June 2, 2022 • 32 mins
In a shocking turn of events, Lizzie Mulder’s own husband, Jesse, shows up unannounced to the Laguna Beach police department and confesses to detective Jordan Mirakian that his wife is stealing millions of dollars from her clients. And then suddenly, con artist Lizzie Mulder uses the element of surprise to her advantage and ambushes detective Mirakian at a local park; telling him she wants to talk about her case. The detective convinces her to come down to the police station to talk and then records their entire conversation.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
My babysat herd kids with my kids. What does that
make you feel like? Now? What runs to your head?
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. The scams of c p A.
Lizzie Mulder cost forensic accountant Jen Rodriguez's boss millions, and
(00:22):
I literally almost vomited, like vomited. Then suddenly Jen gets
drafted and Detective Jordan morackians increasingly expanding criminal case against
Lizzie Mulder, and God knows he needs all the help
he can get. I didn't get very much support from
my department. Why they run a business, and their business
(00:43):
is the entire community, not just this one victim, right,
And I kept trying to explain to my command staff,
this is bigger than Laguna. The problem is only one
victim complains to Laguna BEACHPD about Lizzie Mulder. The other
victims complain in nearby cities like San Clementi, Irvine, and
(01:04):
Newport Beach, which involved entirely different police jurisdictions, And the
higher ups at Laguna Beach p D really couldn't care
less because it's not there a problem. But then all
of a sudden, in the middle of everything, a huge
break and Detective Iraqian's case comes out of nowhere. I'm
(01:24):
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 got me
(01:45):
involved in it. All right, let's talk. So Jesse sits
down with me. He tells me how he's a brand
new firefighter in the city of Orange. He's married to
a woman named Elizabeth, and she's an accountant. I came
home because I thought 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,
(02:07):
and I think she's scamming people out of millions of dollars.
And I said, well, what's your wife's name? And he
goes Elizabeth Mulder, but she goes by Lizzie. I'm Jonathan
Walton and this is Queen of the con The O
(02:28):
C Savior episode six, he said, she said, we live
in Orange, so I would go down to the Circle.
Have you ever been there? The Circle? Now? What's that?
To the Orange Circle? Orange Circle? It's beautiful. There's a
(02:50):
fountain in the middle. There's a roundabout and a bunch
of old antique shops and a bunch of nice restaurants
in there. Anyway, I saw Jesse one day down there,
dogging with some of the firefighters. He saw me. I
saw him. We made eye contact, and that was that,
and he acknowledged you. No, No, he's not going to
(03:10):
acknowledge me. He knows how I feel about Jesse. Mulder
walks into the Laguna Beach Police Department in May. He
tells Detective Iraqian that Lizzie is cheating on him, and
there's talk that her paramore is an Orange County cowboy
(03:32):
named Joe Love. More on that later, but Jesse also
says Lizzie is cheating her clients too, out of millions
of dollars. So Lizzie's husband starts helping Detective Mirackian gather
evidence against his wife. Jesse shows me kind of a
haphazard stack of mail, and he agrees not to let
(03:54):
his con artist wife know police are investigating her. Jesse
swears he has nothing to do with it, and Detective
Mirakian believes him. But as the days passed, the detective
starts to see things a little differently. I can't prove it,
but I think Jesse played me. I think the day
(04:15):
Jesse came in to report his wife, I think that
was all part of an orchestrated plan to get the
detective on my side, and that way, if they do
go after Lizzie, I've got my quote unquote informant Jesse Moulder,
who's a firefighter. Were a cop, firefighter, We trust each other,
(04:35):
and so early on in the case, I was feeding
Jesse information and I was doing it because I didn't
want his kids to get dragged into a search warrant.
And he burned me. And he burned me by wiping
her phone. He wiped her phone when we executed the
search warrant because he knew it was coming. Yes, that
(04:58):
is a direct contradiction and to his action in the
first place, going into report his wife. Why would the
same man go into report his wife stealing all this
money from people, then white her phone to hide the evidence.
I think she charmed him. You don't think he was
like in on the scam and wanted to benefit from it.
I don't want to say that he was in on
the scam, but what I do want to say is
I think at some point he's looking at the woman
(05:20):
he married that he loves, the mother of his kids,
and she's telling him, Jesse, if you cooperate with Laguna BEACHPD,
I'm gonna go to jail forever and the kids aren't
going to have their mother. We're gonna lose this house,
and our whole lives are gonna be over. And I
think as time went on, he started to really look
(05:43):
at a scenario where he was going to be a
single dad, and it's scared him. I mean, he was
calling me for advice on you know, I divorced. I'm
married now, but I divorced prior, and he was talking
to me like, you know, were you able to find
someone at thirty four years old? Pana. It's just like, dude,
that's not what this is. Like. Yeah, I'm a detective, right,
(06:04):
we're not BFFs. Shortly after Jesse first walks into Laguna
Beach p D to report his wife, Detective Iraqian executes
a search warrant at the Mulder's Laguna Beach home and
confiscates computers, documents, and cell phones. Then days later, in
a truly bizarre turn of events, Lizzie Maulder inexplicably shows
(06:29):
up out of nowhere and ambushes the detective. How the
hell did that happen? That happened when I met up
with Jesse at Bluebird Park and Lizzie showed up quote unquote,
just showed up. Happened to be in the neighborhood. Lizzie
wants to talk to Detective Iraqi about the case right
there in the park, but the detective explains that's not
(06:53):
how things work. If she wants to talk to him
in her capacity as a suspect and his capacity as
an officer of the law, it's got to be official,
and it's got to happen at the police station. Detective
Iraqi assures her she will not be arrested if she
comes with him to the station to talk. So Lizzie
(07:16):
agreed to come down to the station and talk to me.
I'm surprised she said yes. And why did she say yes?
Because she's an egomaniac. She thinks she's smarter than you.
They always think I'm gonna charm this guy or gal
and make them think I mean. It happens on traffic
stops a thousand times a day to us. Do you
know why I stopped? Do you know? I don't? Yeah?
