May 26, 2022 • 30 mins
While Lizzie Mulder is scamming the salon, the print shop, and the winery, her biggest victim yet is unknowingly waiting in the wings. Jen Rodriguez is a co-worker of Lizzie’s at a successful website that sells luxury travel experiences to a high-end clientele. Lizzie uses every dirty trick in her arsenal of cons and causes the company to lose millions.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
She took eighteen thousand dollars out of my business. She
took a little over twenty dollars out of my parents.
Laguna Beach c p A. Lizzie Mulder is racking up
victims in Orange County as fast as waves lapping up
on its shores. How much money did she get from you?
She got me for like two eighty five altogether, tricking
(00:27):
her clients into writing high dollar checks made out to
income tax payments. They all think those checks are going
to the I R S, but really they're getting deposited
into a secret bank account that Lizzie Mulder creates called
income tax payments. That's bullshit, man, I mean, that's lack
(00:48):
of moral accountability. And while Lizzie's victims lose hundreds of
thousands to her clever scam, Jen Rodriguez's boss is about
to blow them all out of the water, because how
much money did your boss end up losing? Millions? I'm
(01:15):
Jonathan Walton and this is Queen of the Con The
O C Savior, Episode five, Devil in the Den. Explain
to me, how did Lizzie steal money from your boss?
(01:35):
Blindly robbed her blind forensic accountant Jen Rodriguez intensely regrets
being friends with Lizzie Mulder for a handful of years
while working at the same company selling luxury experiences to
high end clientele and her kids with my kids, What
does that make you feel like? Now? What runs to
(01:56):
your head? You know in a moment, sometimes I feel
like a bad mom because I opened my family up,
and you know, I kind of invited the devil into
the den. That makes me uneasy because I do have
a sense of responsibility to protect my family, and you know,
I made them a little bit more vulnerable than they
needed to be, And that's uneasy for sure. That's a regret.
(02:18):
I feel the exact same way, like you invited this
vampire into your world, and yeah, introduced them to people,
vouched for them, vouched for them unwittingly helped them scam people, right,
I know how you feel. Mari did that to me too,
and Mary used our relationship to establish herself as this
trustworthy person who knows, you know, my husband and I
(02:39):
were good people. So like she uses our reputation to
scam other people, and Lizzie Maulda did the same to you.
When you realize that your vision of seeing the good
in people is what caused so much pain and hurt
to so many people. I feel like you blame yourself.
I mean, there's a level of respond instability, and you should.
(03:02):
It's like a thing you have to go through. And
there were so many things that as an accountant, as
a controller, having a background, you know, knowing processes and protocol,
and I just have to say, my husband always saw
through Lizzie's bullshit. He always knew, like he had such intuition,
(03:24):
like there's something not right. But at the time, you know,
I would have never assumed somebody would steal like that
is like the furthest thing from my mind. I couldn't
even like that wasn't a thing. I thought, maybe, you know,
she's a little arrogant, yeah, and a little statistic yeah.
But I never would have thought there was more to
that story. But he called it from the time he
(03:45):
met her the first law and actually catches Lizzie in
is that Salesforce database call that we talked about in
the last episode. It's like a five thousand dollar subscription.
I had told her, Lizzy, you need to pay this bill.
There I'm shut down, and she had told me, I'm
on the phone right now with the guy. Well, I
(04:06):
was on the phone with the guy and she was
texting me blow by blow, but I was on the
phone with Salesforce and there was just no so you
knew every single text at that point. It was a
lot lie. Yeah, how did you find out Lizzie was
up to no good with the fraud part or everything?
(04:27):
It seems like it was a cascading series of events
that happened one after the other. We realize she's she's
been scamming your boss. But but how specifically, like what
was the first sign? That was the first sign with
the Salesforce called? However, in that moment, being naive to
all of this, there's no way I would have ever
(04:49):
put together that somebody created this being. I had no
idea I was because it just seems so out of
left field. Evil? Who could? Who still is it still is?
Six years later, it's still on ad the mobile to me? However,
what happened that really put it all into the tumbling
snowball effect was one of our friends that Lizzie was
(05:10):
good friends with called me and said, have you heard
the rumors? There were rumors and what were those rumors
that Lizzie had done some nefarious things. She had a
bank account in one of their other friends names and
credit cards and their names. And Jesse discovered all this
stuff when Lizzie was gone on a vacation. Remember Jesse
(05:34):
is Lizzie's husband, and at that time she said, she's
writing these checks and their two income tax payments. Well,
I happen to have all the mail told all this.
You think she talked to me, Um, that's a big
fat no. She won't talk to me, but thankfully Jen will.
(05:57):
One of my greatest mentors, John Toms, like he always said,
this is how you touch people is through stories. That's
why I'm here with you. It's because, yeah, through this podcast,
my story is going to touch a bookkeeper or a friend,
a parent, a child, whatever, whoever. They're going to hear
the story and hear your story and say, oh my gosh,
this is a thing like yes, Gen Rodriguez, a more
(06:23):
benevolent creature you will never find anyway. After Jenny, here's
the rumors that Lizzie is scanning people. She does what
any good friend would do. I called Lucy and said,
there's some things going on and rumors going around. Are
you okay? And the panic and the fear in her voice.
(06:48):
I mean, unless she is really a phenomenal actor. It
felt to me her panic and fear in her voice
is what made it really real for me, was because
I realized, oh my, that she really did do this,
like this is real. After that phone call, Jen gets
very suspicious that things aren't adding up. She suddenly worries
(07:10):
Lizzie is involved in something criminal. So gend decides to
take matters into her own hands in an attempt to
figure out what Lizzie's up to. I used to carry
the mail from my boss and give it to Lizzie.
I used to transfer back and forth, like you know.
