
• 39:28
  Speaker 10: out what I was going to.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Do When Hamish found someone with access to money, he
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: kept going back again and again until they were out.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: And that's what he did with Peter and Lorraine. He'd
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: already tapped them for $ 1.
• 39:44
  Speaker 17: 65 million.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Hamish had an intimate understanding of all of Peter and
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Lorraine's finances. In particular, he was aware of an untapped
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: line of credit on a loan that they hadn't accessed yet.
• 39:59
  Speaker 9: He actually one day rang me up and he said
• 40:02
  Speaker 9: he knew there was about 360, I think, left in
• 40:07
  Speaker 9: that loan, that thing that we had.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Hamish knew exactly how to get them to hand him
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: the money. He promised them fantastic returns on a short-term investment.
• 40:18
  Speaker 9: And he said, I've got onto something really good and
• 40:22
  Speaker 9: it's only gonna be short time. And he said, and
• 40:24
  Speaker 9: I'll have your money back to you. And I said, yeah, sure.
• 40:27
  Speaker 9: So I was gonna give him the lot. And he said, no,
• 40:29
  Speaker 9: you keep 60 and the 300.
• 40:32
  Speaker 6: Will be fine.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: When we look at the specific tactics that econ artists use,
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: one of the things is they'll create this time pressure.
• 40:41
  Speaker 7: You know, it's a really good investment, but you have
• 40:43
  Speaker 7: to invest.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: Now because they know that if there is this time pressure,
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: then the victim is less likely to think through the risks.
• 40:53
  Speaker 9: He used to always say, your family, you know, you're
• 40:56
  Speaker 9: like a big sister to me. I'm not going to
• 40:59
  Speaker 9: let you end up with nothing.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: He'd gotten them to hand over all of their super,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: more than a million and a half dollars, and then
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: convinced them to borrow more against the loans they'd already had.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: The repayments that he said that he was going to
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: keep paying stopped coming.
• 41:18
  Speaker 9: That's when we got into trouble as far as money
• 41:21
  Speaker 9: because that $ 150, 000 that we borrowed maxed out to nearly $ 730, 000
• 41:29
  Speaker 9: because it wasn't being paid off. Which he started doing,
• 41:35
  Speaker 9: but then eventually he stopped.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: But somehow Hamish managed to convince Peter and Lorraine that
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: it was all going to be okay.
• 41:44
  Speaker 9: He said, don't worry about it, you'll have your money
• 41:46
  Speaker 9: by the 14th of June, I think it was.
• 41:50
  Speaker 12: He kept saying the money's coming, we've just got to
• 41:54
  Speaker 12: wait for it to mature and I just sat back,
• 41:56
  Speaker 12: gave him the benefit of the doubt and let Lorraine
• 41:59
  Speaker 12: deal with him.
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: I started doing my own checks on businesses he was
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: affiliated with. The businesses didn't appear legitimate in any sense.
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: He used different business entities, so Burlington Prudential was one,
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: Container 8, Oceana Financial Markets, I think. He used those
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: business names and then derivatives of his own identity to
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: make it difficult to tie these stories together. Unless you're
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: looking to tie them together, they won't naturally do it.
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: I spent all day looking at bank statements. And the
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: amount of money that you can see moving between people
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: and the deposits he's receiving and the payments that he's making,
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: it was millions and millions and millions of dollars just
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: moving around over these pages. It's the type of money that.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: I hadn't seen before.
• 43:05
  Speaker 8: The conversations we had around personal money were scattered throughout
• 43:10
  Speaker 8: all of.
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: The other conversations.
• 43:12
  Speaker 8: Specifically around trades he was doing and, you know, funds
• 43:16
  Speaker 8: he was investing in, what the markets were doing, those
• 43:19
  Speaker 8: kind of things. Never once did he say, how much
• 43:24
  Speaker 8: money do you earn? Or how much have you got
• 43:26
  Speaker 8: in superannuation? Or how much savings do you have? Like,
• 43:29
  Speaker 8: there was never anything like that.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: The con that Hamish used against Tracy was a long game.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: So for this to work, it takes a lot of
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: commitment and a lot of time. He didn't even ask
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: about her money until they'd known each other for about
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: a year.
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: Over the months and almost a year, he.
• 43:53
  Speaker 8: Had so many of these conversations with me that when
• 43:56
  Speaker 8: he said, why don't you set up your own self-managed super?
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: And I said, well, you know, I wouldn't know how
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: to do that. I don't know, you know.
• 44:06
  Speaker 8: And of course, you know, there's Hamish that says, I
• 44:09
  Speaker 8: can help you with that.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: That con artists or good con artists use the soft
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: sell rather than hard sell. They don't try and push
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: their agenda too much because if they can lay a trap,
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: if they put some bait and the victim comes towards
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: that and makes them think that it's an idea they
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: want to invest in, it's much more likely to work.
