December 22, 2025 • 44 mins
Jake sits down with Snowball creator Ollie Wards to discuss how a family mystery became an international hit. They trace Ollie’s journey from the first recorded conversation with his dad – recorded under a hotel duvet – to the heart-pounding moment he found himself face-to-face with the con artist herself: Lezlie Manukian.
Along the way, they touch on the challenges of reporting on family, the psychology of scammers and their victims, and the strange kind of closure that comes when truth is messier than justice.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey, this is Jake. We're here at the end
of our special presentation of Snowball, a series that was
originally produced by Ali Wards and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
But there's more. I recently got a chance to sit
down with Ali and ask all the questions I had
(00:37):
about how he made the show, what it was like
to report on his own family, how he feels about
the series now, and where everything has ended up since
he stopped recording. I really think you're going to like it,
So sit back and enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Remind me, so, where is your hometown? Like, where did
you grow up?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Again?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
England?
Speaker 4 (00:59):
So I'm a kay I'm from New Zealand, but I'm
speaking to you today from Sydney, where I live.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Now.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
You know, one of the things to mention here is
this is literally the first time that I have been
in a studio for this whole project. The whole thing
was recorded in hotel rooms in my apartment in New
York Under. Australians called them doners like douve the bedspread. Yeah, yeah,
you know, all this sort of stuff. So this is
(01:27):
the first time I've been in a studio for the
entire Snowball project.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
That's cool. We're honored that that's the case. The whole
thing was just it was so great. It was very compelling.
It was also very charming because and I'm sure a
lot of listeners had this experience that, like, your family
felt like they could have been my family or the
family next door, and you did.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
You did such a.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Great job of bringing your family in and making it
accessible and making us care about that and feel so
invested in the story.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
It really just got me right away.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
That's great, man. Yeah, it is a family story.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I think family is one of the key themes of it,
and that made it what it.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Was, but it also made it difficult, you know.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
I mean, so you know talking about definitely reporting on
your own family and the dynamics with that, and I
think like the strength, as you know better than anybody
of podcasting and recording audio, is you can sort of
disarm people by you're not rocking up with a camera
crew and you know, five different TV cameras in people's faces.
(02:29):
It's just you and a microphone. And I think that
is very personal and disarming, and that helps podcast reporting,
and that helped me with the family. I think if
I had more crew around me or anything like that.
For another medium, it wouldn't have got the result that
it did.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, I mean, I've got so many questions about how
you did it, and I I mean, I have a
lot of admiration for you tackling this. I don't know
that quite honestly, I would have the guts to go
and do this on my own family a right, because
it's really a high wire act. I mean, any story
report is a high wire act. And you want to
do right by your sources. You want them to feel
they weren't burned. You want to balance the truth. But
(03:10):
when the sources of your own family member, it just
seems like the stakes are exceptionally hot.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
They are totally and every family has a story. Though
now I'm interested as to what the help heern family
story could be. And I think this and so many
people reaching out to me about similar stories that have
happened to them after listening to this tells me that
there's some very interesting stuff going on. Like every family
(03:37):
ye totally quirky and has a background story. And it
just happened that I actually went back to New Zealand.
It was around the time of my oldest brother Simon's birthday,
and the whole story of how this thing came about
is around that. And I had a year off from
my job here at the ABC. I was working at
(03:57):
a music radio station called Triple J and I went
back to New Zealand because my dad around that time
was having a quadruple heart bypass, and I kind of thought,
you know, this is one of those junctures of life
where you want to ask your dad something if it's
the last time you speak to him, you know, And
(04:17):
I took her recorder and sat with him and started
asking him questions about his philosophies on life and his
childhood and stuff like that. And then we got into
this story and there was a lot of as you
hear in the show, a lot of wait, what whoa
hang on? And then have you got that document? Can
(04:37):
I see that? And I knew what happened. We lost
the home and everything, so I couldn't miss that. But
when I sat down with that and started going through it,
that's where this whole thing came from, and it truly unraveled.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Where in the timeline was that when you go back
to New Zealand, your dad's having this heart bypass, surgery,
and you're asking these questions, when is that in relation
to when Leslie blew through your lives?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
About ten years later? So it was all a memory
and you know, people had moved on and everything was fine,
and so to dive into the story, like we were
talking about with the sensitivities and the high wire act
with your family to kind of bring up ancient history
in a way was another sensitivity of it and a
(05:27):
difficulty to sort of say, let's go back to that
thing that we've all moved on from.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Did you have to coax it out of your dad
or did you get the sense that your dad on
some of tho was wanting to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
He loves it. No, he you know, he wanted to
write a book about it.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
And I think he never felt like his investigation brought
him the closure and the information that he wanted. And
we all wondered, well, I wonder what happened with her
and what's what was that about? And so Dad was
very happy to talk about it, and he had all
that the big box of Leslie Docks ready to go,
(06:07):
and even to this day, you know, when I told
him the other day that I was coming to speak
to you, Jake. He said, oh, the American Podcast Network
and I was like yeah, and he said maybe finally
doctor Phil can oh deathite. I could not believe it's
my goal here. Yeah, Doctor Phil. Doctor Phil is the
end game for every broadcaster.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
So it's amazing.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
I was like, Dad, come on, man, like, what are
you talking about with the doctor Phil thing?
Speaker 3 (06:32):
At every jot that's perfect.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I was going to say, pass a message on to
your dad that I'm I'm working the.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Doctor Phil Phil angele. I can't believe that guy's still going.
But yeah, I want to.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I want to unpack this bit, but I just want
to observe that it's weird. I'm talking about your dad
as if I know him because I feel like I
know him because you just did such a job of
bringing him to life. And the way he talked to
I mean, he was just such a he felt like
he could have been an uncle of mine.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
But I wonder if that's a weird thing.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Do you encounter people who talk about your parents as
if they know them even though they have no idea
of a stranger.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
And you know, work colleagues, to this day, I have people.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Sort of refer to my family and I go, oh,
where are you from?
Speaker 4 (07:13):
And they say, oh, no, no, I just listened to
the show or whatever, and they are a bunch of kooky,
lovable you know. I think one of the things I'm
most proud of is it was actually quite an accurate
capture of them, and it would be you know that
high wire act we were talking about. On reporting of
your family, there is a temptation to kind of gloss
over things, but I tried to do it warts and
(07:36):
all and call them out, call them out on the
stupidity of ourselves and our own naivety and some of
the things where you're like, come on, man, how did
you fall for that?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Well, that's why I think really elevates your story.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
And what really just impressed me was that that's a
really hard thing to do and I thought you did
it very well. And we'll get into some of those
moments in a sec but I'm just interested in this backstory.
So you go to interview your dad, what was the
moment that you pivoted or you decided or started to
think about let's focus on the Leslies story.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
How did that come about? I mean, I had so
many questions. I think that's the first indication of if
you have an insatiable desire to ask questions about something,
you're onto something.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
And I found myself a lot of wait, hang on,
what and what what?
Speaker 4 (08:27):
And then you know, by the time you're sort of
five or six questions in, and each question opens a
door to a cavenous area of the story. You want
to walk through those doors. I knew I was onto something,
and I had a year off from my regular job,
and truthfully, a little bit of it was like what
am I going to do? And I was my girlfriend
(08:50):
at the time, who is now my wife, was studying
international law and got into this master's It was half
an Amsterdam, half in New York at Columbia. So I
spent the first semester where she was in Amsterdam, and
I was there as well, researching and looking up, looking
through all those emails that dead had and looking through
all the documents and reaching out to people and kind
(09:12):
of scoping what the story was about. And then by
the time I moved to New York the following year
and the following semester, I had contacts in a shell
and that's when I really hit the ground.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
There's another part of this, which is that this is
really a story about Greg right and about a relationship
that really went spectacularly wrong. And I'm wondering, do you
then have to have a conversation with him about whether
he's comfortable doing this, because I'm trying to imagine me
(09:48):
being in your shoes or me going to my brother
and saying, hey, can I do a podcast about your
crazy ex? And how that? Like, I don't I can't
imagine my brother's saying yes, or me even going through
it that And I'm wondering, did you have a conversation
with Greg, and if so, what was that conversation?