I'd get her mail and I'd give it to her.
I never would open her mail because it just wasn't
part of my duty or my responsibilities. I just was
(07:32):
a courier for the mail. And I happen to have
a stack of her mail, and I ripped open a
big statement right then and there and saw right there
on the bank statement that there was a check for
eight thousand dollars to income tax payments. And I literally
almost vomited, Oh my God, like vomited, because you knew
(07:52):
at that point that that's going into Lizzie's account. Well,
I didn't even go to that place yet because that
was even like we you have account with income tax payments,
like what it was so unfathols. It's like dreaming up
the Game of Thrones, Like how could you dream that up?
Like like there were so many layers, because I don't
(08:12):
think most people would think they could open an account
at a bank called income tax payments. People think the
bank would flag it, but you would think they won't.
They won't. Lizzie Malder takes income tax payment checks from
(08:34):
Jen's boss for five years. She would sit down with
her and prepare her quarterly numbers based off her business
sales and revenue, and she would say, okay, this is
what you need to pay for your estimated taxes, and
she would prepare payment, she would sign the check, she
would take the check, she would leave her house and
go and deposit the check directly into our bank account
(08:56):
income tax payments. But her bank account was really Molder
Financial and Consulting, And then she had a d b
A underneath that account is income tax payment, which was
really clever because technically, in Bake jargon, the income tax payment,
the d B A is technically a third party d
(09:20):
b A which means doing business as so they're technically
not clients of the bank, which is this great banking law.
It's a loophole that she either was a complete genius
or she got really lucky because she's letting now the
bank off the hook. Yes, because income tax Payments technically
(09:41):
didn't open the account, Mulder Financial did, so she created
a layer. And this is very common in con you know,
like when you have money wiring, you do a lot
of layering because it helps to hide it. Lizzie Mulder
is a crafty one for sure to create layers. As
Jen says, not only does Lizzie use a d b
(10:04):
A called income Tax Payments to open a new bank account,
Detective Iraqi and uncovers Lizzie actually has Jesse, her husband
opened that bank account for her, so she's not directly
connected to it at all. Every month in Lizzie's Bank
of America account that we found actually completely by accident.
(10:28):
So when you execute a search warrant to the bank,
you have to be very specific. I need all the
accounts under this name, this social security number. So Bank
of America returned the search warrant and I had Molder
Financial Right, which is Lizzie's accounting business. And when I
got that search warrant back, I'm looking at it and
(10:49):
I'm not really seeing anything suspicious. Had a balance of
like eight grand, you know, ten thousand in deposits, twelve
thousand in withdraws, you know, just normal everyday transactions. And
I called Bank of America and I said, something's wrong
here because this woman is cashing these checks. And the
(11:10):
Bank of America investigator, they're very limited on what they
can tell us. They could, they have to stay within
the search warrant. And so the investigator, which is usually
a retired cop right says, well, there's another account here,
but it's not under Lizzie Moulder. She's an authorized signer
on the account. So like if your husband has a
bank account and he adds you as a signer, you
(11:33):
can essentially go into the bank and cash a check, right,
but it's his account. But it's his account, and if
Detective Moracian issues a search warrant on you, his account
is not going to show up. So what Lizzie had
done is she created Income Tax Payments dB A doing
(11:53):
business as under Jesse Moulder, her husband, and then added
herself as a signer, and that is completely intentional distance herself.
She must have known it wouldn't come up in a
search warrant like that's pretty fucking meticulous. Either that or
she didn't care if Jesse got caught. Most con artists
(12:15):
are psychopaths, incapable of feeling empathy for other human beings,
so maybe she really doesn't care if her husband, Jesse
gets caught. The other thing about psychopaths is they're compulsive
and convincing liars, and most victims don't discover the lie
until it's way too late. Part of what she did, too,
(12:36):
is she diminished my knowledge to my boss because my
boss would never listen. If I would say, hey, this
doesn't quite make sense, you would get batted down. So
she was programming your boss against you, and you against
your boss. She probably was I swear, divide and conquer.
It's every con artist's first move. Don't you think Lizzie
(12:58):
was talking ship about Jen to Jen's boss, And that's
one of the reasons maybe Jen's boss was so dismissive
when Jen would points out things. Detective Iraqian is now
keenly aware of the entirety of Lizzie Malder's m O.
One of the things Lizzie was famous for is in
a roundabout way, making people feel stupid, right, like, you
(13:22):
know what, you run a podcast, I'm an accountant. Let
me handle it, right, you just focus on your podcast.
That's kind of how she would talk to people. And
every single victim I talked to said the same thing.
They said, Yeah. Every time I would start asking questions,
she would just get dismissive or she would throw a
(13:42):
temper tantrum and just get angry, like consulted, how dare I?
How dare you? I? Pepper died right, and and so
Jen's are very like not m a stake kind of person,
and Lizzie kind of browbeats people into hey, you you
stay in your life. And that's how Lizzie operates. And
Lizzie's lane is her income tax payment bank account scam,
(14:06):
but that isn't the only method she employs. Took con
money out of Jen's boss. Lizzie was supposed to get
a quote for business insurance and it was supposed to
be for five and Lizzie wrote the check for five thousand,
and my boss caught it and she was able to
get the money back, which was kind of interesting, but
she made it out to this mystery person that was
(14:28):
supposedly this insurance agent and that wasn't even real. When
I went on vacation is when she had a heyday
because she took the checks that I wrote to vendors
and cash him into personal check. Did she write checks
to Lizzie Molder or her company or income tax payments?
It wasn't even to anything. It was to other vendors.
(14:50):
But the bank never caught it. Oh, so she just
deposited us checks in her account. Boy, banks are sloppy.
