March 23, 2023 • 10 mins
The $200,000 Brisbane Catfish: Part 5 - Finding The Stolen Money
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Roluntarily kid on Brisbane's Kiss ninety seven three. This week,
we uncovered a cat fishing story involving a Brisbane woman
by the name of Annie, who gave two hundred thousand
dollars to a man who claimed to be from Brisbane
now working in South Africa. We introduced her to Pi
Day from Ostre's investigations to try and chase the man
(00:21):
and chase the money. It's been a pretty tough journey
for Annie.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I think I've already made too many excuses because I
kept investing into it, literally thinking that you would have
a future because you think that you're supporting somebody that
you love. But that's what you do, right you. Yeah,
you try what you can to do that. But now
(00:48):
to know that it's going to take me years to
recover that money that I've lost, that really hurt. Trusting
is going to be a big issue.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I think, Yeah, okay, and he looked in this moment.
Do you now believe that he's fake?
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
So we've got Jane and Annie and Pi Dave with
us again, because the last you would have heard is
PI Dave chasing the money, trying to find where this
two hundred thousand dollars plus of money that Annie sent
to a mystery man who we now know is not
a real person.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
There's no leads on this identity. There's no leads on
this address in terms of the mystery man, but there
may be a path towards the money.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
Absolutely, So when I spoke with Annie, she was able
to provide me with some banking details of where she
deposited some money. And if you remember the story from Annie,
this person where she deposited the money was supposedly the
finance broker of the said cat fisher. So I was
able to do some inquiries about this bank account, which
(01:56):
led me to an address in Ipswich. Yes, I attended
how to Ipswich and spoke to a female that was
the same person as Annie had transferred. About fifty thousand
dollars was the amount that she told me she transferred
into this account.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I'm ane, how are you going here? Because you know
we haven't really touched base with you yet.
Speaker 6 (02:20):
I'm a bit flab as to that. I switch seriously,
and she's real.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 6 (02:28):
Wow, tell us more.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Yes, So I did speak with this lady, who was
a lovely lady by the way, she's admitted that she's
received significant amounts of money from yourself, Annie, and in fact,
she was then sending this money to a male person
in South Africa.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
No, what do you mean?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
You mean he's been lying to her as well.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
Well, that's where the story, the thick plotens, I guess
you say, this lady admit that she's never actually met
this male person to who she was sending the money.
In fact, she had met him on a dating site.
In fact, this.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Lady, what was the story she was told as to
where that fifty gramd was coming from?
Speaker 5 (03:14):
Well, she was told by this male person that someone
would be making some deposits to her as a medium
person to assist him in his business dealings over in
South Africa. So basically the story that she was told
had a number of similarities to what Annie had been told.
She'd been told that he was working in South Africa.
(03:37):
He was a mechanical engineer, his business was struggling. He
needed money to get his business up off the ground.
Speaker 7 (03:43):
God, Dan, the money's dawn overseas to him, haven't.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Well, I've got some good news Annie. It's something, but
it's not everything. But this lady, when she heard your
story was quite quite devastated, quite distraught that you'd lost everything,
and she actually twenty five thousand dollars left of the
money that she's caught willing to return to you.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Oh man, I'm speech.
Speaker 6 (04:12):
The credit card almost.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Oh my goodness, Annie, I mean, what do you think?
Speaker 6 (04:21):
That's incredible but helpful, that's so wonderful. I can't believe
that he's got double crass fishing.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Can you imagine the conversation you two are going to
have if we can put you two together, the story
that you'll be able to tell each other.
Speaker 6 (04:38):
Yeah, Like did she send him money off her own
as well?
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (04:43):
She did, She herself had been catfish. She had only
only sent him about ten thousand dollars of her own
money over the previous years that she'd known him, so
she'd also had a financial loss herself.
Speaker 7 (04:54):
Was she still believing that he was real? Was this
a big shock to her?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Like?
Speaker 7 (04:58):
Has she been with in a real relationship as such?
Online with this guy for months and months and months
or years?