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Like, yeah, I mean I didn't just pull out the
microphone and start asking questions. It's a challenge and it
was something that I think he is super brave to
have done. And he is a guy that wears his
heart on his sleeve and he is my brother. But
(10:26):
he I would also, as objectively as I can say
that he is a very kind, open man who has
been through a lot, and I think.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
He liked the.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Idea of being able to help other people, to sort
of pay it forward, and he really did do that.
You know, I've received probably thousands of messages of people
that have experienced something like this, and I think he,
you know, took one for the team in a way.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Was he on board immediately or did it take some
convincing or some time before he could of came around
to the idea.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Yeah, I mean I there was definitely times where it
was it was a bit sticky.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I try to think of it like the story starts
with Greg and it ends with Greg, but it's actually
about all of us, and it's sort of moreover, is
about Leslie, and Greg was the catalyst for telling the story,
but he's not the central character.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Actually. You know, we had this person.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
That was an enigma in our lives and was in
so many other people's, and that.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Was the north Star, if you will.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
That was kind of the person I was quite literally chasing.
And you know, Greg's moved on with his life as
well as you hear, and he's got a lovely family,
you know. So again, it was not a picking up
the pieces kind of interview. It wasn't a hang on. Yeah,
(12:11):
it was more of a throwback. So I think that
help that space helped. I think it helped some healing
and some reflection to have happened before we talked about it.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
When I come up with an idea for a story,
I'll often like have this moment of like great enthusiasm
where I'm like, Oh, this is this is so, It's
going to be great, and I see all the potential
in it, and I'll I'll pitch it.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
And then there's often a moment, often.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Shortly after I'll get the green light on it, and
I'll think like, oh my god, this is not going
to work out like this. What was I thinking? Here
are like six reasons this was a bad idea. This
is all going on inside my head right as the storyteller.
And I'm wondering if, as you were embarking on this process,
(12:58):
whether you had moments.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Of doubt constantly.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
You know, I remember when I was in California and
I found Leslie and spoke to her in that car park.
We listened to the conversation I had with her, and
you hear me in the car park kind of thinking, Oh,
I feel really sorry for her and I don't want
to kind of put anything bad out about her. And
so there was moments like that along the way where
you go, hang on, maybe this is real, and in
(13:26):
a world of lies and make believe and fictional characters
and worlds within worlds, you do have these moments where
you don't know which ones are real and which isn't,
and you don't want to kind of you know, we're
trying to be fact based journalists here and you're dealing
with the fake emails between each other, and it does
(13:49):
get in your head, and a lot of times I
was like, how do we even report this? And how
do we not only do our due diligence and fact
checking and all that kind of stuff, but how do
we actually tell somebody this and have it make sense.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
I have a question, a storytelling question for you, which
is that.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
That makes sense to me?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
If I'm in your shoes and I'm embarking on this
as a storyteller, I am thinking, in my head, the
payoff of this is do they find this Leslie character?
In fact, when this story first came in, unto our attention,
one of the producers to describing me to is the
first question I said, do they find her? And they said, yes,
(14:31):
they find her. I say, all right, I gotta listen.
But I'm wondering, when you started this, how confident did
you feel that you were actually going to find her
and have that payoff moment of confrontation that you eventually get.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Not very confident, but I am a pretty stubborn person,
and I sort of in my mind was like, how
hard can it be. You know, she's a real person,
She's out there, people leave trails.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
I had leads, you know, I had people to speak
to and.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
The clues that we were getting, like you in episode
five with Cameron and Passerobla. And by the way, can
I just make a quick apology to the people of
northern California and the people of Passeroble for my terrible
pronunciation of I think I was saying passer Robls, So
apologies to you if you're from that wonderful town for
(15:27):
my butchering of the Spanish there.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So that's all part of the charm of the show.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
You know what.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
I haven't received any mail on that, so maybe I
will now that it's an American thing. But I wasn't
I was confident something would happen and I wasn't going
to give up.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, and I want to talk to you more about
that moment, which I think you handled really well, especially
it was just such a high stakes moment. But back
to your family. One more bit. It's sometimes difficult to
convince the victims to talk because they feel this sense
of shame, often which they shouldn't. I dealt with this
(16:10):
in season six of Truth About Sarah, where she was
an exceptional liar. She lied about things that no one
would possibly imagine that someone would lie about. But I,
in the course of convincing or trying to convince people
to talk to me, folks were reluctant because they didn't
want They were either ashamed or didn't want to come
off as dupes or yeah, and I don't think they
(16:33):
did in the season, But I wonder if you could
talk about this for a moment, because one reason that
I could imagine your family not wanting to participate is
this very reason.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
But yet they.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Were able to overcome that and share the story, and
they don't and to my mind, come off that way
in the story at all. But I'm wondering, was that
something to overcome with them or how did you handle that?
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Absolutely, that's really common, And I speak to Maria Konnakova,
the psychologist in the show, who I believe does a
Pushkin show as well, and I'd listened to a podcast
of hers and the literature and the kind of research
about conn Art says that they get away with it
in so many cases because the victims feel ashamed and
they just want to move on with their lives, and
(17:16):
therefore they don't report it to police and law enforcement,
and the con sort of praise on that level of shame.
And you know, I empathized with the people in the
Truth about Sarah, particularly those that had their health records
and bank account statements and stuff duplicated and reworked to
(17:40):
serve her.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
And the shame is real.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
And I mentioned I've had lots and lots of messages
from people since Snowball came out that have gone through
this kind of love fraud, let's call it. You know,
whether it's a friendship or a romantic love, there is
usually an emotional connection that is then used as access
to be able to get what the person wants. And
(18:06):
that kind of emotional connection and shame stops people from
wanting to do anything. But everybody's reached out to me
saying thank you for telling the story. It's made me
realize that I'm not alone. And there's a bit in Snowball.
My mum says, I feel bad for the others. But
it makes me feel less dumb, like I wasn't you know,
a clown that was taken advantage of. And these people
(18:29):
are very powerful at what they do and they have practice.
You know, these things don't come around. And I think
the truth about Sarah and Snowball are similar in so
many ways, and that the lie is always built on
a truth. And Sarah worked at the VA, so she
had access to understand, you know, veterans' stories. I think
they were drawn in because Sarah told them the same
(18:52):
story that happened to them. And that's a theme on
this shows a dream reflector. That's one of the things
that we had in Snowball. And there's even a little
sound effect if you listen, whenever we talk about reflecting
a dream, it's got a little wind chime that sort
of suggests that this is a moment where the person
is sucking them in by reflecting their ambitions and their
(19:12):
skills and strengths and weaknesses.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
But it did a big difference. I think with Sarah.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Sarah is humble, and part of her charm was her
humility and people thinking that she was just cracking on
with her life despite all those challenges and they were
enamored with that, whereas Leslie was this look at me charismatic, shiny,
flashy kind of person that would draw people in through that.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
It's interesting I'm thinking about, you know, traditionally, like in
a story like The Truth about Sarah, I'm just the reporter, right,
And I've always had this idea that in those sorts
of stories, your job is to kind of stay out
of the way, or to only insert yourself at moments
where somehow, you know it reveals something about the story,
(20:12):
but it's really not about me. You're in quite a
different situation with this because it's such a personal story.
You are a part of the story, and I appreciate
it at times when you talked about that, for example,
you said, there is one part in which your brother
was going through a hard time, and you know, he
was kind of breaking breaking down or tearing up a
little bit, And you said, I had this instinct to
(20:34):
turn my recorder on because I was a reporter, But
then I realized that I was a brother first, and
so I was like, of course not. And I'm wondering,
was that something that you dealt with that you felt
like was present a lot or just occasionally and and
and and how did.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
You deal with that?
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Yeah, being a family member and trying to walk that
line between pressing for information and not letting something that's
unclear go past, versus also knowing I'm sitting down with
you for Christmas lunch later this year and I don't
want to say anything that might have seen you.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
That was tough.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
And it's the instinct to put the tape on is
there all the time?
