July 14, 2024 • 34 mins
It’s time to go back to the very beginning where it all started for accused fraudster Alan Metcalfe. In a remote Queensland mining town, Alan learned he could scam people - and get away with it.
The Missing $49 Million is an eight-part investigative series by news.com.au, hosted by award-winning finance reporter Alex Turner-Cohen.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
If I'm going to find Alan's missing forty nine million dollars,
I need to understand more about the man himself. Had
he done something like his safe World scheme before? Who
was he, what was he like and how did he
get his start? Looking into someone's past is a tricky undertaking,
as I'm about to learn, and I had no idea
(00:23):
what I was in for and how far back. Unraveling
the mystery of Alan Metcalf goes.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Inn.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
He killed me A nine sixty nine and a car accent.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
This is Gary Avis. Gary might be eighty years old now,
but he remembers it all vividly, the dirt road where
he and his then colleague Alan Metcalf should have died.
We're speaking over the phone, so it's not a great recording.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
We told him at least four times to stop the
car or we're going to get out of the car,
and that's when he rolled up. I mean, it's a
lot of fun rolling a car in the middle central
Australia with nobody around in two hundred CA's from the
nearest down.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Did you think you were going to die in that moment?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Didn't that time to think a bloody thing? Roll five times?
Had ended up on its roof.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Alan and Gary were working together as life insurance salesman
at amp in Mount Isa in Queensland's northwest Outback, a
tiny Australian town even tinier back then. The cause of
the accident was simple. Alan was in his early twenties
and he was starting to make some serious money. Recently,
he'd bought a new car. His little Volkswagen Beetle was
(01:36):
upgraded to a VIP Valiant.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Also doing Alan, This car's too powerful for the speed
you were doing. You've never had a big car like this.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Alan was newly married to Mary. The young husband was
in a rush because he'd promised his wife he'd be
home in time for dinner. We should have died, but
they didn't. In fact, Alan Metcalf was just getting started.
He was about to launch his earliest recorded scale, but
it wouldn't be his last. I'm Alex Turner Cohen, a
finance and investigative reporter from newstock com do AU, and
(02:08):
you're listening to The Missing forty nine Million. This is
episode two genesis. Alan and Gary were down that lonely
road visiting a client. The papers in their work briefcase
(02:31):
went flying everywhere. After the crash, glass shattered all over them.
They tried to set the car on fire, the only
way they could think to draw attention as the desert
darkened around them. But Gary said it was the hardest
thing he'd ever attempted to do, and eventually he and
Alan just gave up. It took three hours for another
car to find them, and the police drove them home
(02:52):
to Mount Isa. They kept working at amp, but it
wouldn't be the last time Gary crosspaths with Alan metcalf
or her his name around town for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Mount Oz is a raw town, a rough town. Most
of the pubs had a bearfisted fighting champion. It was
an exciting town to be in as a young black,
and people were making a lot of money, serious money.
I mean five hundred and eighty bucks a week in
nineteen sixty six is a lot of money. Allan was
(03:24):
caught up in that sort of hype.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Gary's right, it was a lot of money like making
nine thousand dollars a week in today's world. In Allan's
own words from a video uploaded to vimeo discussing his past, he.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Said Mount Isaza was an interesting place because there was
great job opportunities.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
That's what attracted people, and there was good money to
be made in Mount Isa.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Alan grew up in Cannes, in Queensland's tropical north, but
he moved to Mount Isa for a mining job and
married Mary in nineteen sixty five. He was around nineteen
years old and she was about seventy. He became a
salesman at AMP shortly after, which is how Gary Avis
met him. Years later he'd be peddling the safe Worth product,
(04:09):
but then he was selling life insurance and he was
really good at his job, too good. In a eulogy,
Mary had this to say.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
Just before he turned twenty one, he was approached by
the AMP Society and he became Australasia's top salesman. Three
years in a row. He broke all sales records, which
he held for over a decade or even longer. Keep
in mind that mat iSER had a population of twenty
(04:38):
five thousand people, and yet he still beat all these records,
writing in excess of seven and a half million dollars
in whole of life policies.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
But Gary doesn't see how he never impressed me.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
He was nowhere near the top sales in Australia got
nowhere near he wouldn't be in the top fifty. I
think I know what he did. He probably signed up
what they call temstans, these people that don't exist.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So essentially he was selling insurance to dead people and
he was pocketing a hefty commission in the process.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
So like he probably got to check out to Highlight,
or he may not.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Someone else who knew Alan, who preferred to remain anonymous,
explain to me how it works. We're using a voice actor,
but these are his words.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
You would go to a local cemetery, a Nudge cemetery
or pick a cemetery, and you'd literally write the person's
name down. And back in those days, the insurance companies
would pay like two or three years commission to the
insurance agent for having signed someone on an insurance policy.
