November 17, 2025 • 42 mins
The stories Lezlie Manukian has told people about her time in Hawaii usually end with murderous local mobsters running her off the island. But this is also coming from the tall tale telling Californian trickster we've heard can even swindle a bank. When Lezlie left New Zealand, never to be seen again, it seemed like the only way for Greg Wards to understand who he really married was to ask the Hawaiian police what really happened.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hey, it's Jake. Before we get into this episode, I
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(00:41):
Pushkin Plus on the deep Cover show page on Apple Podcasts,
or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. Let's get into it.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
This episode contains occasional course language.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
The first thing about Leslie Minuchian that caught my brother's
attention was her American accent. The second thing my American
file brother was attracted to was Leslie's wild story about
why she left Hawaii.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
Some bad people in Hawaii were trying to attack her,
you know, because that frauded her and we're trying to
do bad stuff to her, and her mom and dad
sent her to Europe to escape them.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
According to Leslie, she had been run off the island
by murderous locals. A lot of people heard different versions
of the story.
Speaker 6 (01:31):
I remember her saying something about she had to crawl
up in a dark bathroom.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Was something about some cash. She was like hiding under
a table and these guys looking somewhere and she was
trying to call her dad and she got on the
wrong side of the local mafia.
Speaker 7 (01:42):
She witnessed.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
She might have got beaten up, murder or she got
home invaded at a house or something like that.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
They're going to kill me tonight, dad.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Criminals got on this chartered airplane.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Parents had a paper and private jet to come get
her before the mafia killed her.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
So this story about Hawaii, after everything that happened to
my brother Greg, he started to think about how it
might be a fat yarn. He wanted to know what
really happened, So we figured he had write to the
Hawaiian police and ask if they knew anything. Greg might
have been watching a bit too much Hawaii five Oh
or Magnum Pi when he wrote this letter, because he's
(02:19):
dialed up the drama.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
I find myself in a murky world of con artists
and swindlers. We are battling them and I will find
out the truth. Any information, advice, maybe a point in
the right direction, would be invaluable.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Normally cops don't go giving out details to letter writing
busybodies like you can't just write a letter to the
police asking them to hand over documents because you're curious
about someone's past. But maybe whoever got that letter was
moved by Greg's quest for justice, because whoever read Gregg's
letter sent back a thick Manila envelope. What Greg found
(02:58):
in that envelope was relief.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
Finally I had something that was real and genuine and
could cast light on her, her character and what she
was really about.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Inside the envelope were copies of police reports, including detectives notes,
and witness statements. The reports suggested that Greg wasn't alone.
He wasn't the only person who had been burnt by
Leslie Minuchian. I'm Ollie Ward's and this is snowball. Does
(03:39):
the name Leslie Minuchian mean anything to you?
Speaker 8 (03:42):
Oh, you've bet never forget her.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
She's a sociopath.
Speaker 9 (03:46):
She wanted me to come to Hawaii with her and
help her open this fucking bar.
Speaker 10 (03:51):
That's the cool spot because it was one of the
biggest venues here on Mollie.
Speaker 6 (03:55):
It just started getting shittier and shittier.
Speaker 8 (03:58):
He was brock. She took every fucking thing out.
Speaker 10 (04:03):
I just kept tiding about if screw you, this is
your karma, and I just kept grabbing every bit of money.
Speaker 8 (04:09):
He's a manipulative con artist. He loves what she's doing.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
She just loved it. By writing to the Hawaiian State Police,
Greg was able to get back this fat Manila folder
that I've got in my hand. It contained these couple
(04:39):
of reports that I'm looking at now, which show there
was at least two people pissed off enough to file
police complaints against Leslie, and there's detective notes, witness accounts.
It's pretty detailed. Under the suspect is listed Leslie Ruth Minouchian, adult,
white female citizen, thirty four years old, height five seven,
(05:04):
weight one hundred and sixteen pounds, so that's about fifty kg,
brown eyes, brown hair, fair complexion, unemployed and no local address.
There's allegations in here of check fraud, lots of tantalizing intel.
This one is filed by a guy called Jorge Herdi,
(05:27):
and so I've just googled him and I've found a
picture of him on a modeling site. He's got shaggy
blonde hair, blue eyes, surfy looking kind of guy, and
the only other thing I can find about him is
a pretty empty linked in account, and it says that
he works at a hostel in Santa Catarina, Brazil. I'm
(05:53):
pretty nervous about getting in touch. All of this stuff
in Hawaii happened back in the early two thousands. I
don't even know if he'll remember Leslie. Plus it's kind
of hard to explain who I am and what I'm
doing too. But I've got to give him a buzz
to find out what he remembers. See Georges, heardi see
(06:18):
no nobla Portuguese. Yeah, I speak for Guese. I speak
in English. You speak English. Yeah, I'm looking for Georges Herdy.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Please okay you I mean please.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
Hello Georges. Yes, yes, my name is Ollie Ward's and
I'm just wondering, are you the same Georges that used
to live in Hawaii in about two thousand and four.
You used to go there a lot, so I've had
trouble getting I'm just wondering if you if the name
Leslie Minouchian means anything to you.
Speaker 9 (06:58):
Oh, the scammer.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
I'm kind of glad to hear him say that, the scammer.
I'm onto something, Georges says him Leslie in Oceanside, California.
Speaker 9 (07:13):
Leslie was a very charming like she you know, I
had a way too, Can I get into your good side?
Like seeing nice things about me, like what a good
looking man I was. And she had the hearts for
me and this and that and the other, and she
(07:35):
kind of started dating and that was the whole thing
that she wanted me to come to Hawaii with her
and help her open this fucking bar.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
George's story already sounds familiar. It starts out with Leslie
hooking up with a guy and next thing, he's involved
in the grand opening of a hospitality business. George's wasn't
the only person Leslie recruited for her Hawaiian plan. Leslie
was working at a restaurant in California and became friends
(08:08):
with some of the others who worked there.
Speaker 10 (08:10):
She and I became friends, so she would invite me
over to her house in San Diego and Oceanside, and
she had a beautiful home. She had a lot of
toys with the doom buggies and you know, beautiful yard
with a pond, and you know, she was my manager
at the restaurant that I was working at.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Trinity found that her ambitions matched up with Lislie's.
Speaker 10 (08:31):
She and I had the same ideas of entrepreneurship, of
wanting to fulfill opening up a restaurant, bar night lifestyle.
And it was kind of like friendship instantaneously because she
kind of had that aura where she's a very smooth
speaking person, where she can make everything seem perfect.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Trinity looks like someone who would be at home at
the beach some died here, straight talking vibe. She had
spent lots of time in Hawaii and had always wanted
to go back there, so she had an idea for Leslie.
Speaker 10 (09:03):
She wanted to do it within Oceanside, and I kept
telling her, no, there's you know, there's too many restaurants here.
You're going to be such a small fish in this
big pond, you know. And so I kept telling her
that I have lived in Maui prior to and that
I had a lot of connections here in Hawaii. And
one day she said, Okay, let's go, let's do it,
(09:24):
and so I said, okay, let's do it. Let's go.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Trinity wasn't the only person ready to follow Leslie out
to the islands.
Speaker 10 (09:32):
We were like her little ducklings.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Following behind her, Georgia and a couple of others jumped
on the bandwagon.
Speaker 10 (09:37):
And all the stories that she had, you know, put
into our heads as to what we were going to
be doing.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
They headed to Maui, the second biggest of the Hawaiian islands.
They ended up in a place called Lehina. There's heaps
of tourists. If you've been to Maui, you probably went
to Lehina with its still blue water protected by a reef.
The main street is called Front Street, with restaurants, bars,
and souvenir shops. Amongst those was an old bar that
(10:08):
had been closed. It looked like the perfect spot to
open a new business.
Speaker 10 (10:12):
It's like a ten thousand square foot venue, and I
have a lot of connections, so I started making phone calls,
got in there, we got the lease on the building.
Being a bartender for nineteen years, I had a wonderful
connection with the liquor Commission, so I was able to
get the liquor license and stated as well, I was
creating network of people for her to be welcomed here
(10:35):
in Maui.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
More and more people were drawn into Leslie's Hawaiian vision.