(07:36):
You do? Yeah, you're going, yeah, you do? You know.
I'm sorry. You know. I just found out my uncle
has COVID and he's coughing and I need to go
to his house. It's like, no, you're not. Can I
call your uncle? And the lie crumbles. We're professional bullshit detectors,
like we got lied to all the time, and it's
about to happen again. Normally, police have to call a
(08:06):
suspect and sometimes even beg a suspect to come down
to the station for an interview, and normally the attorney
says hell no. But Lizzie throws Detective Iraqian a curve
ball by just showing up out of the blue. He's
not prepared to interview his suspect yet. But at the
same time, as a detective, that's a golden opportunity. You
(08:30):
want to talk to them. You want to bring him out,
bring him quickly as you can and get something. The
truth is, the day I sat down with Lizzie Molder
for her interview. I didn't know anything. I just I
pretended like I knew everything. I wasn't prepared. I wasn't
even in uniform or even in my suit and tie.
I just had a shirt and slacks on. So I
(08:52):
ran into the office. I saw the records clerk. I said,
give me four or five boxes, and she goes, what four?
I said, just give me some boxes, and I wrote
Molder on the outside of the boxes, and I stacked
them up in the interview room and grabbed a bunch
of miscellaneous files from our records clerk and threw them
in the boxes. And I would just as I'm talking
(09:13):
to her, I could see her looking over my shoulder
at these boxes, and I wanted her to think that
I already knew everything was brilliant. You know, it's an
old trick, and I just wanted her to think that
we were already a couple of steps ahead of her.
He's actually not a couple of steps ahead of her,
not yet anyway, But that's all about to change, and
(09:34):
thank god. Detective Miraqian records his entire conversation with Lizzie
Maulder on MA at six fifty PM. Say what you
will about Lizzie Maulder. She does not go gentle into
that good night cash flow, wait for the next payment.
(09:58):
So when I take a payment her right out of
the gate, she tries to explain away her elaborate series
of cons as innocent misrepresentations. Yeah, that's how the fool
thing started, and not if I could put more money
through my baby account, I could show you were trying
(10:20):
to employ the mercy to buy that house. That was
the least option to buy. It's a last option to buy.
That explained that it certainly does, meaning the two and
a half million dollar Laguna Beach home overlooking the Pacific
Ocean that Lizzie brags to everyone she owns and belittle's
friends like Jen Rodriguez for being quote renters. Oh, John,
(10:44):
I'm so sorry you rent. Oh she said that to you.
Oh yeah, she would say that often. Well, Lizzie is
actually renting too. And this revelation rubs print shop owner
Mike Cochrane the wrong way and adds more weight to
the theory that Lizzie's husband, Jesse, might not be as
innocent as he appears to be. Her husband said he
(11:06):
was not a collaborator. That's a freaking joke. Okay. We
went on a tour of their house. We went neate
dinner at him, and they told us about the new
house that they bought in Laguna Beach and how they
were renovating it and all this stuff, and they were exciting.
We walked around and patted him on the back. While
pretending to be a Laguna Beach homeowner is not a
crime in and of itself. Lizzie definitely uses the facade
(11:29):
of owning that home to trick her victims into believing
she's a successful c p A. Remember what Salon owner
Geneva Mendoza said back in episode one, Lauren set up
an appointment with her at her home office in Laguna
and she had this really great front office with ocean views. Beautiful.
That was Lizzie using her home as bait, and now
(11:53):
she's trying to explain it away to Detective Miraqian with
verbal gymnastics. Kinda liar, But I'm a liar because I
don't want to come to grips with what's really happy.
I just want to keep everything over. You're not lying
to me right now, you know I'm not lying to well,
you know what I told her, the part you're not
under arrest. I'm not gonna arrest you today. I'm not
(12:14):
here to arrest you, okay. I'm here to find out
the truth. I want to know why. You know, I
know what happened for the most part, but you kept
saying that's not what you think. And I've heard that before.
Remember when Lizzie's husband, Jesse, gives her a heads up
about an impending search warrant which is supposed to be
(12:35):
a surprise, and then he deletes the contents of her
cell phone before police arrive. Well, that's all just a misunderstanding.
According to Lizzie, Jesse is actually trying to cut back
on expenses and just getting rid of Lizzie's cell phone
to save money makes perfect sense, right. The whole thing
(12:56):
with Jesse and the phone, it wasn't calculated. Jetsie's just
doesn't make enough money and he's freaking out on the Well,
they made you do that when we I swear Lizzie
Mulder has answers for everything, even when they make zero sense.
(13:18):
On the phone, everything that's accounts to come back, pictures,
text message, emails and called it. That's why I like
it was Tom Jessie. You know when the search warns
come back to the evidence is there? Yeah? The first scam.
Detective Iraqian eviscerates early on in the conversation, throws everything
(13:40):
Lizzie's ever told anyone about herself into question. You're never
return I just want you how did you end up
a pepodyne you've ever done? Yeah? I want to quest
to college. This is huge. The very foundation Lizzie mulder
(14:06):
lais to gain entry into all her victims businesses. By
Lizzie's own admission is a lie. She's not a c
p A, even though she tricks everyone into believing she is.
And she never went to Pepperdine. So that degree she
has hanging in her office indicating she did is a fake,
(14:26):
just like detective Morackians strategically placed evidence boxes. Those boxes,
that's the same con you did on her her Pepperdine
University degree. Those are your boxes. That's the same thing.
You're like, it's a prop to make people believe A
when B is true. God, So yeah, out con the con? Yeah? Yeah,
(14:46):
because she probably thought, fuck, they have six seven boxes
about me, like they have a case and they caned
me at first dizzy they played me. And when I
found out that I got played aid, the gloves are off.
This is my priority. Detective Miracian is already well aware.
