May 12, 2022 • 30 mins
When Jay Avery needs to take a break from his new wine business to go to rehab, Lizzie Mulder is there for him like family. And when she takes the reins of his winery, business is booming and Jay gets an attractive offer from a Chinese investor who wants to pump millions into his company. The only problem is that every time they set up a meeting, the investor inexplicably cancels at the last minute. When Jay and his wife Marla finally learn what Lizzie’s really been up to, they go straight to the police. But will anyone believe them?
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Just the arrogance of Lizzie Maulder. It made it easier
for me to go after her because I just didn't
like her. In May, authorities are piecing together the spectacular
cons of Laguna Beach c p A. Lizzie Mulder. When
all was said and done, how much money did she
get from you? But years before Lizzie scams that Newport
(00:27):
Beach salon, she starts doing the books for Jack Wines
in Napa Valley. She was a big part of helping
me get organized when I started the wine business. And
when Jay Avery checks himself into rehab for a prescription
pain pill addiction, Lizzie Maulder takes the reins of his
wine company, and what she does next almost drives Jay
(00:48):
to the brink. I got to a place to where
I wasn't sure if I really wanted to continue moving
forward with life. I'm Jonathan Walton and this is Queen
(01:09):
of the con The O C Savior Episode three, Grapes
of Wrath. Me and my partner, close friend May Alex.
We would lend the wine and then we go out
(01:30):
and sell it, just door to door. Basically, Jay Avery
starts Jack Wines in Napa Valley back in two thousand
nine and he's doing really well and it started to
get bigger than we had direct to consumer, which was online,
and that's when I decided to hire Lizzie to help
manage to drect to consumer. And the relationship started as
(01:51):
she was just kind of helping me do the accounts,
payable and receivable and managing the book so paying for
the foil of the cork, the bottles ship being as
well as uh storage. So I delegated a lot of
that to her. And when you started the wine business
and you hired Lizzie and she starts helping you do stuff,
(02:12):
you know, run the finances. What stage of your addiction
are you at. I'm not even full till yet. I'm
highly functioning. But I met her in oh nine and
it didn't get really bad until the middle of two
thousand eleven until that went stop treat me. So at
this point, you're running a business and Lizzie appears to
(02:33):
be not only helping you with your wine business, but
helping you recover, like helping you with your addiction. Yeah.
So when I was getting sober, her brother passed away
from a heroin overdose and he was also an opiate addict,
and she told me, you know, to get sober and
not to die on her too. Those were her zact words.
M Lizzie Mulder becomes like a sister to Jay. They
(02:57):
spend Christmas Is and Thanksgivings together. So when Jay checks
himself into rehab, Lizzie's got us back. And at that
point I needed to pay a bunch of bills and
do a bunch of stuff for the business and detox
in Utah. And then they wouldn't allow me adequate time
on the computer to get done, and I needed to
get done. They asked me if I had somebody that
(03:18):
could help me in this process, and they took me
down to Wells Fargo and I made her a signer
on the account and I gave her signing authority. So
whild Jay is in rehab, Lizzie takes full control of
Jack Wines and seems to be doing a fantastic job
bottling wine, doing the books, paying vendors, and paying the
(03:39):
company's taxes. Production actually ticks up under Lizzie's leadership. Jay
Avery and his wife Marla are relieved. And when I
got out, I really wanted to stay healthy and stay
active in my recovery and not have to focus on
some of that stuff. So I just let her run
with it until I got healthy, and then it seemed
(04:02):
like she was doing a good job, so I didn't
change anything in the In the short term, she was
also like giving him a lot of hope with investors
in these grandiose ideas of where the winery would go.
So not only is Lizzie doing a great job running
Jack Wines, but she's also courting new investors out of
(04:25):
China who have millions of dollars they potentially want to
invest in Jay's company. She said she had sent an
email to a company that helps young wineries grow and
go global, right, and depending if the products any good
and if we have marketing behind us, but they would
give us marketing dollars, they would help us find distribution.
(04:46):
But they needed more vidols, right, So we did a
cabin a chardonnay. It was a high end wine, but
we were going to make a couple of lower end
products that we could do volume but keep the high
end as well. So I had to make samples that
had to get bottles. I had to come up with labels.
I mean, it was a process and at the time,
I had the money to do it, So I said,
you know what I disc could potentially helped this brand
(05:08):
grow exponentially. This sounds like a good opportunity. So I said, Okay,
let's go forward. Let's examples, let's get bottles, Let's maybe
do new labels, you know, the foil of the cork.
I wanted to do a certain kind of cork. I mean,
there was all sorts of stuff that we wanted to do,
the adding little bells and whistles that created you know,
a better buzz around the name and better marketing. So
(05:29):
the process was she told me about it. I talked
to Brent Harrison. Brent Harrison gave me a list of
action items I needed to do for them to be
satisfied and investing into our company. Brent Harrison is the
liaison for a huge Chinese wine conglomerate, the Wine Trust.
(05:49):
They're excited to invest millions of dollars in Jack Wines.
They just need some more proof of concept stuff from
j We're gonna come up with, you know, three or
four more different rattles of wine, and then we were
going to ship it out to him and have them sample,
and then we were supposed to meet in Boston one
of the times, and they canceled, and then I spoke
(06:10):
to Brent Harrison for another six months over the phone. Meanwhile,
I think we're getting samples. I think we got the
foil of the core. Lizzie would send me pictures of
all this stuff when she was ordering. I said, it
looks great. We were getting ready for this meeting in Seattle,
and then the last minute they text me, probably around
(06:30):
ten am on a Friday, and I was supposed to
leave it around four pm to go to Seattle, and
they said they wanted another live scan. And a live
scan is what you have to do to be able
to get liquor licenses in the rest of the country.
It's just basically a background check. I had one done
before my d U I, but I wouldn't have been
(06:50):
able to pass another one but the last ten years,
so I should have been fine. And Lizzie said, well
they want an updated one, and said, well we just
had this woman two and half three years ago. I
should be fine, and she's like, I'll go, you hang back.