One of them was a British backpacker called Will. He
was in his early thirties and looking to set himself
up in the island life. He's a Northerner with long
hair and a laid back attitude.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
When I met Leslie, she had all these fantastic ideas
of what was going to happen, and it seemed to
fall so into line with the things that I wanted
to do as well. I've really fallen on my feet.
I mean everyone almost saying the same thing. It all
hinged on Leslie's word of things, and it was all
(11:14):
sun together by dreams.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Really, it sounds like Leslie has always been someone that
can work out what people want and talk to that
a dream reflector. Leslie rented a house in a nice
neighborhood for some of the people working for her to
live in. There were lots of bedrooms and a separate
cottage out back.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
There was no furniture in there. It had been explained
to me that Leslie was waiting for a shipping container
or something to arrive. That I had all the furniture
for the house. The girls were all really nice, and
they were all raring to go with the club idea.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
We'll be right.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Back on promises of getting paid. Once the bar took off,
Leslie's squad got to work. They had a lot to do.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
It had been closed up for a long time. I
think russ had been the only thing in and out
of the place. It needed a hell of lots of
work doing to it. They had sort of grassroof type
of foods that were just black with dust many years.
It was a filthy mess.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Lesley's Brazilian boyfriend, Georgia, was redoing the bars Interia.
Speaker 9 (12:25):
We had to pull out a lot of trash out
of there, repaint everything, and basically start from scratch. And
she had a whole bunch of people working for her, painters,
people that would do like you know, would work or
whatever just to get the place ready to go.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Another of Lesley's recruits was Leahina local Layane.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
She told us that, you know, she had all this
funding and then that she needed our help. What I
remember is busting my butt for hours, day after day
for her. Nurse would pay me like one hundred two
hundred dollars every now and again.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
And Leslie was almost like a little celebrity in Lahina,
so everyone was sort of bowing at her feet. Kind
of thing, and we were enjoying it. Everyone was very helpful.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
With some elbow grease from all sorts of people. Lislie's
bar started looking pretty good. She named it the Breakwater.
It almost looked like the dream was coming true.
Speaker 10 (13:26):
Oh, that's pretty awesome. There was a front and bar
with tables, and then also an outdoor seating area, and
then as you walked towards at the back, you have
more of a nightclub where you can actually close off
the doors from the front side so that you can
have the full nightclub aspect.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
The club opened and we're doing really well. There was
a lot of interest from the locals, people queuing around
the block a couple of times to get in. On
the opening night, it was really really busy. There were
local bands playing, It was packed, and it was a
really good atmosphere.
Speaker 10 (13:59):
It was a cool spot because it was one of
the biggest venues here on Melli. It was the newest
thing happening, and it was great. A lot of the time,
when you have nothing and somebody has something and they
make it seem like such this beautiful painted picture, you
(14:21):
try to believe in.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
That the story about Hawaii. It makes me think about
the Dragonfly CAFA in New Zealand and everyone who helped
Lislie open it, Greg Simon, my parents. It's like the
same story, just on a different island. Because just as
(14:43):
the dreamy picture Lislie paints starts to become a reality,
things begin to fall apart.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
There was a chef that she chosen to take over
the kitchen work, and it was a really nice guy
who was putting everything into it. It made some really
nice hamburgers as samples that have been given out at
the bar, and he got good ideas. But the fridges
were filled with these hamburgers, but they were never able
to be sold because of the grease trap, never get
and emptied.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
I don't know what a grease trappers, but it sounds
gross and it needed empty in Apparently it needed an
expensive reef. It too to get a liquor license, Leslie
told the liquorboard the grease trap had been upgraded, but
will rickins that was never done.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
That was the health code violation that stopped the kitchen
from ever opening up.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
So after a pretty good start at the bar, the
breakwater became a shambles. Will sees their electricity got cut off.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
There were anti moskitail candles on the tables instead of
any light in. People were starting to wonder what was going.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
On without air conditioning. The bar was baking hot too.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
We were buying bags of vice from the local shop,
filling cool box is full of beers, but Leslie was
still trying to sell her little dreams.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
I'm starting to recognize pieces of the story. Leslie once
told me that electricity got cut off at the breakwater
because she got on the wrong side of the bouncer
who had a cousin in the power company. So the
power did get cut off, but Will in Trinity think
it was for a more obvious reason.
Speaker 10 (16:17):
At this point, she hadn't paid her electric bill, so
from my understanding, she was running her electricity off of
a generator.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Literally. Around this time, Leslie and her workers were all
evicted from the house they lived in. Will suspected that
Leslie wasn't paying the rent.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
We got evicted on New Year's Eve and I had
to move into the club. So I was in the
offices at the bike I put a bed in there
and a fridge and wavya while Leslie was in a
pool house she's rented at the side of her big house.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
People had been working on the project in return for
free rent, little bits of cash, and promises that they'd
be sordid when the breakwater took off, But now they
started to realize they might never see the money they
were owed. Words spread quickly that things were broken at
the breakwater.
Speaker 10 (17:05):
This town is very small. We caught the cook and
it wireless, so everyone talks to everyone about everything, so
it's very easy to find out what people are doing
when you're not even within the same area as them.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
Slowly but surely, people were dropping. Things started getting really
shady at one point because every time we tried to
ask her for money and she didn't have it. And
I still have bills to pay, I have children defeed.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Eventually, Leane did manage to get some of their wages
out of Lesley, which was more than most.
Speaker 10 (17:36):
I was never paid a dollar. I was able to live.
I guess you can say rent free for a month,
but if that is restitution for everything that I did
to get her to have this ten thousand square foot venue,
to get the chef in line, for her to get
the music in line, for her to get the sign
person involved, for her I liquor license. I did it all,
(17:58):
but no, I was never paid one penny, not one.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
And people weren't just saying they didn't get paid. There
were also allegations of stolen chicks and credit cards. Leslie's
Surphy boyfriend, Georgia's, had been living with her. Then he
went home to Brazil on holiday, and.
Speaker 9 (18:15):
Shortly after I realized that she had already picked up
my check book and went to town on it. You know, literally,
she had like fake checks sent out to the whole
fucking city under my name. I couldn't believe. It was
actually pretty much sucked into that whole thing. It's like
(18:37):
a movie.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Georgia went to the police and told them that Leslie
had ridden out nine checks totaling over thirteen thousand dollars
from his account.
Speaker 9 (18:45):
And she was just like, oh, I'm gonna pay that.
My father's gonna pay you. It's like, I don't believe
one single word you say to me anymore, you know,
after what you've done. And apparently she just kept on
on a roll.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
From this other police report I've got from Hawaii, it
does look like Leslie might have been on a roll.
This second report is filed by a guy called Scott.
Scott's police report says that Leslie needed a place to crash,
and so he offered her a room at his. The
report also says quote they were intimate, but only a
(19:20):
few days later Scott noticed some strange charges on his
credit card. Scott's a sort of wily looking entrepreneur guy.
He's got gray hair, and in the one photo I
can find of him online, he's rocking a checkered vest
I managed to get his phone number through a furniture
company he owns in Washington State. Hello, yeah, today, is
(19:44):
that Scott?
Speaker 9 (19:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Oh that's great. Okay, Scott, Look, this might be a
little bit of a strange call, so please just hang
in there for a moment. But I'm just wondering if
you used to live in Hawaii in around two thousand
and four.
Speaker 8 (19:58):
Yeah, uh huh.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Does the name Leslie Minukian mean anything to you?
Speaker 9 (20:02):
Oh?
Speaker 8 (20:03):
You bet.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
Never forget her. It's not good that Leslie might have
scammed more people, but I'm glad I'm on the right trail.
I'm kind of relieved to find someone else. And even
though this all happened like fifteen years ago, Scott remembers
everything straight away.
