November 10, 2025 • 44 mins
What looks like a dream marriage for Ollie Wards' brother Greg soon morphs into a nightmare. With the whole family drawn into the mess, his parents go from a comfortable retirement to being homeless and squatting in the basement at his Aunty's house.
Even though she was on a tourist visa in New Zealand, Greg's American wife had secured a massive loan from the country's state-owned bank. After she flies off, never to be seen again, a box of documents from the bank transaction surfaces.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
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 (00:53):
This episode contains occasional course language, and we've used some
voice actors to bring emails to life. The last time
my brother saw Leslie Minouchian, she was getting on a plane.
He thought she was just taking a holiday to see
her family in the US. But just before Leslie turned
(01:13):
to go through the gate, she said those words, the
snowball was about to hit you.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
And Greg was so shell shocked.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
We didn't really know what that meant. No, well, how
would manifest itself? What snowball?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Within a couple of months, my parents had lost more
than a million dollars, their home and their retirement, and
Greg was heartbroken. As paperwork surfaced from the failed Dragonfly Cafa.
Dad started to find some hectic stuff that didn't make sense.
Leslie Minuchi and had left behind a trail of clues
(01:53):
about what she had done, and the more my Dad discovered,
the more obsessed he got about investigating. Dad even sort
of turned himself into a sixty something year old hacker,
and he eventually uncovered a web of deception so strange
that it's kind of funny. Welcome to Unravel season four.
(02:14):
I'm Molly Wards and this is Snowball.
Speaker 6 (02:19):
I need to clear this up.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Don't call yourself Houdini.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Held it up to the light and everything merged.
Speaker 7 (02:27):
That person has a border placed on it.
Speaker 8 (02:29):
It's just like a finger and it it's a big
metal phone.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
It's so weird. That is weird. It is weird.
Speaker 9 (02:50):
Oh my fucking gosh, are you serious? We pointed that out?
Speaker 5 (02:59):
What buck God.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
When Leslie left Forever the Dragonfly Cafa had only been
open for five months, Dad and Greg could finally look
at the books.
Speaker 10 (03:22):
Felt like it was a bit of a relief that
she was out of the way so we could start
trying to work out what the fuck was going on.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
What Greg and Dad found wasn't pretty. The Dragonfly was
in serious debt. If the business didn't get turned around quickly,
the whole thing would collapse. My family pulled together to
save the Dragonfly. Mum worked as a waitress, my dad
behind the counter. My brother Simon and his chef mates
were in the kitchen.
Speaker 8 (03:49):
When Mum and Dad came up. I just remember it
being like whoa, and then whoa, but and then after
like two or three woes. As the woes went keep
on getting worse. Even though they were getting worse, it
wasn't really a surprise. You're like, I wonder what the
next woe is going to be.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
They tried their best to turn things around, but the
business debts weren't getting paid down fast enough. Mum, dad
and Greg were worried and they didn't want to do
anything wrong, so they voluntarily handed control of the business
to administrators, some suits from Auckland, whould do whatever they
needed to for the debts to be repaid. It was
the administrators who ended up pulling the pin. The cafe,
(04:28):
gift shop, and the house were all sold. The bank
also got my family home, the house I grew up in.
The day Mum and Dad were told it was all over,
they went for a walk along the beach.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
That was a terrible time. And we were walking along
the beach looking at this pew de cauetward tree and
in a way sort of jokingly saying, there's a lot
of foliage up there. It will be sort of where
the proof we could live under this tree. We sat
down on the wharf walkworth and had a little cry
(05:10):
about it.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
We both sunk to our knees and sat on the wolf.
We cried. We just were destroyed. We went angry. We
were just destroyed.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
To make things worse, the global economy was going into meltdown.
Speaker 10 (05:40):
It was a parallel with the world economy at that
time as well in the United States.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Housing market has spread across the international.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Stock markets around the world, embracing for a potential melt or.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
It just has a sharp his average and not just
down the road, but right now. The Dragonfly wasn't worth
what Leslie had bought it for just a few months ago.
Selling it all, even including our house, didn't cover the
more than one point five million dollar alone. The debt
to kiwibank was short, about one hundred and fifty grand
(06:11):
My parents had less than nothing. My Auntie Robin and
Uncle Merv renovated their basement so my parents could move in.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
If we hadn't had the backing of families, our families,
I don't know where we would have ended up.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Mum and Dad even went to ask if they were
eligible for any welfare payments.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
At one stage we went to see if we could
get a flat to live in and work an Incomebrihige
is so hard to deal with. We had a young
lady of about twenty one. I'm only guessing it twenty
She said to us, said what are we going to do?
(06:54):
And she said, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You just got to sort it.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
And we've lived with that saying ever since, it's been
quite good.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
If you don't know, you just saw that. If this
was a hard time for my parents, it was even
harder for Greg. He had to watch Mum and Dad
get turfed out of our family home.
Speaker 10 (07:14):
The house that you know we all sort of spent
twenty odd years as a family was well in the past.
Everyone was split. I was off. I don't know where
I was. I think I was flanning in Mount Eden.
Simon had gone his way. Mum and Dad were living
(07:35):
at someone else's house as well.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
And while all this was happening, he was coming to
terms with the fact that his marriage was over. Did
you miss her? I mean, like, you know, yeah I did.
Speaker 10 (07:46):
I sort of thought that maybe we things could be
worked out and she had come back down, But then
each week it got more and more out of the
realms of possibilities.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And does she know about everything that happened? I mean,
I don't even know if she knows that the house
got sold and everything.
Speaker 10 (08:07):
I think I probably yelled at who went on the
phone and said a few things like.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
That, and.
Speaker 10 (08:14):
Yeah, yep, but obviously not the whole She didn't live it,
did she, So she wouldn't know.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
But would it even be fair to say it was
all Leslie's fault anyway? After all, my parents kicked in
money to a business venture that failed. Like Dad said,
they stuck their neck out, it didn't pay off. They
weren't forced to back Leslie's loan. It would be fair
to say that my parents and Greg were naive to
put so much into the deal just on trust. They
(08:53):
made a bad call investing in the Dragonfly, and in
two thousand and eight, people all over the world were
going bankrupt. But as my dad found out, This was
no ordinary business failure. After everything that could be sold
was gone, KII Bank sent Dad a bunch of all
the documents. While this was happening, I was still living overseas.
(09:15):
But now that I'm back and end zed, I've finally
heard the crazy story about what happened when Dad started
digging through that box of documents. When Kiwibank loaned one
point five million dollars to Leslie, one of their conditions
was Leslie had to prove she rarely had that big
trust fund she always talked about. Because she was an
(09:36):
equal partner, a guaranteur of the loan along with Greg
and my parents, she was supposed to be taking on
the risk of the investment alongside them. In the box
of stuff from Kiwibank, there was a document Leslie had
given them showing her trust fund had more than five
million US dollars locked up in it. It was a
statement from Bank of America.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
The Bank of America's statement was crucial to the bank
recognizing that Leslie had funds to be able to sustain
the business.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Dad hadn't seen any of this when the deal was done.
Leslie had her own dealings with Kiwibank, but as soon
as he found this Bank of America's statement, he could
tell it looked dodgy. Looking at the statement now, it's
pretty sketchy. The numbers on the closing balance of more
than five million sort of trail off on a slight angle.
(10:29):
The ins and outs of the transactions don't even add
up properly. The closing balance is wrong by six hundred
and sixteen dollars. There's heaps of empty lines. It looks
like a photocopy. It's not signed or stamped by anyone.
But for Dad, things didn't raally fall into place until
he stumbled on something else Leslie had left behind. When
(10:55):
Mom and Dad moved out of our house and closed
up the Dragonfly, my aunties and uncles helped pack up
everything they could keep, furniture, mum's china plates that we
never used. It was all squashed into a small suburban
storage unit, tight square tin walls like a shed, with
boxes backed to the roof.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
Sometimes I'd go to the store and sort of reminisce
about how it was with my own stuff around me,
and I was just kort of sitting in this little
storeroom with all of our household goods. Everything was there
totally packed in and for some reason, I was just
going through the drawers of this chest of draws and
(11:35):
I found a Barclay Bank statement, and then I found
a copy of the America Bank of America statement, and
they looked similar. I put one on top of the
other and held it up to the light and everything merged.