Lizzie stolen nearly three hundred thousand dollars from j Avery's company,
(15:10):
Jack Wines, using her bogus income tax payment bank account
scam and fabricating an investor named Brent Harrison who tricks
j into believing he's gonna pump millions of dollars into
Jack Wines, motivating Jay to spend a fortune getting his
company ready for that investment. I wrote a search warrant
(15:32):
for your account, so I feel the way the layers
and started figuring out who Bred Harrison wasn't and who
he was, and the investors in China, and all the
things that went into Jack Wines at all pointed back
to you. We have chanted income tax payments dating back
to income tax payment. I would paint myself because I
(15:58):
was doing everything, and then we're investor is in China,
and I met them at there was Carleton, and I
fluted Seattle's trying to anything. There's no bread here. Jay
was such a liability that I created that, and I
had been doing that for a long time because I
don't know how to just tell people your liability. I
(16:20):
have a problem that way. And maybe because I've never
been on medication. Maybe it's because my umbray. I don't
know what it's from. But I had no every time
he called it because I couldn't manage him j Yeah,
when he was addictive of pills. And yeah, I mean
he's dead on and off forever. And that's the thing,
(16:42):
like we, Jay couldn't find it anymore. I couldn't make
it money. I loved him all the wine. I didn't
take any of it, and he hasn't all the assets
of it. I didn't sell it from my own being
or anything. So bread Harrison, there's no right couple person
in the line trust. So you created all those invoices?
(17:04):
Then I've never Yeah, there were invoices sent from you
to Jay Gambury from different businesses for payments. Was that
someone else or was that you? I don't know. I
never created invoices, So I created emails. Okay, okay? So
you created the brand, Harrison, Yes, And why didn't you
(17:27):
do that? I started that right after he lost Indians.
Who are these that you're talking about? You were pretty
close to making this deal cup Room. And the deal
was for to sell all their wine directs, all indie pasinos.
Because I was really cool. Ad and James flew out too.
(17:48):
I think it was Kentucky and Tennessee and that's the
whole thing up. And how did he do that? He
would drunken high And at the moment after that, I said,
I have to keep him and gave it with somebody
that's not real so I can take over. So you
created Brent Harrison, there's a way to keep coming to
(18:08):
Muntating for what purpose? I wanted to sell the company.
I was hoping that we could sell the company for
a couple of million dollars. We had a nice label,
we had some really good point. While I was trying
really hard to get it sold, there's a guy named
Johnny that I thought I was gonna be it and
I he was gonna import to China, and I did
(18:29):
all a cheaper work for the important export of pitches
fell apart, and on this last October I thought he
was clean and I was going to let him come
to Seattle. I was gonna bring him to Chatau, San
Michell and Chatta. That's just been aim of the winery.
I told him here's the goal, which here's what we're
(18:51):
looking for, really cheap dollar twenty five dollars seventy five
export to China. I can't bring gay and five people.
Goodness people. He's liability, he's a financer, but he's not
the voice. He's not the person you wanted the face
of the cake. Hiring me this bookkeeper and then look,
I just took over, just like I hear with everybody
(19:13):
that I'm smart, I can do stuf, and I end
up doing every single thing. And it's so stupid of me.
But all the checks they wrote up to Lizzie Mulder,
he said, you need to pay yourself. We're all those
checks like Mulder Financials and Gulpion, the MSc. That's so
that we talked about. And you know, of course he's
not gonna tell Marma. There's the point that long before
(19:34):
Marma has been involved and pitches that he said, she said,
he just wanted over. You know. So Lizzy, in a
very matter of fact kind of way, is trying to
explain all the money she steals from Jack Wines as
a he said, she said, Jay is just a crazy
drug addict. So she's forced to invent the Brent Harrison
(19:57):
character to keep Jake calm while she tried is to
sell his company. It's for his own good. She just
wants to help him. I reach out to Jay to
get his reaction to Lizzie's explanation what she said in
(20:17):
that interview. Some of what she said was that she
created Brent Harrison to help you, to help me. Uh funny,
help me because she said you were so crazy because
of your drug addiction and carrying on that she was
trying to pacify you so she could use Brent Harrison
(20:39):
to keep you, know, giving you comfort in some way,
while she could hopefully sell your company for a couple
of million dollars and get you that money to help you. Yeah. Man,
that kind of blows my mind that she would say
that because there wasn't much that she did besides still
and me and Alex, who was my partner. We were
handling everything. I was doing all out of the sales.
(21:00):
He was making the wine he hits themselves. Um, but
the drug addiction wasn't affecting my business to the point
where I was a highly functioning drug addict. Highly functioning
I mean, honestly, if she wasn't in my life. There's
a very strong chance that Jack Lyns would still be
up and doing well, potentially thriving. She was more detrimental
(21:24):
and than anything else. So her whole thing is as
full of ship. Detective Iraqian isn't buying what was he
saying either. But your role agreeing for Harrison email was
to sell linery, like basically to keep the business afloat.
And Nick Jay is not a liability. I have pages
(21:46):
of text messages, pages of emails between you and Jack
and he would say something like just got off the
phone with friend Harrison and they're ready to move on
the next ship, but they need twenty dollars in the
well star. And I hope Johnny was actually the guy
who we were doing. Wanted to try um I forgot
(22:10):
his last name, of course she did. And you know
all that money, Detective Iraqian fines and Lizzie's bank accounts
from Jack Wines is just her salary that Jay told
her to take. I would never consider a delement. I
consider paying my help because I was the only one.
If you asked, Ja, what were you doing for the company?