I don't want this to be on professionals, so that
doesn't make any sense. I'm going and I'm meeting these people.
(07:11):
I kind of had an idea that this wasn't really
adding up. So I called the Edgewater in Seattle for
assistance with an existing and I said, hey, is there
a room for Elizabeth Mulder in another room for Jay Avery?
And they said no, and I said, okay, So I
text Lizzy. I said, give me the confirmation number for
the hotel. So ten minutes later I got confirmation. So
(07:34):
then I called the hotel and I spoke to the
same lady and she said, someone just called and booked
that room. Then all of a sudden, Jay gets an
email from Brent Harrison canceling their Seattle meeting altogether. I
just I knew right then and there this whole thing
(07:56):
was a bunch of it was just bs. I knew,
and I cried, I'll be honest, man, I was. I
cannot believe that all this is not what it is.
I was so hurt, so I didn't even go to anger.
I didn't go. I just laid in bed for a
little bit and gathered myself and said, okay, what do
we do. Marla's text Lizzie and said, you know, we
(08:27):
know that this isn't adding up. And that's when Marla
asked me for all my big statements, all my emails
for the company, everything, and every day, for anywhere from
one to four hours a day, she sat in the
office and printed out everything. No one knew it at
a time, but Jay's wife, Marla would turn out to
(08:50):
be crucial to the case. There is another complaints though.
He was going through a very stressful, difficult divorce and
she was supposed to be doing all the paperwork or
all the tacks is and all the financials for it.
That's where my red flag went up was because his
(09:11):
child sports through the roof because he couldn't get these
financials in and it didn't make sense to me. It
was like a month yet link between the lawyer and her.
I kept trying to get all this financial information for
Core so that this could be wrapped up. Lizzie actually
(09:32):
knows Jay's ex wife and has her hands in all
of Jay's divorce paperwork, grossly inflating Jay's finances, making his
ex wife entitled to more alimony. So when Jay and
Marlaw finally sit down with Detective Jordan Miracian at the
Laguna Beach Police Department after months of being turned away,
(09:55):
Jay is convinced Lizzie Mulder and his ex wife are
concer spiring against him. And the short version of his
story was, while I was in rehab, my accountant colluded
with my ex wife, who I'm in a custody battle
with and child support battle with, and together they emptied
my account. That's what he thought initially. Yeah, it sounds
(10:18):
like a mess, right. And their theory was that Lizzie Molder,
my suspect, had elevated the books to make it appear
that Jay was making more money, so when Jay and
his ex wife went to court, she would get more
alimony and child So that was their theory. They didn't
(10:39):
think Lizzie was a con artist. They thought his ex
wife was putting her up to it so she could
get more alimony. Correct, And that turned out not to
be true at all. We couldn't prove or disprove it.
Were they hoots? I couldn't. I couldn't say. But what
I what I can say is it with fraud? Right,
I know how much money I make. Right? If I
(11:02):
had just pulled up here in a brand new Maserati,
anyone would say, Wow, where do you get the money?
Get the money? He's either really good at bitcoin, or
he's a crook because Steel Beach isn't paying him enough
to you know. Yeah. So I don't think the ex
wife was necessarily involved, but I think presented with the
(11:24):
information that Lizzie was giving her, probably, I mean I
would think that that's exciting. You know, I'm gonna get
more child support. I'm gonna get I'm gonna get more
support for my kids. So why would you ask any questions.
It's like when you get your taxes done, if you
get a big return, you're not gonna ask your accountant
how do you pull that off? You're just gonna say, Okay,
(11:44):
as long as I don't get audited, we're good. Right. Interesting,
So jase ex wife is not in on the scam.
Lizzie Mulder is feeding her lies too to ramp up
the drama and distract everyone from what's really going on.
After Jay's current wife, Marla judiciously examines all of the
(12:05):
financial records for Jack Wines, she starts putting the puzzle together.
So I was going through the emails and I found
the invoices, and I called these companies and I would say, like,
do you have an invoice from Jack Wines for this
amount with this invoice number, and they're like, no, that
doesn't exist. Remember though at first Detective Morackian isn't convinced
(12:29):
an actual crime has occurred. He's just meeting with Jay
and Marla to assuage them, to make them feel heard,
to be polite. I'm like, okay, this is gonna This
is a domestic court, family court, civil court, but not
criminal court. I'm out, what got you back in, Marla? Marla? Yeah,
(12:53):
So Marla had very meticulous records and emails. It gets
very convoluted within that you have a fake email address
with a fake name. And the bottom line is Marlow
was able to present documentation to show that there fake
people who are accepting invoices on behalf of Lizzie Molder
(13:15):
and Jack Wines, and money is not going from Jack
Wines to these people, It's going right back into Lizzie
Moulder's account, because she could prove that immediate. So that
swayed you. It swaghed me enough to at least pull
a case number and listen, given that it was the
(13:38):
end of the day, I gave j about forty five
minutes and Marla and then I said, well, you know,
we gotta cut the short. Um, I need you to
go back and get some bank records. I gave him
some homework. In my head, I was like, they probably
won't come back. Oh but Jay and Marla do come
back with tons of evidence, and Detective Miraqian begins piecing
(13:59):
together the full extent of Lizzie Moulder's scams, and then
she creates a fake invoice from the wine company right
shows Jay, Hey, here's the invoice for eight thousand dollars.
I paid it out of my own pocket. So you
just reimburse me, reimburse my company molder Financial or later
(14:20):
on income tax payments, which is a totally different scheme.