Speaker 8 (20:25):
She took my credit cards, went and charged all that
money on him. And then I got called by the
credit card company on a charge and I says, no,
I didn't make that charge. You know, I knew it
was her because it was all restaurant related supplies and
different things to open that restaurant. But I mean, she
(20:46):
was stealing. But when I contacted the police, she was
so slick.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Leslie said Scott gave her permission to use his credit
card and to buy things for the breakwater. She says
Scott wanted a relationship, but when she turned him down,
he started making accusations. Scott says, that's all lies.
Speaker 8 (21:07):
The police. They told me that I was full of it,
and she convinced them that I was lying. I couldn't
believe it, and so a few more days passed by,
somebody else called the police and told them that she
had done something to them similar, So then they believed me.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
The cops had actually done a criminal history check on Leslie,
and this background check must have fired the cops up
because it showed that Leslie had form. They found out
Leslie had been arrested for stuff like writing bad checks
in San Diego, California, only seven months earlier. Leslie had
ended up pleading guilty to burglary related to check fraud.
(21:49):
She was even on a three year suspended sentence from
that when all this went down in Hawaii. And that
wasn't all. Leslie left behind in California. In a newspaper archive,
I found some ads notifying Leslie she was being sued.
I tracked down the guy who sued her. The reason
I'm calling is just because I am interested in your
(22:10):
running with Leslie.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Mountains, the Leslie Leslie thing.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
It turns out the sky Mike Templin is the guy
with the June Buggies and the nice place where Leslie
was living before she went to Hawaii. And like a
lot of people who have hooked up with Lislie, he's
got a story. Is now all right time?
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Yeah, it's okay, okay, I just don't like to relive it. Yeah,
sorry to drag as you can imagine.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Yeah, Mike's a tour guide and he's walking around an
amusement park while we talk.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
We did live together, a notion side. That's when she
was hiding my mail, you know, like my credit card
statements and saying that she was paying for them while
meanwhile she was just racking up everything she could on
my credit cards after I found some receipts with my
credit card numbers on them, you know, with her signature,
(22:59):
you know, bottles of champagne, you know, two hundred dollars dinners.
She would take a limousine to a nail salon and
spend five hundred dollars at a nail salon on my
credit cards without me knowing, never authorized once to use anything.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
Zero sounds like a lot of cash on nail salons.
Must have been some sweet, many pities. Mike says. Hawaii
was Leslie's escape plan.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, she literally packed up and wamp, I'll pay you back.
Don't worry. I'll start this restaurant and send you back money.
Oh like, oh my god. So yeah, she was gone.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
I've got copies of the documents from Mike's court case
against Leslie. They show while Leslie was in Hawaii, she
kept promising to pay Mike back. In his statement to
the court, Mike says he believed she'd pay him back
because he loved her. Leslie kept sending him checks that bounced,
all from a closed account. Then she sent Mike a
(23:53):
receipt showing she had transferred him thirty one grand Lizlie
added a handwritten note to the transfer receipt, Mike.
Speaker 11 (24:02):
Marry Axnez, I've thrown in an extra six thousand dollars
by yourself, some nice. This is from my trust fund
and could take up to eight working days.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Bit cheeky by yourself, something nice. But the money never arrived.
That receipt turned out to be fake. It's another one
where the numbers trail off on an angle. Maybe they
have twink and photocopies in Hawaii too. Leslie didn't show
up or respond to the court, and they ruled in
favor of Mike. She was ordered to pay him more
(24:37):
than sixty five thousand dollars. But even though deck collectors
were assigned to the case, Mike says he's never seen
a cent.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
I would love to see her right And how.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
So, by the time Leslie was setting up the breakwater
in Hawaii, she was on a suspended sentence and she
was about to be sued for racking up tens of
thousands of dollars on someone else's credit card. With that
kind of stuff goinging on, why didn't the cops just
arrest Leslie? At the bottom of the police reports filed
(25:15):
in Hawaii. It says referred to the Prosecutor's office for
review and prosecution. So it seems like the police were
keen to lay charges, but neither of these police reports
went anywhere. I tried to get to the bottom of
what happened, and it seems like maybe it was a
bureaucratic stuff up. The Maui Prosecutor's office say they never
(25:38):
got the reports from the police. So then I spoke
to the top cop who should know what happened.
Speaker 12 (25:44):
My name is Tivoli Famu and I am the chief
of Police for the Maui County Police Department. Here in
a way, I'm not sure what happened, but now everything
is computerized, so it's automatic, but back then it was
not computerized. A copy goes to our record section, and
then another copy goes to the Prosecutor's office. How what
(26:08):
happened to the case? I can't give you an answer
to that.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Whatever happened, the Hawaiian police didn't arrest Leslie and they
didn't prosecute her. So at least those police reports have
told me a lot about what happened, And after reading
them heaps of times on their own, I realized that
putting them together like jigsaw pieces, reveals a picture of
how Leslie briefly kept afloat in Hawaii. It looks like
(26:36):
this is how things worked. It's like a rob Peter
to pay Paul's situation, or make that Robed Scott to
pay George. According to the police reports, Leslie had some
money stolen from Scott transferred to George, but some of
George's money was allegedly stolen to pay other people back.
It goes around in circles. It's like a house of cards,
(26:59):
but even Flimsia a house made with IOUs ridden on barnapkins.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
As it all went down, Scott actually went into investigator
mode himself, and he had another interesting thing to tell me.
Scott had tracked down Leslie's parents, Betty and Andrew, and
told them what he thought was going on.
Speaker 8 (27:25):
I don't know what the hell their deal is because
I got ahold of them and told them what their
daughter was doing, and they would I don't believe you.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Throughout this whole thing, I've been wondering how much of
Leslie's antics Betty and Andrew really know. So it seems
that they knew about some of these allegations from Hawaii,
but maybe Leslie was lying to them too. In any case,
Scott is angry at Betty and Andrew as well.
Speaker 8 (27:50):
They know exactly what she's doing. They know all of it,
you know. I don't know how much a part they
are of it, but they know exactly what this girl's doing.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Hearing about Leslie's parents reminded me that I should give
my own mom and dad an update. They've always wondered
whether other people have had similar experiences with Leslie. So
I called them and told them about all the stories
I've been hearing, and I asked Dad what he thought
about Leslie's parents potentially being aware of this stuff.
Speaker 13 (28:20):
I just feel the same basically that Leslie's been, if
you like, nurtured into continuing by her parents. They're obviously
not necessarily agree with what she does, but they sort
of do by not condemning it.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
I asked Mum how she felt knowing that there were
other victims out.
Speaker 7 (28:40):
There, sickened, but also a bit vindicated that we're not
as dumb as we thought we were because other people
have said, oh no, we would have known when I
meet her. I knew she was no good. I knew
(29:01):
it when I meet her. This we were wanting to
tell us I knew, I knew, and it makes you
feel really dumb and angry. Makes me feel vindicated that
we're not dumb, that we were so powerfully used. The
(29:21):
power that she has is amazing.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
It turns out there was one more report from the
Hawaiian police. Leslie went to them to file a report
of her own. The police wrote down her account of
a break in at her house. This report says, upon
her return to her residence at about twenty one hundred hours,
she observed everything in her room thrown about. The door
was open and removed from her jewelry box a two
(29:53):
point five carrot diamond ring valued at twenty thousand dollars,
white guest watch valued at about two hundred dollars, and
also a point five carrot diamond airing. Also observed a
knife was put in one of the pillowcases on her bed.
Nothing than that. Who knows how much of this is true?
(30:17):
I mean, the police report says there was no evidence
associated with this case and they never got hold of
any receipts showing that Leslie actually owned this expensive stuff
she said was stolen by the time she got to London,
Leslie was telling a story about men with knives entering
her house while she hit under the bed. There is
(30:37):
one element of Leslie's story about Hawaii that does hold up, though.
When Leslie told the story, she always said that she
fled the island fearing for her life, and from the
people who've been talking to it turns out that's kind
of right. By the time the breakwater folded, Leanne says
people were out to get Leslie.