What were But how does Lizzie really expect seasoned detective
(22:35):
like Jordan Mirakian, let alone anyone else to believe all
this stuff. She had a lot of success tricking people, right,
and so if I tricked all these people, they trusted me,
they opened their bank accounts. I ripped them off. I
can fool this detective too. Former FBI criminal profiler and
(22:56):
hosted the podcast Killer Psyche Candice DeLong said, is Lizzie
showing up unexpectedly to talk to Detective Iraqian is a
calculated stunt that a lot of criminals use. I can
tell you if somebody walks into an FBI office to
talk to an agent, or walks into a police department
to talk to a detective and explain that they haven't
(23:18):
even been charged. You know, I did this and that,
but they told me to pay myself, and they're stupid
and I didn't do anything wrong. I have an expression, Jonathan,
and it is I'll take that as a confession. That
was a confession. It was stupid for her to do that,
but she had every reason to believe she could fool
(23:41):
the detective, just like she fooled everybody else. And that,
you know, that sends chills down my spine. As you
say that because it jibs with a feeling that I've
had for many years. The harder someone tries to hide something,
the more they end up revealing it. Right, So she
walks in there to try to avert disaster, try to
(24:02):
get ahead of this investigation, try to get the cop
to shut it down. When really, like you said, you
take it as a confession. Yes, I do. Of course,
That's my favorite expression, and I use it a lot.
I will borrow it and attribute it to you. I
love it. Yeah, her trying to explain it away as
a confession because nobody's charged her at that point. You're
right right away, I mean she was trying to charm me.
(24:26):
Detective Iraqian immediately picks up what Lizzie Mulder is putting down.
Gone is the confident and glamorous Lizzie with makeup and
hair done, wearing high end designer clothes. Here now, SAIDs
crestfallen mother of two, just trying to make ends meet
in an untucked, oversized button down shirt and jeans, hair unkempt,
(24:48):
playing the victim. People know, how can you get money
from you? It's not one that I think because a
bad person, and I think of me I'm a mom.
It's really hard to live in within that and have
kids and have the mas driting next door. I see
(25:12):
it every day work, see how old our houses. I
love that we're Yes, that really was hard on me
because I was a kid who's dad was severely mentally
ill and get to fronting and I had a walk
on egg shell and I started why I at a
young age was crazy. But I will I know what
I've heard with Alice, with your mother involved in maybe okay,
(25:37):
nobody's involved in any of this for me, And with
a straight face, Lizzie Malder bats away accusations that she
stole nearly three hundred thousand dollars from Jack Wines. But
what about the two she's accused of scamming from that
Newport Beach salon giving hand to Tommy and guy? What
(26:01):
happened there? How did you get introduced to the high
school friends? Laurence Geneva and I? First they met with
me and I said they didn't have mind to pay
anybody really, I said, maybe you should look around. So
they got a reference from some guy wasn't legit and
they begged me and that just took me down, and
(26:22):
I should never said I would work for free, would
take down. I end up having to pay somebody who
worked for me too. It was a ninety five job.
There were so many problems. It's my hair dresser is
writing a big business. It just doesn't work, you know.
And I couldn't do it, and I didn't. I didn't
want to say this and have it sound bad. I
(26:43):
didn't feel like I was open money. I didn't. That
wasn't my mind praying. It was like, I'm working my assis,
got a pay my rent and I'll just cover it later.
We're I'll pay a built for them. And they demanded
so much I couldn't do are all full time jobs
and charged them like it was a one day a
(27:04):
week job. Definitely fault. My life was so much harder
because I was trying to do all that. Like they
have the major problems with their pay roll and their
cable taxes. I don't do their payroll a service at
their payroll. They have major problems. They's some back taxes
their hairdressers. So right now I'm playing in bed at night, going,
(27:27):
oh my god, they're probably drowning and their mind is
probably exploding because they're they're not trying to handle anything
out of business. That's what's happening. I'll tell you guys.
They're taking out loans to pay their employees and they're
hoping to stay aflow long enough to stay in business.
(27:48):
Um and right now, what's happening is their employees that
haven't gotten their income tax returns because the income taxes
weren't paid and not my dad have never being not
painter of the tax ADP did all that, alright, So
anything that you see on there, me taking had nothing
(28:09):
to do a painter. An income tax is different than
pabal taxes, paybal tax, so you didn't you didn't pay
money that was designated for them. Never. Well, the bank
account Lizzie creates and names income tax payments begs to differ.
(28:30):
Watching this recorded interview of Lizzie Mulder selling all these
explanations to Detective Iraqian. At times, she looks kind of
like a grade school teacher trying to explain something complicated
to a child, using exaggerated hand gestures and overpronounced facial expressions.
Other times, though, she really looks like a woman who's
(28:52):
being falsely accused, a sympathetic figure, and she's clearly trying
to influence Detective Mirackian with this poor little me performance.
She smiled and batted her eyes at me, and you know,
she's naturally flirtatious, and she tries to use her charm,
and I got a glimpse of how these people got swindled.
(29:15):
I think she was hoping that I would look at
her as a mother and the wife of a firefighter
and someone who you know, was paying herself because she
was trying to put food on the table and these
people were ripping her off. So you're telling me in
a nut show, is that you were doing business as
MFC Molder Financial Consulting Income Tact Payments, and you, as
(29:39):
a unlicensed c p A as a bookkeeper, went to
these businesses and started essentially being the CFO for these
businesses potentially, and then during the course of your duties
as CFO or bookkeeper, you would pay yourself and at
some point you got in over your head and actually
(30:01):
took more money than Why, we're just where you deserved
to keep up with the paying of the house. Ye
seems like a logical, even forthcoming explanation, right, But Lizzie
Mulder's interview is actually pretty damning. She's basically lying about everything,
and Detective Morakian can prove it, which means the criminal
(30:23):
case he's got against her is stronger than ever. But
some unseen powerful force appears to be conspiring to help
Lizzie get away with everything. You know, I was getting
pressure to basically close the case. They wanted you to
get rid of it and not do any just close it.
The distinct attorney told me, I don't think this is
(30:44):
a winnable case. It doesn't really have any jury appeal
and quite honestly, it's too convoluted, and I don't think
you have enough to win in court. Yea, for those
of you keeping score, that's one for con artist Lizzie
alter Her and zero for all her victims. How time,
(31:08):
oh my gosh, okay, question next time. On Queen of
the Con the O c Savior, a new victim suddenly appears.