So she ha j fell victim two as well. Yes
she was making these tax payments allegedly, but really that
should that they were going to her own Bank of
America account labeled income tax payments. Yeah, and and income
tax payments. You know this This kind of goes into
(14:40):
the naivety of business owners. J. You owe the I
R S thirty dollars. I'm going to negotiate it down
to twenty tho. I just need you to cut a
check for your debt to the I R S. J says, Okay,
and then what Lizzie would do is she would call
him back and say, good new news. I negotiated it
(15:01):
down to twenty dollars. So when you see a check
go out to income tax payments for twenty grand, that's
your payment to the i r S. Not knowing that
you write a check to the Internal Revenue Service or
the U. S. Treasury or the U. S Treasure, you
don't write it to income tax payments. It's crazy to
me the Bank of America ever allowed a dB A
(15:22):
called income tax payments in the first place, but it
is crazy. But by far the craziest and most complex
scam Lizzie pulls on Jack Wines over the course of
a year is one for the record books. The Wine Trust,
that Chinese company that wants to pour millions of dollars
into Jay's winery. Their guy, Brent Harrison, talks to Jay
(15:45):
on the phone dozens of times, but always ends up
canceling in person meetings at the last minute. As you
might have already guessed, there is no Wine Trust and
Brent Harrison is Surprise, surprise, Lizzie Mulder. She created a website,
She created a d numbers, she created two personalities, Young
(16:08):
something a guy named Brent Harrison. So she created this
whole company basically saying they're going to invest into Jack Wines.
We need to do X, Y and Z to make
that happen. So I put it even more money and
to get bottles and juice and samples and all this stuff.
And that was like a good amount of money too.
And that company ended up not even being a real company.
(16:30):
So I spent probably a good twenty five hours, thirty
hours talking to Brent Harrison. Come to find out she
is Brent Harrison using spoo software. And I'm thinking, I'm
talking to a guy overseas that wants to invest into
my winery, and really I'm talking to that woman in
Orange County that is just scamming me. The whole time.
(16:52):
It sounded like a map it did. It sounded just
like a man. It was wild one a hundred number.
The website there was review was. There was a whole
bunch of stuff that she did that we looked into.
So for me, when this all came out, I felt
like a crazy person because I'm like, is this really
a thing? Or is this? Did she really do this?
(17:13):
It just dawned on me the reason she invented this
investor and correct me if I'm wrong. Was to get
you to believe that something big is going to happen
for the company, so you would put more money in
so she could take more money out. Yes. At this point,
Detective Morakian starts building a strong case against Lizzie Molder.
(17:35):
You had a fake Brent Harrison who I found. You
have to establish that there's a real So if you
invent a person, it's not a crime. Correct. You gotta
be kidding. If it's a real person that's be held
criminally or civilly liable, it's it's identity theft. But if
it's a whole invented person, there's no crime. And I
(17:55):
found a Brent Harrison that was on a board of
directors for some wine business that was plausible, And it
was like, that's who she's in person too. And I
talked to him. He's like, I've been out of the
wine business for ten years. I live in Washington with
my wife. And I said, well, you're the victim of identity.
Cup of down. Congratulations. So we were able to have that. Yeah,
(18:18):
that was a brilliant move. God, God bless you. I
got creative. Yeah, without I mean obviously without wine or
making anything up. If there is a real Brent Harrison,
and wherever he was living, he was involved in the
wine business. He did attend a meeting that j Avery
was at because j Avery, when he was initially bottling
(18:40):
the wine, he would go into local wineries and they
do a tasting, right, sell my wine. And from my
understanding was that Brent Harrison was the manager of one
of these small wine businesses, and he was also on
the board of directors for a conglomerate, but he was
out of the business. Now, the reason why he becomes
a victim. He could, for all intents and purposes, be suited.
(19:04):
Somebody could say, well, yeah, he can't they frauded by
Brent Harrison. He could have been involved, he wasn't, But yeah,
it becomes very tricky, and professional con artists actually prefer
their scams to be very tricky because the more complicated
they make their scams, the harder it is for victims
(19:26):
to explain what happened to them, and the harder it
is for police to believe the scams and investigate them.
Jay Avery has an uphill battle getting police to take
his case seriously, and he's lost a lot. So she
got me for like two eighty five altogether. Yeah, but
(19:49):
then the I r S sent me a letter for
it was like a quarter million. Probably lost a couple
of million over the divorce Lizzie I R S or
like a seven year period. Wow. Yeah, but yeah, and
that's a couple million you would not have lost if
Lizzie Mulder didn't inject herself into your life. Yeah. One
(20:21):
of the most interesting things about the Lizzie Milder case
is how her victims don't believe they're victims at first.
A few months after Jay Avery goes to police, Jesse Moulder,
Lizzie's husband, walks into the Laguna Beach Police Department and
tells Detective Iraqian his wife is stealing from her clients.
(20:44):
Jesse walks in, and he gives me the names of
about six different businesses, and so I start making phone
calls to all those businesses the following Monday, and every
single one of them. First, they didn't leave I was
a detective. Second, they didn't believe that Lizzie Mulder had
done anything wrong. And third, they weren't entirely convinced that
(21:11):
they were victims of fraud. Because as Mark Twain famously said,
it's easier to fool people than it is to convince
them that they've been fooled. It's also a testament to
how believable Lizzie really is. Well, the account documentation that
Lizzie was sending them, which was doctored, showed a balance.
(21:31):
Everything made sense on paper. So they were defending her
to you. Yeah, I mean they were basically saying, I
think you got the wrong girl. Lizzie's a sweetheart. I've
been at her house, I met her kids and her
beautiful family, and you know, she's amazing. She's amazing, all
right at being a sophisticated scammer. When Jay's wife Marla
(21:54):
starts calling all those companies listed on the fake invoices
Lizzie used to scam, Jack Wines, she gets some interesting reactions.
A lot of people were so nice and so cooperative,
and like, some people were really upset, and I think
it's somebody that she scammed too. In Laguda Beach was
(22:14):
like a Kinko's or something, and he was really upset.