So using your own money, you could give a thousand
dollars to the insurance company and they would give you
(05:50):
three thousand back. So a lot of dead people were
for udulently registered as owners of insurance policies.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
AMP did not respond to requests for comment. While trying
to find out more about Alan and his involvement in
tombstone scams, I come across an expert who can help.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
My name's Clinton Free, and I'm a professor here at
the University of Sydney Business School.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Professor Free has researched con artists and fraud for a
long time and he's noticed some common and disturbing traits
among offenders. We talk in his office and swap stories
about some of the interesting characters we've come across through
our work.
Speaker 7 (06:25):
I think some really interesting research in this space refers
to something called the dark triad of personality traits, and
those things are narcissism, machiavelianism, and psychopathy. And there's research
which shows that con artists or scammers tend to have
a much more elevated sense of the dark triad personality traits.
(06:47):
And narcissism refers to grandiosity, selfishness, importance of their self image.
Machiavelianism is that capacity to manipulate and convince others gain
other people's confidence for your own benefits. And psychopathy is
just a lack of empathy, so not being alert or
(07:08):
attendant to other people's plights and being very self oriented
in the way that one thinks. And I think where
we see those sort of personality traits come together, we
see a very effective scammer, a very effective con artist.
But I think there's a category of white collar offenders
who where there's a lack of empathy for victims, where
(07:31):
there's grandiosity, and when there's a sort of exceptional ability
to manipulate others and gain their confidence and trust, that
is incredibly potent and dangerous in our society.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So you've obviously been doing a lot of work in
white collar crime for many, many years, and you actually
mentioned that you'd heard the name Alan metcalf before through
your work. So could you tell me a bit about that,
because that kind of came as a shock to me,
But I thought, maybe it's a really small world, or
maybe he's been on some kind of radar for a while.
Speaker 8 (08:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (08:04):
So, as part of a research project that I was
working on with a colleague, we had some research assistants
review internet sources for the names of people who had
received either custodical sentences or who'd been the subject of
inquiries or court cases going back several decades, because we
were trying to identify people who we might be able
(08:26):
to speak to. And one of the things we did
come across was Allen's name in Hansart where he'd been
identified as perpetrating a variety of scams, so he was
named publicly. So we had this sort of list which
we whittled down, and what we tried to do was
move from that to talk to people inside prisons. And
(08:48):
obviously Alan wasn't in the latter category, so we never
went forward there. But he certainly was someone who has
been known and cited in Parliament as being associated with whitechrime.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Hansard is the official parliamentary record. Following Clinton's lead, I
discovered that Allan's time as a salesman was indeed mentioned
there nearly twenty years later by Queensland MP Jeff Smith,
part of Labour's Townsville branch. He said Allan was recognized
as amp's top salesman by routing the system, but that
(09:28):
the insurer woke up to it after customers didn't pay
their fees when they fell due.
Speaker 9 (09:33):
The AMP undoubtedly had grounds for civil and perhaps other action,
but because of its embarrassment and the potential loss of
goodwill due to the inevitable unfavorable publicity, the AMP simply
cut its losses and its ties with mister metcalf.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
That transcript from nineteen eighty five, which a colleague of
mine has read out, is still accessible today. Jeff's scathing
speech to Parliament has helped me piece together what Alan
did next. He didn't leave Mount ol straight away, even
after the Tombstone scandal.
Speaker 9 (10:02):
With the advantage of some inside knowledge, he managed to
discover certain license and permit expiry dates, and as Minus
tend to be casual about such matters, he was able
to move in and register certain holdings in his own name.
The original and rightful owners would then be obliged to
negotiate a financial sediment with him to regain possession.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Jeff liken this to a modern day version of claim jumping,
something where people would take plots of land during the
gold Rush. It would be in today's terms like stealing
a domain name off the Internet as it expires and
then holding it to ransom. But that wasn't all.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
He was coorforded and then a strong self promoter, and
he told himself very.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Well, that's Murray Byrd, an expert on the history of AFL.