Who is Joe Love? What a name? Right? Yeah? He
(31:28):
sounds like a porn star, Joe Love. Joe Love. And
while Lizzie might be caught, that's not slowing her down
one bit. When you're in a psychiatric hospital, police can't
come in and get you, I know. Safe. Queen of
(31:52):
the Con 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
(32:15):
Eric Newman. Sound 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 iHeart Media, Maya Howard
My babysat herd kids with my kids. What does that
make you feel like? Now? What runs to your head?
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. The scams of c p A.
Lizzie Mulder cost forensic accountant Jen Rodriguez's boss millions, and
(00:22):
I literally almost vomited, like vomited. Then suddenly Jen gets
drafted and Detective Jordan morackians increasingly expanding criminal case against
Lizzie Mulder, and God knows he needs all the help
he can get. I didn't get very much support from
my department. Why they run a business, and their business
(00:43):
is the entire community, not just this one victim, right,
And I kept trying to explain to my command staff,
this is bigger than Laguna. The problem is only one
victim complains to Laguna BEACHPD about Lizzie Mulder. The other
victims complain in nearby cities like San Clementi, Irvine, and
(01:04):
Newport Beach, which involved entirely different police jurisdictions, And the
higher ups at Laguna Beach p D really couldn't care
less because it's not there a problem. But then all
of a sudden, in the middle of everything, a huge
break and Detective Iraqian's case comes out of nowhere. I'm
(01:24):
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 got me
(01:45):
involved in it. All right, let's talk. So Jesse sits
down with me. He tells me how he's a brand
new firefighter in the city of Orange. He's married to
a woman named Elizabeth, and she's an accountant. I came
home because I thought 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,
(02:07):
and I think she's scamming people out of millions of dollars.
And I said, well, what's your wife's name? And he
goes Elizabeth Mulder, but she goes by Lizzie. I'm Jonathan
Walton and this is Queen of the con The O
(02:28):
C Savior episode six, he said, she said, we live
in Orange, so I would go down to the Circle.
Have you ever been there? The Circle? Now? What's that?
To the Orange Circle? Orange Circle? It's beautiful. There's a
(02:50):
fountain in the middle. There's a roundabout and a bunch
of old antique shops and a bunch of nice restaurants
in there. Anyway, I saw Jesse one day down there,
dogging with some of the firefighters. He saw me. I
saw him. We made eye contact, and that was that,
and he acknowledged you. No, No, he's not going to
(03:10):
acknowledge me. He knows how I feel about Jesse. Mulder
walks into the Laguna Beach Police Department in May. He
tells Detective Iraqian that Lizzie is cheating on him, and
there's talk that her paramore is an Orange County cowboy
(03:32):
named Joe Love. More on that later, but Jesse also
says Lizzie is cheating her clients too, out of millions
of dollars. So Lizzie's husband starts helping Detective Mirackian gather
evidence against his wife. Jesse shows me kind of a
haphazard stack of mail, and he agrees not to let
(03:54):
his con artist wife know police are investigating her. Jesse
swears he has nothing to do with it, and Detective
Mirakian believes him. But as the days passed, the detective
starts to see things a little differently. I can't prove it,
but I think Jesse played me. I think the day
(04:15):
Jesse came in to report his wife, I think that
was all part of an orchestrated plan to get the
detective on my side, and that way, if they do
go after Lizzie, I've got my quote unquote informant Jesse Moulder,
who's a firefighter. Were a cop, firefighter, We trust each other,
(04:35):
and so early on in the case, I was feeding
Jesse information and I was doing it because I didn't
want his kids to get dragged into a search warrant.
And he burned me. And he burned me by wiping
her phone. He wiped her phone when we executed the
search warrant because he knew it was coming. Yes, that
(04:58):
is a direct contradiction and to his action in the
first place, going into report his wife. Why would the
same man go into report his wife stealing all this
money from people, then white her phone to hide the evidence.
I think she charmed him. You don't think he was
like in on the scam and wanted to benefit from it.
I don't want to say that he was in on
the scam, but what I do want to say is
I think at some point he's looking at the woman
(05:20):
he married that he loves, the mother of his kids,
and she's telling him, Jesse, if you cooperate with Laguna BEACHPD,
I'm gonna go to jail forever and the kids aren't
going to have their mother. We're gonna lose this house,
and our whole lives are gonna be over. And I
think as time went on, he started to really look
(05:43):
at a scenario where he was going to be a
single dad, and it's scared him. I mean, he was
calling me for advice on you know, I divorced. I'm
married now, but I divorced prior, and he was talking
to me like, you know, were you able to find
someone at thirty four years old? Pana. It's just like, dude,
that's not what this is. Like. Yeah, I'm a detective, right,
(06:04):
we're not BFFs. Shortly after Jesse first walks into Laguna
Beach p D to report his wife, Detective Iraqian executes
a search warrant at the Mulder's Laguna Beach home and
confiscates computers, documents, and cell phones. Then days later, in
a truly bizarre turn of events, Lizzie Maulder inexplicably shows
(06:29):
up out of nowhere and ambushes the detective. How the
hell did that happen? That happened when I met up
with Jesse at Bluebird Park and Lizzie showed up quote unquote,
just showed up. Happened to be in the neighborhood. Lizzie
wants to talk to Detective Iraqi about the case right
there in the park, but the detective explains that's not
(06:53):
how things work. If she wants to talk to him
in her capacity as a suspect and his capacity as
an officer of the law, it's got to be official,
and it's got to happen at the police station. Detective
Iraqi assures her she will not be arrested if she
comes with him to the station to talk. So Lizzie
(07:16):
agreed to come down to the station and talk to me.
I'm surprised she said yes. And why did she say yes?
Because she's an egomaniac. She thinks she's smarter than you.
They always think I'm gonna charm this guy or gal
and make them think I mean. It happens on traffic
stops a thousand times a day to us. Do you
know why I stopped? Do you know? I don't? Yeah?
(07:36):
You do? Yeah, you're going, yeah, you do? You know.