Why is everybody telling me that? Then? Why is this
going on like that? Which I'm sure maybe it was
an emotional reaction. I'm sure somebody called Jay in the
midst of their friendship. I don't know what happened there,
but she took money out there all the time from
his account because he was so upset, which did I
(22:38):
totally understand, like I fully caught him off guard. I'm
sure I tracked down the guy who Marla fully caught
off guard that day. His name is Mike Cochrane. I've
been an entrepreneur since I've been about twenty eight years old. Dad, father,
four kids, run a series of businesses, but for a
(22:58):
solid twenty two years I on a print shop, and
that was when I got exposed to Lizzie Moulder. At
seven ft tall, Mike cuts an imposing figure. He's a
no funny business kind of guy, and printing is in
his blood. My dad was a printer, my grandfather was printer,
so I'm technically third generation. Wow California Print A Copy
(23:23):
is the name of Mike's shop, and in eleven he's
looking for a new c p A. We had a
series of tax issues. My tax guy used for fifteen
plus years, were tired. We're tired. Yeah, he said he
had some health issues, so we hired another guy. Through
referral a friend local to us, and after six months
(23:46):
he gave us our taxes for two years and he
made all sorts of errors, and my wife and I
were like, at this ain't our guy, so we paid him.
We then talked to a few of our clients, because
when you own a print shop, you're dealing with all
these small businesses. That's what a lot of the people
are our clients. You know, there are other business owners.
I was talking to a gal. She was a dog trainer.
(24:08):
We used to print business cards for her and put
up graphics on her cars and stuff like that to
promote her business. She knew a girl, young lady Elizabeth Mulder,
and referred to us. Said she's a tax repairer. And
what did she tell you about Lizzie Moulder at that point?
That she's good, like that she had stole her virtues.
You know, it's one of the attributes you reflect on
(24:28):
when you find out you've been ripped off as why
and how? And I mean, for me, it was simply
that I'm a very trusting in person and I feel
I can size people up. You know, I feel like
I know when there's a threat and when there isn't
I didn't feel any of that, and at that time
in my business. We got to know her in late
(24:49):
two thousand eleven and my dad was in the last
four months of his life, so I was super distracted.
You know. I would go into work, work three or
four hours, and then I'd get in my truck, drive
down to carlstadd where my dad was, spent three or
four hours with him, bring him stuff, hang out with him,
(25:09):
go see my mom, and then come home at eight
o'clock and I and repeat it. So, you know, that's
one of the things that you find about these scam
artist type people is Lizzie profiled certain people. Anybody she
could run across, but they had to fit a certain criteria.
They had to have funds behind them of some variety
or nature, and approachable, you know, and uh busy. Yeah,
(25:37):
I think that that was her biggest thing that she
got on us as we were busy. Yeah. Well, I
mean every small business owner is busy, because you know,
I come from a family of small business owners. When
you run a small business, you wear many hats. You
gotta be this this day, you've gotta be that that day.
You gotta do everything. You can't hire bodies for all
the work you gotta do it. Yeah, so of course
(25:57):
you're busy. Yeah. She targeted small businesses for sure. Yeah.
And then Lizzie Mulder starts grooming her new mark and
gets really close. Lizzie was around for a couple of
years to two and a half years. We were friends,
and she talked about when she was a young girl
that she started riding horses and she went through a
(26:19):
stable where she met the dog trainer. They rode horses,
then they started to competitively ride them long distance across
country horse racing. I think it's what they call it,
something like that sounds expensive? Is what sounds expensive? Man?
That sounds like Orange County, doesn't it. And she came
(26:40):
in and she said all the right things. She had
the right look, wearing her norse stroom's closed, good jewelry,
her nails are done, you know, she looked glamorous. Yeah,
and we kind of had a mini interview, my wife
and I. My wife was doing the books at the time.
We were really busy with our lives. You know. Lizzie
comes in, gives us her resume. Here's all my work experience,
(27:03):
here's you know what I know, and I graduated from Ah,
wasn't it Pepperdine Pepperdine University? I apologize, Yeah, Sima kum
Latta the boot you know. You know that's the best
part is when you start evaluating, when you get ripped off,
you find out what the fuck was wrong with me? Man?
(27:23):
I mean, how many people do I know that really
did graduate? Sima Kulata. You know, it's amazing how people's
minds can spend this stuff and make it convincing. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
I mean society functions by trust. You know, when there's
a knock at the door and it's the ups guy,
if you don't trust that it is, you'll never open
your door, You'll never leave your house. Society would grind
(27:46):
to a halt without trust. So that's what Lizzie Mulder
and other use. They know when they say they went
to Pepperdine, you're just gonna trust that that's true. Yeah.
The more I hear about Lizzie Mulder from My conquer
and the more curious I get about the dog trainer,
the dog trainer recommends her. The dog trainer recommended her. Yes,
(28:08):
it was like her second mom, she claimed, and all that.
So I run the dog Trainer through my three background
check databases, and I find a phone number and I
call her up and I get her voicemail. Now, I
don't want her to know I'm calling about Lizzie Malder
because then she might never call me back. But I
don't want to lie either, so I keep things they
(28:30):
but truthful. Hey, my name is Jonathan Walton. I'm working
on a podcast for I Heart Radio, and I really
want to interview you. Give me a call back as
soon as you can. So the next day, the dog
Trainer calls me back and blows my mind. According to her,
Lizzie Malder is being set up next time on Queen
(29:05):
of the Con the o C Savior. You know, the
embarrassing part about us is we're one of the lower
rip offs. Okay, she took eighteen thou dollars out of
my business. She took a little over twenty out of
my parents. And it looks like this con artist might
not be working alone. The dog Trainer tells me Lizzie
(29:25):
Maulder is innocent. Lizzie Maulder is not a con artist.
That's my mind is long right now, and speaking is
any evening. An expert weighs in on just how good
a con artist Lizzie Mulder really is. So, what's your
take on the dog trainer that Lizzie did a hell
of a job on her. I think that it's kind
(29:46):
of one of those things where they all stick together,
kind of like cops stick together, you know, of the
con The O C Savior is a production of a
y R Media and I heeart Media, Hosted by me
Jonathan Walton, Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions
(30:12):
and Eliza Rosen for A y R Media. Written by
Jonathan Walton, Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman.