Speaker 3 (21:25):
And really for that year that I was away.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
That's another aspect of this is I was not in
New Zealand when I was making this show, so I
was this distant person and having chats like we are now,
you know from Afar, and I did not speak to
my family for a year that when it wasn't about
this thing.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Did you feel that in some ways that may have
made you closer to them? Though, because on the one hand,
like you could say, oh, it's this is a work project,
but it's really so much more than that. I wonder
if you felt that by doing this work project your
you're I don't know that it changed your personal relationship
for or to write you closer.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
It definitely did it helped me understand, as I say
in the show. You know, something so profound that impacted
us all in different ways, and it is our family's story.
You know, it's not just about Greg. It was about
my mum and dad. It was about my brother Simon.
It was about my our extended family, you know, aunties
and uncles and everybody kind of like rallied around and
(22:23):
got involved in this.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
But you know, especially.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Simon, when we were driving around in a muscle car
with our Hawaiian shirts on.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And loved that. Loved it.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
I don't imagine doing that. Like we still talk about it.
He was saying to me the other day that he
just he often thinks of that. And when I was
preparing to talk to you, I jumped in my archive
and we shot a lot of like mobile phone footage
and stuff while we were driving around, and I sent
him in one of the videos of us pulling up
to this hotel where she had worked, and you know,
(22:54):
that night we snuck into the swimming pool and drank
some beers and it was just a awesome little road
trip with my brother.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah, that comes across and it feels so real.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
I mean I've heard versions of that that have felt contrived,
that feel like a contrivance. That whole trip you did
with him, it really did feel it felt real.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I wonder your family is very.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Gracious, Like there's clearly like hurt there and they went
through a really rough time because of what Leslie did.
I didn't hear anger through this, And I would think,
quite honestly, if I'm putting myself in your shoes and
your family shoes, I think it would be quite understandable
(23:40):
for there to be anger. And I'm wondering, I'm wondering
about that. Was it just Is it just that that
time had passed and they were able to see it,
or were they just not the angry type or just
what explains that?
Speaker 4 (24:00):
I don't think they are the angry type, to be honest,
you know, I think there is so many moments in
the show where you hear them talk about the feeling
that they had when the walls fell down and the
feeling of devastation, and in a way that being focused
on the reality rather than some type of revenge or something,
(24:25):
because being angry is only going to make you feel
worse when there were so many practical things to deal with,
like where are we going to live? And again, I
want to paint a real picture here. I think that
they were probably really pissed off when it happened. And yeah,
when it went down, you know, as I said, if
I'd got the microphone out at that time, maybe there
(24:45):
would have been a few beeps. Even though there's swear
words throughout the show, you know, language warning, maybe maybe
there would have been some even more swear words if
I'd recorded it at the time. But they're nice people,
you know, And I maybe I was more angry. I
was the one who kind of went out and chased
the story.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
And well, let me that's the question. Were you angry?
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Well, I, you know, I left New Zealand to go
on my OI the Overseas experience, and I walked out
of my family home that day and I never went back, and.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
I was very upset.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
But I was learning about this from when I was
living in London at the time, and I was kind
of like I wanted something to happen. I was like,
this surely isn't fair.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
The idea of justice is part of this story and
part of these kind of cons and you come away
wanting justice. And I don't know if that's the same
as being angry or wanting revenge. You know, the world
that we live in, we have expectations of do something bad, something,
We'll catch up with you. And that's one of the
frustrations people have with Snowball and with cons and these stories.
(26:01):
People reach out to me and say, it's so annoying
she got away. That's my you know, one star, because
she didn't get caught at the end. And that is understandable,
and I think we probably have a feeling of that,
like where is the justice? But there is this person
that's out there just you know, running herself into a
brick wall all the time, and we have empathy for
(26:25):
that and go, actually, maybe can you help yourself because
you're going around affecting all these other people. But they
eventually move on. The people in the Truth about Sarah
that were in the courtroom were all very hurt, and
you know, many of them referred to never probably never
getting over it. But they've all ultimately moved on with
(26:45):
their lives. And it's Sarah that sits in that prison cell.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah, I was not left with the feeling of, oh
my god, she got away with it, and kind of
unsatisfied with that.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I felt.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Weirdly, I felt pity for her, which is not what
I was expecting.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
Why why did you you feel petty because her life is.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Broken? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:15):
I mean you part of it is I know how
it ends, right, Like, we know that we know that
your brother, we don't know all the details, but we
know enough to know that your brother moved on, that
he has a family, that he's doing Okay, that we
meet your parents and we understand that even though they
lost their home, that they're like, they're loving parents. We
see the camaraderie between you and your brother. Like part
(27:37):
of the joy of listening to this show is that
there's love and there's laughter and and you guys make
it through this thing, right, And then you just see
this character that is Leslie, and the person that emerges.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Is really kind of like and I don't mean this.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Judgmentally, I just mean this, This was my honest take,
was a kind of lonely, more pathetic person.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
And I don't you at that moment, I'm not hungering
for vengeance for her to be brought away in cuffs.
It's almost this feeling of like, look how it's played out, Like,
look where this is left her, All this hustling, all
this deceit, all this fraud, look what she has. And
then weirdly with your family even though they were the
(28:23):
quote unquote victim here, like you wouldn't switch spots for
a second, and it so I didn't. I left kind
of weirdly satisfied in the sense that like it's not
that she got what she deserved, but like whatever feelings
I might have had for wanting vengeance or her getting
her come up and were not there, because I kind
of felt like, look where she is.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Yeah, you know, family triumphs and family always will. If
there's a strong family, Is there anything more powerful in
the world, you know? And I'm lucky, you know, I
love my family, We love each other. We emerged stronger
from this. I think that's in the show. And it
was a binding experience for us. And it's totally true
(29:07):
that the person I found was a wrecking ball, going
from one spot in her life that would have some
cataclysmic end and then moving on to the next and
starting again.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
And how awful is that? And that's why it's like, you.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
Know, hey, can this be a wake up call for
you to stop doing this stuff?
Speaker 3 (29:30):
As well?
Speaker 4 (29:32):
I don't think I would trade spots You're totally right.
I am very happy to have been able to show people.
I guess what my family response was like, and I
hope that might help other people. She's a very broken
person that can't help but doing this stuff. And that
is the words of the eighteen year old girl that
(29:53):
you hear in the story who was the daughter of Cameron.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
In episode five.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Let's talk about the confrontation you have with Leslie, which
is kind of remarkable that that ended up happening. There's
a lot of things that come out there, but one
is that I was listening to it. It was funny.
I was actually out in my driveway and I was
(30:30):
doing like the middle aged dad thing, which is I
was cleaning my Toyota Highlander.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
But the confrontations that's come on, and of.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Course I just like put the sponge down and I'm like,
oh man, it's on. And she does the thing like
pretty early on. If I recall where she suggests that
you come by tomorrow and the journalist to me was
like no, no, no, no, no, don't but you you
(31:00):
kept her talking, And I wonder if in that moment,
did you think, like this moment that I have in
the car is probably all on when a gat like
what was going through your hand?
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Man. When I got up there and the car is
running and the door is ajar, I was thinking, Okay,
she's going to drive away, but I need give me
thirty seconds and that might be enough.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
To get something here.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
And Maria Konikova says it and that they just love
to talk about themselves and what they do, and they're
proud of their things.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
And I think she.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
It was pretty crazy when you think about it, that
more than ten years later, all of that was on
the top of her brain that I was asking her about,
and even all the way back to Hawaii, which was,
you know, even longer ago, she could still instantly recall
these things and be able to swerve around certain moments
(32:01):
like the Eric Dewiss thing.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
And she's very good.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Like when you think about that, if somebody rocked up
to me and asked me about something I was involved
in ten years ago, my first questions would be like,
hang on, what he remind me?
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Can you tell me about that?
Speaker 4 (32:16):
But she was ready to go, and we did plan
to meet up the next day because I kicked myself
listening back to it on all the things I didn't
ask in that moment, Like.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
God, I still have so many questions.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
I actually wish that I went more in on Eric
t Weiss and actually just came out with it and said,
look are you him?
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Are you pretending to be him? And questions along those lines.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
I didn't, you know, ask about the snowball line itself.