(11:57):
The wording was the same, same font, same size, the
barcode on it was the same, and that sort of
locked it in. She had actually produced the Bank of
America's statement by modifying the Barclay Bank statement.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
This might not have been the first time Leslie had
made good use of a photocopier. Last episode, we heard
someone say that Leslie had admitted to twinking out, photocopying
and faking up her driving record, but this took it
to another level. It looked like she had faked up
a bank statement showing the balance of her trust fund.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
That was a fundamental wow moment for me. That was
the ultimate and fraudulent activity when you present that to
a bank and they accept it. I was sitting there
on the stall just looking at the stuff, and it
was a moment where suddenly everything seemed to fall into place.
(13:02):
We had been done.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Dad couldn't believe this hadn't been picked up, and honestly
I can't either. Some people have suggested to me that
Leslie would distract people with flirting, but I wondered if
it was really possible. With all these professionals like at
the bank, could they be influenced by that kind of thing?
I asked Dad what he thought.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
Well, I think she certainly pursued that line with a
lot of people, including the bank people. One of them, Mike,
is quite astounded to see her give him a big
gobby kiss. What do you mean at gobby mouth to
mouth job? As we were leaving a meeting.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Gobby means something different in Australia. Anyway, when my parents
figured all this out, they knew that it was time
to go to the bank and show them the fake
documents that had been under their noses the whole time.
Mom and Dad went to Kiwibank's head office in Wellington.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
So this guy said, look, you said, I know it's
bad news, but you got to go home and live
with it. And I got so angry. I said to him,
you are talking about a family that have no home,
and you're telling us to walk out of here. And
by this stage David had presented the form showing the
(14:23):
fraud and how easy it was to pick up, and
he actually said to these manage men, he said, look
at it. He said, I found it. He said, your
janitors should have found it. Why didn't you find it?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
And what did they say? Oh?
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Ah?
Speaker 5 (14:47):
They were totally embarrassed, very very embarrassed about this. And
I suddenly realized that I was in command here, and
I can remember saying, now, we'll go home now, but
we'll reconvene the meeting tomorrow. All right, tomorrow afternoon, I'll
present you with my claim and we'll see where we
(15:07):
go from there, right, And he said okay, So off
we went, and we went off to pub and had
a rub and coke and a lot of laughter because
we thought, ah, fastards, we've got them. Well, it didn't
quite turn out that way.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Kii Bank did initially offer some compensation to Mum and Dad,
but later the offer was retracted. The bank's lawyers had
decided that they didn't owe Mum and Dad anything. Mum
and Dad had been relying on the bank to make
sure Leslie's finances were sound, but the bank basically said
that they should have been doing their own checks. I
wanted to talk to Kii Bank about all this, but
(15:45):
they just said we do not comment publicly on specific
consumer issues and won't be doing so in this circumstance.
The person my mum and dad would usually get to
help with this kind of thing was their lawyer of
twenty five years. This lawyer had helped them to buy
(16:05):
their house and help Dad set up as party higher business.
But they could talk to him because back when Leslie
was still in New Zealand, before this fraud had been discovered,
the lawyer dumped Dad.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
My lawyer rang and told me he had a conflict
of interest situation. He was dealing with Leslie and he
was dealing with us, and he saw the two starting
to split apart.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Did you find that ominous? You're the longest client in
the scenario. Why are you going?
Speaker 7 (16:38):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (16:38):
I did think that was a bit odd. Then I
thought he was obviously armored with Leslie. She was the future.
We were the present, but not so much the future.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Not knowing where else to turn, Mum and Dad took
all the documents to their local member of parliament, a
guy called Rodney Hyde, and it just so happened that
Rodney Hyde had quite a profile. He was the leader
of a political party called Act. And he didn't just act,
he also danced. The Honorable Rodney Hyde was a surprisingly
(17:17):
popular contestant on New Zealand's Dancing with the Stars.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Up next Rodney Hyde And after that first fox trot,
the question is has he got a little cheeky chut
chacha left in.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
Him dancing the chut cha? Or Rodney Hyde and Crystal
Stewart please take to the floor.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Mum and Dad felt like they were finally getting somewhere
because Rodney Hyde took a keen interest in their case.
Rodney wrote a strongly worded letter to the bank suggesting
that their lax checking of Leslie's documents was negligent and
asked them to reverse their position, but the bank didn't budge.
(18:00):
The only other thing my parents could do was report
the whole thing to the police.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
You have reached the New Zealand Police non emergency line.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Dad had a couple of meetings with Auckland's top fraud cop,
a Welshman.
Speaker 7 (18:15):
So I'm Mahal Jones, I'm a detective respect at the
moment at the time when this file came in. I
was the acting detective senior sergeant in charge of Auckland
City Fraud Squad as it was then. Certainly, if the
suspect we were in New Zealand, it would be something
that we would have allocated and looked at. Unfortunately, with
(18:36):
her already having left the country ex standard practice at
that point that we wouldn't take it any further. It's
unfortunate that by the time this fraud, you know, or
the likely forward was realized, she was already well gone.
But what we did do is ensure that that person
has a border that placed on them, so if they
were to re enter the country, I would get a
(18:57):
notification and at that point we would look at the
filer game.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Unless Leslie came back to New Zealand, the cops wouldn't
do anything. By skipping the country, Leslie could leave it
all behind. Is it any part of the practice as
well to sort of let the US authorities know that
they've done something like that.
Speaker 7 (19:14):
I'd only do that if I really expecting to transfer
a file that had sufficient evidence on it to warrant
an investigation. In America, a lot of fraud files is
to get to that level you actually need to speak
to the suspect. Because you're looking at bank accounts, a
handwriting samples to get to that point. It's quite a
long road.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
It seems like kind of a loop. With Leslie gone,
they couldn't investigate her, but without an investigation in New Zealand,
they couldn't tell the US. Therefore, no one was going
to investigate. But what all this meant was pretty simple.
Even if Leslie had committed blatant fraud, she was gonna
(19:55):
get away with it. As Dad and the administrators kept
investigating what happened at the Dragonfly, they found more shady surprises.
One of the administrators somehow found out that Leslie had
been hit with charges relating to check fraud in the US,
(20:17):
and she had a conviction. Dad also found records showing
something really dodgy. Not long after he had put an
eye watering seventy five grand in an account for Leslie
to set up the Dragonfly, she sent over twenty grand
to her parents in the US, and that was before
the business had even opened. Greg tried to confront Leslie
(20:42):
about all this, but according to Greg, she continued to
blame the failure of the Dragonfly on Mum and dad
and Greg meddling in the business. Mum and dad wanted
answers from Leslie's parents. They tried calling, and then Leslie's dad,
Andrew replied by email, this isn't his real voice.
Speaker 11 (21:03):
I felt it would be better to respond to you
via email as I have difficulty most of the time
understanding the key we accent, and I apologize for that.
We are extremely sorry for the situation everyone is in.
Betty has been praying for a turnaround of the situation,
and we all do care about your welfare and success.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
But he goes on to say stuff like the cafe
should never have been sold.
Speaker 11 (21:28):
We feel that you should have received advice from at
least three or four different experts. There are many brokers
out there that at least would have given you the
option to refinance. Your main concern seems to be that
Leslie was not properly regretful of her contributions to the
failure of the business. However, I am not sure what
gave you this impression. As far as our empathy for you,
(21:51):
it is more than you realize.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
He sees they don't appreciate my mom and dad blaming
the loss of their home on Lesley.
Speaker 11 (22:00):
You are an adult who has had your own businesses
in the past, and you must have known the risk
involved in this type of business.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Fear enough, Dead new the risks. But based on Leslie
saying she had her trust fund to back everything up,
here's the strange thing. It seems like Betty and Andrew
think Leslie's trust fund is real, or at least they're
trying to convince my parents it's real.