You think when you write the name on the check
that only that person can cash it, but it's not
the case. And the reason why in for all of
us consumers and people that want to get their money fast,
is because check deposits are automated and so they go
(15:13):
through so unless something is flagged, then it's not caught.
Often there were so many checks that didn't have signatures
that she didn't even they weren't even signed, but they
never got caught and the bank cashed them. And the
bank cashed them without even catching it. So many Lizzie
steals more than eight hundred thousand dollars from Jen's boss,
(15:36):
which is a fortune, but the financial fallout Lizzie scams
create and I r s penalties and legal fees is
way more than that. How much money did your boss
end up losing millions, millions of dollars because of Lizzie Mulder? Gosh,
that would devastate anyone. And in the same way that
(15:56):
my con artist, the Irish Heiress changes the actory of
my life, forever con artist Lizzie Maulder changes the trajectory
of Jen's life too. At the time, you were not
a forensic accountant, So this whole experience with Lizzie Maulder
inspired you to become out of almost necessity. Yes, first
(16:17):
of all, I've had sixteen or eighteen years of accounting experience,
day to day operations, being a controller, reconciliation, like all
the things that you do to run a business. But
at the time, when I was younger, a forensic accountant
was when you know, you sue a partner and you
need to go through their books, or you're getting divorced
and you need to go through your ex husband's books.
(16:39):
Forensic accounting wasn't hey, let's look at fraud. This is
fairly new. It's now more a thing than ever. I mean,
it's really not new, but we're experiencing it more so.
At the same time, Jen is going through all her
boss's financial records to ferret out exactly how Lizzie Maulder
scammed her. She's studying for an entirely new career. I
(17:03):
threw myself into school and I got a master's in
forensic accounting Digital forensics with the concentration data analytics also,
because that's what it really boils down to is looking
at a lot of data. You are amazing and I'm
not the only one who thinks so. Jen was friends
with Lizzie Moulder, and Jen started discovering this fraud before
(17:25):
I even called her. Detector Jordan Moracian quickly figures out
that soon to be forensic accountant Jen Rodriguez is about
to become a powerful ally. Jen's boss. She's operating this
business and she's got Jen Rodriguez who is doing a
lot of the accounting and bookkeeping, and she's also got
(17:48):
Lizzie who's the accountant. And so when Jed, who is
very meticulous, is sending these records to Lizzie and Lizzie's
refusing to send things back Jen starts getting suspicious and
going to her boss, who's a friend. But in Jen's
boss's ear is this Pepperdine educated accountant who's very manipulative.
(18:11):
And you have to understand the personality of Jen Rodriguez's boss.
You know, if she were to take her car to
get washed and they were to say, would you like
us to wax it, she'd say, I don't know. You
guys do the car wash. You do whatever you think
you need to do, and just tell me how much. Right.
She's not a numbers person, you know, And that's why
Lizzie was able to get so many checks out of her.
(18:37):
Jen discovered very early on, like before things got really bad.
Jen discovered a check that was out of place, like, hey,
this doesn't make sense. This check was cashed twice or whatever,
and Jen contacted Lizzie. Lizzie blew up, and Jen brought
(18:57):
it to her boss's attention, and within minutes Lizzie had
cleared it up. Lizzie had an email from a fake
person saying, our mistake, we didn't mean to cash that check.
We've refunded you the money. Here you go, and and
Lizzie immediately deposits some money back and account. Jen, who
can't see the account, just sees this email and it's like, well,
(19:21):
I'm gonna keep my eye on her. But it looks
like it was a mistake. But it wasn't a mistake.
It was it was part of the Czech frond scheme.
Jen and Detective Iraqian hit it off almost immediately. How
did Detective Morakian enter your life? Okay, so we met
first only on the phone and called yes, I think
(19:43):
he had reached out to my boss, and then my
boss gave him approval to talk to me and he
called me, and I remember I was in the car
with my husband and my son, and I remember thinking like,
this is really a thing, like a police police officers
calling me, you know, And I got to talk to him.
And shortly after that phone call, Jen Rodriguez becomes instrumental
(20:04):
in the Lizzie Mulder investigation. Jen Rodriguez is really kind
of the person that helped keep me organized and also
helped explain that scheme because that's tricky to follow, It's
very tricky. Jen Rodriguez is really good with numbers, so
(20:33):
she starts assisting Detective Miraqian with untangling the complicated financial
web of scams that Lizzie Mulder pulls on her boss.
So you had an accounting background, yes, and you started
helping detective Miraqian with all these numbers, trying to trace
the money and figure out put the pieces together. And
(20:54):
so then I start telling him where the money had gone.
It had already tracked that it was going to this one,
found the A, B A. And I was able to
find just some little pieces that I knew, not knowing
that I was like really doing detective work, but just
trying to follow the money. Right, money's gone, you gotta
follow the money. Common sense. So we talked and we
(21:16):
put it together. You know, it developed so organically because
he had skills and tools and things that I didn't have.
Like so I would say, can you subpoena death? And
like if we get the bank records, we can find that.
You would point out things that he didn't necessarily know
he needed, or he would say like we could do this,
and I be like, oh, if we could do this,
we could get that. Like H and R block was one.
(21:38):
I think he had a subpoena because I was like, well,
if we could see she used H and R block
to file all these taxes, we can see where the
money went. So that was like one thing. He was
able to do that. So at first I felt like
sometimes we were throwing pasta against the wall to see
what it would stick. I probably wasted a lot of
energy and time because I was just trying to find everything.