There were so many things that I was juggling and
I missed, and I did think that I might actually
have a second shot at speaking to her, so I
didn't want to lay all my cards on the table
in that moment, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
But you were patient with her, Like granted, I get it,
I hear what you're saying that like kind of artists
like to talk about themselves. That being said, it's kind
of amazing that she didn't just drive away. And I
think that part of it is the fact that you
didn't start off off by just like confronting her with
her lies. You actually started off and I didn't feel
(33:14):
I felt it was genuine. You say to her right
off the bat, I'm recording this conversation. I've been doing
a podcast, so there's there's not the seat there. You're
you're letting you know, you're checking all the boxes. But
then you're like, you know, there's there's two sides of
a story. I'd love to understand your perspective. And then
she starts talking. And then it's a few minutes in
(33:36):
before you slowly start to.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Call her on some of on some of the lies
that she told them.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
By that point, she's kind of bought into the conversation
and so so she actually starts to engage you, at
least on some of those those issues. Yea.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
And by the end of it, I'm reeling off her
criminal record, you know what I mean, Like there's a
bit where I'm like, you, you were charged with chick
fraud and pleaded guilty to burglary too, and all this
kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
And so.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
Yes, I did go in and we were chopped it
at the beginning about being palms open, and I think
this isn't really about proving things. And you know, I
spoke about justice before and will justice be done?
Speaker 3 (34:22):
And what does that mean? But in a.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Way, it's about understanding the mind mechanics more than the
logistical fraud mechanics, and so who really cares about the
forged signature that I can show and say, Hugh the
curve goes off on the end when he does it,
but on this one it's got a little bit like,
you know, getting into the detail of that isn't really
(34:45):
what's interesting. What's interesting to me is why do you
do this stuff like it? Like, what are you thinking?
What's the point?
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I mean, part of.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Me also wondered, Okay, so she's working at a grocery
store at this point, what happened to all the money?
Because for example, what happened to the money that your
parents lost? Was that was that money that all ended
up with her?
Speaker 3 (35:09):
No where did Yeah?
Speaker 4 (35:11):
And I think, you know, just in general with con
artists and the psychs speaks to this in Snowball, and
I think it's probably true of the truth about Sarah
as well, is.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
They're not in it for the money.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
They very rarely get away with lots of cash, and
as Maria says, they could probably make a lot more
money in more legitimate ways because they are often quite smart.
And you know, if Leslie had continued the businesses that
she had, she would probably be sitting on a massive
nest eb right now. But she certainly didn't get away
with the total of the money that was lost. You know,
(35:47):
in our case there was you know, bank foreclosures and
you know that kind of thing, but in some of
the other victims similar sort of stuff. But there is
definitely vast lump sums that go missing to the tunes
of hundreds of thousands of dollars in total, and I
think that that fuels a lot lifestyle that is very
(36:11):
flash in the Pan, and there's gift giving, there's probably
living the high life. You hear about going to nail
cellons and you know, spending lots of money, getting champagne
and many petties and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
So I think it's a flash in the Pan lifestyle.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
And there is definitely a debt going on where she
has to kind of pay the previous person a little
bit to keep them off her back while she looks
for the next stash to then pay off the person,
and that pyramid gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
So when you have all of these.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Debts, you're servicing those through the money you get from
the next victim. And it's true that she had some
debt to her parents from something. I don't know what
it was, but I wish that I had spoken to them.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Why didn't you speak to them.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
I tried to, you know, I.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Very nearly went and knocked on the door at that
point where we were at their house, and if they
had answered and I spoke to them, I would have
actually spoken to them before Leslie. So we kind of thought, oh,
we should try and speak to her first and then
and then swing back around to the parents, which we did.
I very much tried to get you know, I was
multiple phone calls, emails, we sent them letters and never
(37:35):
heard back.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, I'm wondering do you have any sense for whether
you think that Leslie herself listened to your podcast.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
I don't know whether she listened to the podcast, but
I know the effect that it's had because there was
also someone who I ran into in California when I
was over there who pulled up in a golf buggy
when Simon and I were doing some interviewing and was
very much on her side and had a massive goal
(38:03):
with us and was kind of defending her and saying,
you know, if you want to talk to her, I'll
be there. You know, you bitter back off and amos
kind of thing, And I said, Hey, may I'm just here.
I would love to speak to you, and ask some questions,
and then we went home and the show came out,
and a bit of time went by, and then that
person reached out to me and had experienced what everyone
(38:26):
else does eventually, and it all came crashing down and
Leslie had screwed him over and he had a conversation
with her, which he sent me.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
He did that.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
I didn't kind of ask him to record anything, but
he recorded a conversation that he sent me, and she says,
I can't get a condo. People look me up. This
thing is ruining my life, or words to that effect.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
How did that make you feel?
Speaker 4 (38:58):
Yeah, I feel bad, like I don't want to this
podcast and the story is the only ongoing connection to this,
And so people reach out to me and they'll say,
you know, I've had a run in I need your help,
And I'm like, hey man, I'm done like this is
I'm not going to spend the rest of my life
chasing this person around, and so I don't want I
(39:18):
actually feel bad that the story that I've done, and
even that I'm talking to you today about, you know,
these kind of fresh things. It will continue to chase
her if you like. But it's also that very human
instinct and desire that we spoke about in a quest
for justice where people expect something to happen, and when somebody,
(39:41):
anybody is doing the wrong thing and getting away with it.
I think anybody who comes across that sort of situation,
the human instinct is to try to stop it and
see some level of justice done. So I don't necessarily
(40:02):
think people are roping me in as a previous victim,
if you like, I think they're clutching its straws for
any sort of justice and fairness. And in those cases
that have reached out to me, I'm the closest they've
got because the police are unlikely to do anything. The
kind of crimes or love fraud is very hard to
(40:26):
deal with in the true justice system sense. So I'm
the best they've got, and that's why they're reaching out
to me.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
So how does this story end?
Speaker 4 (40:38):
I mean, I doctor Phil, Maybe I eventually think that,
you know, I wonder if we will meet again. I
do think she's a fascinating person, like this is a
fascinating story, and reviewing some of the material before we spoke,
(41:01):
I would love to still get answers for some of
those questions. But in self, preservation. I kind of have
to say the story has ended. What you heard is
it can only be the end?
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Right?
Speaker 4 (41:18):
Is that my family picked up the pieces and came
closer together and moved on, and we all look back
on it as just this strange, funny, insightful moment in
our lives.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
And we all have these.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
We all have some incident in our life that becomes
your greatest hit moment that you think about and talk
about it late at night or over a couple of beers, And.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Isn't that the end?
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah? The last question I was going to ask was that,
I mean, you had so many questions that you wanted
to pose to Leslie, which is understandable, right, But I'm
wondering if you think that she's actually capable of giving
you any answers would truly satisfy you, right, because the
(42:12):
presumption in order for an answer to satisfy you, you
have to believe that it's credible.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
I was surprised that she was as.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
Off the cuff in the car park when she described
the ways she got the finances as not totally kosher,
quote unquote. I was surprised at her willingness to go there,
and I think her instincts are to the same as
mine is, to meet in the middle a little bit
and to give some information, probably holding quite a lot back.
(42:49):
I think, if the circumstances were right, and like Maria
Konnikova described, if it was kind of begging her up.
And actually there's this case of this a famous corn artist,
a Canadian dude who went on a kind of like
a talk show, a doctor phild type show, if you will,
and he very proudly described what he had done, and
(43:14):
it was crazy. He pretended to be a doctor and
went on a Canadian medical ship during the war and
was I think even operating on people who was wild
or that guy from Catch Me if you can. I
saw a video of him the other day proudly describing
how he scammed PanAm airlines. And I think, if it
was the right circumstances, if it was Leslie under bright lights,
(43:38):
and one day, if we could kind of reconcile and
tell this story together, maybe she would own up to
some of it, and maybe some of the stuff is
able to be proven, or we got it wrong, or
you know, she has a different side of the story,
and I think we should all be open to that.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
That's it Lastlie, if you're listening, there's room for one
more bonus episode.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
That would be fascinating. I wouldn't put it out of
the realms of possibility.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Thanks, Sally, really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
This episode was produced by Isaac Carter. Our executive producer
is Jacob Smith, mastering by Sarah Bruguer. Original scoring and
our theme were composed by Luis Gara. Special thanks to
Morgan Ratner, Owen Miller, and Greta Cone. I'm Jake Halpern
Pushkin. Hey, this is Jake. We're here at the end
of our special presentation of Snowball, a series that was
originally produced by Ali Wards and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
But there's more. I recently got a chance to sit
down with Ali and ask all the questions I had
(00:37):
about how he made the show, what it was like
to report on his own family, how he feels about
the series now, and where everything has ended up since
he stopped recording. I really think you're going to like it,
So sit back and enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Remind me, so, where is your hometown? Like, where did
you grow up?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Again?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
England?