Speaker 5 (05:05):
Yeah? Absolutely met him from a dating site nine him
for four years, never spoke physically because he always used
some rubbish story that he couldn't get access to his
phone and never met him. Fake story that he was
using is nearly identical, you know, to and he's he
was using a different name and he was using a
different photograph, completely different person, which I've seen and I've
(05:27):
also read the messages conversations, and it is exactly the same,
the same situation.
Speaker 7 (05:33):
Wow, we are so grateful to you and so grateful
to ninety seventy three because you know, to make other
people aware.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Wow, that's great. That's great because we just take a
breath for a moment because I don't know where you
go from here. Yeah, what do you do next?
Speaker 3 (05:54):
In the situation, I'm just I'm speechless. I mean, ipswitch
that poor woman, I mean, what the state of breath?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
It's an amazing twists and says to our cat fishing
story on the phone.
Speaker 7 (06:09):
Us.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
We've got Annie who has been catfish. We've got her
sister in lawd Jane, who introduce us to Annie and
p I Dave from os Trace Investigations.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Dave, I'm so glad that there's a little bit of
money that is going to help Annie. It it feels like
there's at least some little bright spark in this. But
I'm really pissed about this whole scenario, and I wonder
then how many other people may well be in Brisbane
who are in exactly the same situation. So what happens now?
Can we get the police involved? How do we find
(06:41):
this bloke because seriously, he could be having ten aliases
and millions of dollars.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
Yeah, that's exactly right. Well here's too you know straight
off the cuff that we've been able to identify from
any a couple of days work. So I've got no
doubts at all that he is doing this to numerous persons.
What I would recommend absolutely is to report the matter
to the Queensland Police. You have to go online. It's
a report cyber.
Speaker 6 (07:07):
I've already done my cyber crime report.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
But you know what, we've just done a whole lot
of work for the Queensland Police Service just by this
whole process.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Yeah, it's quite significant the amounts of money you're talking about,
in the vicinity of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
that he's obtained by a couple of fake emails and
fake messages.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
And sweet talking. Is there any way you can identify
him Dave like as a PI.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
No, not really. Pis don't have access to financial information.
That's a matter for the police to follow up. They
have to get warrant to access bank accounts some where
this money's gone, So it's not They're the appropriate authority
to deal with it, and they will deal with it appropriately.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
There might be other women who are sending this money
to this lady in Nippich as well. You don't know
how wide the tent spread.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Well, one thing, Annie, I think both her finding out
what's happened to you, we've cut off that source of revenue.
He won't be doing it again.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
I don't think Dave absolutely guarantee that.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
So Annie, what does this twenty five grand mean? I mean,
it's not two hundred k, but is this going to help?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Definitely help me.
Speaker 6 (08:11):
It will put me in a better position with my budget,
that's for sure. I'll never fully recover what I'm borrowed
from family and all the additional money that I put
in from my divorce settlement bonuses and tax checks. I've
been living quite meagerly to try and make sure that
(08:33):
I could support him. It makes me feel sick, so sick. Yeah,
it would have been easier for me to fly to
the cape wouldn't It would have been deeper.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
But you know what's great, as you told your story
and you've you've saved one person already. This other lady
in Ipswich, she's just found out something that you know,
there's probably been halting her the same way. So you
being brave enough to come and tell your story has
already helped somebody. It's also helped you a little bit.
And I don't know about you, but I feel like
this is a massive stepped today, huge.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
I don't I just don't want to just leave you here.
I want to see what we can do with the
police because I think or maybe even get you know,
other media people involved, like a current affair or yeah right,
just because I think we've we've got a responsibility to
stop people like this.
Speaker 7 (09:22):
It's so criminal and it's so emotionally crippling.
Speaker 6 (09:26):
Yeah, it is emotionally crippling. You put your life on
hold in the home. But it's true and it's going
to come true, and you invest in it because you
want it to come true. You're not living a life
during that time. It's not healthy.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
You know. You push family and friends away because there's
only so many excuses and so many cover ups you
can keep making.
Speaker 6 (09:49):
I kept him. I have to own that and to
win my family trust back and because I supported me.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
But tom O, Babe, I think you've just been proven
that all you believed in was love. Like I think
your family totally get that. P I Dave, You're a
legend once again. Nailed it.