Speaker 11 (22:24):
Unfortunately, she does not have the freedom to access her
trust fund for any amounts to help the Dragonfly with
the financial distress it was in. Leslie does not have
control of this trust fund, nor do we. I want
to reiterate that we do not want to be involved
in any way whatsoever and would appreciate being left out
of this situation. Sincerely, Andrew.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Despite the evidence that shows Leslie sending money to Andrew,
when my dad reached out to them, it was pretty
clear they didn't want a bar of the whole situation.
Leslie warned Greg not to send the documents to her parents,
but then Mum and dad did exactly that. They emailed
Betty and Andrew with attachments showing evidence of fraudulent documents
(23:10):
and money transfers to them in the US.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
Andrew and Betty some facts. Shortly after the bank loan
for the business and startup funding was obtained, Leslie transferred
US twelve five hundred dollars to you on the twenty
fifth of September. Our conclusion is that you both had
knowledge of what was happening, and we're a party to
the deceit.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Not long after my dad sent that email, Leslie wrote
to Greg asking for a divorce. She said it was
the last straw. I read some of what Leslie said
to Greg. He hadn't seen this divorce letter in over
a decade, Like I just want to read some of
this letter to you. It says, dere Greg, I'm filing
(24:04):
for dissolution of our marriage and would appreciate your signature
as soon as possible. I am sorry that things have
ended this way.
Speaker 10 (24:11):
It's just all crap.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
There's one particular paragraph here, which is I am sorry
that now you will never really know what was real
or not? Oh, what was real or not? But I
kept asking and pleading not to push and allow me
to do things on my terms.
Speaker 12 (24:28):
And allow me to do things on my terms, but
you just didn't trust me enough to let me finish
what I started.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I didn't run from the mask.
Speaker 12 (24:39):
I laughed because I was not going to set back
and be told what to do by your family. I
did not work with people up in my face making demands.
Speaker 10 (24:54):
She's a sociopath. She's trying to kill the lily, blame
other people, manipulation. So what I make of that is
just total crap.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
To be honest, what do you think she meant by
I'm sorry, you will never really know what was real
or not.
Speaker 10 (25:11):
Yeah, so that's the I guess. When you marry someone
you want to you feel like you really know them.
So to have her say that was quite tough because
it actually shows that she was holding out. She said,
you know you don't really know me. Well, she was
(25:32):
the one preventing me from knowing. And when I think,
I recall when I read that, I thought of Hawaii
and all of the stories from there, and I thought
to myself, I've just become the new Hawaii. Hawaii was
a mystery. Now in New Zealand's a mystery, and now
(25:53):
the storm's gone somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
My dad still had heaps of questions, like was Leslie's
trust fund real? She seemed to have faked the proof
she gave to the bank. But the weird thing was
Kiwebek also had other documents and even people who seem
to have vouched for the existence of this trust fund.
Some attuney called Eric t. Weiss Esquire head written to
(26:23):
the bank saying.
Speaker 13 (26:24):
This letter is confirmation that Leslie R. Minooki and receives
five thousand US dollars per month allowance for the rest
of her life from a trust fund set up by
her grandfather.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
So who is this guy, Eric t weiss Esquire. Well,
according to his letterhead, he worked at a place called
the Colonial Trust Company in Newport Beach, California.
Speaker 14 (26:46):
No, I do not know an Eric t. Weiss and
my name is Walter Barr. I'm chairman of Colonial Trust Company,
which is a South Carolina State chartered trust company. We
have offices in Spartanburg, Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston, South Carolina.
We have no branches outside of South Carolina. And that
(27:07):
was confusing to be carl Trust or on the Bank
America statement. That old statement looks wrong to me. We
certainly are a Colonial Trust company. Have had no dealings
with either the wife's individual or the Moniquin, and I
don't think these were anything we would have had anything
(27:28):
to do with.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
So the only company of that name that was open
then has never heard of Leslie or Eric t Weiss esquire,
so who is he? Dad went looking for him, and
he did find an American lawyer named Eric t Weiss.
He sent him a fax. They still love fax machines
in the US. Dad was pretty worked up about what
(27:49):
had happened, so this facsy scent was intense.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
Sir, you may wonder who it is that is writing
to you. The fact is you probably know much much
much more about me than I know about you. I
wish to address this imbalance, so I think it is
time to lay some cards on the table.
Speaker 6 (28:09):
Well, you know, the language is somewhat accusatory, and I
guess in reading the letter, the first thing that comes
to my mind is that somebody has been wronged using
my name and rightfully believes that the person who wronged
them is me. My name is Eric t Weiss. I'm
(28:30):
a practicing attorney in the state of Michigan. One thing
I've learned since, you know, when I was a very
young child, is that your reputation is perhaps the most
important thing to you, and so just trying to put
pieces together, realizing that I need to clear this up
as soon as possible and that help this person essentially,
(28:53):
rather than going to become.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
An adversary, Sir, this Eric t Weiss joined my dad's hunt.
Now they were all looking for Eric t Weiss esquire.
Speaker 6 (29:06):
Being an attorney. As long as I've been an attorney,
there are there are ways to find out names of
attorneys where they practiced throughout.
Speaker 14 (29:13):
The United States.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
There is an Eric L. Wise in Atlanta, Eric Georgia
Wise in Eric Jersey City, Eric in Iwis, and Eric.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
But there just wasn't any sign of another era Eric T.
Wise anyway Lavinia, and an Eric G.
Speaker 6 (29:28):
Wise in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Much to my surprise, I am
the only Eric Tys practicing law in the United States.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
It's strange because can We Bank told Dad they had
spoken to Eric t Weiss. He had given his phone
number and seed to Cole if the bank needed anything else.
Apparently they did. Cole Eric T Wess verified the existence
of this trust fund. So who was on the other
end of that phone call?
Speaker 6 (29:53):
There was a phone number that I was able to
do a reverse check of the number online and was
able to contermine that it came out of California. The
number is the home number for Andrew R. And Betty R.
Minukian of California. And then I concluded that perhaps Eric
(30:16):
t wise to fake Eric t Weiss was really Andrew R. Minukian.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
The phone number for Eric t Weiss's esquire given to
Kiwi Bank was actually just the phone number for Leslie's parents' house.
And that wasn't all. Eric had another illusion to reveal.
Eric knew he shared a name with someone famous. He
(30:43):
sort of casually mentioned to Dad that Eric Weiss was
also the real name of the great escape artist, Harry Houdini.
Speaker 9 (30:55):
Lady and gentleman, Oh my fucking god, are you serious?
Speaker 14 (31:10):
Who pointed that out?
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Back when Dad was learning all of this stuff, He
didn't share it with my brothers. So I told Simon
about Eric t Weiss and the Great Houdini.
Speaker 9 (31:19):
Okay, so that's that's bizarre.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
If you don't call yourself Houdini, you know when you're
doing your fraud.
Speaker 8 (31:29):
Well, no, it's it's it's beautiful. She's just taking the
fucking pass, mate. So that makes me a lot more angrier. Well,
I didn't know that. Yeah, that totally changed the game
for me. Really, yeah, that's quite calculated, and like, I
don't know, It's just like a finger, isn't it. It's
a big It's a big metal finger that's fucking out there.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
I was just gobsmacked as too. What's going on here?
How could this be? It was just one of those
moments where I can't figure it out, and I actually
still can't.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
This whole Eric t Weiss thing added a new layer
to the mystery. Dad was keen to get to the
bottom of who was in on the scam, who wasn't,
and how it all worked. More clues turned up leaving
in a hurry and under the pretense that she'd be back.
Leslie had left a lot of stuff around the house
at the Dragonfly, nothing valuable, mostly clothes, but there was
a diary and a few documents, and this one piece
(32:36):
of paper that had a word clearly scrawled on it.
When Dad saw it, he had an idea. He knew
that Leslie had been using his laptop to access her email,
and it kept prompting him to put in a password,
so he thought, maybe I'll just try this, and incredibly
it worked. All of a sudden, he had access to
(33:00):
the inner workings of Leslie's world.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
Being able to look at her emails, I can tell
you there was an awful lot of stuff going on.
I have to say that there were thousands of emails.