I'm sorry. You know. I just found out my uncle
has COVID and he's coughing and I need to go
to his house. It's like, no, you're not. Can I
call your uncle? And the lie crumbles. We're professional bullshit detectors,
like we got lied to all the time, and it's
about to happen again. Normally, police have to call a
(08:06):
suspect and sometimes even beg a suspect to come down
to the station for an interview, and normally the attorney
says hell no. But Lizzie throws Detective Iraqian a curve
ball by just showing up out of the blue. He's
not prepared to interview his suspect yet. But at the
same time, as a detective, that's a golden opportunity. You
(08:30):
want to talk to them. You want to bring him out,
bring him quickly as you can and get something. The
truth is, the day I sat down with Lizzie Molder
for her interview. I didn't know anything. I just I
pretended like I knew everything. I wasn't prepared. I wasn't
even in uniform or even in my suit and tie.
I just had a shirt and slacks on. So I
(08:52):
ran into the office. I saw the records clerk. I said,
give me four or five boxes, and she goes, what four?
I said, just give me some boxes, and I wrote
Molder on the outside of the boxes, and I stacked
them up in the interview room and grabbed a bunch
of miscellaneous files from our records clerk and threw them
in the boxes. And I would just as I'm talking
(09:13):
to her, I could see her looking over my shoulder
at these boxes, and I wanted her to think that
I already knew everything was brilliant. You know, it's an
old trick, and I just wanted her to think that
we were already a couple of steps ahead of her.
He's actually not a couple of steps ahead of her,
not yet anyway, But that's all about to change, and
(09:34):
thank god. Detective Miraqian records his entire conversation with Lizzie
Maulder on MA at six fifty PM. Say what you
will about Lizzie Maulder. She does not go gentle into
that good night cash flow, wait for the next payment.
(09:58):
So when I take a payment her right out of
the gate, she tries to explain away her elaborate series
of cons as innocent misrepresentations. Yeah, that's how the fool
thing started, and not if I could put more money
through my baby account, I could show you were trying
(10:20):
to employ the mercy to buy that house. That was
the least option to buy. It's a last option to buy.
That explained that it certainly does, meaning the two and
a half million dollar Laguna Beach home overlooking the Pacific
Ocean that Lizzie brags to everyone she owns and belittle's
friends like Jen Rodriguez for being quote renters. Oh, John,
(10:44):
I'm so sorry you rent. Oh she said that to you.
Oh yeah, she would say that often. Well, Lizzie is
actually renting too. And this revelation rubs print shop owner
Mike Cochrane the wrong way and adds more weight to
the theory that Lizzie's husband, Jesse, might not be as
innocent as he appears to be. Her husband said he
(11:06):
was not a collaborator. That's a freaking joke. Okay. We
went on a tour of their house. We went neate
dinner at him, and they told us about the new
house that they bought in Laguna Beach and how they
were renovating it and all this stuff, and they were exciting.
We walked around and patted him on the back. While
pretending to be a Laguna Beach homeowner is not a
crime in and of itself. Lizzie definitely uses the facade
(11:29):
of owning that home to trick her victims into believing
she's a successful c p A. Remember what Salon owner
Geneva Mendoza said back in episode one, Lauren set up
an appointment with her at her home office in Laguna
and she had this really great front office with ocean views. Beautiful.
That was Lizzie using her home as bait, and now
(11:53):
she's trying to explain it away to Detective Miraqian with
verbal gymnastics. Kinda liar, But I'm a liar because I
don't want to come to grips with what's really happy.
I just want to keep everything over. You're not lying
to me right now, you know I'm not lying to well,
you know what I told her, the part you're not
under arrest. I'm not gonna arrest you today. I'm not
(12:14):
here to arrest you, okay. I'm here to find out
the truth. I want to know why. You know, I
know what happened for the most part, but you kept
saying that's not what you think. And I've heard that before.
Remember when Lizzie's husband, Jesse, gives her a heads up
about an impending search warrant which is supposed to be
(12:35):
a surprise, and then he deletes the contents of her
cell phone before police arrive. Well, that's all just a misunderstanding.
According to Lizzie, Jesse is actually trying to cut back
on expenses and just getting rid of Lizzie's cell phone
to save money makes perfect sense, right. The whole thing
(12:56):
with Jesse and the phone, it wasn't calculated. Jetsie's just
doesn't make enough money and he's freaking out on the Well,
they made you do that when we I swear Lizzie
Mulder has answers for everything, even when they make zero sense.
(13:18):
On the phone, everything that's accounts to come back, pictures,
text message, emails and called it. That's why I like
it was Tom Jessie. You know when the search warns
come back to the evidence is there? Yeah? The first scam.
Detective Iraqian eviscerates early on in the conversation, throws everything
(13:40):
Lizzie's ever told anyone about herself into question. You're never
return I just want you how did you end up
a pepodyne you've ever done? Yeah? I want to quest
to college. This is huge. The very foundation Lizzie mulder
(14:06):
lais to gain entry into all her victims businesses. By
Lizzie's own admission is a lie. She's not a c
p A, even though she tricks everyone into believing she is.
And she never went to Pepperdine. So that degree she
has hanging in her office indicating she did is a fake,
(14:26):
just like detective Morackians strategically placed evidence boxes. Those boxes,
that's the same con you did on her her Pepperdine
University degree. Those are your boxes. That's the same thing.
You're like, it's a prop to make people believe A
when B is true. God, So yeah, out con the con? Yeah? Yeah,
(14:46):
because she probably thought, fuck, they have six seven boxes
about me, like they have a case and they caned
me at first dizzy they played me. And when I
found out that I got played aid, the gloves are off.
This is my priority. Detective Miracian is already well aware.