Speaker 6 (30:58):
She's definitely made a lot of enemies that wanted the
money that they were promised, but especially like where I'm from,
and it is a community, and I'll say, you know, Honora,
She's burned so many people that even people that weren't
directly affected monetarily by her. I was to the point
(31:20):
where I probably, you know, wanted to punch her in
the face. Unfortunately I ever had a chance.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Lane isn't the only person who felt that way. Trinity,
the beachy, sporty looking Hawaiian who helped Leslie set up
the breakwater, well, she definitely did. I mean, this.
Speaker 10 (31:37):
Island, you know, we're all very Aloha made people here.
I'd seen ninety percent of us, and you do wantto
others as you want done to yourself. So if someone's
working there butt off and they have bills to pay
and you're not paying them, what are they going to do?
They're going to do something to you.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
The story she told me next kind of shocked me.
It starts late one night in Lehina. Trinity says she
was having a night out. Her and her uncle and
her boyfriend went to see a punk band play. Leahina
is a small place, so they weren't that far from
the breakwater. After the band finished, Trinity and her crew
climbed into a cab to leave, But just as she
was getting into the cab, she saw Lazie coming out
(32:15):
of the breakwater.
Speaker 10 (32:17):
I looked over at the bar and I seen her
coming out, and I said, oh, hang on a minute, mister,
And he said what the cab driver said, you need
to stop the cab. So I looked at my uncle
and I said, hey, man, she's out there. I'm gonna
go get her. And he said what I said, Are
you ready? And he said okay. So I jumped out
of the cab. I ran directly towards her and I
(32:39):
just punched her directly into her face. She had grabbed
all of the cover charge money from the front door,
and so her purse was filled with cash. So when
I punched her, her purse flew, so her money was
flying everywhere. Kept telling her, you know, f off, screw you,
this is your karma, blah blah blah, and I just
(33:00):
kept grabbing every bit of money I could.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
The brul got bigger as Trinity's uncle started fighting with
someone in Laizley's crowd.
Speaker 10 (33:08):
One of the cops pulled up, and he's one of
our local cops, and he said, Trinity, what have you done?
And I said, I know, you've heard about all of
the things she's been doing. At this point, he looked
at me and he said, oh, I know. He said,
do yourself a favor, get out of here right now.
I said, okay, So I jumped in the cab and
we took off. Next morning, I showed up at her door,
(33:32):
pounding on her door. But from what the neighbor told me,
that she had been packing stuff in trying to leave,
and by that day she was completely off of the island.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
And for Leanne, that local from Lehina, she reckons Leslie
probably wouldn't care about who she hurt. Anyway.
Speaker 6 (33:49):
She is as fake as they come, and she has
no heart for anyone or no concern for anyone, And honestly,
her level of care is zero for anyone else outside
of herself.
Speaker 10 (34:06):
You get what you give care, whether you're in Hawaii,
you're in California, you're in New Zealand, and wherever, you
get what you give. And this place will welcome you,
but it will also throw you and drowned you as
fast as you make yourself apparent to be who you are.
And that's what she did, and she's lucky she left.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
So there were parts of Leslie's story about Hawaii that
were kind of true. It's easier to tell a lie
when it's built on a truth. I'm learning that as
I'm starting to understand Leslie's world. But that doesn't make
Leslie's lies any less damaging, especially as I'm hearing from
the people who have been hurt by those lies along
the way, people that remind me of my brother Greg.
(34:53):
If there's a Greg in this story, it's a local
restaurant manager named David Parks. He didn't marry Leslie. In fact,
as far as I can tell, they weren't ever involved
with each other. Romantically, but in the collapse of the Breakwater,
David lost out more more than anyone.
Speaker 8 (35:11):
So she hooked up with David pretty much as a
con artist.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
David was a friend of Scott's.
Speaker 8 (35:18):
She went ahead and found all of his dreams and
strengths and weaknesses and talked him into quitting his job
and investing all of his money with her to open
up this bar.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
David quit his job managing another restaurant for the promise
of bigger things at the Breakwater. He invested twenty five
thousand dollars in Leslie's business. David got to work immediately
alongside the others, including Will.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Everyone liked him. He was a very junteel guy, very
humble guy, very honest guy. And I think that's one
of the main things that Leslie was able to trade
on is Dave's reputation as being an honest, trustworthy fellow.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
As things started to go bad at the Breakwater, David
Will tried to keep each other's spirits up.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
As time was going on, it became more and more
apparent that Leslie was just lying to everybody, just behind
had been the whole time. Myself and Dave used to
lay down the beach in the Daytimes, talking everything through
and laughing in a way at how much bullshit we
would pull with.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
But Wills's that laughter was a sad kind of laughter.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
For Dave, it was devastating. It was his life savings
and his reputation that was being plundered.
Speaker 8 (36:39):
He was broke. She took every fucking thing he had. Okay,
he was flat broke, But more than anything, he was
so humiliated. We all told him that he was going
to get screwed.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
You know, I really wanted to talk to David. I've
been asking everyone what happened to him. People have told
me David was totally cut up and his reputation was ruined.
So he left Hawaii. He went to live with his mum.
Then one day Scott called me back with some news
he had found.
Speaker 8 (37:09):
Out Dave did pass away. The people that I talked
to don't know what it was. My friend that knew
him that hasn't seen him for quite some time said
that it was a sudden thing or something that he
didn't know what the situation was, just the bottom line
that he was gone.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
So I'm just looking at this statement that David made
for the police. Now that I know he's no longer alive.
It seems like this is the only thing I'll ever
hear from him. It's a statement he made as part
of Scott's case. He was a witness, and it's recorded
in here that he stated he is non Minuchian for
only a few months and regrets ever going into business
(37:56):
with her. And I've read this witness statement from David
so many times, but it's really this last line that
gets me. Says stated he had learned that Leslie is
a really good talker and can make you believe things
that are not true.
Speaker 8 (38:15):
She loves sucking a person in, like your brother or
me or David, and just destroying that person. Those things
never leave you, you know, they never leave you. She's
a manipulative con artist that is like a serial killer.
(38:36):
She loves what she's doing. She just loves it.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Maybe she does love it. I really just don't know
at this point. Maybe it's all just sport for her.
But on the other hand, maybe she's just deluded. Maybe
she believes that these crazy schemes are going to work
out and everyone's going to get paid back and everything's
going to be okay. I just feel like I have
(39:05):
no idea what's going on inside of her head. I'm
not sure where Leslie went next, but a year later
she turns up traveling happily around Europe doing the tourist thing.
I know where she went, not through her emails, but
by reading Leslie's old style paper diary. She left it
(39:27):
in New Zealand. The diary has notes like walking to
her of Prague, flight numbers and albums she likes like
Outcasts Speaker Box. Leslie's handwriting is scribbled and often sideways
on the pages, but the most interesting entry is right
at the start.
Speaker 11 (39:44):
May three, New York. Eric met George Cloudey Julia Roberts
private jet from Das.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Sounds like old mate. Eric t Weiss esquire the lawyer
who Leslie said represented her. And this was written well
before any of us had met Leslie, So this Eric
character has been around for a while. She was just
writing random, strange stuff about him in her own diary
as she traveled. Why would Leslie have made a note
(40:16):
to herself about Eric if he didn't exist, I don't know.
But it was on these travels that Leslie ended up
in London, where she met my brother Greg and Eric
t Weiss would eventually become a fully fledged character in
this story, convincing enough to full Kiwi Bank into approving
a one point five million dollar alone. This mysterious Eric
(40:43):
guy might just be the strangest part of this story.
He might also be the key to unlocking Leslie's world.
So next episode, we're going to get well acquainted with
Leslie's lawyer to the stars. Can you believe this jerk
Eric t Weiss as your lawyer?
Speaker 11 (41:02):
I am starting to make threats also.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
And it's time for me to go to the United States.
I'm going to go and find Answers. All right, touchdown, USA,
I'm going to go and find Leslie.
Speaker 9 (41:19):
What are we getting ourselves into?
Speaker 4 (41:24):
But we've got a muscle curve. It looks like a
sting ray on Willards. That's next time on snowboard. I
have to say you've made a pretty unusual choice of snacks,
But I mean, like, who gets banana chips and beef jerky?