• 44:34
  Speaker 8: I didn't suspect anything and to me it all seemed
• 44:37
  Speaker 8: 100% legitimate.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Hamish McLaren was posing as a 41-year-old banker on a
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: dating site, calling himself Max Tevita when Tracy swiped right.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: A year into the relationship, he suggested that Tracy could
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: do better with her superannuation, her retirement savings. He thought
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: she could take care of it herself, and he casually
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: suggested he could offer his expert advice.
• 45:10
  Speaker 8: MUSIC The discussion that we had was that he would
• 45:23
  Speaker 8: manage the investments in line with all of the other
• 45:27
  Speaker 8: things he was doing as part of his line of work.
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: So I filled in all of that paperwork.
• 45:32
  Speaker 8: And then what I did was I transferred my money
• 45:35
  Speaker 8: out of my existing super fund. Max's name wasn't on anything.
• 45:41
  Speaker 8: And the self-managed super fund was set up in my name.
• 45:44
  Speaker 8: And to me, it all seemed 100% legitimate. It was
• 45:50
  Speaker 8: my life savings, $ 317, 000.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: Hamish wanted other people's money, but at the same time,
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: in this world, this romance con, he knew that Tracy
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: had to be so convinced about it for such a
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: long period of time that that would be the only
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: way that he could eventually access her funds. Because we
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: have to remember that these weren't opportunistic or impulsive scans
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: that he just decided to do off the cuff.
• 46:18
  Speaker 7: These were things.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: that he had pre-planned for a long time, months, years even.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: That means that there were lots and lots of separate
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: opportunities where he could have stopped his behavior, where he
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: could have actually had genuine remorse and regret, but he didn't.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Hamish met Peter and Lorraine through their granddaughter, Jane. He
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: embedded himself in their lives and took $ 1. 5 million of
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: their money. That was their life savings and the compensation
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: claim from Peter's workplace injury. He kept telling them that
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: they were making incredible profits, but in reality, he was
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: just finding new ways to bleed them dry.
• 47:08
  Speaker 12: He said, I'll meet you at the airport. The papers
• 47:11
  Speaker 12: for you to sign. The next flight was ready to leave.
• 47:15
  Speaker 12: They had 10 minutes before it was going When he arrived,
• 47:20
  Speaker 12: he bought me a milkshake and put all this paperwork
• 47:23
  Speaker 12: in front of me. He says, it's all to do
• 47:25
  Speaker 12: with investments. He just flicked the corners up and I
• 47:29
  Speaker 12: signed them. Then he left. So I didn't have time
• 47:34
  Speaker 12: to see the paper.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Hamish set up a scheme where he was buying expensive
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: cars using Peter's money. He was then driving them around,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: racking up expensive toll fines and parking tickets. all in
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Peter's name.
• 47:51
  Speaker 6: We got in the mail a bill for a car
• 47:54
  Speaker 6: that went through a toll. And I rang him up
• 47:58
  Speaker 6: and he said, oh, don't worry about that, I'll fix
• 48:00
  Speaker 6: that up.
• 48:02
  Speaker 9: I said, but it's in Peter's name. And he said, yeah,
• 48:05
  Speaker 9: it's in Peter's name. Remember, we're buying cars and I'm
• 48:09
  Speaker 9: selling them.
• 48:12
  Speaker 12: One of his investments, he'd buy the cars and sell them,
• 48:14
  Speaker 12: but I was buying the cars and he was selling them.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Karen met Hamish through a friend who had investments with him.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: He helped her borrow $ 1 million to fix a hole
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: in her roof. But within days, that money had left
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: her account. And within months, the mortgage repayments that he
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: was helping her with had stopped and she was having
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: trouble getting a hold of him.
• 48:48
  Speaker 10: I rank him incessantly, every day, all day, and... I
• 48:54
  Speaker 10: even rang his niece that I'd been introduced to in
• 48:56
  Speaker 10: London and she said, please don't call me again.
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: I don't know where he is.
• 49:01
  Speaker 10: Just felt sick to my stomach, especially when it was
• 49:06
  Speaker 10: getting towards loan repayment day.
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: I had shingles.
• 49:12
  Speaker 10: My hair fell out. I had alopecia. I was miserable,
• 49:17
  Speaker 10: totally miserable.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Karen got word through a good friend, Henry, that things
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: were much worse than she thought.
• 49:25
  Speaker 10: And then Henry had a really good friend who did
• 49:28
  Speaker 10: work for Goldman Sachs in London. And this is one
• 49:30
  Speaker 10: of the things that made Henry believe that he wasn't
• 49:34
  Speaker 10: who he said he was. This friend went through the
• 49:38
  Speaker 10: whole directory of Goldman Sachs globally and he said they'd
• 49:42
  Speaker 10: never heard of him.
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: Hamish didn't appear to have any real compassion. There was
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: nothing there that would stop him from taking your money.