Speaker 4 (00:59):
So I'm a kay I'm from New Zealand, but I'm
speaking to you today from Sydney, where I live.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Now.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
You know, one of the things to mention here is
this is literally the first time that I have been
in a studio for this whole project. The whole thing
was recorded in hotel rooms in my apartment in New
York Under. Australians called them doners like douve the bedspread. Yeah, yeah,
you know, all this sort of stuff. So this is
(01:27):
the first time I've been in a studio for the
entire Snowball project.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
That's cool. We're honored that that's the case. The whole
thing was just it was so great. It was very compelling.
It was also very charming because and I'm sure a
lot of listeners had this experience that, like, your family
felt like they could have been my family or the
family next door, and you did.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
You did such a.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Great job of bringing your family in and making it
accessible and making us care about that and feel so
invested in the story.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
It really just got me right away.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
That's great, man. Yeah, it is a family story.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I think family is one of the key themes of it,
and that made it what it.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Was, but it also made it difficult, you know.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
I mean, so you know talking about definitely reporting on
your own family and the dynamics with that, and I
think like the strength, as you know better than anybody
of podcasting and recording audio, is you can sort of
disarm people by you're not rocking up with a camera
crew and you know, five different TV cameras in people's faces.
(02:29):
It's just you and a microphone. And I think that
is very personal and disarming, and that helps podcast reporting,
and that helped me with the family. I think if
I had more crew around me or anything like that.
For another medium, it wouldn't have got the result that
it did.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, I mean, I've got so many questions about how
you did it, and I I mean, I have a
lot of admiration for you tackling this. I don't know
that quite honestly, I would have the guts to go
and do this on my own family a right, because
it's really a high wire act. I mean, any story
report is a high wire act. And you want to
do right by your sources. You want them to feel
they weren't burned. You want to balance the truth. But
(03:10):
when the sources of your own family member, it just
seems like the stakes are exceptionally hot.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
They are totally and every family has a story. Though
now I'm interested as to what the help heern family
story could be. And I think this and so many
people reaching out to me about similar stories that have
happened to them after listening to this tells me that
there's some very interesting stuff going on. Like every family
(03:37):
ye totally quirky and has a background story. And it
just happened that I actually went back to New Zealand.
It was around the time of my oldest brother Simon's birthday,
and the whole story of how this thing came about
is around that. And I had a year off from
my job here at the ABC. I was working at
(03:57):
a music radio station called Triple J and I went
back to New Zealand because my dad around that time
was having a quadruple heart bypass, and I kind of thought,
you know, this is one of those junctures of life
where you want to ask your dad something if it's
the last time you speak to him, you know, And
(04:17):
I took her recorder and sat with him and started
asking him questions about his philosophies on life and his
childhood and stuff like that. And then we got into
this story and there was a lot of as you
hear in the show, a lot of wait, what whoa
hang on? And then have you got that document? Can
(04:37):
I see that? And I knew what happened. We lost
the home and everything, so I couldn't miss that. But
when I sat down with that and started going through it,
that's where this whole thing came from, and it truly unraveled.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Where in the timeline was that when you go back
to New Zealand, your dad's having this heart bypass, surgery,
and you're asking these questions, when is that in relation
to when Leslie blew through your lives?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
About ten years later? So it was all a memory
and you know, people had moved on and everything was fine,
and so to dive into the story, like we were
talking about with the sensitivities and the high wire act
with your family to kind of bring up ancient history
in a way was another sensitivity of it and a
(05:27):
difficulty to sort of say, let's go back to that
thing that we've all moved on from.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Did you have to coax it out of your dad
or did you get the sense that your dad on
some of tho was wanting to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
He loves it. No, he you know, he wanted to
write a book about it.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
And I think he never felt like his investigation brought
him the closure and the information that he wanted. And
we all wondered, well, I wonder what happened with her
and what's what was that about? And so Dad was
very happy to talk about it, and he had all
that the big box of Leslie Docks ready to go,
(06:07):
and even to this day, you know, when I told
him the other day that I was coming to speak
to you, Jake. He said, oh, the American Podcast Network
and I was like yeah, and he said maybe finally
doctor Phil can oh deathite. I could not believe it's
my goal here. Yeah, Doctor Phil. Doctor Phil is the
end game for every broadcaster.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
So it's amazing.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
I was like, Dad, come on, man, like, what are
you talking about with the doctor Phil thing?
Speaker 3 (06:32):
At every jot that's perfect.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I was going to say, pass a message on to
your dad that I'm I'm working the.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Doctor Phil Phil angele. I can't believe that guy's still going.
But yeah, I want to.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I want to unpack this bit, but I just want
to observe that it's weird. I'm talking about your dad
as if I know him because I feel like I
know him because you just did such a job of
bringing him to life. And the way he talked to
I mean, he was just such a he felt like
he could have been an uncle of mine.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
But I wonder if that's a weird thing.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Do you encounter people who talk about your parents as
if they know them even though they have no idea
of a stranger.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
And you know, work colleagues, to this day, I have people.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Sort of refer to my family and I go, oh,
where are you from?
Speaker 4 (07:13):
And they say, oh, no, no, I just listened to
the show or whatever, and they are a bunch of kooky,
lovable you know. I think one of the things I'm
most proud of is it was actually quite an accurate
capture of them, and it would be you know that
high wire act we were talking about. On reporting of
your family, there is a temptation to kind of gloss
over things, but I tried to do it warts and
(07:36):
all and call them out, call them out on the
stupidity of ourselves and our own naivety and some of
the things where you're like, come on, man, how did
you fall for that?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Well, that's why I think really elevates your story.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
And what really just impressed me was that that's a
really hard thing to do and I thought you did
it very well. And we'll get into some of those
moments in a sec but I'm just interested in this backstory.
So you go to interview your dad, what was the
moment that you pivoted or you decided or started to
think about let's focus on the Leslies story.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
How did that come about? I mean, I had so
many questions. I think that's the first indication of if
you have an insatiable desire to ask questions about something,
you're onto something.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
And I found myself a lot of wait, hang on,
what and what what?
Speaker 4 (08:27):
And then you know, by the time you're sort of
five or six questions in, and each question opens a
door to a cavenous area of the story. You want
to walk through those doors. I knew I was onto something,
and I had a year off from my regular job,
and truthfully, a little bit of it was like what
am I going to do? And I was my girlfriend
(08:50):
at the time, who is now my wife, was studying
international law and got into this master's It was half
an Amsterdam, half in New York at Columbia. So I
spent the first semester where she was in Amsterdam, and
I was there as well, researching and looking up, looking
through all those emails that dead had and looking through
all the documents and reaching out to people and kind
(09:12):
of scoping what the story was about. And then by
the time I moved to New York the following year
and the following semester, I had contacts in a shell
and that's when I really hit the ground.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
There's another part of this, which is that this is
really a story about Greg right and about a relationship
that really went spectacularly wrong. And I'm wondering, do you
then have to have a conversation with him about whether
he's comfortable doing this, because I'm trying to imagine me
(09:48):
being in your shoes or me going to my brother
and saying, hey, can I do a podcast about your
crazy ex? And how that? Like, I don't I can't
imagine my brother's saying yes, or me even going through
it that And I'm wondering, did you have a conversation
with Greg, and if so, what was that conversation?
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Like, yeah, I mean I didn't just pull out the
microphone and start asking questions. It's a challenge and it
was something that I think he is super brave to
have done. And he is a guy that wears his
heart on his sleeve and he is my brother. But
(10:26):
he I would also, as objectively as I can say
that he is a very kind, open man who has
been through a lot, and I think.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
He liked the.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Idea of being able to help other people, to sort
of pay it forward, and he really did do that.