It wasn't any fraudulentcy on my part. I acquired a
past word, and while I didn't tell her I was
(33:28):
looking at them, it did give me an awful lot
of information.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
So did you save her emails?
Speaker 5 (33:43):
I have saved some of them, the ones that were interesting.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
How often would you go in there and look at
least once a week? So weird? It is weird. It
is weird. Why how many do you have? Oh?
Speaker 5 (34:13):
I only kept the ones that have great interest, and
I did little sort of excerpts from them.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Dad tells me that for about a year he was
copy pasting the interesting stuff into word documents until the
past word got changed. I can totally understand why Dad
did this. The walls had fallen in around him. The
bank didn't seem to want to act on any of
this stuff, and neither did the police. He had no
other way of getting more definitive answers about the extent
(34:41):
of Leslie's fraud and at this point, neither do I.
All of the emails Dad saved are in the box
of documents he's given me. I do feel kind of
conflicted about this. I could have just left the emails
in the box and cracked on working things out without them.
But leaving them in the box would have meant not
truly understanding what happened, so I decided to read them.
(35:06):
That means getting a real insight into Leslie's world, as
we can hear directly from her. This is a bio
she wrote about herself in an email. I think it's
for a course application. We've got an actor to read
Leslie's emails.
Speaker 12 (35:23):
I have always been fascinated with fast things. My closest
friends would tell you that adrenaline is my best friend.
I'm always looking for the most extreme high through HELLI
morning offal desk, kayaking with the glaciers, hiking the backside
of Half Dell, to scuba diving with the hammerheads of
the Cocus Islands. I am sad to have a glowing personality,
(35:48):
and at times I believe this is true because of
all the great friends that I have. But I see
myself as shy and guarded as a bartender. The fun,
crazy people and rushes of mad crowds give me the
ultimate natural high. I traveled for seven years through fifty
two countries, mostly alone, meeting people along the way. The
(36:12):
experience taught me that I am a go getter who's
a hard working and confident woman. But mostly I am
a survivor.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Those last few words are in capital letters. By the way,
I am a survivor. She'll often emphasize the line in capitals.
Looking through Leslie's other emails, there's more that sticks out
to me. There's insight into her relationship with her parents,
mainly Betty, Leslie's mum. She seems to do most of
the emailing a lot of the time. Betty seems nice.
(36:47):
She even asks after my parents, how is everything there?
Speaker 6 (36:51):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (36:51):
How are Julie and Dave?
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Please tell them hello for me, love Mom.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
This makes me think maybe they don't know about Leslie's
tricks in some ways, could they be victims too? Firstly,
there's just so much admin going on of Leslie trying
to send money to her mum. It's a constant dance
of her explaining holdups and sending cash back to her parents.
Speaker 12 (37:18):
I can send you money Western Union. I'm going to
try to send you a little money first from Greg's account.
Greg was using my computer the other night while waiting
for me to call him for a ride, and the
rabbit ate my computer cord again.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
It seems like while Leslie was spending the Dragonfly startup money,
she was also keeping up appearances and n zed with
her mum's credit card. Here's an email from Leslie's mum, Betty.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Leslie, this is the last time you're going to use
our credit card. I know you are short of money,
and that's why I'm giving this to you. But you
are a grown woman with a husband and a business,
and we are your poor parents who are in deep
shit debt.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
So maybe Betty suffers from Leslie's creative approach to money
management too. But what about Andrew. The phone number provided
by Eric t Weiss to Kiwibank was their home number,
but the bank manager reckoned. He called the number and
spoke to Eric. Could that have been Leslie's dad, Andrew
playing the role of Eric t Weiss. If things weren't
(38:34):
strange already. They get a bit sideways from here, because
for a guy who doesn't seem real Eric t Weiss
sends a lot of emails, and a lot of them
are to Leslie's parents.
Speaker 13 (38:47):
Good morning, Andy and Mattie. Hope this email finds you well.
I have had several lengthy conversations with a banker friend
of mine, and the paperwork on the trust money that
Leslie received on your behalf is a very tricky situation.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
I can see these emails from Eric to Lesley's parents
because they seem to show up in Leslie's account. She's
c seed or they've been forwarded. Eric writes a lot
like Leslie. He puts random words in capitals, and he's
often explaining delays and money transfers to her parents.
Speaker 13 (39:21):
Sarah from the accounting office of Sony did leave a
message with my assistant letting us know that the money
will be available on Wednesday. They will fed extra cashier's
check to you to receive by a Thursday.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Eric also passes on advice to Leslie's parents about what
to do in some situations, like here, Eric suggests what
to say to my mom and dad.
Speaker 13 (39:42):
If he starts whining about his present financial situation. Apologize
for his loss, but state you feel that he should
have had at least three or four different opinions before
making this final decision.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Reading through these emails, something seemed strangely familiar. I started
to recognize some of the words in this email. Eric
is talking about how the administrators were called into the Dragonfly,
and he's saying that my family shouldn't have placed the
business into voluntary administration. I realized, I've heard that somewhere before.
Speaker 11 (40:19):
We feel that you should have received advice from at
least three or four different experts.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Leslie's dad said all the same stuff to my parents
when he wrote to them.
Speaker 11 (40:28):
There are many brokers out there that at least would
have given you the option to refinance.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
It seems like he's just rehashing what Eric said to say.
Speaker 13 (40:36):
Just say, there are many brokers out there who would
have bailed you out for at least six months. Yes,
maybe had a higher interest rate, but at least they
would have made it through the winter, so could have
put the property up for a salement.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Ugh. I feel like I'm playing a game of pickup sticks,
just where every stick is actually a thick piece of bullshit. Okay,
So Eric t Weiss sends advice to Leslie, who forwards
it to her dad, Andrew. Andrew follows instructions and sends
all of this bullshit my dad. So it seems like
(41:11):
Leslie could be using this fake persona Eric t Weiss,
to get her parents to say whatever she wants them
to say. If Eric t Weiss is just a character
Leslie invented, she's at least made him three dimensional. Because
Eric writes to Leslie like he's updating a friend.
Speaker 13 (41:32):
Hi, Leslie, hope this email finds you well At the moment,
I'm back in Bangkok, still dealing with legal issues, Leslie.
I was happy to hear that you made it back
to the States. I am sorry that things have not
gone so well for you.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
So is Leslie emailing herself as Eric. What is going on?
Speaker 13 (41:53):
It will be worth it one day, Leslie, Leslie, do not.
Speaker 12 (41:57):
I was happy to.
Speaker 13 (41:57):
Hear that you made it actually secure for life by
your dad. That hummer you keep talking about.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
If only Leslie used this much imagination running the Dragonfly,
and if she can pull off such complicated lies, Leslie
must have had practice. There must be other people that
have been conned. I need to find them, and I
know where I have to start. Before Leslie met Greg,
she was in Hawaii. I have to find out what
(42:25):
happened there. Luckily Greg's given me a head start. Greg
knew now that Leslie's story of being run out of
Hawaii by murderous local mobsters probably wasn't true, So while
Dad was skulking around in Leslie's emails, Greg was writing
to the Hawaiian State Police.
Speaker 10 (42:45):
This is obviously not an ordinary crime or set of circumstance,
but from the normal successful life my family once led,
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 may be a point
(43:06):
in the right direction, would be invaluable.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
And before long Greg got a reply.
Speaker 10 (43:16):
Checked the letterbox and an interesting looking Manila folder type envelope,
quite chunky in the letter box and had some US
postal marks on it, and I thought, wow, this is
this is going to be interesting.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
So interesting that it's going to help me discover what
really happened in Hawaii.
Speaker 14 (43:41):
Going to help you.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Yes, hi, chi phone, it's Ollie Ward's here. The ABC
journalispits this town is very small.
Speaker 13 (43:49):
We can't cooking it wireless, so everyone talks to everyone
about everything.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Does the name Leslie Minoukian mean anything to you?
Speaker 4 (43:55):
Oh, you've bet never forget her.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
I was to the point where I wanted to.
Speaker 14 (44:00):
She had all these fantastic ideas of what was going
to happen and was all sung together by dreams.
Speaker 8 (44:06):
Really, I don't care whether you're in Hawaii, you're in California,
you're in New Zealand, or wherever.