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: Your personal circumstances didn't mean anything to him. For him,
• 49:59
  Speaker 5: it was just another mark. It was another person that
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: he could steal money from.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Hamish had absolutely no scruples when it came to conning people.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: When he met Simon in London, Hamish immediately set about
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: his charm offensive, befriending him. And, as he always does,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Hamish told him a stack of very sad but very
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: untrue stories about his past.
• 50:25
  Speaker 18: My first impression of Hamish, he's got a big smile,
• 50:28
  Speaker 18: blue eyes, looks very healthy, very clever, convincing, charming.
• 50:34
  Speaker 7: Intelligent guy.
• 50:38
  Speaker 18: I found that time really interesting, and I really liked
• 50:42
  Speaker 18: the guy, and I thought there was a future friendship
• 50:46
  Speaker 18: developing in it. Hamish explained to me that he became
• 50:52
  Speaker 18: an orphan when his parents died in a light aircraft crash,
• 50:59
  Speaker 18: and that he went on to work for large banks,
• 51:02
  Speaker 18: investment banks.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: For this con, Hamish was once again Hamish Maxwell. He
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: presented himself as a genius mathematician who went to the
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: prestigious university, MIT. He said he worked for Goldman Sachs,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: developing top-secret trading algorithms.
• 51:21
  Speaker 18: Very sort of dark and mysterious stuff. The whole thing
• 51:25
  Speaker 18: just appeared to be amazing, but real. I'd never met
• 51:32
  Speaker 18: anybody before that managed.
• 51:34
  Speaker 7: Hundreds of millions... for people like Goldman Sachs.
• 51:39
  Speaker 18: I didn't have a set profile in my head of
• 51:42
  Speaker 18: what somebody should look like, but he seemed eminently capable
• 51:46
  Speaker 18: of doing it. And I started talking to my best pal, Steve,
• 51:53
  Speaker 18: at the time.
• 51:55
  Speaker 19: The general gist of the conversation was that Simon had
• 51:58
  Speaker 19: met this chap, very successful, you know, billionaire, and that
• 52:03
  Speaker 19: this chap was going to give him a sort of
• 52:05
  Speaker 19: leg up, as it were, Yeah, I was very.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Happy for him at the time.
• 52:12
  Speaker 18: During this period, my youngest son was having treatment. He
• 52:18
  Speaker 18: had three operations already for his heart.
• 52:21
  Speaker 7: I needed a fourth. It was a good three months
• 52:25
  Speaker 7: before he could come out of hospital.
• 52:27
  Speaker 18: And this was, as you can imagine, extremely stressful for
• 52:33
  Speaker 18: the entire family.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Simon has a disabled son who needed open-heart surgery at
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: the time. Hamish knew that extra money would be a
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: vital lifeline for Simon, so he preyed upon that.
• 52:47
  Speaker 18: The amount I invested with Hamish, if you can call
• 52:50
  Speaker 18: it investment.
• 52:51
  Speaker 7: Was £ 50, 000.
• 52:52
  Speaker 18: The return on investment for the money that I'd put
• 52:58
  Speaker 18: forward to Hamish was going to be about 30% to
• 53:02
  Speaker 18: 40% earnings over.
• 53:05
  Speaker 7: The original window was two to four weeks.
• 53:09
  Speaker 19: This just tiny alarm bell rang, which made me think,
• 53:15
  Speaker 19: you know, this is too good to be true.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Steve decided to do some digging. He wanted to find
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: some presence of Hamish in Australia, but he couldn't find
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: any records of Hamish Maxwell. He did know that Hamish
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: was a fitness fanatic who loved marathons. So he set
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: about trawling through running databases in Australia. and eventually found
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: a photo of Hamish finishing a marathon in Sydney.
• 53:39
  Speaker 7: He rang me and said, I've found him, and his
• 53:42
  Speaker 7: name's not.
• 53:44
  Speaker 18: Hamish Maxwell, it's Hamish McLaren, and that's where we start, Simon.
• 53:51
  Speaker 19: There was quite a lot of information about this bloke,
• 53:55
  Speaker 19: where he'd been a very naughty boy in Australia.
• 53:59
  Speaker 7: Failed companies, bankruptcy, files.
• 54:03
  Speaker 18: The feeling, finding that information out is, oh dear, we
• 54:09
  Speaker 18: have got a problem.
• 54:10
  Speaker 7: We are dealing with a villain.
• 54:13
  Speaker 19: I think I went pretty cold. You know, where you
• 54:16
  Speaker 19: just think, right, you know, I didn't want it to
• 54:19
  Speaker 19: be true.
• 54:21
  Speaker 7: But it is true.
• 54:23
  Speaker 19: So we hatched a plan that luckily for Simon worked.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Simon and Steve had a plan to con the con
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: artist and turn the tables on Hamish. Steve would tell
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Hamish that he knew of a number of wealthy individuals
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: ready to invest. But before he could do that, Simon
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: needed his £ 50, 000 back. Steve pretended to represent these wealthy individuals.