You know, I've received probably thousands of messages of people
that have experienced something like this, and I think he,
you know, took one for the team in a way.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Was he on board immediately or did it take some
convincing or some time before he could of came around
to the idea.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Yeah, I mean I there was definitely times where it
was it was a bit sticky.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I try to think of it like the story starts
with Greg and it ends with Greg, but it's actually
about all of us, and it's sort of moreover, is
about Leslie, and Greg was the catalyst for telling the story,
but he's not the central character.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Actually. You know, we had this person.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
That was an enigma in our lives and was in
so many other people's, and that.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Was the north Star, if you will.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
That was kind of the person I was quite literally chasing.
And you know, Greg's moved on with his life as
well as you hear, and he's got a lovely family,
you know. So again, it was not a picking up
the pieces kind of interview. It wasn't a hang on. Yeah,
(12:11):
it was more of a throwback. So I think that
help that space helped. I think it helped some healing
and some reflection to have happened before we talked about it.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
When I come up with an idea for a story,
I'll often like have this moment of like great enthusiasm
where I'm like, Oh, this is this is so, It's
going to be great, and I see all the potential
in it, and I'll I'll pitch it.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
And then there's often a moment, often.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Shortly after I'll get the green light on it, and
I'll think like, oh my god, this is not going
to work out like this. What was I thinking? Here
are like six reasons this was a bad idea. This
is all going on inside my head right as the storyteller.
And I'm wondering if, as you were embarking on this process,
(12:58):
whether you had moments.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Of doubt constantly.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
You know, I remember when I was in California and
I found Leslie and spoke to her in that car park.
We listened to the conversation I had with her, and
you hear me in the car park kind of thinking, Oh,
I feel really sorry for her and I don't want
to kind of put anything bad out about her. And
so there was moments like that along the way where
you go, hang on, maybe this is real, and in
(13:26):
a world of lies and make believe and fictional characters
and worlds within worlds, you do have these moments where
you don't know which ones are real and which isn't,
and you don't want to kind of you know, we're
trying to be fact based journalists here and you're dealing
with the fake emails between each other, and it does
(13:49):
get in your head, and a lot of times I
was like, how do we even report this? And how
do we not only do our due diligence and fact
checking and all that kind of stuff, but how do
we actually tell somebody this and have it make sense.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
I have a question, a storytelling question for you, which
is that.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
That makes sense to me?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
If I'm in your shoes and I'm embarking on this
as a storyteller, I am thinking, in my head, the
payoff of this is do they find this Leslie character?
In fact, when this story first came in, unto our attention,
one of the producers to describing me to is the
first question I said, do they find her? And they said, yes,
(14:31):
they find her. I say, all right, I gotta listen.
But I'm wondering, when you started this, how confident did
you feel that you were actually going to find her
and have that payoff moment of confrontation that you eventually get.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Not very confident, but I am a pretty stubborn person,
and I sort of in my mind was like, how
hard can it be. You know, she's a real person,
She's out there, people leave trails.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
I had leads, you know, I had people to speak
to and.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
The clues that we were getting, like you in episode
five with Cameron and Passerobla. And by the way, can
I just make a quick apology to the people of
northern California and the people of Passeroble for my terrible
pronunciation of I think I was saying passer Robls, So
apologies to you if you're from that wonderful town for
(15:27):
my butchering of the Spanish there.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So that's all part of the charm of the show.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
You know what.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
I haven't received any mail on that, so maybe I
will now that it's an American thing. But I wasn't
I was confident something would happen and I wasn't going
to give up.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, and I want to talk to you more about
that moment, which I think you handled really well, especially
it was just such a high stakes moment. But back
to your family. One more bit. It's sometimes difficult to
convince the victims to talk because they feel this sense
of shame, often which they shouldn't. I dealt with this
(16:10):
in season six of Truth About Sarah, where she was
an exceptional liar. She lied about things that no one
would possibly imagine that someone would lie about. But I,
in the course of convincing or trying to convince people
to talk to me, folks were reluctant because they didn't
want They were either ashamed or didn't want to come
off as dupes or yeah, and I don't think they
(16:33):
did in the season, But I wonder if you could
talk about this for a moment, because one reason that
I could imagine your family not wanting to participate is
this very reason.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
But yet they.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Were able to overcome that and share the story, and
they don't and to my mind, come off that way
in the story at all. But I'm wondering, was that
something to overcome with them or how did you handle that?
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Absolutely, that's really common, And I speak to Maria Konnakova,
the psychologist in the show, who I believe does a
Pushkin show as well, and I'd listened to a podcast
of hers and the literature and the kind of research
about conn Art says that they get away with it
in so many cases because the victims feel ashamed and
they just want to move on with their lives, and
(17:16):
therefore they don't report it to police and law enforcement,
and the con sort of praise on that level of shame.
And you know, I empathized with the people in the
Truth about Sarah, particularly those that had their health records
and bank account statements and stuff duplicated and reworked to
(17:40):
serve her.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
And the shame is real.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
And I mentioned I've had lots and lots of messages
from people since Snowball came out that have gone through
this kind of love fraud, let's call it. You know,
whether it's a friendship or a romantic love, there is
usually an emotional connection that is then used as access
to be able to get what the person wants. And
(18:06):
that kind of emotional connection and shame stops people from
wanting to do anything. But everybody's reached out to me
saying thank you for telling the story. It's made me
realize that I'm not alone. And there's a bit in Snowball.
My mum says, I feel bad for the others. But
it makes me feel less dumb, like I wasn't you know,
a clown that was taken advantage of. And these people
(18:29):
are very powerful at what they do and they have practice.
You know, these things don't come around. And I think
the truth about Sarah and Snowball are similar in so
many ways, and that the lie is always built on
a truth. And Sarah worked at the VA, so she
had access to understand, you know, veterans' stories. I think
they were drawn in because Sarah told them the same
(18:52):
story that happened to them. And that's a theme on
this shows a dream reflector. That's one of the things
that we had in Snowball. And there's even a little
sound effect if you listen, whenever we talk about reflecting
a dream, it's got a little wind chime that sort
of suggests that this is a moment where the person
is sucking them in by reflecting their ambitions and their
(19:12):
skills and strengths and weaknesses.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
But it did a big difference. I think with Sarah.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Sarah is humble, and part of her charm was her
humility and people thinking that she was just cracking on
with her life despite all those challenges and they were
enamored with that, whereas Leslie was this look at me charismatic, shiny,
flashy kind of person that would draw people in through that.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
It's interesting I'm thinking about, you know, traditionally, like in
a story like The Truth about Sarah, I'm just the reporter, right,
And I've always had this idea that in those sorts
of stories, your job is to kind of stay out
of the way, or to only insert yourself at moments
where somehow, you know it reveals something about the story,
(20:12):
but it's really not about me. You're in quite a
different situation with this because it's such a personal story.
You are a part of the story, and I appreciate
it at times when you talked about that, for example,
you said, there is one part in which your brother
was going through a hard time, and you know, he
was kind of breaking breaking down or tearing up a
little bit, And you said, I had this instinct to
(20:34):
turn my recorder on because I was a reporter, But
then I realized that I was a brother first, and
so I was like, of course not. And I'm wondering,
was that something that you dealt with that you felt
like was present a lot or just occasionally and and
and and how did.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
You deal with that?
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Yeah, being a family member and trying to walk that
line between pressing for information and not letting something that's
unclear go past, versus also knowing I'm sitting down with
you for Christmas lunch later this year and I don't
want to say anything that might have seen you.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
That was tough.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
And it's the instinct to put the tape on is
there all the time?
Speaker 3 (21:25):
And really for that year that I was away.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
That's another aspect of this is I was not in
New Zealand when I was making this show, so I
was this distant person and having chats like we are now,
you know from Afar, and I did not speak to
my family for a year that when it wasn't about
this thing.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Did you feel that in some ways that may have
made you closer to them? Though, because on the one hand,
like you could say, oh, it's this is a work project,
but it's really so much more than that. I wonder
if you felt that by doing this work project your
you're I don't know that it changed your personal relationship
for or to write you closer.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
It definitely did it helped me understand, as I say
in the show. You know, something so profound that impacted
us all in different ways, and it is our family's story.