Right now, I know that you need to have a
(21:59):
little bit more our focus intention when you're working, but
I was just consuming everything I could because I wanted
to understand you wanted justice and they wanted to hopefully
find the money. I thought, Oh, if I could just
get the money, it'll I'll be okay. You can help
your boss, Yeah, they'll be okay. Gen Rodriguez is truly
a godsend for Detective Miraqian because the Lizzie Maulder case
(22:22):
is quickly getting insanely complicated and expansive as Detective Miraqian
starts finding more and more victims and tries to convince
each and every one of them to press charges. The
deputy disattorney who prosecuted my case, my con artist told
me at the onset because it would be like twenty
(22:43):
something court appearances over like more than a year. It
took so much of my time and off work and everything.
He said, most people in your position just stopped coming
to court and we have to drop the chargers. You
have to drop the case, Like that's not happening. But
I understand. It can wear you down and people don't
want to dissipate, and if you don't participate, they there's
no case. They dismiss it. And I stayed on these victims.
(23:05):
They all have my personal cell, which is amazing. I
was calling them, checking in with them, just keeping them
from giving up. And it wasn't because I'm this great detective.
It was because I had put so much of my
time into it that I didn't want to lose it
based on someone deciding last minute they wanted to back out.
(23:25):
It would have been incredibly frustrating and it would have
been a disservice to everybody else. Yeah. I was taking
calls at all hours of the night to keep victims
in in the fight. Right, My wife, who never complains
about anything, started complaining. She started saying, you're always on
your face this case. It's sucking up. You'd think Laguna
(23:46):
Beach p D would be circling the wagons right about
now and assisting their ace detective with this incredibly complicated
and far reaching case. But you'd be dead wrong. I
didn't get very much suppoor from my department. Why they
run a business. Essentially, we're gonna Beach PD runs a business,
and their businesses the entire community, not just this one victim, right,
(24:10):
which I understand. But I think police departments as a whole,
not the one I work for now, But I think
police departments as a whole. Stop looking at people as
people your case number eighteen dash zero zero one seven one,
you know. And I kept trying to explain to my
command staff, this is bigger than Laguna. I had a
(24:33):
number of detectives blow me off from other departments. I
had some that were very helpful. Newport Beach PD was
very helpful, but there were a couple other jurisdictions that, yeah, dude,
whatever you want to do with this case, that's yours.
I don't want any part of it. Cool right. So
when I say they weren't cooperative or weren't helpful, what
(24:54):
I mean by that is I was trying to get
them to shoulder some of this investigation right, to put
some hours in so you're not taking calls with your
wife in bed at night, or I'm not driving all
the way out San clement A to interview the victims
when they could send their local people. So you didn't
get much support. You kind of inadvertently recruited Jen because
(25:15):
nobody was helping you. And here you have Jen who's
savvy with numbers and accounting and knows all this stuff.
She kind of became your investigator. She like helped you
with this case, right, And that's why I'm always very
quick to give her credit. You know, Jen would get
spreadsheets done for me on Excel that would normally take
me an entire day. I'm just a beat cop, right,
(25:39):
I'm just a guy who goes out knuckle dragging beat
cop who has a grease board and he's writing a
bunch of numbers on a grease board that could be
erased by the cleaning crew. And I've got do not
a race on it, it's not scientific. Whereas I've got
gen Rodriguez sending me an Excel spreadsheets and like I
would lose the check, got you can't find this one
(26:01):
check And she'd be like, oh, I got it, check
your email. I mean just very organized. Jordan and I
were like obsessed, Like I mean, I literally left like
one hour a night for like three years. You know,
we had to get to it. We had to get
to all the answers, and those answers are coming from
(26:22):
a multitude of directions. While victims like Jay and Marla
Avery from jack Wines show up and report Lizzie Mulder
directly to police, but when we did talk to Jordan Rocky,
he was like the first person not to make me
feel crazy. Other victims first surface as random names on
some of Lizzie's forged documents, victims like Mike Cochrane. Lizzie
(26:45):
Mulder entered our life when I was the owner and
operator of print shop down in Irvine. But by far
the most bizarre twist in this con case is the
day Jesse Mulder Lizzie his husband shows up but Laguna BEACHPD,
seemingly out of the blue and drops a dime on
(27:06):
his wife. I'm walking out of the station and in
walks Jesse Moulder. I need to talk to a detective. Wow,
I mean literally like just like that. I look at him,
I'm a detective, how can I help you? And he says,
I'm a firefighter And I think my wife is scamming
her clients out of money, and I'm afraid that she's
(27:29):
got me involved in it. All right, let's talk. So
Jesse's with a friend of his who is an attorney,
not necessarily his attorney, but an attorney. So we sit
down in the conference room and Jesse proceeds to tell
me this story. And I don't know that he's married
to Lizzie Moulder. So Jesse sits down with me. He
(27:53):
tells me how he's a brand new firefighter in the
city of Orange. He's married to a woman named Lizzie
or he called her Aizabeth, and she's an accountant. And
I came home because I thought she was cheating on me.
I started going through the mail and I found all
these bills for all these different people, and all these
credit cards that are in her name and in the
(28:15):
name of her business, and I think she's scamming people
out of millions of dollars. And I didn't put two
and two together yet, and I said, well, what's your
wife's name? And he goes Elizabeth Mulder, but she goes
by Lizzie and I went, okay, uh, yeah, we need
to talk next time. On Queen of the con the
(28:37):
O C. Savior, Lizzie Mulder and Bushes. Detective Morackian, how
the hell did that happen? Lizzie showed up, quote unquote,
just showed up, happened to be in the neighborhood, but
in the end it comes back to bite her hard.
So yeah, out con the con at that point, and
they coned me at first. I played queen of the con.
(29:10):
The O C. Savior is a production of A y
R Media and I Heart Media, hosted by Me Jonathan Walton,
Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions and Eliza
Rosen for A y R Media. Written by Jonathan Walton,
Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman. Sound
(29:34):
design by baked ZD Media, mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggy.