Speaker 12 (41:40):
And I wanted to
Speaker 5 (41:41):
Stay away from sugar
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hey, it's Jake. Before we get into this episode, I
want to let you know that you can hear more
ad free episodes from Snowball before the release to the
public by signing up for Pushkin Plus. In addition to
supporting narrative storytelling, you'll also get bonus episodes, full audio books,
and binge's from your favorite pushkin hosts and authors. Fine
(00:41):
Pushkin Plus on the deep Cover show page on Apple Podcasts,
or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. Let's get into it.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
This episode contains occasional course language.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
The first thing about Leslie Minuchian that caught my brother's
attention was her American accent. The second thing my American
file brother was attracted to was Leslie's wild story about
why she left Hawaii.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
Some bad people in Hawaii were trying to attack her,
you know, because that frauded her and we're trying to
do bad stuff to her, and her mom and dad
sent her to Europe to escape them.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
According to Leslie, she had been run off the island
by murderous locals. A lot of people heard different versions
of the story.
Speaker 6 (01:31):
I remember her saying something about she had to crawl
up in a dark bathroom.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Was something about some cash. She was like hiding under
a table and these guys looking somewhere and she was
trying to call her dad and she got on the
wrong side of the local mafia.
Speaker 7 (01:42):
She witnessed.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
She might have got beaten up, murder or she got
home invaded at a house or something like that.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
They're going to kill me tonight, dad.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Criminals got on this chartered airplane.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Parents had a paper and private jet to come get
her before the mafia killed her.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
So this story about Hawaii, after everything that happened to
my brother Greg, he started to think about how it
might be a fat yarn. He wanted to know what
really happened, So we figured he had write to the
Hawaiian police and ask if they knew anything. Greg might
have been watching a bit too much Hawaii five Oh
or Magnum Pi when he wrote this letter, because he's
(02:19):
dialed up the drama.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
I find myself in a murky world of con artists
and swindlers. We are battling them and I will find
out the truth. Any information, advice, maybe a point in
the right direction, would be invaluable.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Normally cops don't go giving out details to letter writing
busybodies like you can't just write a letter to the
police asking them to hand over documents because you're curious
about someone's past. But maybe whoever got that letter was
moved by Greg's quest for justice, because whoever read Gregg's
letter sent back a thick Manila envelope. What Greg found
(02:58):
in that envelope was relief.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
Finally I had something that was real and genuine and
could cast light on her, her character and what she
was really about.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Inside the envelope were copies of police reports, including detectives notes,
and witness statements. The reports suggested that Greg wasn't alone.
He wasn't the only person who had been burnt by
Leslie Minuchian. I'm Ollie Ward's and this is snowball. Does
(03:39):
the name Leslie Minuchian mean anything to you?
Speaker 8 (03:42):
Oh, you've bet never forget her.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
She's a sociopath.
Speaker 9 (03:46):
She wanted me to come to Hawaii with her and
help her open this fucking bar.
Speaker 10 (03:51):
That's the cool spot because it was one of the
biggest venues here on Mollie.
Speaker 6 (03:55):
It just started getting shittier and shittier.
Speaker 8 (03:58):
He was brock. She took every fucking thing out.
Speaker 10 (04:03):
I just kept tiding about if screw you, this is
your karma, and I just kept grabbing every bit of money.
Speaker 8 (04:09):
He's a manipulative con artist. He loves what she's doing.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
She just loved it. By writing to the Hawaiian State Police,
Greg was able to get back this fat Manila folder
that I've got in my hand. It contained these couple
(04:39):
of reports that I'm looking at now, which show there
was at least two people pissed off enough to file
police complaints against Leslie, and there's detective notes, witness accounts.
It's pretty detailed. Under the suspect is listed Leslie Ruth Minouchian, adult,
white female citizen, thirty four years old, height five seven,
(05:04):
weight one hundred and sixteen pounds, so that's about fifty kg,
brown eyes, brown hair, fair complexion, unemployed and no local address.
There's allegations in here of check fraud, lots of tantalizing intel.
This one is filed by a guy called Jorge Herdi,
(05:27):
and so I've just googled him and I've found a
picture of him on a modeling site. He's got shaggy
blonde hair, blue eyes, surfy looking kind of guy, and
the only other thing I can find about him is
a pretty empty linked in account, and it says that
he works at a hostel in Santa Catarina, Brazil. I'm
(05:53):
pretty nervous about getting in touch. All of this stuff
in Hawaii happened back in the early two thousands. I
don't even know if he'll remember Leslie. Plus it's kind
of hard to explain who I am and what I'm
doing too. But I've got to give him a buzz
to find out what he remembers. See Georges, heardi see
(06:18):
no nobla Portuguese. Yeah, I speak for Guese. I speak
in English. You speak English. Yeah, I'm looking for Georges Herdy.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Please okay you I mean please.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
Hello Georges. Yes, yes, my name is Ollie Ward's and
I'm just wondering, are you the same Georges that used
to live in Hawaii in about two thousand and four.
You used to go there a lot, so I've had
trouble getting I'm just wondering if you if the name
Leslie Minouchian means anything to you.
Speaker 9 (06:58):
Oh, the scammer.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
I'm kind of glad to hear him say that, the scammer.
I'm onto something, Georges says him Leslie in Oceanside, California.
Speaker 9 (07:13):
Leslie was a very charming like she you know, I
had a way too, Can I get into your good side?
Like seeing nice things about me, like what a good
looking man I was. And she had the hearts for
me and this and that and the other, and she
(07:35):
kind of started dating and that was the whole thing
that she wanted me to come to Hawaii with her
and help her open this fucking bar.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
George's story already sounds familiar. It starts out with Leslie
hooking up with a guy and next thing, he's involved
in the grand opening of a hospitality business. George's wasn't
the only person Leslie recruited for her Hawaiian plan. Leslie
was working at a restaurant in California and became friends
(08:08):
with some of the others who worked there.
Speaker 10 (08:10):
She and I became friends, so she would invite me
over to her house in San Diego and Oceanside, and
she had a beautiful home. She had a lot of
toys with the doom buggies and you know, beautiful yard
with a pond, and you know, she was my manager
at the restaurant that I was working at.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Trinity found that her ambitions matched up with Lislie's.
Speaker 10 (08:31):
She and I had the same ideas of entrepreneurship, of
wanting to fulfill opening up a restaurant, bar night lifestyle.
And it was kind of like friendship instantaneously because she
kind of had that aura where she's a very smooth
speaking person, where she can make everything seem perfect.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Trinity looks like someone who would be at home at
the beach some died here, straight talking vibe. She had
spent lots of time in Hawaii and had always wanted
to go back there, so she had an idea for Leslie.
Speaker 10 (09:03):
She wanted to do it within Oceanside, and I kept
telling her, no, there's you know, there's too many restaurants here.
You're going to be such a small fish in this
big pond, you know. And so I kept telling her
that I have lived in Maui prior to and that
I had a lot of connections here in Hawaii. And
one day she said, Okay, let's go, let's do it,
(09:24):
and so I said, okay, let's do it. Let's go.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Trinity wasn't the only person ready to follow Leslie out
to the islands.
Speaker 10 (09:32):
We were like her little ducklings.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Following behind her, Georgia and a couple of others jumped
on the bandwagon.
Speaker 10 (09:37):
And all the stories that she had, you know, put
into our heads as to what we were going to
be doing.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
They headed to Maui, the second biggest of the Hawaiian islands.
They ended up in a place called Lehina. There's heaps
of tourists. If you've been to Maui, you probably went
to Lehina with its still blue water protected by a reef.
The main street is called Front Street, with restaurants, bars,
and souvenir shops. Amongst those was an old bar that
(10:08):
had been closed. It looked like the perfect spot to
open a new business.
Speaker 10 (10:12):
It's like a ten thousand square foot venue, and I
have a lot of connections, so I started making phone calls,
got in there, we got the lease on the building.
Being a bartender for nineteen years, I had a wonderful
connection with the liquor Commission, so I was able to
get the liquor license and stated as well, I was
creating network of people for her to be welcomed here
(10:35):
in Maui.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
More and more people were drawn into Leslie's Hawaiian vision.