• 54:46
  Speaker 19: All you're doing is relying on someone who's greedy and
• 54:48
  Speaker 19: prepared to say anything and prepared to do anything to
• 54:51
  Speaker 19: get hold of cash. So the carrot that he's got,
• 54:55
  Speaker 19: you make him an offer of a much bigger carrot.
• 54:58
  Speaker 19: And luckily, as I said.
• 54:59
  Speaker 7: He took it. The money came back.
• 55:06
  Speaker 18: To finally get the money back was just the most
• 55:09
  Speaker 18: incredible sense of relief that the battle was over. It
• 55:15
  Speaker 18: had been won from our point of view. We put
• 55:18
  Speaker 18: Hamish's hat on and so we scammed a scammer.
• 55:24
  Speaker 7: And that was, you know, the final full stop in
• 55:28
  Speaker 7: that story.
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: When we think about what motivates somebody like Hamish, it
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: cannot be overstated that it boils down to greed. I
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: think that is the most important and simplest motivating driving
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: factor for him. He just wants money. And he feels
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: that the world owes him. He feels that he deserves
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: things like other people's money.
• 56:06
  Speaker 8: When you don't suspect somebody of being a fraudster or
• 56:10
  Speaker 8: trying to con you, when someone says to you, this
• 56:14
  Speaker 8: is my name and this is where I live, you
• 56:17
  Speaker 8: don't automatically think, well, hang on, let me double check that.
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: I didn't suspect anything. You don't even question it.
• 56:27
  Speaker 8: I met his brother-in-law, so his sister's husband, Chris, and
• 56:33
  Speaker 8: I met a friend that he had grown up with.
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: In one of those meetings, his friend called him Hambone.
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: And I asked him afterwards, I said, why did Matt
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: call you Hambone? What's that?
• 56:47
  Speaker 8: And quick as a flash, he said, oh, when I
• 56:50
  Speaker 8: was a kid, I was really skinny and my legs
• 56:53
  Speaker 8: were really skinny and everyone said I needed to put
• 56:55
  Speaker 8: some ham on the bone. I needed to put some
• 56:58
  Speaker 8: fat on myself. He said, that's why he called me Hambone.
• 57:03
  Speaker 8: Must have been shitting himself. But I think he had
• 57:08
  Speaker 8: a level of confidence and arrogance that made him believe
• 57:14
  Speaker 8: that he could get away with it.
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: So it just kept going.
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: I found different names that had been paying him deposits
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: and also receiving money from him. The trading company that
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: Hamish was putting a lot of money into, that account
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: had received millions of dollars. But he wasn't doing what
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: he was telling all these victims he was doing and
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: wasn't trading in the way that he was purporting he was.
• 57:51
  Speaker 7: It was pretty much washing money.
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: It was always a concern that he did have a
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: pot of gold somewhere and was going to run away
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: down the rainbow with it. So I had to make
• 58:03
  Speaker 5: sure that I didn't let too many people know what
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: I was doing. There was a degree of risk associated
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: with that, obviously. One of the people I spoke to
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: admitted that they knew Hamish, but there was nothing wrong
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: and hung up the phone, which at the time made
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: me very nervous. I was concerned that I'd made the
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: wrong move. But I guess you've got to kind of
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: take risks sometimes.
• 58:41
  Speaker 9: It was getting to a stage where there was, I'd
• 58:44
  Speaker 9: be ringing him up and saying, are you going to
• 58:46
  Speaker 9: put some money in? Always had an excuse and it
• 58:49
  Speaker 9: would be waiting for somebody to put the money in
• 58:53
  Speaker 9: or to change it over or I'd just about be
• 58:56
  Speaker 9: talking to him every day. I went and did shopping
• 59:01
  Speaker 9: and didn't have the money in the account that it was.
• 59:04
  Speaker 6: Supposed to be. Couldn't pay for the groceries.
• 59:07
  Speaker 9: So I rang him up and he said, oh, I'm sorry, Loz,
• 59:09
  Speaker 9: I'll I'll quickly put something over. So he quickly put
• 59:13
  Speaker 9: some money in the bank so I could pay for
• 59:15
  Speaker 9: the groceries. But then it just got worse and worse
• 59:21
  Speaker 9: and that we had everything maxed out and we just
• 59:24
  Speaker 9: didn't have any money at the end.
• 59:28
  Speaker 6: We did have our suspicions, but I.
• 59:31
  Speaker 9: Was holding on with the hope that if we hung
• 59:34
  Speaker 9: in there, that it definitely, it was going.
• 59:38
  Speaker 6: To be real. We would get the money.
• 59:42
  Speaker 9: It was always saying that that money will be, wait,
• 59:46
  Speaker 9: you'll have at least 10 million.