Sound editing, audio and studio engineering by Matt Jacobson. Legal
counsel for A y R Media, Gianni Douglas, Executive producer
for I Heart Media. Maya Howard You
She took eighteen thousand dollars out of my business. She
took a little over twenty dollars out of my parents.
Laguna Beach c p A. Lizzie Mulder is racking up
victims in Orange County as fast as waves lapping up
on its shores. How much money did she get from you?
She got me for like two eighty five altogether, tricking
(00:27):
her clients into writing high dollar checks made out to
income tax payments. They all think those checks are going
to the I R S, but really they're getting deposited
into a secret bank account that Lizzie Mulder creates called
income tax payments. That's bullshit, man, I mean, that's lack
(00:48):
of moral accountability. And while Lizzie's victims lose hundreds of
thousands to her clever scam, Jen Rodriguez's boss is about
to blow them all out of the water, because how
much money did your boss end up losing? Millions? I'm
(01:15):
Jonathan Walton and this is Queen of the Con The
O C Savior, Episode five, Devil in the Den. Explain
to me, how did Lizzie steal money from your boss?
(01:35):
Blindly robbed her blind forensic accountant Jen Rodriguez intensely regrets
being friends with Lizzie Mulder for a handful of years
while working at the same company selling luxury experiences to
high end clientele and her kids with my kids, What
does that make you feel like? Now? What runs to
(01:56):
your head? You know in a moment, sometimes I feel
like a bad mom because I opened my family up,
and you know, I kind of invited the devil into
the den. That makes me uneasy because I do have
a sense of responsibility to protect my family, and you know,
I made them a little bit more vulnerable than they
needed to be, And that's uneasy for sure. That's a regret.
(02:18):
I feel the exact same way, like you invited this
vampire into your world, and yeah, introduced them to people,
vouched for them, vouched for them unwittingly helped them scam people, right,
I know how you feel. Mari did that to me too,
and Mary used our relationship to establish herself as this
trustworthy person who knows, you know, my husband and I
(02:39):
were good people. So like she uses our reputation to
scam other people, and Lizzie Maulda did the same to you.
When you realize that your vision of seeing the good
in people is what caused so much pain and hurt
to so many people. I feel like you blame yourself.
I mean, there's a level of respond instability, and you should.
(03:02):
It's like a thing you have to go through. And
there were so many things that as an accountant, as
a controller, having a background, you know, knowing processes and protocol,
and I just have to say, my husband always saw
through Lizzie's bullshit. He always knew, like he had such intuition,
(03:24):
like there's something not right. But at the time, you know,
I would have never assumed somebody would steal like that
is like the furthest thing from my mind. I couldn't
even like that wasn't a thing. I thought, maybe, you know,
she's a little arrogant, yeah, and a little statistic yeah.
But I never would have thought there was more to
that story. But he called it from the time he
(03:45):
met her the first law and actually catches Lizzie in
is that Salesforce database call that we talked about in
the last episode. It's like a five thousand dollar subscription.
I had told her, Lizzy, you need to pay this bill.
There I'm shut down, and she had told me, I'm
on the phone right now with the guy. Well, I
(04:06):
was on the phone with the guy and she was
texting me blow by blow, but I was on the
phone with Salesforce and there was just no so you
knew every single text at that point. It was a
lot lie. Yeah, how did you find out Lizzie was
up to no good with the fraud part or everything?
(04:27):
It seems like it was a cascading series of events
that happened one after the other. We realize she's she's
been scamming your boss. But but how specifically, like what
was the first sign? That was the first sign with
the Salesforce called? However, in that moment, being naive to
all of this, there's no way I would have ever
(04:49):
put together that somebody created this being. I had no
idea I was because it just seems so out of
left field. Evil? Who could? Who still is it still is?
Six years later, it's still on ad the mobile to me? However,
what happened that really put it all into the tumbling
snowball effect was one of our friends that Lizzie was
(05:10):
good friends with called me and said, have you heard
the rumors? There were rumors and what were those rumors
that Lizzie had done some nefarious things. She had a
bank account in one of their other friends names and
credit cards and their names. And Jesse discovered all this
stuff when Lizzie was gone on a vacation. Remember Jesse
(05:34):
is Lizzie's husband, and at that time she said, she's
writing these checks and their two income tax payments. Well,
I happen to have all the mail told all this.
You think she talked to me, Um, that's a big
fat no. She won't talk to me, but thankfully Jen will.
(05:57):
One of my greatest mentors, John Toms, like he always said,
this is how you touch people is through stories. That's
why I'm here with you. It's because, yeah, through this podcast,
my story is going to touch a bookkeeper or a friend,
a parent, a child, whatever, whoever. They're going to hear
the story and hear your story and say, oh my gosh,
this is a thing like yes, Gen Rodriguez, a more
(06:23):
benevolent creature you will never find anyway. After Jenny, here's
the rumors that Lizzie is scanning people. She does what
any good friend would do. I called Lucy and said,
there's some things going on and rumors going around. Are
you okay? And the panic and the fear in her voice.
(06:48):
I mean, unless she is really a phenomenal actor. It
felt to me her panic and fear in her voice
is what made it really real for me, was because
I realized, oh my, that she really did do this,
like this is real. After that phone call, Jen gets
very suspicious that things aren't adding up. She suddenly worries
(07:10):
Lizzie is involved in something criminal. So gend decides to
take matters into her own hands in an attempt to
figure out what Lizzie's up to. I used to carry
the mail from my boss and give it to Lizzie.
I used to transfer back and forth, like you know.
I'd get her mail and I'd give it to her.