When he was writing a book on it a decade ago,
he met Alan to find out more about the early
days of the sport in regional Queensland, Alan had become
involved in the mining town's emerging afi else In his
spare time, his sales skills were put to good use
trying against sponsors for the team. Years later, Allan would
(11:08):
set up a website describing his own pass in Mount iSER.
He claimed he was the founder and secretary of the
mount Is Australian Football League and the North Australian Football Championships.
That's simply not true, according to Murray.
Speaker 7 (11:22):
Definitely wasn't the faner of the mount Is completely he didn't. No,
he wasn't the fan of the Northern Stroane Football League which.
Speaker 8 (11:28):
Was just a really a one off carnival, as he.
Speaker 7 (11:32):
Played a part in the promotion of that and the
genesis of the idea of it. But yeah, I could
be so for sure about being the founder. I think
he's stretching in a bit to say he's the founder
of that as well.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Alan worked as a sports journalist. Jeff Smith said that
Alan went on to launch his own paper in Mount
Isa called The Advertiser.
Speaker 9 (11:53):
It is sufficient to say that the paper closed and
Metcalf left town with the investors in the Advertiser looking
for their money. He then moved on to Townsville.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Their shift to coastal Queensland happened in nineteen seventy eight.
By then Alan and Mary had their young son, Clayton.
Speaker 9 (12:09):
In tow Metcalf went into a publishing business that produced
magazines entitled Rugby League North and Townsville Woman. Both the
ventures eventually folded, with a number of supplies and printing
firms still being owed substantial sums of money. Metcalf's projects
are widely different, and they bear little relationship to each other.
I am sure that the whole thing is suspect.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Jeff Smith, who launched this stinging attack on Allen's business
activities in Parliament, is still alive. He's ninety years old.
I knew it was a massive long shot, but I
really wanted to talk to him. I contacted Labor headquarters
to see if they had any way of getting in touch,
and I even managed to track down a home phone
number for him.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
The number you have called is not connected.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Please check the number.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
This be calling again.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Not connected.
Speaker 10 (13:02):
To check the number before calling again.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Looking for another lead to help me understand who Alan was.
Something caught my eye in his speech. Jeff said that
another politician had mentioned Alan metcalf in Parliament before him.
So I went to the library and dug through the
archives and what I found next honestly gobsmacked me. It
was blinking at me in black and white from the screen.
Speaker 11 (13:25):
Quite frankly, mister Metcalfe is one of the greatest convent
to have resided in North Queensland.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
That was a voice actor reading out the nineteen eighty
four handsard transcript of Kenneth Mechlagott, another labor politician from
Townsville who went on to become the Queensland Health Minister.
Speaker 11 (13:41):
I'm very concerned about mister Metcalf's record in business, very
concerned about this is one of the greatest conments.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
As well as Alan's track record of scamming at AMP
and his failures in the publishing world. Kenneth also plugged
another hole for me about Alan's early years. Alan had
attempted a political career with the Nationals, an Australian political
party known to represent farmers and other regional voters. I
wanted to talk to Kenneth Mcalligott, but unfortunately he passed
(14:09):
away in twenty twenty one. There was one thing I
could easily fact check to see who was lying, Kenneth
or Allen. Kenneth claims that.
Speaker 11 (14:17):
Allan stood for election in the seat of Townsville South
in nineteen eighty and made no impression on the vote
of the sitting member, mister Alex Wilson, But.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
On Allan's own profile, he claims he was narrowly beaten
in this election. I find the election results. Now it's
time to bring in an.
Speaker 12 (14:34):
Expert testing one two three.
Speaker 13 (14:38):
My name is Jessica Wang and I work at NCA Newswire, so.
Speaker 12 (14:42):
We used to work together. Jess is a good friend
of mine. She's a great journo. And can you tell
me a bit about what you do at NCI newswiy
So what do you specialize in there?
Speaker 13 (14:51):
I cover state politics for New South Wales. I'm sort
of a cross You're across the other states as well,
just as part of the job.
Speaker 12 (15:00):
That we're looking into. So Alan Metcalf, he's this colorful
character from Queensland. I'd be looking to him for about
a year now, and he was actually running in an
election campaign in the seat of Townsville in nineteen eighty.
So he says on his profile that he lost by
a tiny margin in the seat of Townsville. You know,
(15:21):
it was like a hare's length that he lost by.