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: In June.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Hamish knew that if he could lay this scam out
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: in the right way, he'd be able to make excuses
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: as to why the money's not returned. To constantly delay
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: and delay and delay so that that victim would be
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: just always held at bay, thinking that they don't want
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: to take action against him because they don't want to
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: rock the boat and possibly miss out on their pot
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: of gold that's going to potentially come down the track.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: The fact that when Lorraine was anxious and worried about
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: the future, Hamish went out of his way to comfort
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: her and reassure her, all the while knowing that he's
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: in fact ripping her off in the background, really speaks
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: to his humongous lack of empathy. This guy has no
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: compassion at all. He doesn't care about the lives he's damaging.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: He is extremely deceitful and he is a conniving piece
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: of work.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 5: I reached out to a couple of the people that
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 5: I'd seen in those bank statements. Some were just done
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: completely with anything to do with Hamish. They couldn't talk
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 5: about him. At least a quarter of the people ended
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: up in tears on the phone. Some of them just
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 5: hung up on me because they couldn't, like mid-conversation, because
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: they couldn't handle going back through that level of trauma,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: I think. I think it's an understated part of fraud
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: that there is a financial loss, but there's an emotional toll.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: It is really tough to read the weekly text messages of, hey,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 5: I'm struggling, I need my money back. Where's my money?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 10: There was never enough to pay the loan, put food
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 10: on the table and ran the car.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: I sold a few things, just scrimped.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 10: I'm very lucky. I have got some amazing friends. And
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 10: when the money really dried up from Hamish, they knew
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 10: I was in a real pickle. And so they not
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 10: only helped me out, they bailed me out. It was
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 10: pretty hard, you know, and having to tell my kids
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 10: as well that I'd completely messed up.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: That was pretty tough. I thought I was a better
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: judge of character.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 6: I'm angry.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: He duped me. I believed him.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 10: For a while there, I thought we were gonna, you know,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 10: have this amazing friendship and it would go on until
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 10: he started to lie and not pick up the phone and.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: So at this time, Hamish was married, living with Beck,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: mother of three, and his teenage stepson, Jack. Jack was
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: dating Jane. Jane was Peter and Lorraine's 16-year-old granddaughter. Over
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: a long period of time, Hamish put a lot of
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: work into earning Jane's trust. He would take her surfing,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: he would help her with her homework, he became something
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: of a mentor to her.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 6: I just said to.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 9: Her one day that, why don't you ask Hamish about
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 9: doing what he does?
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 6: So, I mean, you can make a lot of money
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 6: doing that.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: Hamish always had a great radar for what people wanted
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: and I think in Jane he could clearly see someone
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: who was really bright, she was a school captain, she
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: was very ambitious, she wanted to be something other than
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: a girl in a, you know, sleepy surfing town north
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: of Sydney and he fed that throughout the relationship.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 9: She came to him and she said, Hamish is talking
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 9: about going overseas and going to Princeton and he thinks
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 9: that he can get me into Princeton.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 6: It was a great opportunity and.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I just thought everything was just falling into place
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 9: for her, for Jane.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Of all the things we found out about Hamish, this
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: was by far the most shocking. He managed to, I suppose,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: morph the relationship from a mentorship to actually become a
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: sexual partner. We're talking about the relationship between a 51-year-old
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: man and a 16-year-old girl. It was pretty clearly a
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: predatory relationship.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 9: I actually think that he was grooming her from about 15,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 9: 16 when I look back at it.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: Hamish had been deliberately, carefully, secretly grooming Peter and Lorraine's
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: 16-year-old granddaughter Jane over a series of months. One night
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: when they were all together in Sydney, Lorraine saw an
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: interaction between Hamish and Jane and the penny suddenly dropped.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 9: I just looked at him and I said, how long's
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 9: this been going on? And he looked at me and
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 9: he said, I'm sorry, Lossie. When he answered, that I
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 9: just couldn't believe that that would happen. I just felt
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 9: absolutely dumbfounded and numb.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: Another cruel layer to all of this is that Hamish
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: wasn't even particularly interested in Jane for Jane. He was
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: using Jane to get access to her grandparents. So not
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: only did this completely detonate Jane's life, it also led
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: to the detonation of Peter and Lorraine's lives too.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 6: It affected her a hell of a lot. She was beautiful,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 6: very intelligent, beautiful personality.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 12: Good at sports, good at everything really and she's just
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 12: a mess now. Just his ego, he's going to win
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 12: no matter what.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: What he did to Jane was just.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: Despicable.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 6: He's a very cruel man. Very sick man, I think.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: He seems to be sexually attracted to the 16-year-old girl. Meanwhile,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: he was lying to his own wife, Beck, and he
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: was ripping off this young girl's grandparents. So this really
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: shows that there's almost no boundary that he won't cross.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: There's no level of depravity that he won't stoop to.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: It's almost like he has no moral compass whatsoever.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: When you actually think about it, already the power imbalance
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: with that age gap of having a 50-year-old and a
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: 16-year-old having a relationship like that, like it's very difficult,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: I think, for a 16-year-old to really comprehend what they're
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: getting into. When you do that with a psychopath, it's