I never would open her mail because it just wasn't
part of my duty or my responsibilities. I just was
(07:32):
a courier for the mail. And I happen to have
a stack of her mail, and I ripped open a
big statement right then and there and saw right there
on the bank statement that there was a check for
eight thousand dollars to income tax payments. And I literally
almost vomited, Oh my God, like vomited, because you knew
(07:52):
at that point that that's going into Lizzie's account. Well,
I didn't even go to that place yet because that
was even like we you have account with income tax payments,
like what it was so unfathols. It's like dreaming up
the Game of Thrones, Like how could you dream that up?
Like like there were so many layers, because I don't
(08:12):
think most people would think they could open an account
at a bank called income tax payments. People think the
bank would flag it, but you would think they won't.
They won't. Lizzie Malder takes income tax payment checks from
(08:34):
Jen's boss for five years. She would sit down with
her and prepare her quarterly numbers based off her business
sales and revenue, and she would say, okay, this is
what you need to pay for your estimated taxes, and
she would prepare payment, she would sign the check, she
would take the check, she would leave her house and
go and deposit the check directly into our bank account
(08:56):
income tax payments. But her bank account was really Molder
Financial and Consulting, And then she had a d b
A underneath that account is income tax payment, which was
really clever because technically, in Bake jargon, the income tax payment,
the d B A is technically a third party d
(09:20):
b A which means doing business as so they're technically
not clients of the bank, which is this great banking law.
It's a loophole that she either was a complete genius
or she got really lucky because she's letting now the
bank off the hook. Yes, because income tax Payments technically
(09:41):
didn't open the account, Mulder Financial did, so she created
a layer. And this is very common in con you know,
like when you have money wiring, you do a lot
of layering because it helps to hide it. Lizzie Mulder
is a crafty one for sure to create layers. As
Jen says, not only does Lizzie use a d b
(10:04):
A called income Tax Payments to open a new bank account,
Detective Iraqi and uncovers Lizzie actually has Jesse, her husband
opened that bank account for her, so she's not directly
connected to it at all. Every month in Lizzie's Bank
of America account that we found actually completely by accident.
(10:28):
So when you execute a search warrant to the bank,
you have to be very specific. I need all the
accounts under this name, this social security number. So Bank
of America returned the search warrant and I had Molder
Financial Right, which is Lizzie's accounting business. And when I
got that search warrant back, I'm looking at it and
(10:49):
I'm not really seeing anything suspicious. Had a balance of
like eight grand, you know, ten thousand in deposits, twelve
thousand in withdraws, you know, just normal everyday transactions. And
I called Bank of America and I said, something's wrong
here because this woman is cashing these checks. And the
(11:10):
Bank of America investigator, they're very limited on what they
can tell us. They could, they have to stay within
the search warrant. And so the investigator, which is usually
a retired cop right says, well, there's another account here,
but it's not under Lizzie Moulder. She's an authorized signer
on the account. So like if your husband has a
bank account and he adds you as a signer, you
(11:33):
can essentially go into the bank and cash a check, right,
but it's his account. But it's his account, and if
Detective Moracian issues a search warrant on you, his account
is not going to show up. So what Lizzie had
done is she created Income Tax Payments dB A doing
(11:53):
business as under Jesse Moulder, her husband, and then added
herself as a signer, and that is completely intentional distance herself.
She must have known it wouldn't come up in a
search warrant like that's pretty fucking meticulous. Either that or
she didn't care if Jesse got caught. Most con artists
(12:15):
are psychopaths, incapable of feeling empathy for other human beings,
so maybe she really doesn't care if her husband, Jesse
gets caught. The other thing about psychopaths is they're compulsive
and convincing liars, and most victims don't discover the lie
until it's way too late. Part of what she did, too,
(12:36):
is she diminished my knowledge to my boss because my
boss would never listen. If I would say, hey, this
doesn't quite make sense, you would get batted down. So
she was programming your boss against you, and you against
your boss. She probably was I swear, divide and conquer.
It's every con artist's first move. Don't you think Lizzie
(12:58):
was talking ship about Jen to Jen's boss, And that's
one of the reasons maybe Jen's boss was so dismissive
when Jen would points out things. Detective Iraqian is now
keenly aware of the entirety of Lizzie Malder's m O.
One of the things Lizzie was famous for is in
a roundabout way, making people feel stupid, right, like, you
(13:22):
know what, you run a podcast, I'm an accountant. Let
me handle it, right, you just focus on your podcast.
That's kind of how she would talk to people. And
every single victim I talked to said the same thing.
They said, Yeah. Every time I would start asking questions,
she would just get dismissive or she would throw a
(13:42):
temper tantrum and just get angry, like consulted, how dare I?
How dare you? I? Pepper died right, and and so
Jen's are very like not m a stake kind of person,
and Lizzie kind of browbeats people into hey, you you
stay in your life. And that's how Lizzie operates. And
Lizzie's lane is her income tax payment bank account scam,
(14:06):
but that isn't the only method she employs. Took con
money out of Jen's boss. Lizzie was supposed to get
a quote for business insurance and it was supposed to
be for five and Lizzie wrote the check for five thousand,
and my boss caught it and she was able to
get the money back, which was kind of interesting, but
she made it out to this mystery person that was
(14:28):
supposedly this insurance agent and that wasn't even real. When
I went on vacation is when she had a heyday
because she took the checks that I wrote to vendors
and cash him into personal check. Did she write checks
to Lizzie Molder or her company or income tax payments?
It wasn't even to anything. It was to other vendors.
(14:50):
But the bank never caught it. Oh, so she just
deposited us checks in her account. Boy, banks are sloppy.
You think when you write the name on the check
that only that person can cash it, but it's not
the case. And the reason why in for all of
us consumers and people that want to get their money fast,
is because check deposits are automated and so they go
(15:13):
through so unless something is flagged, then it's not caught.