You know, it's not just about Greg. It was about
my mum and dad. It was about my brother Simon.
It was about my our extended family, you know, aunties
and uncles and everybody kind of like rallied around and
(22:23):
got involved in this.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
But you know, especially.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Simon, when we were driving around in a muscle car
with our Hawaiian shirts on.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And loved that. Loved it.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
I don't imagine doing that. Like we still talk about it.
He was saying to me the other day that he
just he often thinks of that. And when I was
preparing to talk to you, I jumped in my archive
and we shot a lot of like mobile phone footage
and stuff while we were driving around, and I sent
him in one of the videos of us pulling up
to this hotel where she had worked, and you know,
(22:54):
that night we snuck into the swimming pool and drank
some beers and it was just a awesome little road
trip with my brother.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah, that comes across and it feels so real.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
I mean I've heard versions of that that have felt contrived,
that feel like a contrivance. That whole trip you did
with him, it really did feel it felt real.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I wonder your family is very.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Gracious, Like there's clearly like hurt there and they went
through a really rough time because of what Leslie did.
I didn't hear anger through this, And I would think,
quite honestly, if I'm putting myself in your shoes and
your family shoes, I think it would be quite understandable
(23:40):
for there to be anger. And I'm wondering, I'm wondering
about that. Was it just Is it just that that
time had passed and they were able to see it,
or were they just not the angry type or just
what explains that?
Speaker 4 (24:00):
I don't think they are the angry type, to be honest,
you know, I think there is so many moments in
the show where you hear them talk about the feeling
that they had when the walls fell down and the
feeling of devastation, and in a way that being focused
on the reality rather than some type of revenge or something,
(24:25):
because being angry is only going to make you feel
worse when there were so many practical things to deal with,
like where are we going to live? And again, I
want to paint a real picture here. I think that
they were probably really pissed off when it happened. And yeah,
when it went down, you know, as I said, if
I'd got the microphone out at that time, maybe there
(24:45):
would have been a few beeps. Even though there's swear
words throughout the show, you know, language warning, maybe maybe
there would have been some even more swear words if
I'd recorded it at the time. But they're nice people,
you know, And I maybe I was more angry. I
was the one who kind of went out and chased
the story.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
And well, let me that's the question. Were you angry?
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Well, I, you know, I left New Zealand to go
on my OI the Overseas experience, and I walked out
of my family home that day and I never went back, and.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
I was very upset.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
But I was learning about this from when I was
living in London at the time, and I was kind
of like I wanted something to happen. I was like,
this surely isn't fair.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
The idea of justice is part of this story and
part of these kind of cons and you come away
wanting justice. And I don't know if that's the same
as being angry or wanting revenge. You know, the world
that we live in, we have expectations of do something bad, something,
We'll catch up with you. And that's one of the
frustrations people have with Snowball and with cons and these stories.
(26:01):
People reach out to me and say, it's so annoying
she got away. That's my you know, one star, because
she didn't get caught at the end. And that is understandable,
and I think we probably have a feeling of that,
like where is the justice? But there is this person
that's out there just you know, running herself into a
brick wall all the time, and we have empathy for
(26:25):
that and go, actually, maybe can you help yourself because
you're going around affecting all these other people. But they
eventually move on. The people in the Truth about Sarah
that were in the courtroom were all very hurt, and
you know, many of them referred to never probably never
getting over it. But they've all ultimately moved on with
(26:45):
their lives. And it's Sarah that sits in that prison cell.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah, I was not left with the feeling of, oh
my god, she got away with it, and kind of
unsatisfied with that.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I felt.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Weirdly, I felt pity for her, which is not what
I was expecting.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
Why why did you you feel petty because her life is.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Broken? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:15):
I mean you part of it is I know how
it ends, right, Like, we know that we know that
your brother, we don't know all the details, but we
know enough to know that your brother moved on, that
he has a family, that he's doing Okay, that we
meet your parents and we understand that even though they
lost their home, that they're like, they're loving parents. We
see the camaraderie between you and your brother. Like part
(27:37):
of the joy of listening to this show is that
there's love and there's laughter and and you guys make
it through this thing, right, And then you just see
this character that is Leslie, and the person that emerges.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Is really kind of like and I don't mean this.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Judgmentally, I just mean this, This was my honest take,
was a kind of lonely, more pathetic person.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
And I don't you at that moment, I'm not hungering
for vengeance for her to be brought away in cuffs.
It's almost this feeling of like, look how it's played out, Like,
look where this is left her, All this hustling, all
this deceit, all this fraud, look what she has. And
then weirdly with your family even though they were the
(28:23):
quote unquote victim here, like you wouldn't switch spots for
a second, and it so I didn't. I left kind
of weirdly satisfied in the sense that like it's not
that she got what she deserved, but like whatever feelings
I might have had for wanting vengeance or her getting
her come up and were not there, because I kind
of felt like, look where she is.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Yeah, you know, family triumphs and family always will. If
there's a strong family, Is there anything more powerful in
the world, you know? And I'm lucky, you know, I
love my family, We love each other. We emerged stronger
from this. I think that's in the show. And it
was a binding experience for us. And it's totally true
(29:07):
that the person I found was a wrecking ball, going
from one spot in her life that would have some
cataclysmic end and then moving on to the next and
starting again.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
And how awful is that? And that's why it's like, you.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
Know, hey, can this be a wake up call for
you to stop doing this stuff?
Speaker 3 (29:30):
As well?
Speaker 4 (29:32):
I don't think I would trade spots You're totally right.
I am very happy to have been able to show people.
I guess what my family response was like, and I
hope that might help other people. She's a very broken
person that can't help but doing this stuff. And that
is the words of the eighteen year old girl that
(29:53):
you hear in the story who was the daughter of Cameron.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
In episode five.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Let's talk about the confrontation you have with Leslie, which
is kind of remarkable that that ended up happening. There's
a lot of things that come out there, but one
is that I was listening to it. It was funny.
I was actually out in my driveway and I was
(30:30):
doing like the middle aged dad thing, which is I
was cleaning my Toyota Highlander.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
But the confrontations that's come on, and of.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Course I just like put the sponge down and I'm like,
oh man, it's on. And she does the thing like
pretty early on. If I recall where she suggests that
you come by tomorrow and the journalist to me was
like no, no, no, no, no, don't but you you
(31:00):
kept her talking, And I wonder if in that moment,
did you think, like this moment that I have in
the car is probably all on when a gat like
what was going through your hand?
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Man. When I got up there and the car is
running and the door is ajar, I was thinking, Okay,
she's going to drive away, but I need give me
thirty seconds and that might be enough.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
To get something here.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
And Maria Konikova says it and that they just love
to talk about themselves and what they do, and they're
proud of their things.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
And I think she.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
It was pretty crazy when you think about it, that
more than ten years later, all of that was on
the top of her brain that I was asking her about,
and even all the way back to Hawaii, which was,
you know, even longer ago, she could still instantly recall
these things and be able to swerve around certain moments
(32:01):
like the Eric Dewiss thing.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
And she's very good.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Like when you think about that, if somebody rocked up
to me and asked me about something I was involved
in ten years ago, my first questions would be like,
hang on, what he remind me?
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Can you tell me about that?
Speaker 4 (32:16):
But she was ready to go, and we did plan
to meet up the next day because I kicked myself
listening back to it on all the things I didn't
ask in that moment, Like.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
God, I still have so many questions.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
I actually wish that I went more in on Eric
t Weiss and actually just came out with it and said,
look are you him?
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Are you pretending to be him? And questions along those lines.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
I didn't, you know, ask about the snowball line itself.