Speaker 7 (10:13):
Thanks, thank you.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It's improvant. Terry and Kids on Brisbane's Cheese ninety seventy
three
Roluntarily kid on Brisbane's Kiss ninety seven three. This week,
we uncovered a cat fishing story involving a Brisbane woman
by the name of Annie, who gave two hundred thousand
dollars to a man who claimed to be from Brisbane
now working in South Africa. We introduced her to Pi
Day from Ostre's investigations to try and chase the man
(00:21):
and chase the money. It's been a pretty tough journey
for Annie.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I think I've already made too many excuses because I
kept investing into it, literally thinking that you would have
a future because you think that you're supporting somebody that
you love. But that's what you do, right you. Yeah,
you try what you can to do that. But now
(00:48):
to know that it's going to take me years to
recover that money that I've lost, that really hurt. Trusting
is going to be a big issue.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I think, Yeah, okay, and he looked in this moment.
Do you now believe that he's fake?
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
So we've got Jane and Annie and Pi Dave with
us again, because the last you would have heard is
PI Dave chasing the money, trying to find where this
two hundred thousand dollars plus of money that Annie sent
to a mystery man who we now know is not
a real person.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
There's no leads on this identity. There's no leads on
this address in terms of the mystery man, but there
may be a path towards the money.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
Absolutely, So when I spoke with Annie, she was able
to provide me with some banking details of where she
deposited some money. And if you remember the story from Annie,
this person where she deposited the money was supposedly the
finance broker of the said cat fisher. So I was
able to do some inquiries about this bank account, which
(01:56):
led me to an address in Ipswich. Yes, I attended
how to Ipswich and spoke to a female that was
the same person as Annie had transferred. About fifty thousand
dollars was the amount that she told me she transferred
into this account.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I'm ane, how are you going here? Because you know
we haven't really touched base with you yet.
Speaker 6 (02:20):
I'm a bit flab as to that. I switch seriously,
and she's real.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 6 (02:28):
Wow, tell us more.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Yes, So I did speak with this lady, who was
a lovely lady by the way, she's admitted that she's
received significant amounts of money from yourself, Annie, and in fact,
she was then sending this money to a male person
in South Africa.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
No, what do you mean?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
You mean he's been lying to her as well.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
Well, that's where the story, the thick plotens, I guess
you say, this lady admit that she's never actually met
this male person to who she was sending the money.
In fact, she had met him on a dating site.
In fact, this.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Lady, what was the story she was told as to
where that fifty gramd was coming from?
Speaker 5 (03:14):
Well, she was told by this male person that someone
would be making some deposits to her as a medium
person to assist him in his business dealings over in
South Africa. So basically the story that she was told
had a number of similarities to what Annie had been told.
She'd been told that he was working in South Africa.
(03:37):
He was a mechanical engineer, his business was struggling. He
needed money to get his business up off the ground.
Speaker 7 (03:43):
God, Dan, the money's dawn overseas to him, haven't.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Well, I've got some good news Annie. It's something, but
it's not everything. But this lady, when she heard your
story was quite quite devastated, quite distraught that you'd lost everything,
and she actually twenty five thousand dollars left of the
money that she's caught willing to return to you.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Oh man, I'm speech.
Speaker 6 (04:12):
The credit card almost.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Oh my goodness, Annie, I mean, what do you think?
Speaker 6 (04:21):
That's incredible but helpful, that's so wonderful. I can't believe
that he's got double crass fishing.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Can you imagine the conversation you two are going to
have if we can put you two together, the story
that you'll be able to tell each other.
Speaker 6 (04:38):
Yeah, Like did she send him money off her own
as well?
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (04:43):
She did, She herself had been catfish. She had only
only sent him about ten thousand dollars of her own
money over the previous years that she'd known him, so
she'd also had a financial loss herself.
Speaker 7 (04:54):
Was she still believing that he was real? Was this
a big shock to her?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Like?
Speaker 7 (04:58):
Has she been with in a real relationship as such?
Online with this guy for months and months and months
or years?
Speaker 5 (05:05):
Yeah? Absolutely met him from a dating site nine him
for four years, never spoke physically because he always used
some rubbish story that he couldn't get access to his
phone and never met him. Fake story that he was
using is nearly identical, you know, to and he's he
was using a different name and he was using a
different photograph, completely different person, which I've seen and I've
(05:27):
also read the messages conversations, and it is exactly the same,
the same situation.