Often there were so many checks that didn't have signatures
that she didn't even they weren't even signed, but they
never got caught and the bank cashed them. And the
bank cashed them without even catching it. So many Lizzie
steals more than eight hundred thousand dollars from Jen's boss,
(15:36):
which is a fortune, but the financial fallout Lizzie scams
create and I r s penalties and legal fees is
way more than that. How much money did your boss
end up losing millions, millions of dollars because of Lizzie Mulder? Gosh,
that would devastate anyone. And in the same way that
(15:56):
my con artist, the Irish Heiress changes the actory of
my life, forever con artist Lizzie Maulder changes the trajectory
of Jen's life too. At the time, you were not
a forensic accountant, So this whole experience with Lizzie Maulder
inspired you to become out of almost necessity. Yes, first
(16:17):
of all, I've had sixteen or eighteen years of accounting experience,
day to day operations, being a controller, reconciliation, like all
the things that you do to run a business. But
at the time, when I was younger, a forensic accountant
was when you know, you sue a partner and you
need to go through their books, or you're getting divorced
and you need to go through your ex husband's books.
(16:39):
Forensic accounting wasn't hey, let's look at fraud. This is
fairly new. It's now more a thing than ever. I mean,
it's really not new, but we're experiencing it more so.
At the same time, Jen is going through all her
boss's financial records to ferret out exactly how Lizzie Maulder
scammed her. She's studying for an entirely new career. I
(17:03):
threw myself into school and I got a master's in
forensic accounting Digital forensics with the concentration data analytics also,
because that's what it really boils down to is looking
at a lot of data. You are amazing and I'm
not the only one who thinks so. Jen was friends
with Lizzie Moulder, and Jen started discovering this fraud before
(17:25):
I even called her. Detector Jordan Moracian quickly figures out
that soon to be forensic accountant Jen Rodriguez is about
to become a powerful ally. Jen's boss. She's operating this
business and she's got Jen Rodriguez who is doing a
lot of the accounting and bookkeeping, and she's also got
(17:48):
Lizzie who's the accountant. And so when Jed, who is
very meticulous, is sending these records to Lizzie and Lizzie's
refusing to send things back Jen starts getting suspicious and
going to her boss, who's a friend. But in Jen's
boss's ear is this Pepperdine educated accountant who's very manipulative.
(18:11):
And you have to understand the personality of Jen Rodriguez's boss.
You know, if she were to take her car to
get washed and they were to say, would you like
us to wax it, she'd say, I don't know. You
guys do the car wash. You do whatever you think
you need to do, and just tell me how much. Right.
She's not a numbers person, you know, And that's why
Lizzie was able to get so many checks out of her.
(18:37):
Jen discovered very early on, like before things got really bad.
Jen discovered a check that was out of place, like, hey,
this doesn't make sense. This check was cashed twice or whatever,
and Jen contacted Lizzie. Lizzie blew up, and Jen brought
(18:57):
it to her boss's attention, and within minutes Lizzie had
cleared it up. Lizzie had an email from a fake
person saying, our mistake, we didn't mean to cash that check.
We've refunded you the money. Here you go, and and
Lizzie immediately deposits some money back and account. Jen, who
can't see the account, just sees this email and it's like, well,
(19:21):
I'm gonna keep my eye on her. But it looks
like it was a mistake. But it wasn't a mistake.
It was it was part of the Czech frond scheme.
Jen and Detective Iraqian hit it off almost immediately. How
did Detective Morakian enter your life? Okay, so we met
first only on the phone and called yes, I think
(19:43):
he had reached out to my boss, and then my
boss gave him approval to talk to me and he
called me, and I remember I was in the car
with my husband and my son, and I remember thinking like,
this is really a thing, like a police police officers
calling me, you know, And I got to talk to him.
And shortly after that phone call, Jen Rodriguez becomes instrumental
(20:04):
in the Lizzie Mulder investigation. Jen Rodriguez is really kind
of the person that helped keep me organized and also
helped explain that scheme because that's tricky to follow, It's
very tricky. Jen Rodriguez is really good with numbers, so
(20:33):
she starts assisting Detective Miraqian with untangling the complicated financial
web of scams that Lizzie Mulder pulls on her boss.
So you had an accounting background, yes, and you started
helping detective Miraqian with all these numbers, trying to trace
the money and figure out put the pieces together. And
(20:54):
so then I start telling him where the money had gone.
It had already tracked that it was going to this one,
found the A, B A. And I was able to
find just some little pieces that I knew, not knowing
that I was like really doing detective work, but just
trying to follow the money. Right, money's gone, you gotta
follow the money. Common sense. So we talked and we
(21:16):
put it together. You know, it developed so organically because
he had skills and tools and things that I didn't have.
Like so I would say, can you subpoena death? And
like if we get the bank records, we can find that.
You would point out things that he didn't necessarily know
he needed, or he would say like we could do this,
and I be like, oh, if we could do this,
we could get that. Like H and R block was one.
(21:38):
I think he had a subpoena because I was like, well,
if we could see she used H and R block
to file all these taxes, we can see where the
money went. So that was like one thing. He was
able to do that. So at first I felt like
sometimes we were throwing pasta against the wall to see
what it would stick. I probably wasted a lot of
energy and time because I was just trying to find everything.
Right now, I know that you need to have a
(21:59):
little bit more our focus intention when you're working, but
I was just consuming everything I could because I wanted
to understand you wanted justice and they wanted to hopefully
find the money. I thought, Oh, if I could just
get the money, it'll I'll be okay. You can help
your boss, Yeah, they'll be okay. Gen Rodriguez is truly
a godsend for Detective Miraqian because the Lizzie Maulder case
(22:22):
is quickly getting insanely complicated and expansive as Detective Miraqian
starts finding more and more victims and tries to convince
each and every one of them to press charges. The
deputy disattorney who prosecuted my case, my con artist told
me at the onset because it would be like twenty
(22:43):
something court appearances over like more than a year. It
took so much of my time and off work and everything.