Speaker 6 (44:12):
You get what you give the scammer. And she's lucky
she left.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
That's next time on Snowball.
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 (00:53):
This episode contains occasional course language, and we've used some
voice actors to bring emails to life. The last time
my brother saw Leslie Minouchian, she was getting on a plane.
He thought she was just taking a holiday to see
her family in the US. But just before Leslie turned
(01:13):
to go through the gate, she said those words, the
snowball was about to hit you.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
And Greg was so shell shocked.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
We didn't really know what that meant. No, well, how
would manifest itself? What snowball?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Within a couple of months, my parents had lost more
than a million dollars, their home and their retirement, and
Greg was heartbroken. As paperwork surfaced from the failed Dragonfly Cafa.
Dad started to find some hectic stuff that didn't make sense.
Leslie Minuchi and had left behind a trail of clues
(01:53):
about what she had done, and the more my Dad discovered,
the more obsessed he got about investigating. Dad even sort
of turned himself into a sixty something year old hacker,
and he eventually uncovered a web of deception so strange
that it's kind of funny. Welcome to Unravel season four.
(02:14):
I'm Molly Wards and this is Snowball.
Speaker 6 (02:19):
I need to clear this up.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Don't call yourself Houdini.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Held it up to the light and everything merged.
Speaker 7 (02:27):
That person has a border placed on it.
Speaker 8 (02:29):
It's just like a finger and it it's a big
metal phone.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
It's so weird. That is weird. It is weird.
Speaker 9 (02:50):
Oh my fucking gosh, are you serious? We pointed that out?
Speaker 5 (02:59):
What buck God.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
When Leslie left Forever the Dragonfly Cafa had only been
open for five months, Dad and Greg could finally look
at the books.
Speaker 10 (03:22):
Felt like it was a bit of a relief that
she was out of the way so we could start
trying to work out what the fuck was going on.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
What Greg and Dad found wasn't pretty. The Dragonfly was
in serious debt. If the business didn't get turned around quickly,
the whole thing would collapse. My family pulled together to
save the Dragonfly. Mum worked as a waitress, my dad
behind the counter. My brother Simon and his chef mates
were in the kitchen.
Speaker 8 (03:49):
When Mum and Dad came up. I just remember it
being like whoa, and then whoa, but and then after
like two or three woes. As the woes went keep
on getting worse. Even though they were getting worse, it
wasn't really a surprise. You're like, I wonder what the
next woe is going to be.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
They tried their best to turn things around, but the
business debts weren't getting paid down fast enough. Mum, dad
and Greg were worried and they didn't want to do
anything wrong, so they voluntarily handed control of the business
to administrators, some suits from Auckland, whould do whatever they
needed to for the debts to be repaid. It was
the administrators who ended up pulling the pin. The cafe,
(04:28):
gift shop, and the house were all sold. The bank
also got my family home, the house I grew up in.
The day Mum and Dad were told it was all over,
they went for a walk along the beach.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
That was a terrible time. And we were walking along
the beach looking at this pew de cauetward tree and
in a way sort of jokingly saying, there's a lot
of foliage up there. It will be sort of where
the proof we could live under this tree. We sat
down on the wharf walkworth and had a little cry
(05:10):
about it.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
We both sunk to our knees and sat on the wolf.
We cried. We just were destroyed. We went angry. We
were just destroyed.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
To make things worse, the global economy was going into meltdown.
Speaker 10 (05:40):
It was a parallel with the world economy at that
time as well in the United States.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Housing market has spread across the international.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Stock markets around the world, embracing for a potential melt or.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
It just has a sharp his average and not just
down the road, but right now. The Dragonfly wasn't worth
what Leslie had bought it for just a few months ago.
Selling it all, even including our house, didn't cover the
more than one point five million dollar alone. The debt
to kiwibank was short, about one hundred and fifty grand
(06:11):
My parents had less than nothing. My Auntie Robin and
Uncle Merv renovated their basement so my parents could move in.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
If we hadn't had the backing of families, our families,
I don't know where we would have ended up.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Mum and Dad even went to ask if they were
eligible for any welfare payments.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
At one stage we went to see if we could
get a flat to live in and work an Incomebrihige
is so hard to deal with. We had a young
lady of about twenty one. I'm only guessing it twenty
She said to us, said what are we going to do?
(06:54):
And she said, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You just got to sort it.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
And we've lived with that saying ever since, it's been
quite good.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
If you don't know, you just saw that. If this
was a hard time for my parents, it was even
harder for Greg. He had to watch Mum and Dad
get turfed out of our family home.
Speaker 10 (07:14):
The house that you know we all sort of spent
twenty odd years as a family was well in the past.
Everyone was split. I was off. I don't know where
I was. I think I was flanning in Mount Eden.
Simon had gone his way. Mum and Dad were living
(07:35):
at someone else's house as well.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
And while all this was happening, he was coming to
terms with the fact that his marriage was over. Did
you miss her? I mean, like, you know, yeah I did.
Speaker 10 (07:46):
I sort of thought that maybe we things could be
worked out and she had come back down, But then
each week it got more and more out of the
realms of possibilities.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And does she know about everything that happened? I mean,
I don't even know if she knows that the house
got sold and everything.
Speaker 10 (08:07):
I think I probably yelled at who went on the
phone and said a few things like.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
That, and.
Speaker 10 (08:14):
Yeah, yep, but obviously not the whole She didn't live it,
did she, So she wouldn't know.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
But would it even be fair to say it was
all Leslie's fault anyway? After all, my parents kicked in
money to a business venture that failed. Like Dad said,
they stuck their neck out, it didn't pay off. They
weren't forced to back Leslie's loan. It would be fair
to say that my parents and Greg were naive to
put so much into the deal just on trust. They
(08:53):
made a bad call investing in the Dragonfly, and in
two thousand and eight, people all over the world were
going bankrupt. But as my dad found out, This was
no ordinary business failure. After everything that could be sold
was gone, KII Bank sent Dad a bunch of all
the documents. While this was happening, I was still living overseas.
(09:15):
But now that I'm back and end zed, I've finally
heard the crazy story about what happened when Dad started
digging through that box of documents. When Kiwibank loaned one
point five million dollars to Leslie, one of their conditions
was Leslie had to prove she rarely had that big
trust fund she always talked about. Because she was an
(09:36):
equal partner, a guaranteur of the loan along with Greg
and my parents, she was supposed to be taking on
the risk of the investment alongside them. In the box
of stuff from Kiwibank, there was a document Leslie had
given them showing her trust fund had more than five
million US dollars locked up in it. It was a
statement from Bank of America.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
The Bank of America's statement was crucial to the bank
recognizing that Leslie had funds to be able to sustain
the business.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Dad hadn't seen any of this when the deal was done.
Leslie had her own dealings with Kiwibank, but as soon
as he found this Bank of America's statement, he could
tell it looked dodgy. Looking at the statement now, it's
pretty sketchy. The numbers on the closing balance of more
than five million sort of trail off on a slight angle.
(10:29):
The ins and outs of the transactions don't even add
up properly. The closing balance is wrong by six hundred
and sixteen dollars. There's heaps of empty lines. It looks
like a photocopy. It's not signed or stamped by anyone.
But for Dad, things didn't raally fall into place until
he stumbled on something else Leslie had left behind. When
(10:55):
Mom and Dad moved out of our house and closed
up the Dragonfly, my aunties and uncles helped pack up
everything they could keep, furniture, mum's china plates that we
never used. It was all squashed into a small suburban
storage unit, tight square tin walls like a shed, with
boxes backed to the roof.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
Sometimes I'd go to the store and sort of reminisce
about how it was with my own stuff around me,
and I was just kort of sitting in this little
storeroom with all of our household goods. Everything was there
totally packed in and for some reason, I was just
going through the drawers of this chest of draws and
(11:35):
I found a Barclay Bank statement, and then I found
a copy of the America Bank of America statement, and
they looked similar. I put one on top of the
other and held it up to the light and everything merged.