Sound design by baked ZD Media, mixed and mastered by
Cameron Taggy. Sound editing, audio and studio engineering by Matt Jacobson.
(30:35):
Legal counsel for a y R Media, Gianni Douglas, Executive
producer for I Heeart Media, Maya Howard
Just the arrogance of Lizzie Maulder. It made it easier
for me to go after her because I just didn't
like her. In May, authorities are piecing together the spectacular
cons of Laguna Beach c p A. Lizzie Mulder. When
all was said and done, how much money did she
get from you? But years before Lizzie scams that Newport
(00:27):
Beach salon, she starts doing the books for Jack Wines
in Napa Valley. She was a big part of helping
me get organized when I started the wine business. And
when Jay Avery checks himself into rehab for a prescription
pain pill addiction, Lizzie Maulder takes the reins of his
wine company, and what she does next almost drives Jay
(00:48):
to the brink. I got to a place to where
I wasn't sure if I really wanted to continue moving
forward with life. I'm Jonathan Walton and this is Queen
(01:09):
of the con The O C Savior Episode three, Grapes
of Wrath. Me and my partner, close friend May Alex.
We would lend the wine and then we go out
(01:30):
and sell it, just door to door. Basically, Jay Avery
starts Jack Wines in Napa Valley back in two thousand
nine and he's doing really well and it started to
get bigger than we had direct to consumer, which was online,
and that's when I decided to hire Lizzie to help
manage to drect to consumer. And the relationship started as
(01:51):
she was just kind of helping me do the accounts,
payable and receivable and managing the book so paying for
the foil of the cork, the bottles ship being as
well as uh storage. So I delegated a lot of
that to her. And when you started the wine business
and you hired Lizzie and she starts helping you do stuff,
(02:12):
you know, run the finances. What stage of your addiction
are you at. I'm not even full till yet. I'm
highly functioning. But I met her in oh nine and
it didn't get really bad until the middle of two
thousand eleven until that went stop treat me. So at
this point, you're running a business and Lizzie appears to
(02:33):
be not only helping you with your wine business, but
helping you recover, like helping you with your addiction. Yeah.
So when I was getting sober, her brother passed away
from a heroin overdose and he was also an opiate addict,
and she told me, you know, to get sober and
not to die on her too. Those were her zact words.
M Lizzie Mulder becomes like a sister to Jay. They
(02:57):
spend Christmas Is and Thanksgivings together. So when Jay checks
himself into rehab, Lizzie's got us back. And at that
point I needed to pay a bunch of bills and
do a bunch of stuff for the business and detox
in Utah. And then they wouldn't allow me adequate time
on the computer to get done, and I needed to
get done. They asked me if I had somebody that
(03:18):
could help me in this process, and they took me
down to Wells Fargo and I made her a signer
on the account and I gave her signing authority. So
whild Jay is in rehab, Lizzie takes full control of
Jack Wines and seems to be doing a fantastic job
bottling wine, doing the books, paying vendors, and paying the
(03:39):
company's taxes. Production actually ticks up under Lizzie's leadership. Jay
Avery and his wife Marla are relieved. And when I
got out, I really wanted to stay healthy and stay
active in my recovery and not have to focus on
some of that stuff. So I just let her run
with it until I got healthy, and then it seemed
(04:02):
like she was doing a good job, so I didn't
change anything in the In the short term, she was
also like giving him a lot of hope with investors
in these grandiose ideas of where the winery would go.
So not only is Lizzie doing a great job running
Jack Wines, but she's also courting new investors out of
(04:25):
China who have millions of dollars they potentially want to
invest in Jay's company. She said she had sent an
email to a company that helps young wineries grow and
go global, right, and depending if the products any good
and if we have marketing behind us, but they would
give us marketing dollars, they would help us find distribution.
(04:46):
But they needed more vidols, right, So we did a
cabin a chardonnay. It was a high end wine, but
we were going to make a couple of lower end
products that we could do volume but keep the high
end as well. So I had to make samples that
had to get bottles. I had to come up with labels.
I mean, it was a process and at the time,
I had the money to do it, So I said,
you know what I disc could potentially helped this brand
(05:08):
grow exponentially. This sounds like a good opportunity. So I said, Okay,
let's go forward. Let's examples, let's get bottles, Let's maybe
do new labels, you know, the foil of the cork.
I wanted to do a certain kind of cork. I mean,
there was all sorts of stuff that we wanted to do,
the adding little bells and whistles that created you know,
a better buzz around the name and better marketing. So
(05:29):
the process was she told me about it. I talked
to Brent Harrison. Brent Harrison gave me a list of
action items I needed to do for them to be
satisfied and investing into our company. Brent Harrison is the
liaison for a huge Chinese wine conglomerate, the Wine Trust.
(05:49):
They're excited to invest millions of dollars in Jack Wines.
They just need some more proof of concept stuff from
j We're gonna come up with, you know, three or
four more different rattles of wine, and then we were
going to ship it out to him and have them sample,
and then we were supposed to meet in Boston one
of the times, and they canceled, and then I spoke
(06:10):
to Brent Harrison for another six months over the phone. Meanwhile,
I think we're getting samples. I think we got the
foil of the core. Lizzie would send me pictures of
all this stuff when she was ordering. I said, it
looks great. We were getting ready for this meeting in Seattle,
and then the last minute they text me, probably around
(06:30):
ten am on a Friday, and I was supposed to
leave it around four pm to go to Seattle, and
they said they wanted another live scan. And a live
scan is what you have to do to be able
to get liquor licenses in the rest of the country.
It's just basically a background check. I had one done
before my d U I, but I wouldn't have been
(06:50):
able to pass another one but the last ten years,
so I should have been fine. And Lizzie said, well
they want an updated one, and said, well we just
had this woman two and half three years ago. I
should be fine, and she's like, I'll go, you hang back.
I don't want this to be on professionals, so that
doesn't make any sense. I'm going and I'm meeting these people.