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: just a million times worse because there is no sense
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: of remorse or guilt. When you have a relationship with Hamish,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: he just moves on.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 20: She felt very, very guilty, very guilty. I don't think
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 20: she should have been guilty. It's him that should have
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 20: been the one that should ask for forgiveness.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: For Peter and Lorraine, realising that he had been having
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: an abusive relationship with their granddaughter was horrifying. But he
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: also had this enormous power over them. They couldn't cut
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: him out of their life because to do so would
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: give up any hope of ever seeing any of their
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: money ever again.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: I think he has many of the characteristics of a narcissist,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: somebody that has narcissistic personality disorder. So they have an
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: inflated sense of their own self and their own abilities.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: On top of that, a narcissist has a need for
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: attention and for admiration. And then on top of all
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: of these things, you have a sense of entitlement as well,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: that they want things from other people. Hamish wanted other
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: people's money. He felt that the law didn't apply to him.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 10: There were some threats. If I went to the police,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 10: I would bring the whole thing down. Everything will fall apart.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: One of the go-to threats that he had was, you know,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 5: if the police come and find me, I'll run away
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 5: to some beach in some faraway island and you'll never
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 5: find my money ever again.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 10: My friend who introduced me to him said she was
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 10: going to help the police because she was now very desperate.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 10: Then I spoke to Henry again. He said, you have
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 10: to go to the police now. I'm surprised you haven't gone,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 10: you know, 10 months ago.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 5: I had three victims who were willing to provide statements
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 5: initially and knew of other victims. The hardest part was
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 5: convincing these other victims that this was fraud and there
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 5: was no investment.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: With Karen, I think it was.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 5: If you've been chasing this guy for three years, why
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: would you risk talking to the police? You know, there
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 5: was some hesitation there to proceed. For me, it was
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 5: making sure that I didn't lose these people back into
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 5: his web of lies.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 6: Towards the end, I was so desperate.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 10: I called Tom and said that I will now come
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 10: in and give you my statement.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: Then Tom hinted that it's over.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 10: There's no money, you know, that he's done. Right up
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 10: until doing that, I hoped that I was wrong and
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 10: that we would get the money, but....
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 5: We had done some covert surveillance on him, effectively a
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 5: body wire on a witness. It was a successful strategy
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: because we got to hear... exactly who he said he was.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 5: The witness just kept asking questions about everything that he
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 5: said and the answers that he gave didn't make sense
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 5: and the ones that he said he had evidence for,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 5: the evidence didn't exist. So when you hear it on
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 5: a recording, there's no arguing. It was very clear evidence
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 5: of dishonest representation. So at this point, the priority for
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 5: us was making sure we could arrest Hamish and keep
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 5: him bail refused. Because if we made a move on
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 5: him and he had the ability to flee, then he
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 5: would flee.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: In the end, I had enough evidence of deception.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 5: It was all about speed then, because the longer I
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 5: left him out in the world, the more he would
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 5: just steal. As soon as I got to a point
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 5: where I thought I could keep him in jail, I
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 5: went and applied for the search warrant.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: We'd been in Byron Bay for the weekend.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 8: I was up there doing a presentation for a conference
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 8: and he had said he'd come up, he'd go surfing
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 8: in Byron for the weekend. I did my presentation, we
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 8: met up with family, we met up with friends and
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 8: then I flew home on the Sunday night and I
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 8: think he drove home on the Monday. I think we
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 8: spoke that night, said goodnight, went to bed. And the
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 8: next morning I was up super early, it was school holiday,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 8: so I was ferrying kids to different activities, having to
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 8: get into the city for work.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: And it got to about four o'clock and I hadn't
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 4: heard from him.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: What Tracy didn't know was that Tom and a team
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: of New South Wales police officers had been watching Hamish's
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: Bondi apartment for a few days. Now that he was
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: back from Byron Bay, they were preparing to arrest him.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: So when Hamish stepped outside, they swung into action.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 5: When I got there, I told him exactly what he
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 5: was being charged with and who it related to and
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 5: how much, you know, we were alleging he stole. And
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 5: at that point he got pretty quiet. I think he
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 5: wasn't expecting that much to come on him that quick.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 5: He just went really quiet, almost like a vacant look
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 5: in his eyes and one little tear rolled down his face.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 5: I won't forget that because it's probably the only time
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 5: I think you'll ever see any kind of emotion out
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 5: of him.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 8: The next morning, I still hadn't heard from Max. I
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 8: called Bondi Police because I just wanted them to check.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 8: I just felt like something was wrong. Gave them all
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 8: the information, Max.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 4: DeVita, his birthdate, his address.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 8: In the meantime, a girlfriend of mine had called me
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 8: and said, you know, how are you? And I said,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 8: I haven't slept a wink. I'm worried about Max. Something's wrong.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 8: And she said, I've just seen something on the internet
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 8: and I'm going to send you the link and you
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 8: need to take a look at it and you need
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 8: to call me straight back. My stomach just dropped. I
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 8: called her straight back and I said, you know, My God.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: That's him. What's happened?