One of them was a British backpacker called Will. He
was in his early thirties and looking to set himself
up in the island life. He's a Northerner with long
hair and a laid back attitude.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
When I met Leslie, she had all these fantastic ideas
of what was going to happen, and it seemed to
fall so into line with the things that I wanted
to do as well. I've really fallen on my feet.
I mean everyone almost saying the same thing. It all
hinged on Leslie's word of things, and it was all
(11:14):
sun together by dreams.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Really, it sounds like Leslie has always been someone that
can work out what people want and talk to that
a dream reflector. Leslie rented a house in a nice
neighborhood for some of the people working for her to
live in. There were lots of bedrooms and a separate
cottage out back.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
There was no furniture in there. It had been explained
to me that Leslie was waiting for a shipping container
or something to arrive. That I had all the furniture
for the house. The girls were all really nice, and
they were all raring to go with the club idea.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
We'll be right.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Back on promises of getting paid. Once the bar took off,
Leslie's squad got to work. They had a lot to do.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
It had been closed up for a long time. I
think russ had been the only thing in and out
of the place. It needed a hell of lots of
work doing to it. They had sort of grassroof type
of foods that were just black with dust many years.
It was a filthy mess.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Lesley's Brazilian boyfriend, Georgia, was redoing the bars Interia.
Speaker 9 (12:25):
We had to pull out a lot of trash out
of there, repaint everything, and basically start from scratch. And
she had a whole bunch of people working for her, painters,
people that would do like you know, would work or
whatever just to get the place ready to go.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Another of Lesley's recruits was Leahina local Layane.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
She told us that, you know, she had all this
funding and then that she needed our help. What I
remember is busting my butt for hours, day after day
for her. Nurse would pay me like one hundred two
hundred dollars every now and again.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
And Leslie was almost like a little celebrity in Lahina,
so everyone was sort of bowing at her feet. Kind
of thing, and we were enjoying it. Everyone was very helpful.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
With some elbow grease from all sorts of people. Lislie's
bar started looking pretty good. She named it the Breakwater.
It almost looked like the dream was coming true.
Speaker 10 (13:26):
Oh, that's pretty awesome. There was a front and bar
with tables, and then also an outdoor seating area, and
then as you walked towards at the back, you have
more of a nightclub where you can actually close off
the doors from the front side so that you can
have the full nightclub aspect.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
The club opened and we're doing really well. There was
a lot of interest from the locals, people queuing around
the block a couple of times to get in. On
the opening night, it was really really busy. There were
local bands playing, It was packed, and it was a
really good atmosphere.
Speaker 10 (13:59):
It was a cool spot because it was one of
the biggest venues here on Melli. It was the newest
thing happening, and it was great. A lot of the time,
when you have nothing and somebody has something and they
make it seem like such this beautiful painted picture, you
(14:21):
try to believe in.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
That the story about Hawaii. It makes me think about
the Dragonfly CAFA in New Zealand and everyone who helped
Lislie open it, Greg Simon, my parents. It's like the
same story, just on a different island. Because just as
(14:43):
the dreamy picture Lislie paints starts to become a reality,
things begin to fall apart.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
There was a chef that she chosen to take over
the kitchen work, and it was a really nice guy
who was putting everything into it. It made some really
nice hamburgers as samples that have been given out at
the bar, and he got good ideas. But the fridges
were filled with these hamburgers, but they were never able
to be sold because of the grease trap, never get
and emptied.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
I don't know what a grease trappers, but it sounds
gross and it needed empty in Apparently it needed an
expensive reef. It too to get a liquor license, Leslie
told the liquorboard the grease trap had been upgraded, but
will rickins that was never done.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
That was the health code violation that stopped the kitchen
from ever opening up.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
So after a pretty good start at the bar, the
breakwater became a shambles. Will sees their electricity got cut off.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
There were anti moskitail candles on the tables instead of
any light in. People were starting to wonder what was going.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
On without air conditioning. The bar was baking hot too.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
We were buying bags of vice from the local shop,
filling cool box is full of beers, but Leslie was
still trying to sell her little dreams.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
I'm starting to recognize pieces of the story. Leslie once
told me that electricity got cut off at the breakwater
because she got on the wrong side of the bouncer
who had a cousin in the power company. So the
power did get cut off, but Will in Trinity think
it was for a more obvious reason.
Speaker 10 (16:17):
At this point, she hadn't paid her electric bill, so
from my understanding, she was running her electricity off of
a generator.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Literally. Around this time, Leslie and her workers were all
evicted from the house they lived in. Will suspected that
Leslie wasn't paying the rent.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
We got evicted on New Year's Eve and I had
to move into the club. So I was in the
offices at the bike I put a bed in there
and a fridge and wavya while Leslie was in a
pool house she's rented at the side of her big house.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
People had been working on the project in return for
free rent, little bits of cash, and promises that they'd
be sordid when the breakwater took off, But now they
started to realize they might never see the money they
were owed. Words spread quickly that things were broken at
the breakwater.
Speaker 10 (17:05):
This town is very small. We caught the cook and
it wireless, so everyone talks to everyone about everything, so
it's very easy to find out what people are doing
when you're not even within the same area as them.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
Slowly but surely, people were dropping. Things started getting really
shady at one point because every time we tried to
ask her for money and she didn't have it. And
I still have bills to pay, I have children defeed.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Eventually, Leane did manage to get some of their wages
out of Lesley, which was more than most.
Speaker 10 (17:36):
I was never paid a dollar. I was able to live.
I guess you can say rent free for a month,
but if that is restitution for everything that I did
to get her to have this ten thousand square foot venue,
to get the chef in line, for her to get
the music in line, for her to get the sign
person involved, for her I liquor license. I did it all,
(17:58):
but no, I was never paid one penny, not one.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
And people weren't just saying they didn't get paid. There
were also allegations of stolen chicks and credit cards. Leslie's
Surphy boyfriend, Georgia's, had been living with her. Then he
went home to Brazil on holiday, and.
Speaker 9 (18:15):
Shortly after I realized that she had already picked up
my check book and went to town on it. You know, literally,
she had like fake checks sent out to the whole
fucking city under my name. I couldn't believe. It was
actually pretty much sucked into that whole thing. It's like
(18:37):
a movie.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Georgia went to the police and told them that Leslie
had ridden out nine checks totaling over thirteen thousand dollars
from his account.
Speaker 9 (18:45):
And she was just like, oh, I'm gonna pay that.
My father's gonna pay you. It's like, I don't believe
one single word you say to me anymore, you know,
after what you've done. And apparently she just kept on
on a roll.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
From this other police report I've got from Hawaii, it
does look like Leslie might have been on a roll.
This second report is filed by a guy called Scott.
Scott's police report says that Leslie needed a place to crash,
and so he offered her a room at his. The
report also says quote they were intimate, but only a
(19:20):
few days later Scott noticed some strange charges on his
credit card. Scott's a sort of wily looking entrepreneur guy.
He's got gray hair, and in the one photo I
can find of him online, he's rocking a checkered vest
I managed to get his phone number through a furniture
company he owns in Washington State. Hello, yeah, today, is
(19:44):
that Scott?
Speaker 9 (19:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Oh that's great. Okay, Scott, Look, this might be a
little bit of a strange call, so please just hang
in there for a moment. But I'm just wondering if
you used to live in Hawaii in around two thousand
and four.
Speaker 8 (19:58):
Yeah, uh huh.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Does the name Leslie Minukian mean anything to you?
Speaker 9 (20:02):
Oh?
Speaker 8 (20:03):
You bet.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
Never forget her. It's not good that Leslie might have
scammed more people, but I'm glad I'm on the right trail.
I'm kind of relieved to find someone else. And even
though this all happened like fifteen years ago, Scott remembers
everything straight away.
Speaker 8 (20:25):
She took my credit cards, went and charged all that
money on him. And then I got called by the
credit card company on a charge and I says, no,
I didn't make that charge. You know, I knew it
was her because it was all restaurant related supplies and
different things to open that restaurant. But I mean, she
(20:46):
was stealing. But when I contacted the police, she was
so slick.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Leslie said Scott gave her permission to use his credit
card and to buy things for the breakwater. She says
Scott wanted a relationship, but when she turned him down,
he started making accusations. Scott says, that's all lies.