(07:11):
I kind of had an idea that this wasn't really
adding up. So I called the Edgewater in Seattle for
assistance with an existing and I said, hey, is there
a room for Elizabeth Mulder in another room for Jay Avery?
And they said no, and I said, okay, So I
text Lizzy. I said, give me the confirmation number for
the hotel. So ten minutes later I got confirmation. So
(07:34):
then I called the hotel and I spoke to the
same lady and she said, someone just called and booked
that room. Then all of a sudden, Jay gets an
email from Brent Harrison canceling their Seattle meeting altogether. I
just I knew right then and there this whole thing
(07:56):
was a bunch of it was just bs. I knew,
and I cried, I'll be honest, man, I was. I
cannot believe that all this is not what it is.
I was so hurt, so I didn't even go to anger.
I didn't go. I just laid in bed for a
little bit and gathered myself and said, okay, what do
we do. Marla's text Lizzie and said, you know, we
(08:27):
know that this isn't adding up. And that's when Marla
asked me for all my big statements, all my emails
for the company, everything, and every day, for anywhere from
one to four hours a day, she sat in the
office and printed out everything. No one knew it at
a time, but Jay's wife, Marla would turn out to
(08:50):
be crucial to the case. There is another complaints though.
He was going through a very stressful, difficult divorce and
she was supposed to be doing all the paperwork or
all the tacks is and all the financials for it.
That's where my red flag went up was because his
(09:11):
child sports through the roof because he couldn't get these
financials in and it didn't make sense to me. It
was like a month yet link between the lawyer and her.
I kept trying to get all this financial information for
Core so that this could be wrapped up. Lizzie actually
(09:32):
knows Jay's ex wife and has her hands in all
of Jay's divorce paperwork, grossly inflating Jay's finances, making his
ex wife entitled to more alimony. So when Jay and
Marlaw finally sit down with Detective Jordan Miracian at the
Laguna Beach Police Department after months of being turned away,
(09:55):
Jay is convinced Lizzie Mulder and his ex wife are
concer spiring against him. And the short version of his
story was, while I was in rehab, my accountant colluded
with my ex wife, who I'm in a custody battle
with and child support battle with, and together they emptied
my account. That's what he thought initially. Yeah, it sounds
(10:18):
like a mess, right. And their theory was that Lizzie Molder,
my suspect, had elevated the books to make it appear
that Jay was making more money, so when Jay and
his ex wife went to court, she would get more
alimony and child So that was their theory. They didn't
(10:39):
think Lizzie was a con artist. They thought his ex
wife was putting her up to it so she could
get more alimony. Correct, And that turned out not to
be true at all. We couldn't prove or disprove it.
Were they hoots? I couldn't. I couldn't say. But what
I what I can say is it with fraud? Right,
I know how much money I make. Right? If I
(11:02):
had just pulled up here in a brand new Maserati,
anyone would say, Wow, where do you get the money?
Get the money? He's either really good at bitcoin, or
he's a crook because Steel Beach isn't paying him enough
to you know. Yeah. So I don't think the ex
wife was necessarily involved, but I think presented with the
(11:24):
information that Lizzie was giving her, probably, I mean I
would think that that's exciting. You know, I'm gonna get
more child support. I'm gonna get I'm gonna get more
support for my kids. So why would you ask any questions.
It's like when you get your taxes done, if you
get a big return, you're not gonna ask your accountant
how do you pull that off? You're just gonna say, Okay,
(11:44):
as long as I don't get audited, we're good. Right. Interesting,
So jase ex wife is not in on the scam.
Lizzie Mulder is feeding her lies too to ramp up
the drama and distract everyone from what's really going on.
After Jay's current wife, Marla judiciously examines all of the
(12:05):
financial records for Jack Wines, she starts putting the puzzle together.
So I was going through the emails and I found
the invoices, and I called these companies and I would say, like,
do you have an invoice from Jack Wines for this
amount with this invoice number, and they're like, no, that
doesn't exist. Remember though at first Detective Morackian isn't convinced
(12:29):
an actual crime has occurred. He's just meeting with Jay
and Marla to assuage them, to make them feel heard,
to be polite. I'm like, okay, this is gonna This
is a domestic court, family court, civil court, but not
criminal court. I'm out, what got you back in, Marla? Marla? Yeah,
(12:53):
So Marla had very meticulous records and emails. It gets
very convoluted within that you have a fake email address
with a fake name. And the bottom line is Marlow
was able to present documentation to show that there fake
people who are accepting invoices on behalf of Lizzie Molder
(13:15):
and Jack Wines, and money is not going from Jack
Wines to these people, It's going right back into Lizzie
Moulder's account, because she could prove that immediate. So that
swayed you. It swaghed me enough to at least pull
a case number and listen, given that it was the
(13:38):
end of the day, I gave j about forty five
minutes and Marla and then I said, well, you know,
we gotta cut the short. Um, I need you to
go back and get some bank records. I gave him
some homework. In my head, I was like, they probably
won't come back. Oh but Jay and Marla do come
back with tons of evidence, and Detective Miraqian begins piecing
(13:59):
together the full extent of Lizzie Moulder's scams, and then
she creates a fake invoice from the wine company right
shows Jay, Hey, here's the invoice for eight thousand dollars.
I paid it out of my own pocket. So you
just reimburse me, reimburse my company molder Financial or later
(14:20):
on income tax payments, which is a totally different scheme.