Lizzie stolen nearly three hundred thousand dollars from j Avery's company,
(15:10):
Jack Wines, using her bogus income tax payment bank account
scam and fabricating an investor named Brent Harrison who tricks
j into believing he's gonna pump millions of dollars into
Jack Wines, motivating Jay to spend a fortune getting his
company ready for that investment. I wrote a search warrant
(15:32):
for your account, so I feel the way the layers
and started figuring out who Bred Harrison wasn't and who
he was, and the investors in China, and all the
things that went into Jack Wines at all pointed back
to you. We have chanted income tax payments dating back
to income tax payment. I would paint myself because I
(15:58):
was doing everything, and then we're investor is in China,
and I met them at there was Carleton, and I
fluted Seattle's trying to anything. There's no bread here. Jay
was such a liability that I created that, and I
had been doing that for a long time because I
don't know how to just tell people your liability. I
(16:20):
have a problem that way. And maybe because I've never
been on medication. Maybe it's because my umbray. I don't
know what it's from. But I had no every time
he called it because I couldn't manage him j Yeah,
when he was addictive of pills. And yeah, I mean
he's dead on and off forever. And that's the thing,
(16:42):
like we, Jay couldn't find it anymore. I couldn't make
it money. I loved him all the wine. I didn't
take any of it, and he hasn't all the assets
of it. I didn't sell it from my own being
or anything. So bread Harrison, there's no right couple person
in the line trust. So you created all those invoices?
(17:04):
Then I've never Yeah, there were invoices sent from you
to Jay Gambury from different businesses for payments. Was that
someone else or was that you? I don't know. I
never created invoices, So I created emails. Okay, okay? So
you created the brand, Harrison, Yes, And why didn't you
(17:27):
do that? I started that right after he lost Indians.
Who are these that you're talking about? You were pretty
close to making this deal cup Room. And the deal
was for to sell all their wine directs, all indie pasinos.
Because I was really cool. Ad and James flew out too.
(17:48):
I think it was Kentucky and Tennessee and that's the
whole thing up. And how did he do that? He
would drunken high And at the moment after that, I said,
I have to keep him and gave it with somebody
that's not real so I can take over. So you
created Brent Harrison, there's a way to keep coming to
(18:08):
Muntating for what purpose? I wanted to sell the company.
I was hoping that we could sell the company for
a couple of million dollars. We had a nice label,
we had some really good point. While I was trying
really hard to get it sold, there's a guy named
Johnny that I thought I was gonna be it and
I he was gonna import to China, and I did
(18:29):
all a cheaper work for the important export of pitches
fell apart, and on this last October I thought he
was clean and I was going to let him come
to Seattle. I was gonna bring him to Chatau, San
Michell and Chatta. That's just been aim of the winery.
I told him here's the goal, which here's what we're
(18:51):
looking for, really cheap dollar twenty five dollars seventy five
export to China. I can't bring gay and five people.
Goodness people. He's liability, he's a financer, but he's not
the voice. He's not the person you wanted the face
of the cake. Hiring me this bookkeeper and then look,
I just took over, just like I hear with everybody
(19:13):
that I'm smart, I can do stuf, and I end
up doing every single thing. And it's so stupid of me.
But all the checks they wrote up to Lizzie Mulder,
he said, you need to pay yourself. We're all those
checks like Mulder Financials and Gulpion, the MSc. That's so
that we talked about. And you know, of course he's
not gonna tell Marma. There's the point that long before
(19:34):
Marma has been involved and pitches that he said, she said,
he just wanted over. You know. So Lizzy, in a
very matter of fact kind of way, is trying to
explain all the money she steals from Jack Wines as
a he said, she said, Jay is just a crazy
drug addict. So she's forced to invent the Brent Harrison
(19:57):
character to keep Jake calm while she tried is to
sell his company. It's for his own good. She just
wants to help him. I reach out to Jay to
get his reaction to Lizzie's explanation what she said in
(20:17):
that interview. Some of what she said was that she
created Brent Harrison to help you, to help me. Uh funny,
help me because she said you were so crazy because
of your drug addiction and carrying on that she was
trying to pacify you so she could use Brent Harrison
(20:39):
to keep you, know, giving you comfort in some way,
while she could hopefully sell your company for a couple
of million dollars and get you that money to help you. Yeah. Man,
that kind of blows my mind that she would say
that because there wasn't much that she did besides still
and me and Alex, who was my partner. We were
handling everything. I was doing all out of the sales.
(21:00):
He was making the wine he hits themselves. Um, but
the drug addiction wasn't affecting my business to the point
where I was a highly functioning drug addict. Highly functioning
I mean, honestly, if she wasn't in my life. There's
a very strong chance that Jack Lyns would still be
up and doing well, potentially thriving. She was more detrimental
(21:24):
and than anything else. So her whole thing is as
full of ship. Detective Iraqian isn't buying what was he
saying either. But your role agreeing for Harrison email was
to sell linery, like basically to keep the business afloat.
And Nick Jay is not a liability. I have pages
(21:46):
of text messages, pages of emails between you and Jack
and he would say something like just got off the
phone with friend Harrison and they're ready to move on
the next ship, but they need twenty dollars in the
well star. And I hope Johnny was actually the guy
who we were doing. Wanted to try um I forgot
(22:10):
his last name, of course she did. And you know
all that money, Detective Iraqian fines and Lizzie's bank accounts
from Jack Wines is just her salary that Jay told
her to take. I would never consider a delement. I
consider paying my help because I was the only one.
If you asked, Ja, what were you doing for the company?
What were But how does Lizzie really expect seasoned detective
(22:35):
like Jordan Mirakian, let alone anyone else to believe all
this stuff. She had a lot of success tricking people, right,
and so if I tricked all these people, they trusted me,
they opened their bank accounts. I ripped them off. I
can fool this detective too. Former FBI criminal profiler and
(22:56):
hosted the podcast Killer Psyche Candice DeLong said, is Lizzie
showing up unexpectedly to talk to Detective Iraqian is a
calculated stunt that a lot of criminals use. I can
tell you if somebody walks into an FBI office to
talk to an agent, or walks into a police department
to talk to a detective and explain that they haven't
(23:18):
even been charged. You know, I did this and that,
but they told me to pay myself, and they're stupid
and I didn't do anything wrong. I have an expression, Jonathan,
and it is I'll take that as a confession. That
was a confession. It was stupid for her to do that,
but she had every reason to believe she could fool
(23:41):
the detective, just like she fooled everybody else. And that,
you know, that sends chills down my spine. As you
say that because it jibs with a feeling that I've
had for many years. The harder someone tries to hide something,
the more they end up revealing it. Right, So she
walks in there to try to avert disaster, try to
(24:02):
get ahead of this investigation, try to get the cop
to shut it down. When really, like you said, you
take it as a confession. Yes, I do. Of course,
That's my favorite expression, and I use it a lot.