There were so many things that I was juggling and
I missed, and I did think that I might actually
have a second shot at speaking to her, so I
didn't want to lay all my cards on the table
in that moment, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
But you were patient with her, Like granted, I get it,
I hear what you're saying that like kind of artists
like to talk about themselves. That being said, it's kind
of amazing that she didn't just drive away. And I
think that part of it is the fact that you
didn't start off off by just like confronting her with
her lies. You actually started off and I didn't feel
(33:14):
I felt it was genuine. You say to her right
off the bat, I'm recording this conversation. I've been doing
a podcast, so there's there's not the seat there. You're
you're letting you know, you're checking all the boxes. But
then you're like, you know, there's there's two sides of
a story. I'd love to understand your perspective. And then
she starts talking. And then it's a few minutes in
(33:36):
before you slowly start to.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Call her on some of on some of the lies
that she told them.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
By that point, she's kind of bought into the conversation
and so so she actually starts to engage you, at
least on some of those those issues. Yea.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
And by the end of it, I'm reeling off her
criminal record, you know what I mean, Like there's a
bit where I'm like, you, you were charged with chick
fraud and pleaded guilty to burglary too, and all this
kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
And so.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
Yes, I did go in and we were chopped it
at the beginning about being palms open, and I think
this isn't really about proving things. And you know, I
spoke about justice before and will justice be done?
Speaker 3 (34:22):
And what does that mean? But in a.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Way, it's about understanding the mind mechanics more than the
logistical fraud mechanics, and so who really cares about the
forged signature that I can show and say, Hugh the
curve goes off on the end when he does it,
but on this one it's got a little bit like,
you know, getting into the detail of that isn't really
(34:45):
what's interesting. What's interesting to me is why do you
do this stuff like it? Like, what are you thinking?
What's the point?
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I mean, part of.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Me also wondered, Okay, so she's working at a grocery
store at this point, what happened to all the money?
Because for example, what happened to the money that your
parents lost? Was that was that money that all ended
up with her?
Speaker 3 (35:09):
No where did Yeah?
Speaker 4 (35:11):
And I think, you know, just in general with con
artists and the psychs speaks to this in Snowball, and
I think it's probably true of the truth about Sarah
as well, is.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
They're not in it for the money.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
They very rarely get away with lots of cash, and
as Maria says, they could probably make a lot more
money in more legitimate ways because they are often quite smart.
And you know, if Leslie had continued the businesses that
she had, she would probably be sitting on a massive
nest eb right now. But she certainly didn't get away
with the total of the money that was lost. You know,
(35:47):
in our case there was you know, bank foreclosures and
you know that kind of thing, but in some of
the other victims similar sort of stuff. But there is
definitely vast lump sums that go missing to the tunes
of hundreds of thousands of dollars in total, and I
think that that fuels a lot lifestyle that is very
(36:11):
flash in the Pan, and there's gift giving, there's probably
living the high life. You hear about going to nail
cellons and you know, spending lots of money, getting champagne
and many petties and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
So I think it's a flash in the Pan lifestyle.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
And there is definitely a debt going on where she
has to kind of pay the previous person a little
bit to keep them off her back while she looks
for the next stash to then pay off the person,
and that pyramid gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
So when you have all of these.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Debts, you're servicing those through the money you get from
the next victim. And it's true that she had some
debt to her parents from something. I don't know what
it was, but I wish that I had spoken to them.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Why didn't you speak to them.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
I tried to, you know, I.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Very nearly went and knocked on the door at that
point where we were at their house, and if they
had answered and I spoke to them, I would have
actually spoken to them before Leslie. So we kind of thought, oh,
we should try and speak to her first and then
and then swing back around to the parents, which we did.
I very much tried to get you know, I was
multiple phone calls, emails, we sent them letters and never
(37:35):
heard back.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, I'm wondering do you have any sense for whether
you think that Leslie herself listened to your podcast.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
I don't know whether she listened to the podcast, but
I know the effect that it's had because there was
also someone who I ran into in California when I
was over there who pulled up in a golf buggy
when Simon and I were doing some interviewing and was
very much on her side and had a massive goal
(38:03):
with us and was kind of defending her and saying,
you know, if you want to talk to her, I'll
be there. You know, you bitter back off and amos
kind of thing, And I said, Hey, may I'm just here.
I would love to speak to you, and ask some questions,
and then we went home and the show came out,
and a bit of time went by, and then that
person reached out to me and had experienced what everyone
(38:26):
else does eventually, and it all came crashing down and
Leslie had screwed him over and he had a conversation
with her, which he sent me.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
He did that.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
I didn't kind of ask him to record anything, but
he recorded a conversation that he sent me, and she says,
I can't get a condo. People look me up. This
thing is ruining my life, or words to that effect.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
How did that make you feel?
Speaker 4 (38:58):
Yeah, I feel bad, like I don't want to this
podcast and the story is the only ongoing connection to this,
And so people reach out to me and they'll say,
you know, I've had a run in I need your help,
And I'm like, hey man, I'm done like this is
I'm not going to spend the rest of my life
chasing this person around, and so I don't want I
(39:18):
actually feel bad that the story that I've done, and
even that I'm talking to you today about, you know,
these kind of fresh things. It will continue to chase
her if you like. But it's also that very human
instinct and desire that we spoke about in a quest
for justice where people expect something to happen, and when somebody,
(39:41):
anybody is doing the wrong thing and getting away with it.
I think anybody who comes across that sort of situation,
the human instinct is to try to stop it and
see some level of justice done. So I don't necessarily
(40:02):
think people are roping me in as a previous victim,
if you like, I think they're clutching its straws for
any sort of justice and fairness. And in those cases
that have reached out to me, I'm the closest they've
got because the police are unlikely to do anything. The
kind of crimes or love fraud is very hard to
(40:26):
deal with in the true justice system sense. So I'm
the best they've got, and that's why they're reaching out
to me.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
So how does this story end?
Speaker 4 (40:38):
I mean, I doctor Phil, Maybe I eventually think that,
you know, I wonder if we will meet again. I
do think she's a fascinating person, like this is a
fascinating story, and reviewing some of the material before we spoke,
(41:01):
I would love to still get answers for some of
those questions. But in self, preservation. I kind of have
to say the story has ended. What you heard is
it can only be the end?
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Right?
Speaker 4 (41:18):
Is that my family picked up the pieces and came
closer together and moved on, and we all look back
on it as just this strange, funny, insightful moment in
our lives.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
And we all have these.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
We all have some incident in our life that becomes
your greatest hit moment that you think about and talk
about it late at night or over a couple of beers, And.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Isn't that the end?
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah? The last question I was going to ask was that,
I mean, you had so many questions that you wanted
to pose to Leslie, which is understandable, right, But I'm
wondering if you think that she's actually capable of giving
you any answers would truly satisfy you, right, because the
(42:12):
presumption in order for an answer to satisfy you, you
have to believe that it's credible.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
I was surprised that she was as.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
Off the cuff in the car park when she described
the ways she got the finances as not totally kosher,
quote unquote. I was surprised at her willingness to go there,
and I think her instincts are to the same as
mine is, to meet in the middle a little bit
and to give some information, probably holding quite a lot back.
(42:49):
I think, if the circumstances were right, and like Maria
Konnikova described, if it was kind of begging her up.
And actually there's this case of this a famous corn artist,
a Canadian dude who went on a kind of like
a talk show, a doctor phild type show, if you will,
and he very proudly described what he had done, and
(43:14):
it was crazy. He pretended to be a doctor and
went on a Canadian medical ship during the war and
was I think even operating on people who was wild
or that guy from Catch Me if you can. I
saw a video of him the other day proudly describing
how he scammed PanAm airlines. And I think, if it
was the right circumstances, if it was Leslie under bright lights,
(43:38):
and one day, if we could kind of reconcile and
tell this story together, maybe she would own up to
some of it, and maybe some of the stuff is
able to be proven, or we got it wrong, or
you know, she has a different side of the story,
and I think we should all be open to that.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
That's it Lastlie, if you're listening, there's room for one
more bonus episode.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
That would be fascinating. I wouldn't put it out of
the realms of possibility.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Thanks, Sally, really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
This episode was produced by Isaac Carter. Our executive producer
is Jacob Smith, mastering by Sarah Bruguer. Original scoring and
our theme were composed by Luis Gara. Special thanks to
Morgan Ratner, Owen Miller, and Greta Cone. I'm Jake Halpern
Host
Jake Halpern
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