So she ha j fell victim two as well. Yes
she was making these tax payments allegedly, but really that
should that they were going to her own Bank of
America account labeled income tax payments. Yeah, and and income
tax payments. You know this This kind of goes into
(14:40):
the naivety of business owners. J. You owe the I
R S thirty dollars. I'm going to negotiate it down
to twenty tho. I just need you to cut a
check for your debt to the I R S. J says, Okay,
and then what Lizzie would do is she would call
him back and say, good new news. I negotiated it
(15:01):
down to twenty dollars. So when you see a check
go out to income tax payments for twenty grand, that's
your payment to the i r S. Not knowing that
you write a check to the Internal Revenue Service or
the U. S. Treasury or the U. S Treasure, you
don't write it to income tax payments. It's crazy to
me the Bank of America ever allowed a dB A
(15:22):
called income tax payments in the first place, but it
is crazy. But by far the craziest and most complex
scam Lizzie pulls on Jack Wines over the course of
a year is one for the record books. The Wine Trust,
that Chinese company that wants to pour millions of dollars
into Jay's winery. Their guy, Brent Harrison, talks to Jay
(15:45):
on the phone dozens of times, but always ends up
canceling in person meetings at the last minute. As you
might have already guessed, there is no Wine Trust and
Brent Harrison is Surprise, surprise, Lizzie Mulder. She created a website,
She created a d numbers, she created two personalities, Young
(16:08):
something a guy named Brent Harrison. So she created this
whole company basically saying they're going to invest into Jack Wines.
We need to do X, Y and Z to make
that happen. So I put it even more money and
to get bottles and juice and samples and all this stuff.
And that was like a good amount of money too.
And that company ended up not even being a real company.
(16:30):
So I spent probably a good twenty five hours, thirty
hours talking to Brent Harrison. Come to find out she
is Brent Harrison using spoo software. And I'm thinking, I'm
talking to a guy overseas that wants to invest into
my winery, and really I'm talking to that woman in
Orange County that is just scamming me. The whole time.
(16:52):
It sounded like a map it did. It sounded just
like a man. It was wild one a hundred number.
The website there was review was. There was a whole
bunch of stuff that she did that we looked into.
So for me, when this all came out, I felt
like a crazy person because I'm like, is this really
a thing? Or is this? Did she really do this?
(17:13):
It just dawned on me the reason she invented this
investor and correct me if I'm wrong. Was to get
you to believe that something big is going to happen
for the company, so you would put more money in
so she could take more money out. Yes. At this point,
Detective Morakian starts building a strong case against Lizzie Molder.
(17:35):
You had a fake Brent Harrison who I found. You
have to establish that there's a real So if you
invent a person, it's not a crime. Correct. You gotta
be kidding. If it's a real person that's be held
criminally or civilly liable, it's it's identity theft. But if
it's a whole invented person, there's no crime. And I
(17:55):
found a Brent Harrison that was on a board of
directors for some wine business that was plausible, And it
was like, that's who she's in person too. And I
talked to him. He's like, I've been out of the
wine business for ten years. I live in Washington with
my wife. And I said, well, you're the victim of identity.
Cup of down. Congratulations. So we were able to have that. Yeah,
(18:18):
that was a brilliant move. God, God bless you. I
got creative. Yeah, without I mean obviously without wine or
making anything up. If there is a real Brent Harrison,
and wherever he was living, he was involved in the
wine business. He did attend a meeting that j Avery
was at because j Avery, when he was initially bottling
(18:40):
the wine, he would go into local wineries and they
do a tasting, right, sell my wine. And from my
understanding was that Brent Harrison was the manager of one
of these small wine businesses, and he was also on
the board of directors for a conglomerate, but he was
out of the business. Now, the reason why he becomes
a victim. He could, for all intents and purposes, be suited.
(19:04):
Somebody could say, well, yeah, he can't they frauded by
Brent Harrison. He could have been involved, he wasn't, But yeah,
it becomes very tricky, and professional con artists actually prefer
their scams to be very tricky because the more complicated
they make their scams, the harder it is for victims
(19:26):
to explain what happened to them, and the harder it
is for police to believe the scams and investigate them.
Jay Avery has an uphill battle getting police to take
his case seriously, and he's lost a lot. So she
got me for like two eighty five altogether. Yeah, but
(19:49):
then the I r S sent me a letter for
it was like a quarter million. Probably lost a couple
of million over the divorce Lizzie I R S or
like a seven year period. Wow. Yeah, but yeah, and
that's a couple million you would not have lost if
Lizzie Mulder didn't inject herself into your life. Yeah. One
(20:21):
of the most interesting things about the Lizzie Milder case
is how her victims don't believe they're victims at first.
A few months after Jay Avery goes to police, Jesse Moulder,
Lizzie's husband, walks into the Laguna Beach Police Department and
tells Detective Iraqian his wife is stealing from her clients.
(20:44):
Jesse walks in, and he gives me the names of
about six different businesses, and so I start making phone
calls to all those businesses the following Monday, and every
single one of them. First, they didn't leave I was
a detective. Second, they didn't believe that Lizzie Mulder had
done anything wrong. And third, they weren't entirely convinced that
(21:11):
they were victims of fraud. Because as Mark Twain famously said,
it's easier to fool people than it is to convince
them that they've been fooled. It's also a testament to
how believable Lizzie really is. Well, the account documentation that
Lizzie was sending them, which was doctored, showed a balance.
(21:31):
Everything made sense on paper. So they were defending her
to you. Yeah, I mean they were basically saying, I
think you got the wrong girl. Lizzie's a sweetheart. I've
been at her house, I met her kids and her
beautiful family, and you know, she's amazing. She's amazing, all
right at being a sophisticated scammer. When Jay's wife Marla
(21:54):
starts calling all those companies listed on the fake invoices
Lizzie used to scam, Jack Wines, she gets some interesting reactions.
A lot of people were so nice and so cooperative,
and like, some people were really upset, and I think
it's somebody that she scammed too. In Laguda Beach was
(22:14):
like a Kinko's or something, and he was really upset.