I will borrow it and attribute it to you. I
love it. Yeah, her trying to explain it away as
a confession because nobody's charged her at that point. You're
right right away, I mean she was trying to charm me.
(24:26):
Detective Iraqian immediately picks up what Lizzie Mulder is putting down.
Gone is the confident and glamorous Lizzie with makeup and
hair done, wearing high end designer clothes. Here now, SAIDs
crestfallen mother of two, just trying to make ends meet
in an untucked, oversized button down shirt and jeans, hair unkempt,
(24:48):
playing the victim. People know, how can you get money
from you? It's not one that I think because a
bad person, and I think of me I'm a mom.
It's really hard to live in within that and have
kids and have the mas driting next door. I see
(25:12):
it every day work, see how old our houses. I
love that we're Yes, that really was hard on me
because I was a kid who's dad was severely mentally
ill and get to fronting and I had a walk
on egg shell and I started why I at a
young age was crazy. But I will I know what
I've heard with Alice, with your mother involved in maybe okay,
(25:37):
nobody's involved in any of this for me, And with
a straight face, Lizzie Malder bats away accusations that she
stole nearly three hundred thousand dollars from Jack Wines. But
what about the two she's accused of scamming from that
Newport Beach salon giving hand to Tommy and guy? What
(26:01):
happened there? How did you get introduced to the high
school friends? Laurence Geneva and I? First they met with
me and I said they didn't have mind to pay
anybody really, I said, maybe you should look around. So
they got a reference from some guy wasn't legit and
they begged me and that just took me down, and
(26:22):
I should never said I would work for free, would
take down. I end up having to pay somebody who
worked for me too. It was a ninety five job.
There were so many problems. It's my hair dresser is
writing a big business. It just doesn't work, you know.
And I couldn't do it, and I didn't. I didn't
want to say this and have it sound bad. I
(26:43):
didn't feel like I was open money. I didn't. That
wasn't my mind praying. It was like, I'm working my assis,
got a pay my rent and I'll just cover it later.
We're I'll pay a built for them. And they demanded
so much I couldn't do are all full time jobs
and charged them like it was a one day a
(27:04):
week job. Definitely fault. My life was so much harder
because I was trying to do all that. Like they
have the major problems with their pay roll and their
cable taxes. I don't do their payroll a service at
their payroll. They have major problems. They's some back taxes
their hairdressers. So right now I'm playing in bed at night, going,
(27:27):
oh my god, they're probably drowning and their mind is
probably exploding because they're they're not trying to handle anything
out of business. That's what's happening. I'll tell you guys.
They're taking out loans to pay their employees and they're
hoping to stay aflow long enough to stay in business.
(27:48):
Um and right now, what's happening is their employees that
haven't gotten their income tax returns because the income taxes
weren't paid and not my dad have never being not
painter of the tax ADP did all that, alright, So
anything that you see on there, me taking had nothing
(28:09):
to do a painter. An income tax is different than
pabal taxes, paybal tax, so you didn't you didn't pay
money that was designated for them. Never. Well, the bank
account Lizzie creates and names income tax payments begs to differ.
(28:30):
Watching this recorded interview of Lizzie Mulder selling all these
explanations to Detective Iraqian. At times, she looks kind of
like a grade school teacher trying to explain something complicated
to a child, using exaggerated hand gestures and overpronounced facial expressions.
Other times, though, she really looks like a woman who's
(28:52):
being falsely accused, a sympathetic figure, and she's clearly trying
to influence Detective Mirackian with this poor little me performance.
She smiled and batted her eyes at me, and you know,
she's naturally flirtatious, and she tries to use her charm,
and I got a glimpse of how these people got swindled.
(29:15):
I think she was hoping that I would look at
her as a mother and the wife of a firefighter
and someone who you know, was paying herself because she
was trying to put food on the table and these
people were ripping her off. So you're telling me in
a nut show, is that you were doing business as
MFC Molder Financial Consulting Income Tact Payments, and you, as
(29:39):
a unlicensed c p A as a bookkeeper, went to
these businesses and started essentially being the CFO for these
businesses potentially, and then during the course of your duties
as CFO or bookkeeper, you would pay yourself and at
some point you got in over your head and actually
(30:01):
took more money than Why, we're just where you deserved
to keep up with the paying of the house. Ye
seems like a logical, even forthcoming explanation, right, But Lizzie
Mulder's interview is actually pretty damning. She's basically lying about everything,
and Detective Morakian can prove it, which means the criminal
(30:23):
case he's got against her is stronger than ever. But
some unseen powerful force appears to be conspiring to help
Lizzie get away with everything. You know, I was getting
pressure to basically close the case. They wanted you to
get rid of it and not do any just close it.
The distinct attorney told me, I don't think this is
(30:44):
a winnable case. It doesn't really have any jury appeal
and quite honestly, it's too convoluted, and I don't think
you have enough to win in court. Yea, for those
of you keeping score, that's one for con artist Lizzie
alter Her and zero for all her victims. How time,
(31:08):
oh my gosh, okay, question next time. On Queen of
the Con the O c Savior, a new victim suddenly appears.
Who is Joe Love? What a name? Right? Yeah? He
(31:28):
sounds like a porn star, Joe Love. Joe Love. And
while Lizzie might be caught, that's not slowing her down
one bit. When you're in a psychiatric hospital, police can't
come in and get you, I know. Safe. Queen of
(31:52):
the Con 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
(32:15):
Eric Newman. Sound 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 iHeart Media, Maya Howard
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