Speaker 7 (05:33):
Wow, we are so grateful to you and so grateful
to ninety seventy three because you know, to make other
people aware.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Wow, that's great. That's great because we just take a
breath for a moment because I don't know where you
go from here. Yeah, what do you do next?
Speaker 3 (05:54):
In the situation, I'm just I'm speechless. I mean, ipswitch
that poor woman, I mean, what the state of breath?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
It's an amazing twists and says to our cat fishing
story on the phone.
Speaker 7 (06:09):
Us.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
We've got Annie who has been catfish. We've got her
sister in lawd Jane, who introduce us to Annie and
p I Dave from os Trace Investigations.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Dave, I'm so glad that there's a little bit of
money that is going to help Annie. It it feels like
there's at least some little bright spark in this. But
I'm really pissed about this whole scenario, and I wonder
then how many other people may well be in Brisbane
who are in exactly the same situation. So what happens now?
Can we get the police involved? How do we find
(06:41):
this bloke because seriously, he could be having ten aliases
and millions of dollars.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
Yeah, that's exactly right. Well here's too you know straight
off the cuff that we've been able to identify from
any a couple of days work. So I've got no
doubts at all that he is doing this to numerous persons.
What I would recommend absolutely is to report the matter
to the Queensland Police. You have to go online. It's
a report cyber.
Speaker 6 (07:07):
I've already done my cyber crime report.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
But you know what, we've just done a whole lot
of work for the Queensland Police Service just by this
whole process.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Yeah, it's quite significant the amounts of money you're talking about,
in the vicinity of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
that he's obtained by a couple of fake emails and
fake messages.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
And sweet talking. Is there any way you can identify
him Dave like as a PI.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
No, not really. Pis don't have access to financial information.
That's a matter for the police to follow up. They
have to get warrant to access bank accounts some where
this money's gone, So it's not They're the appropriate authority
to deal with it, and they will deal with it appropriately.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
There might be other women who are sending this money
to this lady in Nippich as well. You don't know
how wide the tent spread.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Well, one thing, Annie, I think both her finding out
what's happened to you, we've cut off that source of revenue.
He won't be doing it again.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
I don't think Dave absolutely guarantee that.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
So Annie, what does this twenty five grand mean? I mean,
it's not two hundred k, but is this going to help?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Definitely help me.
Speaker 6 (08:11):
It will put me in a better position with my budget,
that's for sure. I'll never fully recover what I'm borrowed
from family and all the additional money that I put
in from my divorce settlement bonuses and tax checks. I've
been living quite meagerly to try and make sure that
(08:33):
I could support him. It makes me feel sick, so sick. Yeah,
it would have been easier for me to fly to
the cape wouldn't It would have been deeper.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
But you know what's great, as you told your story
and you've you've saved one person already. This other lady
in Ipswich, she's just found out something that you know,
there's probably been halting her the same way. So you
being brave enough to come and tell your story has
already helped somebody. It's also helped you a little bit.
And I don't know about you, but I feel like
this is a massive stepped today, huge.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
I don't I just don't want to just leave you here.
I want to see what we can do with the
police because I think or maybe even get you know,
other media people involved, like a current affair or yeah right,
just because I think we've we've got a responsibility to
stop people like this.
Speaker 7 (09:22):
It's so criminal and it's so emotionally crippling.
Speaker 6 (09:26):
Yeah, it is emotionally crippling. You put your life on
hold in the home. But it's true and it's going
to come true, and you invest in it because you
want it to come true. You're not living a life
during that time. It's not healthy.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
You know. You push family and friends away because there's
only so many excuses and so many cover ups you
can keep making.
Speaker 6 (09:49):
I kept him. I have to own that and to
win my family trust back and because I supported me.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
But tom O, Babe, I think you've just been proven
that all you believed in was love. Like I think
your family totally get that. P I Dave, You're a
legend once again. Nailed it.
Speaker 7 (10:13):
Thanks, thank you.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It's improvant. Terry and Kids on Brisbane's Cheese ninety seventy
three
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