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 17: No.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 8: And at that point, there was no name. There was
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 8: no details. It was just him being arrested. And I thought, God,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 8: that must be a mistake. Like, this is a mistake.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 8: I called back Bondi Police, and they said the name
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 8: of the person and their age that you said that
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 8: lives at that address is not the person that lives.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: At that address. And I said, yeah, it is.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 5: It is.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: It's Maxx. And they said, no, it's not Max.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: At Hamish's apartment, search warrants uncovered a huge amount of
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: bank statements and fake documents. Police seized two laptops and
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: two mobile phones full of damning messages from people desperate
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: to get their money back from Hamish.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 5: We offered him the chance to be interviewed and he refused.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 5: But I just said to him, you know, I've got
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 5: a lot more people to look at here. And, you know,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 5: he said to me, these are all just... people who've
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 5: made bad business decisions. And I just said to him straight,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 5: I don't believe you, you're a liar and I'm going
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 5: to be spending the next good chunk of my time
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 5: making sure that I.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: Get you for all I can.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 8: Everything just spun out of control from that point in
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 8: time and I was frantic to get information. I had
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 8: no idea if his brother-in-law Chris had texted me, Tracy,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 8: please call me back on this number urgently, Chris. And
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 8: in brackets, he wrote Hamish's brother-in-law. And I called him
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 8: straight away. I said, Chris, who the fuck is Hamish?
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 8: The moment I realised that Max DeVita was Hamish McLaren
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 8: was when I was on the phone call to Tom.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 5: I just pulled over on the side of the road
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 5: halfway between the police station and lunch and called Tracy
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 5: and had a conversation with her that I'd basically locked
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 5: up her boyfriend, but he had a different name. She
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 5: was pretty sure of what she was telling me, that
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 5: the guy I'd arrested, his name was Max Tevita.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 8: I couldn't make sense of any of it because suddenly
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 8: I'm being told that it's not his name. It's not
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 8: his age. He is not who he said he was.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 8: And that, in fact, he is a serious criminal. And
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 8: that's when the world came crashing down.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 5: I said to her, you know, have you given him
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 5: any money? And she said, yeah, I have. And I
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 5: think she asked me, is that money gone?
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 7: And I said, probably.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 17: Probably.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 5: I remember thinking I've just kind of ruined someone's entire
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 5: world on a phone call.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: I think I vomited.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 6: I hung up.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 8: I felt so physically ill, like a visceral reaction in
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 8: my body.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: I was in shock.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 5: Just being a Tracy, there's a whole other element to
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 5: what I thought was just a fraudster, he's also willing
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 5: to pee in a relationship with someone to steal money,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 5: which is just another level on top of what was
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 5: already a terrible person.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: The betrayal was so deep.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 8: It was a betrayal on a financial level, of course,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 8: and I'd lost everything. But the emotional betrayal felt worse.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 8: because I had trusted him. I loved him. It made
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 8: me feel so disgusting that he was lying in a
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 8: bed next to me, pretending to love me, and in
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 8: his head, he is plotting to destroy me.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 10: I was very, very, very happy when they caught him,
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 10: when they got him, for sure.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that was.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 6: A good day.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 9: It was on the news and that's how I found out.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 9: One of my granddaughters rang and she said, have you
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 9: seen the news?
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 6: And I said, no. She said, well, watch it because
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 6: Hamish has just been picked up. It's a scam.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I was gobsmacked and absolutely dumbfounded.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 6: On the 14th of July, we were meant to get
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 6: the payment.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 9: That Hamish was saying that we would get, and that
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 9: was $ 10 million. Then, of course, on the 11th of July,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 9: he gets picked up.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 5: The biggest challenge with fraud cases is proving whether or
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 5: not it's a criminal offence, because there is always a
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 5: lot of ambiguity, and that's why they succeed, because they
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 5: create a shroud of ambiguity around them, which makes it
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 5: difficult for you to get to the bottom of what's
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 5: going on.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: You're talking about a situation which can easily be explained
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: away by the fact that these people did give Hamish
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: their money willingly. They were deceived, but they did give
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: it away willingly. Tom Zadrovich knew, in taking on this case,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: that he would need a mountain of very rock-solid, credible
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: evidence to keep Hamish behind bars. After he was arrested,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: Hamish was refused bail and held in remand awaiting trial.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: And over the coming months, Tom went to work finding
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: more victims to include in the case. Tom's hard work
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: paid off. In the end, the charges were expanded to
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: cover 15 victims and more than $ 7. 5 million worth of
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: stolen money. But remarkably, it seems that even being behind
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: bars wasn't enough to deter Hamish from conning. There are
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: allegations that he was ripping off some of his fellow prisoners.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 5: He's a master manipulator and he's in an environment where
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 5: he's got access to a lot of people for a
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 5: lot of time. He still manages to generate income for himself.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 5: There's no stopping him really, I don't think.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: He has become so adept at being able to con
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: people that it's become normal for him. Because that is
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: really the only way that he has been making money
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: for his entire career. So that's all he really knows.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: So it's not surprising that he's going to try and do.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 7: It in prison.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 5: He eventually pled guilty to fraud, multiple counts of fraud.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 5: It was good because I guess the victims didn't have
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 5: to go to court, but it also saved every single
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 5: thing he'd ever done being publicised on public record. So
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 5: I think it was more for him than for anyone else.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 10: I went along to the court because I wanted to
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 10: make sure that he was going away. It was only
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 10: at the hearing that I got to meet everyone properly
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 10: and then I realised how many people there were affected.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 10: Terribly sad to hear other people's stories. People who had
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 10: literally lost everything.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 5: When we did get to The sentence date, I was
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 5: nervous because the first question someone asks you is how
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 5: long do you think they'll get? What do you think
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 5: the outcome's gonna be? The general ballpark that I'd given
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 5: a lot of people conservatively was three years. I just
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 5: said that was the kind of my benchmark and as
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 5: long as I get more than that, I've gotta be happy.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 9: You're still numb sitting there listening to it all and thinking, well,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 9: is he going to go to jail or not go
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 9: to jail?