He said, most people in your position just stopped coming
to court and we have to drop the chargers. You
have to drop the case, Like that's not happening. But
I understand. It can wear you down and people don't
want to dissipate, and if you don't participate, they there's
no case. They dismiss it. And I stayed on these victims.
(23:05):
They all have my personal cell, which is amazing. I
was calling them, checking in with them, just keeping them
from giving up. And it wasn't because I'm this great detective.
It was because I had put so much of my
time into it that I didn't want to lose it
based on someone deciding last minute they wanted to back out.
(23:25):
It would have been incredibly frustrating and it would have
been a disservice to everybody else. Yeah. I was taking
calls at all hours of the night to keep victims
in in the fight. Right, My wife, who never complains
about anything, started complaining. She started saying, you're always on
your face this case. It's sucking up. You'd think Laguna
(23:46):
Beach p D would be circling the wagons right about
now and assisting their ace detective with this incredibly complicated
and far reaching case. But you'd be dead wrong. I
didn't get very much suppoor from my department. Why they
run a business. Essentially, we're gonna Beach PD runs a business,
and their businesses the entire community, not just this one victim, right,
(24:10):
which I understand. But I think police departments as a whole,
not the one I work for now, But I think
police departments as a whole. Stop looking at people as
people your case number eighteen dash zero zero one seven one,
you know. And I kept trying to explain to my
command staff, this is bigger than Laguna. I had a
(24:33):
number of detectives blow me off from other departments. I
had some that were very helpful. Newport Beach PD was
very helpful, but there were a couple other jurisdictions that, yeah, dude,
whatever you want to do with this case, that's yours.
I don't want any part of it. Cool right. So
when I say they weren't cooperative or weren't helpful, what
(24:54):
I mean by that is I was trying to get
them to shoulder some of this investigation right, to put
some hours in so you're not taking calls with your
wife in bed at night, or I'm not driving all
the way out San clement A to interview the victims
when they could send their local people. So you didn't
get much support. You kind of inadvertently recruited Jen because
(25:15):
nobody was helping you. And here you have Jen who's
savvy with numbers and accounting and knows all this stuff.
She kind of became your investigator. She like helped you
with this case, right, And that's why I'm always very
quick to give her credit. You know, Jen would get
spreadsheets done for me on Excel that would normally take
me an entire day. I'm just a beat cop, right,
(25:39):
I'm just a guy who goes out knuckle dragging beat
cop who has a grease board and he's writing a
bunch of numbers on a grease board that could be
erased by the cleaning crew. And I've got do not
a race on it, it's not scientific. Whereas I've got
gen Rodriguez sending me an Excel spreadsheets and like I
would lose the check, got you can't find this one
(26:01):
check And she'd be like, oh, I got it, check
your email. I mean just very organized. Jordan and I
were like obsessed, Like I mean, I literally left like
one hour a night for like three years. You know,
we had to get to it. We had to get
to all the answers, and those answers are coming from
(26:22):
a multitude of directions. While victims like Jay and Marla
Avery from jack Wines show up and report Lizzie Mulder
directly to police, but when we did talk to Jordan Rocky,
he was like the first person not to make me
feel crazy. Other victims first surface as random names on
some of Lizzie's forged documents, victims like Mike Cochrane. Lizzie
(26:45):
Mulder entered our life when I was the owner and
operator of print shop down in Irvine. But by far
the most bizarre twist in this con case is the
day Jesse Mulder Lizzie his husband shows up but Laguna BEACHPD,
seemingly out of the blue and drops a dime on
(27:06):
his wife. I'm walking out of the station and in
walks Jesse Moulder. I need to talk to a detective. Wow,
I mean literally like just like that. I look at him,
I'm a detective, how can I help you? And he says,
I'm a firefighter And I think my wife is scamming
her clients out of money, and I'm afraid that she's
(27:29):
got me involved in it. All right, let's talk. So
Jesse's with a friend of his who is an attorney,
not necessarily his attorney, but an attorney. So we sit
down in the conference room and Jesse proceeds to tell
me this story. And I don't know that he's married
to Lizzie Moulder. So Jesse sits down with me. He
(27:53):
tells me how he's a brand new firefighter in the
city of Orange. He's married to a woman named Lizzie
or he called her Aizabeth, and she's an accountant. And
I came home because I thought she was cheating on me.
I started going through the mail and I found all
these bills for all these different people, and all these
credit cards that are in her name and in the
(28:15):
name of her business, and I think she's scamming people
out of millions of dollars. And I didn't put two
and two together yet, and I said, well, what's your
wife's name? And he goes Elizabeth Mulder, but she goes
by Lizzie and I went, okay, uh, yeah, we need
to talk next time. On Queen of the con the
(28:37):
O C. Savior, Lizzie Mulder and Bushes. Detective Morackian, how
the hell did that happen? Lizzie showed up, quote unquote,
just showed up, happened to be in the neighborhood, but
in the end it comes back to bite her hard.
So yeah, out con the con at that point, and
they coned me at first. I played queen of the con.
(29:10):
The O C. Savior is a production of A y
R Media and I Heart Media, hosted by Me Jonathan Walton,
Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions and Eliza
Rosen for A y R Media. Written by Jonathan Walton,
Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman. Sound
(29:34):
design by baked ZD Media, mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggy.
Sound editing, audio and studio engineering by Matt Jacobson. Legal
counsel for A y R Media, Gianni Douglas, Executive producer
for I Heart Media. Maya Howard You
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