(11:57):
The wording was the same, same font, same size, the
barcode on it was the same, and that sort of
locked it in. She had actually produced the Bank of
America's statement by modifying the Barclay Bank statement.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
This might not have been the first time Leslie had
made good use of a photocopier. Last episode, we heard
someone say that Leslie had admitted to twinking out, photocopying
and faking up her driving record, but this took it
to another level. It looked like she had faked up
a bank statement showing the balance of her trust fund.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
That was a fundamental wow moment for me. That was
the ultimate and fraudulent activity when you present that to
a bank and they accept it. I was sitting there
on the stall just looking at the stuff, and it
was a moment where suddenly everything seemed to fall into place.
(13:02):
We had been done.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Dad couldn't believe this hadn't been picked up, and honestly
I can't either. Some people have suggested to me that
Leslie would distract people with flirting, but I wondered if
it was really possible. With all these professionals like at
the bank, could they be influenced by that kind of thing?
I asked Dad what he thought.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
Well, I think she certainly pursued that line with a
lot of people, including the bank people. One of them, Mike,
is quite astounded to see her give him a big
gobby kiss. What do you mean at gobby mouth to
mouth job? As we were leaving a meeting.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Gobby means something different in Australia. Anyway, when my parents
figured all this out, they knew that it was time
to go to the bank and show them the fake
documents that had been under their noses the whole time.
Mom and Dad went to Kiwibank's head office in Wellington.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
So this guy said, look, you said, I know it's
bad news, but you got to go home and live
with it. And I got so angry. I said to him,
you are talking about a family that have no home,
and you're telling us to walk out of here. And
by this stage David had presented the form showing the
(14:23):
fraud and how easy it was to pick up, and
he actually said to these manage men, he said, look
at it. He said, I found it. He said, your
janitors should have found it. Why didn't you find it?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
And what did they say? Oh?
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Ah?
Speaker 5 (14:47):
They were totally embarrassed, very very embarrassed about this. And
I suddenly realized that I was in command here, and
I can remember saying, now, we'll go home now, but
we'll reconvene the meeting tomorrow. All right, tomorrow afternoon, I'll
present you with my claim and we'll see where we
(15:07):
go from there, right, And he said okay, So off
we went, and we went off to pub and had
a rub and coke and a lot of laughter because
we thought, ah, fastards, we've got them. Well, it didn't
quite turn out that way.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Kii Bank did initially offer some compensation to Mum and Dad,
but later the offer was retracted. The bank's lawyers had
decided that they didn't owe Mum and Dad anything. Mum
and Dad had been relying on the bank to make
sure Leslie's finances were sound, but the bank basically said
that they should have been doing their own checks. I
wanted to talk to Kii Bank about all this, but
(15:45):
they just said we do not comment publicly on specific
consumer issues and won't be doing so in this circumstance.
The person my mum and dad would usually get to
help with this kind of thing was their lawyer of
twenty five years. This lawyer had helped them to buy
(16:05):
their house and help Dad set up as party higher business.
But they could talk to him because back when Leslie
was still in New Zealand, before this fraud had been discovered,
the lawyer dumped Dad.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
My lawyer rang and told me he had a conflict
of interest situation. He was dealing with Leslie and he
was dealing with us, and he saw the two starting
to split apart.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Did you find that ominous? You're the longest client in
the scenario. Why are you going?
Speaker 7 (16:38):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (16:38):
I did think that was a bit odd. Then I
thought he was obviously armored with Leslie. She was the future.
We were the present, but not so much the future.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Not knowing where else to turn, Mum and Dad took
all the documents to their local member of parliament, a
guy called Rodney Hyde, and it just so happened that
Rodney Hyde had quite a profile. He was the leader
of a political party called Act. And he didn't just act,
he also danced. The Honorable Rodney Hyde was a surprisingly
(17:17):
popular contestant on New Zealand's Dancing with the Stars.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Up next Rodney Hyde And after that first fox trot,
the question is has he got a little cheeky chut
chacha left in.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
Him dancing the chut cha? Or Rodney Hyde and Crystal
Stewart please take to the floor.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Mum and Dad felt like they were finally getting somewhere
because Rodney Hyde took a keen interest in their case.
Rodney wrote a strongly worded letter to the bank suggesting
that their lax checking of Leslie's documents was negligent and
asked them to reverse their position, but the bank didn't budge.
(18:00):
The only other thing my parents could do was report
the whole thing to the police.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
You have reached the New Zealand Police non emergency line.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Dad had a couple of meetings with Auckland's top fraud cop,
a Welshman.
Speaker 7 (18:15):
So I'm Mahal Jones, I'm a detective respect at the
moment at the time when this file came in. I
was the acting detective senior sergeant in charge of Auckland
City Fraud Squad as it was then. Certainly, if the
suspect we were in New Zealand, it would be something
that we would have allocated and looked at. Unfortunately, with
(18:36):
her already having left the country ex standard practice at
that point that we wouldn't take it any further. It's
unfortunate that by the time this fraud, you know, or
the likely forward was realized, she was already well gone.
But what we did do is ensure that that person
has a border that placed on them, so if they
were to re enter the country, I would get a
(18:57):
notification and at that point we would look at the
filer game.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Unless Leslie came back to New Zealand, the cops wouldn't
do anything. By skipping the country, Leslie could leave it
all behind. Is it any part of the practice as
well to sort of let the US authorities know that
they've done something like that.
Speaker 7 (19:14):
I'd only do that if I really expecting to transfer
a file that had sufficient evidence on it to warrant
an investigation. In America, a lot of fraud files is
to get to that level you actually need to speak
to the suspect. Because you're looking at bank accounts, a
handwriting samples to get to that point. It's quite a
long road.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
It seems like kind of a loop. With Leslie gone,
they couldn't investigate her, but without an investigation in New Zealand,
they couldn't tell the US. Therefore, no one was going
to investigate. But what all this meant was pretty simple.
Even if Leslie had committed blatant fraud, she was gonna
(19:55):
get away with it. As Dad and the administrators kept
investigating what happened at the Dragonfly, they found more shady surprises.
One of the administrators somehow found out that Leslie had
been hit with charges relating to check fraud in the US,
(20:17):
and she had a conviction. Dad also found records showing
something really dodgy. Not long after he had put an
eye watering seventy five grand in an account for Leslie
to set up the Dragonfly, she sent over twenty grand
to her parents in the US, and that was before
the business had even opened. Greg tried to confront Leslie
(20:42):
about all this, but according to Greg, she continued to
blame the failure of the Dragonfly on Mum and dad
and Greg meddling in the business. Mum and dad wanted
answers from Leslie's parents. They tried calling, and then Leslie's dad,
Andrew replied by email, this isn't his real voice.
Speaker 11 (21:03):
I felt it would be better to respond to you
via email as I have difficulty most of the time
understanding the key we accent, and I apologize for that.
We are extremely sorry for the situation everyone is in.
Betty has been praying for a turnaround of the situation,
and we all do care about your welfare and success.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
But he goes on to say stuff like the cafe
should never have been sold.
Speaker 11 (21:28):
We feel that you should have received advice from at
least three or four different experts. There are many brokers
out there that at least would have given you the
option to refinance. Your main concern seems to be that
Leslie was not properly regretful of her contributions to the
failure of the business. However, I am not sure what
gave you this impression. As far as our empathy for you,
(21:51):
it is more than you realize.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
He sees they don't appreciate my mom and dad blaming
the loss of their home on Lesley.
Speaker 11 (22:00):
You are an adult who has had your own businesses
in the past, and you must have known the risk
involved in this type of business.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Fear enough, Dead new the risks. But based on Leslie
saying she had her trust fund to back everything up,
here's the strange thing. It seems like Betty and Andrew
think Leslie's trust fund is real, or at least they're
trying to convince my parents it's real.
Speaker 11 (22:24):
Unfortunately, she does not have the freedom to access her
trust fund for any amounts to help the Dragonfly with
the financial distress it was in. Leslie does not have
control of this trust fund, nor do we. I want
to reiterate that we do not want to be involved
in any way whatsoever and would appreciate being left out
of this situation. Sincerely, Andrew.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Despite the evidence that shows Leslie sending money to Andrew,
when my dad reached out to them, it was pretty
clear they didn't want a bar of the whole situation.