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 8: Hamish requested to be videoconferenced in that day and the
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 8: judge said no. And Hamish came up from below ground
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 8: and sat in the little cage in the middle, scribbling notes,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 8: never looked at once. That was quite confronting, seeing him
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 8: that day.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: This was a really important moment for the victims to
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: hear the full scope of Hamish's offending read out in court.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: And the judge was very clearly not going to be rushed.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: He took two and a half hours to go through
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: every case and every person's circumstances and provide in detail
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: an account of what Hamish had done and what he'd
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: taken from all these people and the really detrimental impact
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: that it had had on their lives.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 4: It was very quiet.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 8: We were all waiting on bated breath. When the judge
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 8: read out the sentence, we were all, it was just,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 8: you could hear a pin drop.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 5: The judge was running through the sequences and the victims
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 5: and the sentences issued to each. As I was writing
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 5: them down, I think one of the first ones was
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 5: three years straight off the bat.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 17: Mr McLaren, will you stand.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 7: While I pass sentence?
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 17: In my opinion, you conducted yourself as if you would
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 17: never be brought to account. You conducted yourself as if
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 17: you would not have a judgment day. You were mistaken.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 17: That judgment day is today. For the 17 matters, I
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 17: impose an aggregate sentence of 16 years imprisonment with 12
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 17: years non-parole.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: At that point, you had a room full of people
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: who he had hurt, whose lives he'd blown up. They
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: didn't know what to do initially. There was just complete silence.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 17: You can remove Mr McLaren from the court.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 7: It was massive.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 5: It's the largest sentence I'd ever had and it was.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 4: It was deserved.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 5: There is a number that I would think is too much.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 8: I just remember feeling just immense relief that Hamish would
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 8: be in jail and I didn't have to worry about him.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 8: I was relieved, exhausted, emotional and I was just glad
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 8: that it was done.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 12: Yeah, amazing.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 4: More than expected.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 17: Yeah.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: More than we thought.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 10: So Hamish, he's dealt a life sentence to all of
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 10: the victims that were in court today. 16 years isn't
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 10: long enough as far as I'm concerned compared to what
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 10: he's done to a lot of people.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: Seeing Hamish go to prison for a long time was
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: a big relief for his victims. But the $ 60 million
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: question was, and still is, what happened to all that money?
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: Many people are convinced that it's all gone, that he
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: spent it in a lavish lifestyle with private jets and
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: fast cars and big properties. But others are convinced that
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: there's still plenty out there, hidden away overseas in some
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: hard-to-reach place.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: There's an allegation that at least $ 14 million is in
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: an offshore account in the British Virgin Islands, that he
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: has moved money through a Singapore account and laundered money
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: through that Singapore account. There's allegations of property ownership in
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: Panama and in Mexico. And there's also an allegation of
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: a boat worth $ 600, 000 US dollars I believe there's a
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: good chance that Hamish has assets overseas. I believe there's
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: a good chance that somebody overseas is helping him to
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: hide those assets. And I believe that there's a good
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: chance that we can find those assets.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: Two years after his court case, Hamish won an appeal
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: to have his sentence reduced by 25% down to 12 years.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: He'll now be up for parole in 2026.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 6: I think the longer he stays in there, the better.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 9: He can't harm anybody because I don't believe he would
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 9: change at all.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 8: When I think about Hamish getting out of jail, I
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 8: have major concerns. And my concerns are that he will
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 8: just do this again. The guy doesn't know what else
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 8: to do. He's done it his whole life. He's not
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 8: going to be a barista, is he?
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 17: He is.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 4: He actually doesn't know what else to do. This will
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 4: happen again.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 10: He's a nasty, lying, cheating fiend. Without a doubt, I
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 10: think he will try again. I think he'll reinvent himself,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 10: another name. I think he'll have another go at it.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 10: I don't think he knows any other way to live.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 9: He's a thief.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 4: Thank you.