Speaker 8 (21:07):
The police. They told me that I was full of it,
and she convinced them that I was lying. I couldn't
believe it, and so a few more days passed by,
somebody else called the police and told them that she
had done something to them similar, So then they believed me.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
The cops had actually done a criminal history check on Leslie,
and this background check must have fired the cops up
because it showed that Leslie had form. They found out
Leslie had been arrested for stuff like writing bad checks
in San Diego, California, only seven months earlier. Leslie had
ended up pleading guilty to burglary related to check fraud.
(21:49):
She was even on a three year suspended sentence from
that when all this went down in Hawaii. And that
wasn't all. Leslie left behind in California. In a newspaper archive,
I found some ads notifying Leslie she was being sued.
I tracked down the guy who sued her. The reason
I'm calling is just because I am interested in your
(22:10):
running with Leslie.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Mountains, the Leslie Leslie thing.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
It turns out the sky Mike Templin is the guy
with the June Buggies and the nice place where Leslie
was living before she went to Hawaii. And like a
lot of people who have hooked up with Lislie, he's
got a story. Is now all right time?
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Yeah, it's okay, okay, I just don't like to relive it. Yeah,
sorry to drag as you can imagine.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Yeah, Mike's a tour guide and he's walking around an
amusement park while we talk.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
We did live together, a notion side. That's when she
was hiding my mail, you know, like my credit card
statements and saying that she was paying for them while
meanwhile she was just racking up everything she could on
my credit cards after I found some receipts with my
credit card numbers on them, you know, with her signature,
(22:59):
you know, bottles of champagne, you know, two hundred dollars dinners.
She would take a limousine to a nail salon and
spend five hundred dollars at a nail salon on my
credit cards without me knowing, never authorized once to use anything.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
Zero sounds like a lot of cash on nail salons.
Must have been some sweet, many pities. Mike says. Hawaii
was Leslie's escape plan.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, she literally packed up and wamp, I'll pay you back.
Don't worry. I'll start this restaurant and send you back money.
Oh like, oh my god. So yeah, she was gone.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
I've got copies of the documents from Mike's court case
against Leslie. They show while Leslie was in Hawaii, she
kept promising to pay Mike back. In his statement to
the court, Mike says he believed she'd pay him back
because he loved her. Leslie kept sending him checks that bounced,
all from a closed account. Then she sent Mike a
(23:53):
receipt showing she had transferred him thirty one grand Lizlie
added a handwritten note to the transfer receipt, Mike.
Speaker 11 (24:02):
Marry Axnez, I've thrown in an extra six thousand dollars
by yourself, some nice. This is from my trust fund
and could take up to eight working days.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Bit cheeky by yourself, something nice. But the money never arrived.
That receipt turned out to be fake. It's another one
where the numbers trail off on an angle. Maybe they
have twink and photocopies in Hawaii too. Leslie didn't show
up or respond to the court, and they ruled in
favor of Mike. She was ordered to pay him more
(24:37):
than sixty five thousand dollars. But even though deck collectors
were assigned to the case, Mike says he's never seen
a cent.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
I would love to see her right And how.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
So, by the time Leslie was setting up the breakwater
in Hawaii, she was on a suspended sentence and she
was about to be sued for racking up tens of
thousands of dollars on someone else's credit card. With that
kind of stuff goinging on, why didn't the cops just
arrest Leslie? At the bottom of the police reports filed
(25:15):
in Hawaii. It says referred to the Prosecutor's office for
review and prosecution. So it seems like the police were
keen to lay charges, but neither of these police reports
went anywhere. I tried to get to the bottom of
what happened, and it seems like maybe it was a
bureaucratic stuff up. The Maui Prosecutor's office say they never
(25:38):
got the reports from the police. So then I spoke
to the top cop who should know what happened.
Speaker 12 (25:44):
My name is Tivoli Famu and I am the chief
of Police for the Maui County Police Department. Here in
a way, I'm not sure what happened, but now everything
is computerized, so it's automatic, but back then it was
not computerized. A copy goes to our record section, and
then another copy goes to the Prosecutor's office. How what
(26:08):
happened to the case? I can't give you an answer
to that.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Whatever happened, the Hawaiian police didn't arrest Leslie and they
didn't prosecute her. So at least those police reports have
told me a lot about what happened, And after reading
them heaps of times on their own, I realized that
putting them together like jigsaw pieces, reveals a picture of
how Leslie briefly kept afloat in Hawaii. It looks like
(26:36):
this is how things worked. It's like a rob Peter
to pay Paul's situation, or make that Robed Scott to
pay George. According to the police reports, Leslie had some
money stolen from Scott transferred to George, but some of
George's money was allegedly stolen to pay other people back.
It goes around in circles. It's like a house of cards,
(26:59):
but even Flimsia a house made with IOUs ridden on barnapkins.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
As it all went down, Scott actually went into investigator
mode himself, and he had another interesting thing to tell me.
Scott had tracked down Leslie's parents, Betty and Andrew, and
told them what he thought was going on.
Speaker 8 (27:25):
I don't know what the hell their deal is because
I got ahold of them and told them what their
daughter was doing, and they would I don't believe you.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Throughout this whole thing, I've been wondering how much of
Leslie's antics Betty and Andrew really know. So it seems
that they knew about some of these allegations from Hawaii,
but maybe Leslie was lying to them too. In any case,
Scott is angry at Betty and Andrew as well.
Speaker 8 (27:50):
They know exactly what she's doing. They know all of it,
you know. I don't know how much a part they
are of it, but they know exactly what this girl's doing.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Hearing about Leslie's parents reminded me that I should give
my own mom and dad an update. They've always wondered
whether other people have had similar experiences with Leslie. So
I called them and told them about all the stories
I've been hearing, and I asked Dad what he thought
about Leslie's parents potentially being aware of this stuff.
Speaker 13 (28:20):
I just feel the same basically that Leslie's been, if
you like, nurtured into continuing by her parents. They're obviously
not necessarily agree with what she does, but they sort
of do by not condemning it.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
I asked Mum how she felt knowing that there were
other victims out.
Speaker 7 (28:40):
There, sickened, but also a bit vindicated that we're not
as dumb as we thought we were because other people
have said, oh no, we would have known when I
meet her. I knew she was no good. I knew
(29:01):
it when I meet her. This we were wanting to
tell us I knew, I knew, and it makes you
feel really dumb and angry. Makes me feel vindicated that
we're not dumb, that we were so powerfully used. The
(29:21):
power that she has is amazing.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
It turns out there was one more report from the
Hawaiian police. Leslie went to them to file a report
of her own. The police wrote down her account of
a break in at her house. This report says, upon
her return to her residence at about twenty one hundred hours,
she observed everything in her room thrown about. The door
was open and removed from her jewelry box a two
(29:53):
point five carrot diamond ring valued at twenty thousand dollars,
white guest watch valued at about two hundred dollars, and
also a point five carrot diamond airing. Also observed a
knife was put in one of the pillowcases on her bed.
Nothing than that. Who knows how much of this is true?
(30:17):
I mean, the police report says there was no evidence
associated with this case and they never got hold of
any receipts showing that Leslie actually owned this expensive stuff
she said was stolen by the time she got to London,
Leslie was telling a story about men with knives entering
her house while she hit under the bed. There is
(30:37):
one element of Leslie's story about Hawaii that does hold up, though.
When Leslie told the story, she always said that she
fled the island fearing for her life, and from the
people who've been talking to it turns out that's kind
of right. By the time the breakwater folded, Leanne says
people were out to get Leslie.
Speaker 6 (30:58):
She's definitely made a lot of enemies that wanted the
money that they were promised, but especially like where I'm from,
and it is a community, and I'll say, you know, Honora,
She's burned so many people that even people that weren't
directly affected monetarily by her. I was to the point
(31:20):
where I probably, you know, wanted to punch her in
the face. Unfortunately I ever had a chance.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Lane isn't the only person who felt that way. Trinity,
the beachy, sporty looking Hawaiian who helped Leslie set up
the breakwater, well, she definitely did. I mean, this.