Leslie warned Greg not to send the documents to her parents,
but then Mum and dad did exactly that. They emailed
Betty and Andrew with attachments showing evidence of fraudulent documents
(23:10):
and money transfers to them in the US.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
Andrew and Betty some facts. Shortly after the bank loan
for the business and startup funding was obtained, Leslie transferred
US twelve five hundred dollars to you on the twenty
fifth of September. Our conclusion is that you both had
knowledge of what was happening, and we're a party to
the deceit.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Not long after my dad sent that email, Leslie wrote
to Greg asking for a divorce. She said it was
the last straw. I read some of what Leslie said
to Greg. He hadn't seen this divorce letter in over
a decade, Like I just want to read some of
this letter to you. It says, dere Greg, I'm filing
(24:04):
for dissolution of our marriage and would appreciate your signature
as soon as possible. I am sorry that things have
ended this way.
Speaker 10 (24:11):
It's just all crap.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
There's one particular paragraph here, which is I am sorry
that now you will never really know what was real
or not? Oh, what was real or not? But I
kept asking and pleading not to push and allow me
to do things on my terms.
Speaker 12 (24:28):
And allow me to do things on my terms, but
you just didn't trust me enough to let me finish
what I started.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I didn't run from the mask.
Speaker 12 (24:39):
I laughed because I was not going to set back
and be told what to do by your family. I
did not work with people up in my face making demands.
Speaker 10 (24:54):
She's a sociopath. She's trying to kill the lily, blame
other people, manipulation. So what I make of that is
just total crap.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
To be honest, what do you think she meant by
I'm sorry, you will never really know what was real
or not.
Speaker 10 (25:11):
Yeah, so that's the I guess. When you marry someone
you want to you feel like you really know them.
So to have her say that was quite tough because
it actually shows that she was holding out. She said,
you know you don't really know me. Well, she was
(25:32):
the one preventing me from knowing. And when I think,
I recall when I read that, I thought of Hawaii
and all of the stories from there, and I thought
to myself, I've just become the new Hawaii. Hawaii was
a mystery. Now in New Zealand's a mystery, and now
(25:53):
the storm's gone somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
My dad still had heaps of questions, like was Leslie's
trust fund real? She seemed to have faked the proof
she gave to the bank. But the weird thing was
Kiwebek also had other documents and even people who seem
to have vouched for the existence of this trust fund.
Some attuney called Eric t. Weiss Esquire head written to
(26:23):
the bank saying.
Speaker 13 (26:24):
This letter is confirmation that Leslie R. Minooki and receives
five thousand US dollars per month allowance for the rest
of her life from a trust fund set up by
her grandfather.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
So who is this guy, Eric t weiss Esquire. Well,
according to his letterhead, he worked at a place called
the Colonial Trust Company in Newport Beach, California.
Speaker 14 (26:46):
No, I do not know an Eric t. Weiss and
my name is Walter Barr. I'm chairman of Colonial Trust Company,
which is a South Carolina State chartered trust company. We
have offices in Spartanburg, Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston, South Carolina.
We have no branches outside of South Carolina. And that
(27:07):
was confusing to be carl Trust or on the Bank
America statement. That old statement looks wrong to me. We
certainly are a Colonial Trust company. Have had no dealings
with either the wife's individual or the Moniquin, and I
don't think these were anything we would have had anything
(27:28):
to do with.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
So the only company of that name that was open
then has never heard of Leslie or Eric t Weiss esquire,
so who is he? Dad went looking for him, and
he did find an American lawyer named Eric t Weiss.
He sent him a fax. They still love fax machines
in the US. Dad was pretty worked up about what
(27:49):
had happened, so this facsy scent was intense.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
Sir, you may wonder who it is that is writing
to you. The fact is you probably know much much
much more about me than I know about you. I
wish to address this imbalance, so I think it is
time to lay some cards on the table.
Speaker 6 (28:09):
Well, you know, the language is somewhat accusatory, and I
guess in reading the letter, the first thing that comes
to my mind is that somebody has been wronged using
my name and rightfully believes that the person who wronged
them is me. My name is Eric t Weiss. I'm
(28:30):
a practicing attorney in the state of Michigan. One thing
I've learned since, you know, when I was a very
young child, is that your reputation is perhaps the most
important thing to you, and so just trying to put
pieces together, realizing that I need to clear this up
as soon as possible and that help this person essentially,
(28:53):
rather than going to become.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
An adversary, Sir, this Eric t Weiss joined my dad's hunt.
Now they were all looking for Eric t Weiss esquire.
Speaker 6 (29:06):
Being an attorney. As long as I've been an attorney,
there are there are ways to find out names of
attorneys where they practiced throughout.
Speaker 14 (29:13):
The United States.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
There is an Eric L. Wise in Atlanta, Eric Georgia
Wise in Eric Jersey City, Eric in Iwis, and Eric.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
But there just wasn't any sign of another era Eric T.
Wise anyway Lavinia, and an Eric G.
Speaker 6 (29:28):
Wise in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Much to my surprise, I am
the only Eric Tys practicing law in the United States.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
It's strange because can We Bank told Dad they had
spoken to Eric t Weiss. He had given his phone
number and seed to Cole if the bank needed anything else.
Apparently they did. Cole Eric T Wess verified the existence
of this trust fund. So who was on the other
end of that phone call?
Speaker 6 (29:53):
There was a phone number that I was able to
do a reverse check of the number online and was
able to contermine that it came out of California. The
number is the home number for Andrew R. And Betty R.
Minukian of California. And then I concluded that perhaps Eric
(30:16):
t wise to fake Eric t Weiss was really Andrew R. Minukian.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
The phone number for Eric t Weiss's esquire given to
Kiwi Bank was actually just the phone number for Leslie's parents' house.
And that wasn't all. Eric had another illusion to reveal.
Eric knew he shared a name with someone famous. He
(30:43):
sort of casually mentioned to Dad that Eric Weiss was
also the real name of the great escape artist, Harry Houdini.
Speaker 9 (30:55):
Lady and gentleman, Oh my fucking god, are you serious?
Speaker 14 (31:10):
Who pointed that out?
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Back when Dad was learning all of this stuff, He
didn't share it with my brothers. So I told Simon
about Eric t Weiss and the Great Houdini.
Speaker 9 (31:19):
Okay, so that's that's bizarre.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
If you don't call yourself Houdini, you know when you're
doing your fraud.
Speaker 8 (31:29):
Well, no, it's it's it's beautiful. She's just taking the
fucking pass, mate. So that makes me a lot more angrier. Well,
I didn't know that. Yeah, that totally changed the game
for me. Really, yeah, that's quite calculated, and like, I
don't know, It's just like a finger, isn't it. It's
a big It's a big metal finger that's fucking out there.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
I was just gobsmacked as too. What's going on here?
How could this be? It was just one of those
moments where I can't figure it out, and I actually
still can't.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
This whole Eric t Weiss thing added a new layer
to the mystery. Dad was keen to get to the
bottom of who was in on the scam, who wasn't,
and how it all worked. More clues turned up leaving
in a hurry and under the pretense that she'd be back.
Leslie had left a lot of stuff around the house
at the Dragonfly, nothing valuable, mostly clothes, but there was
a diary and a few documents, and this one piece
(32:36):
of paper that had a word clearly scrawled on it.
When Dad saw it, he had an idea. He knew
that Leslie had been using his laptop to access her email,
and it kept prompting him to put in a password,
so he thought, maybe I'll just try this, and incredibly
it worked. All of a sudden, he had access to
(33:00):
the inner workings of Leslie's world.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
Being able to look at her emails, I can tell
you there was an awful lot of stuff going on.
I have to say that there were thousands of emails.
It wasn't any fraudulentcy on my part. I acquired a
past word, and while I didn't tell her I was
(33:28):
looking at them, it did give me an awful lot
of information.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
So did you save her emails?
Speaker 5 (33:43):
I have saved some of them, the ones that were interesting.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
How often would you go in there and look at
least once a week? So weird? It is weird. It
is weird. Why how many do you have? Oh?