Why is everybody telling me that? Then? Why is this
going on like that? Which I'm sure maybe it was
an emotional reaction. I'm sure somebody called Jay in the
midst of their friendship. I don't know what happened there,
but she took money out there all the time from
his account because he was so upset, which did I
(22:38):
totally understand, like I fully caught him off guard. I'm
sure I tracked down the guy who Marla fully caught
off guard that day. His name is Mike Cochrane. I've
been an entrepreneur since I've been about twenty eight years old. Dad, father,
four kids, run a series of businesses, but for a
(22:58):
solid twenty two years I on a print shop, and
that was when I got exposed to Lizzie Moulder. At
seven ft tall, Mike cuts an imposing figure. He's a
no funny business kind of guy, and printing is in
his blood. My dad was a printer, my grandfather was printer,
so I'm technically third generation. Wow California Print A Copy
(23:23):
is the name of Mike's shop, and in eleven he's
looking for a new c p A. We had a
series of tax issues. My tax guy used for fifteen
plus years, were tired. We're tired. Yeah, he said he
had some health issues, so we hired another guy. Through
referral a friend local to us, and after six months
(23:46):
he gave us our taxes for two years and he
made all sorts of errors, and my wife and I
were like, at this ain't our guy, so we paid him.
We then talked to a few of our clients, because
when you own a print shop, you're dealing with all
these small businesses. That's what a lot of the people
are our clients. You know, there are other business owners.
I was talking to a gal. She was a dog trainer.
(24:08):
We used to print business cards for her and put
up graphics on her cars and stuff like that to
promote her business. She knew a girl, young lady Elizabeth Mulder,
and referred to us. Said she's a tax repairer. And
what did she tell you about Lizzie Moulder at that point?
That she's good, like that she had stole her virtues.
You know, it's one of the attributes you reflect on
(24:28):
when you find out you've been ripped off as why
and how? And I mean, for me, it was simply
that I'm a very trusting in person and I feel
I can size people up. You know, I feel like
I know when there's a threat and when there isn't
I didn't feel any of that, and at that time
in my business. We got to know her in late
(24:49):
two thousand eleven and my dad was in the last
four months of his life, so I was super distracted.
You know. I would go into work, work three or
four hours, and then I'd get in my truck, drive
down to carlstadd where my dad was, spent three or
four hours with him, bring him stuff, hang out with him,
(25:09):
go see my mom, and then come home at eight
o'clock and I and repeat it. So, you know, that's
one of the things that you find about these scam
artist type people is Lizzie profiled certain people. Anybody she
could run across, but they had to fit a certain criteria.
They had to have funds behind them of some variety
or nature, and approachable, you know, and uh busy. Yeah,
(25:37):
I think that that was her biggest thing that she
got on us as we were busy. Yeah. Well, I
mean every small business owner is busy, because you know,
I come from a family of small business owners. When
you run a small business, you wear many hats. You
gotta be this this day, you've gotta be that that day.
You gotta do everything. You can't hire bodies for all
the work you gotta do it. Yeah, so of course
(25:57):
you're busy. Yeah. She targeted small businesses for sure. Yeah.
And then Lizzie Mulder starts grooming her new mark and
gets really close. Lizzie was around for a couple of
years to two and a half years. We were friends,
and she talked about when she was a young girl
that she started riding horses and she went through a
(26:19):
stable where she met the dog trainer. They rode horses,
then they started to competitively ride them long distance across
country horse racing. I think it's what they call it,
something like that sounds expensive? Is what sounds expensive? Man?
That sounds like Orange County, doesn't it. And she came
(26:40):
in and she said all the right things. She had
the right look, wearing her norse stroom's closed, good jewelry,
her nails are done, you know, she looked glamorous. Yeah,
and we kind of had a mini interview, my wife
and I. My wife was doing the books at the time.
We were really busy with our lives. You know. Lizzie
comes in, gives us her resume. Here's all my work experience,
(27:03):
here's you know what I know, and I graduated from Ah,
wasn't it Pepperdine Pepperdine University? I apologize, Yeah, Sima kum
Latta the boot you know. You know that's the best
part is when you start evaluating, when you get ripped off,
you find out what the fuck was wrong with me? Man?
(27:23):
I mean, how many people do I know that really
did graduate? Sima Kulata. You know, it's amazing how people's
minds can spend this stuff and make it convincing. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
I mean society functions by trust. You know, when there's
a knock at the door and it's the ups guy,
if you don't trust that it is, you'll never open
your door, You'll never leave your house. Society would grind
(27:46):
to a halt without trust. So that's what Lizzie Mulder
and other use. They know when they say they went
to Pepperdine, you're just gonna trust that that's true. Yeah.
The more I hear about Lizzie Mulder from My conquer
and the more curious I get about the dog trainer,
the dog trainer recommends her. The dog trainer recommended her. Yes,
(28:08):
it was like her second mom, she claimed, and all that.
So I run the dog Trainer through my three background
check databases, and I find a phone number and I
call her up and I get her voicemail. Now, I
don't want her to know I'm calling about Lizzie Malder
because then she might never call me back. But I
don't want to lie either, so I keep things they
(28:30):
but truthful. Hey, my name is Jonathan Walton. I'm working
on a podcast for I Heart Radio, and I really
want to interview you. Give me a call back as
soon as you can. So the next day, the dog
Trainer calls me back and blows my mind. According to her,
Lizzie Malder is being set up next time on Queen
(29:05):
of the Con the o C Savior. You know, the
embarrassing part about us is we're one of the lower
rip offs. Okay, she took eighteen thou dollars out of
my business. She took a little over twenty out of
my parents. And it looks like this con artist might
not be working alone. The dog Trainer tells me Lizzie
(29:25):
Maulder is innocent. Lizzie Maulder is not a con artist.
That's my mind is long right now, and speaking is
any evening. An expert weighs in on just how good
a con artist Lizzie Mulder really is. So, what's your
take on the dog trainer that Lizzie did a hell
of a job on her. I think that it's kind
(29:46):
of one of those things where they all stick together,
kind of like cops stick together, you know, of the
con The O C Savior is a production of a
y R Media and I heeart Media, Hosted by me
Jonathan Walton, Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions
(30:12):
and Eliza Rosen for A y R Media. Written by
Jonathan Walton, Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman.
Sound design by baked ZD Media, mixed and mastered by
Cameron Taggy. Sound editing, audio and studio engineering by Matt Jacobson.
(30:35):
Legal counsel for a y R Media, Gianni Douglas, Executive
producer for I Heeart Media, Maya Howard
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