Speaker 10 (31:37):
Island, you know, we're all very Aloha made people here.
I'd seen ninety percent of us, and you do wantto
others as you want done to yourself. So if someone's
working there butt off and they have bills to pay
and you're not paying them, what are they going to do?
They're going to do something to you.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
The story she told me next kind of shocked me.
It starts late one night in Lehina. Trinity says she
was having a night out. Her and her uncle and
her boyfriend went to see a punk band play. Leahina
is a small place, so they weren't that far from
the breakwater. After the band finished, Trinity and her crew
climbed into a cab to leave, But just as she
was getting into the cab, she saw Lazie coming out
(32:15):
of the breakwater.
Speaker 10 (32:17):
I looked over at the bar and I seen her
coming out, and I said, oh, hang on a minute, mister,
And he said what the cab driver said, you need
to stop the cab. So I looked at my uncle
and I said, hey, man, she's out there. I'm gonna
go get her. And he said what I said, Are
you ready? And he said okay. So I jumped out
of the cab. I ran directly towards her and I
(32:39):
just punched her directly into her face. She had grabbed
all of the cover charge money from the front door,
and so her purse was filled with cash. So when
I punched her, her purse flew, so her money was
flying everywhere. Kept telling her, you know, f off, screw you,
this is your karma, blah blah blah, and I just
(33:00):
kept grabbing every bit of money I could.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
The brul got bigger as Trinity's uncle started fighting with
someone in Laizley's crowd.
Speaker 10 (33:08):
One of the cops pulled up, and he's one of
our local cops, and he said, Trinity, what have you done?
And I said, I know, you've heard about all of
the things she's been doing. At this point, he looked
at me and he said, oh, I know. He said,
do yourself a favor, get out of here right now.
I said, okay, So I jumped in the cab and
we took off. Next morning, I showed up at her door,
(33:32):
pounding on her door. But from what the neighbor told me,
that she had been packing stuff in trying to leave,
and by that day she was completely off of the island.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
And for Leanne, that local from Lehina, she reckons Leslie
probably wouldn't care about who she hurt. Anyway.
Speaker 6 (33:49):
She is as fake as they come, and she has
no heart for anyone or no concern for anyone, And honestly,
her level of care is zero for anyone else outside
of herself.
Speaker 10 (34:06):
You get what you give care, whether you're in Hawaii,
you're in California, you're in New Zealand, and wherever, you
get what you give. And this place will welcome you,
but it will also throw you and drowned you as
fast as you make yourself apparent to be who you are.
And that's what she did, and she's lucky she left.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
So there were parts of Leslie's story about Hawaii that
were kind of true. It's easier to tell a lie
when it's built on a truth. I'm learning that as
I'm starting to understand Leslie's world. But that doesn't make
Leslie's lies any less damaging, especially as I'm hearing from
the people who have been hurt by those lies along
the way, people that remind me of my brother Greg.
(34:53):
If there's a Greg in this story, it's a local
restaurant manager named David Parks. He didn't marry Leslie. In fact,
as far as I can tell, they weren't ever involved
with each other. Romantically, but in the collapse of the Breakwater,
David lost out more more than anyone.
Speaker 8 (35:11):
So she hooked up with David pretty much as a
con artist.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
David was a friend of Scott's.
Speaker 8 (35:18):
She went ahead and found all of his dreams and
strengths and weaknesses and talked him into quitting his job
and investing all of his money with her to open
up this bar.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
David quit his job managing another restaurant for the promise
of bigger things at the Breakwater. He invested twenty five
thousand dollars in Leslie's business. David got to work immediately
alongside the others, including Will.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Everyone liked him. He was a very junteel guy, very
humble guy, very honest guy. And I think that's one
of the main things that Leslie was able to trade
on is Dave's reputation as being an honest, trustworthy fellow.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
As things started to go bad at the Breakwater, David
Will tried to keep each other's spirits up.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
As time was going on, it became more and more
apparent that Leslie was just lying to everybody, just behind
had been the whole time. Myself and Dave used to
lay down the beach in the Daytimes, talking everything through
and laughing in a way at how much bullshit we
would pull with.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
But Wills's that laughter was a sad kind of laughter.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
For Dave, it was devastating. It was his life savings
and his reputation that was being plundered.
Speaker 8 (36:39):
He was broke. She took every fucking thing he had. Okay,
he was flat broke, But more than anything, he was
so humiliated. We all told him that he was going
to get screwed.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
You know, I really wanted to talk to David. I've
been asking everyone what happened to him. People have told
me David was totally cut up and his reputation was ruined.
So he left Hawaii. He went to live with his mum.
Then one day Scott called me back with some news
he had found.
Speaker 8 (37:09):
Out Dave did pass away. The people that I talked
to don't know what it was. My friend that knew
him that hasn't seen him for quite some time said
that it was a sudden thing or something that he
didn't know what the situation was, just the bottom line
that he was gone.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
So I'm just looking at this statement that David made
for the police. Now that I know he's no longer alive.
It seems like this is the only thing I'll ever
hear from him. It's a statement he made as part
of Scott's case. He was a witness, and it's recorded
in here that he stated he is non Minuchian for
only a few months and regrets ever going into business
(37:56):
with her. And I've read this witness statement from David
so many times, but it's really this last line that
gets me. Says stated he had learned that Leslie is
a really good talker and can make you believe things
that are not true.
Speaker 8 (38:15):
She loves sucking a person in, like your brother or
me or David, and just destroying that person. Those things
never leave you, you know, they never leave you. She's
a manipulative con artist that is like a serial killer.
(38:36):
She loves what she's doing. She just loves it.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Maybe she does love it. I really just don't know
at this point. Maybe it's all just sport for her.
But on the other hand, maybe she's just deluded. Maybe
she believes that these crazy schemes are going to work
out and everyone's going to get paid back and everything's
going to be okay. I just feel like I have
(39:05):
no idea what's going on inside of her head. I'm
not sure where Leslie went next, but a year later
she turns up traveling happily around Europe doing the tourist thing.
I know where she went, not through her emails, but
by reading Leslie's old style paper diary. She left it
(39:27):
in New Zealand. The diary has notes like walking to
her of Prague, flight numbers and albums she likes like
Outcasts Speaker Box. Leslie's handwriting is scribbled and often sideways
on the pages, but the most interesting entry is right
at the start.
Speaker 11 (39:44):
May three, New York. Eric met George Cloudey Julia Roberts
private jet from Das.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Sounds like old mate. Eric t Weiss esquire the lawyer
who Leslie said represented her. And this was written well
before any of us had met Leslie, So this Eric
character has been around for a while. She was just
writing random, strange stuff about him in her own diary
as she traveled. Why would Leslie have made a note
(40:16):
to herself about Eric if he didn't exist, I don't know.
But it was on these travels that Leslie ended up
in London, where she met my brother Greg and Eric
t Weiss would eventually become a fully fledged character in
this story, convincing enough to full Kiwi Bank into approving
a one point five million dollar alone. This mysterious Eric
(40:43):
guy might just be the strangest part of this story.
He might also be the key to unlocking Leslie's world.
So next episode, we're going to get well acquainted with
Leslie's lawyer to the stars. Can you believe this jerk
Eric t Weiss as your lawyer?
Speaker 11 (41:02):
I am starting to make threats also.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
And it's time for me to go to the United States.
I'm going to go and find Answers. All right, touchdown, USA,
I'm going to go and find Leslie.
Speaker 9 (41:19):
What are we getting ourselves into?
Speaker 4 (41:24):
But we've got a muscle curve. It looks like a
sting ray on Willards. That's next time on snowboard. I
have to say you've made a pretty unusual choice of snacks,
But I mean, like, who gets banana chips and beef jerky?
Speaker 12 (41:40):
And I wanted to
Speaker 5 (41:41):
Stay away from sugar
Host
Jake Halpern
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