Speaker 5 (34:13):
I only kept the ones that have great interest, and
I did little sort of excerpts from them.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Dad tells me that for about a year he was
copy pasting the interesting stuff into word documents until the
past word got changed. I can totally understand why Dad
did this. The walls had fallen in around him. The
bank didn't seem to want to act on any of
this stuff, and neither did the police. He had no
other way of getting more definitive answers about the extent
(34:41):
of Leslie's fraud and at this point, neither do I.
All of the emails Dad saved are in the box
of documents he's given me. I do feel kind of
conflicted about this. I could have just left the emails
in the box and cracked on working things out without them.
But leaving them in the box would have meant not
truly understanding what happened, so I decided to read them.
(35:06):
That means getting a real insight into Leslie's world, as
we can hear directly from her. This is a bio
she wrote about herself in an email. I think it's
for a course application. We've got an actor to read
Leslie's emails.
Speaker 12 (35:23):
I have always been fascinated with fast things. My closest
friends would tell you that adrenaline is my best friend.
I'm always looking for the most extreme high through HELLI
morning offal desk, kayaking with the glaciers, hiking the backside
of Half Dell, to scuba diving with the hammerheads of
the Cocus Islands. I am sad to have a glowing personality,
(35:48):
and at times I believe this is true because of
all the great friends that I have. But I see
myself as shy and guarded as a bartender. The fun,
crazy people and rushes of mad crowds give me the
ultimate natural high. I traveled for seven years through fifty
two countries, mostly alone, meeting people along the way. The
(36:12):
experience taught me that I am a go getter who's
a hard working and confident woman. But mostly I am
a survivor.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Those last few words are in capital letters. By the way,
I am a survivor. She'll often emphasize the line in capitals.
Looking through Leslie's other emails, there's more that sticks out
to me. There's insight into her relationship with her parents,
mainly Betty, Leslie's mum. She seems to do most of
the emailing a lot of the time. Betty seems nice.
(36:47):
She even asks after my parents, how is everything there?
Speaker 6 (36:51):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (36:51):
How are Julie and Dave?
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Please tell them hello for me, love Mom.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
This makes me think maybe they don't know about Leslie's
tricks in some ways, could they be victims too? Firstly,
there's just so much admin going on of Leslie trying
to send money to her mum. It's a constant dance
of her explaining holdups and sending cash back to her parents.
Speaker 12 (37:18):
I can send you money Western Union. I'm going to
try to send you a little money first from Greg's account.
Greg was using my computer the other night while waiting
for me to call him for a ride, and the
rabbit ate my computer cord again.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
It seems like while Leslie was spending the Dragonfly startup money,
she was also keeping up appearances and n zed with
her mum's credit card. Here's an email from Leslie's mum, Betty.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Leslie, this is the last time you're going to use
our credit card. I know you are short of money,
and that's why I'm giving this to you. But you
are a grown woman with a husband and a business,
and we are your poor parents who are in deep
shit debt.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
So maybe Betty suffers from Leslie's creative approach to money
management too. But what about Andrew. The phone number provided
by Eric t Weiss to Kiwibank was their home number,
but the bank manager reckoned. He called the number and
spoke to Eric. Could that have been Leslie's dad, Andrew
playing the role of Eric t Weiss. If things weren't
(38:34):
strange already. They get a bit sideways from here, because
for a guy who doesn't seem real Eric t Weiss
sends a lot of emails, and a lot of them
are to Leslie's parents.
Speaker 13 (38:47):
Good morning, Andy and Mattie. Hope this email finds you well.
I have had several lengthy conversations with a banker friend
of mine, and the paperwork on the trust money that
Leslie received on your behalf is a very tricky situation.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
I can see these emails from Eric to Lesley's parents
because they seem to show up in Leslie's account. She's
c seed or they've been forwarded. Eric writes a lot
like Leslie. He puts random words in capitals, and he's
often explaining delays and money transfers to her parents.
Speaker 13 (39:21):
Sarah from the accounting office of Sony did leave a
message with my assistant letting us know that the money
will be available on Wednesday. They will fed extra cashier's
check to you to receive by a Thursday.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Eric also passes on advice to Leslie's parents about what
to do in some situations, like here, Eric suggests what
to say to my mom and dad.
Speaker 13 (39:42):
If he starts whining about his present financial situation. Apologize
for his loss, but state you feel that he should
have had at least three or four different opinions before
making this final decision.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Reading through these emails, something seemed strangely familiar. I started
to recognize some of the words in this email. Eric
is talking about how the administrators were called into the Dragonfly,
and he's saying that my family shouldn't have placed the
business into voluntary administration. I realized, I've heard that somewhere before.
Speaker 11 (40:19):
We feel that you should have received advice from at
least three or four different experts.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Leslie's dad said all the same stuff to my parents
when he wrote to them.
Speaker 11 (40:28):
There are many brokers out there that at least would
have given you the option to refinance.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
It seems like he's just rehashing what Eric said to say.
Speaker 13 (40:36):
Just say, there are many brokers out there who would
have bailed you out for at least six months. Yes,
maybe had a higher interest rate, but at least they
would have made it through the winter, so could have
put the property up for a salement.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Ugh. I feel like I'm playing a game of pickup sticks,
just where every stick is actually a thick piece of bullshit. Okay,
So Eric t Weiss sends advice to Leslie, who forwards
it to her dad, Andrew. Andrew follows instructions and sends
all of this bullshit my dad. So it seems like
(41:11):
Leslie could be using this fake persona Eric t Weiss,
to get her parents to say whatever she wants them
to say. If Eric t Weiss is just a character
Leslie invented, she's at least made him three dimensional. Because
Eric writes to Leslie like he's updating a friend.
Speaker 13 (41:32):
Hi, Leslie, hope this email finds you well At the moment,
I'm back in Bangkok, still dealing with legal issues, Leslie.
I was happy to hear that you made it back
to the States. I am sorry that things have not
gone so well for you.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
So is Leslie emailing herself as Eric. What is going on?
Speaker 13 (41:53):
It will be worth it one day, Leslie, Leslie, do not.
Speaker 12 (41:57):
I was happy to.
Speaker 13 (41:57):
Hear that you made it actually secure for life by
your dad. That hummer you keep talking about.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
If only Leslie used this much imagination running the Dragonfly,
and if she can pull off such complicated lies, Leslie
must have had practice. There must be other people that
have been conned. I need to find them, and I
know where I have to start. Before Leslie met Greg,
she was in Hawaii. I have to find out what
(42:25):
happened there. Luckily Greg's given me a head start. Greg
knew now that Leslie's story of being run out of
Hawaii by murderous local mobsters probably wasn't true, So while
Dad was skulking around in Leslie's emails, Greg was writing
to the Hawaiian State Police.
Speaker 10 (42:45):
This is obviously not an ordinary crime or set of circumstance,
but from the normal successful life my family once led,
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 may be a point
(43:06):
in the right direction, would be invaluable.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
And before long Greg got a reply.
Speaker 10 (43:16):
Checked the letterbox and an interesting looking Manila folder type envelope,
quite chunky in the letter box and had some US
postal marks on it, and I thought, wow, this is
this is going to be interesting.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
So interesting that it's going to help me discover what
really happened in Hawaii.
Speaker 14 (43:41):
Going to help you.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Yes, hi, chi phone, it's Ollie Ward's here. The ABC
journalispits this town is very small.
Speaker 13 (43:49):
We can't cooking it wireless, so everyone talks to everyone
about everything.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Does the name Leslie Minoukian mean anything to you?
Speaker 4 (43:55):
Oh, you've bet never forget her.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
I was to the point where I wanted to.
Speaker 14 (44:00):
She had all these fantastic ideas of what was going
to happen and was all sung together by dreams.
Speaker 8 (44:06):
Really, I don't care whether you're in Hawaii, you're in California,
you're in New Zealand, or wherever.
Speaker 6 (44:12):
You get what you give the scammer. And she's lucky
she left.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
That's next time on Snowball.
Host
Jake Halpern
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal: Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a brand new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack. And make sure to check out Seasons 1-4 of Betrayal, along with Betrayal Weekly Season 1.