But another politician who spoke in parliament about it said
that Alan lost by landslide. He lost by a country mile.
So I don't want to put any pressure on you, jests,
but in some ways the whole podcast could hinge on you,
because this is the moment where I can realize if
(15:41):
Allan is a bit of a truth teller or not
so much. So I might just show you the results
of the election, and I just want you to tell
me straight away what your first thoughts are. Analyze it
as a political journalist. So you're looking at the document
right now.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Did Alan Metcalf lose by a huge amount or by
a tiny as he claims.
Speaker 13 (16:02):
Well, looking at what I have here, he only got
twenty five point five percent of the votes, whereas the
winning candidate, Alex Wilson from Labor, he got forty eight
point nine percent with the votes, so you can tell
that he wasn't even close to winning from a numbers
point of view. So the candidate who won got six
six hundred and sixty seven votes, whereas Ala Metcalf got
(16:23):
three four hundred and eighty one. If you'd look at
the two party preferred vote, Ala Metcalf was on forty
two point four percent and Alex Wilson got fifty seven
point six percent, you couldn't even say that he turned
the seat. He sort of helped the National sort of
clawback more ground in the seat because Labor won with
the swing of six point six percent. That means that
(16:44):
Labor essentially got six point six percent more of the
votes so than before in that essentially increased their ground
by six point six percent in the area. But yeah, absolutely,
he wasn't anywhere close to winning.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Speaking in Parliament, Kenneth also added this as a final
comment on Allan's political career.
Speaker 11 (17:05):
I am aware of a strong rumor that circulated in
Townsville to the effect that mister Metcalf owed the National
Party seventeen thousand dollars as a result of that campaign.
I place credence on the veracity of that rumor, because,
as honorable members will recall, that campaign was a very
expensive one to be candid. Allan Metcalf could not have
(17:25):
paid for it.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
The National Party wouldn't give me a comment on any
of this. The political chapter of his life behind him,
Alan moved on. By now, it was well into the eighties.
Australia's film scene was thriving and would forge some of
the all time greats in its crucible like Puberty Blues
and Crocodile. Dundee and Alan wanted in on the action.
Speaker 8 (17:49):
I awak and recollect Metcalfe was going to turn Towns
Fall into the new Hollywood of Australia. He intended to
make it the film capital of the world.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
This is Bob Bleasdale, an editor who worked with Alan
on a TV series set in northern Queensland called Big
Fish down Under.
Speaker 9 (18:07):
Like I had just slowly.
Speaker 7 (18:12):
Fish, This line is fifteen feet long and weighs more than.
Speaker 12 (18:16):
A metrical time.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Back.
Speaker 7 (18:20):
Is a big game fishing a contested fact with the
biggest game.
Speaker 9 (18:23):
Fishing, White Shop.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Alan was the executive producer, so it fell to him
to pull the funding together.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
It was the first, the very first fishing videos that
produced out of Australia for their time, the old very
big budget, so it was a amount of money he raised.
I don't know how much it was. I know farmers
were definitely is the main source of revenue on the
Big Fish down Under. Definitely came. Farmers were worthy investors
(18:58):
because they would occasionally throw into one of every now
and then were dropping to the edits week to have
a chat and see that his money was still being
put to good news.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
In nineteen eighty the government introduced something known as the
TENBA tax offset. It meant if you invested any money
in the Australian film industry you got a one hundred
and fifty percent tax deduction on all of it. You
also got a fifty percent tax holiday on any profits made.
This might sound boring, but what it meant was money,
(19:27):
lots of it.
Speaker 8 (19:29):
It really said film industry going bananas. There was money
coming from every where.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Bob is right. Between nineteen eighty and eighty eight, nearly
a billion dollars was invested in Australia's film industry. Peter
will is a designer who worked with Alan in Townsville
and he saw how Alan convinced people to invest the
film bombs.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
But you know you've written off the attacks for the year.
Speaker 12 (19:56):
Yeah, so you still are. It's still ahead.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
To the product. Gay look as a matter where the
film goes well not. It just saved yourself fifty thousand
dollars in tax.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
This isn't a great recording, but what Peter's saying is
that Alan's pitch to investors was simple. No matter how
the film performed, they would get a massive tax right off,
so they'd be silly not to give him their money.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
I think he took a lot of leeway out of
the generous film brand scheme that was going on at
the time. I think he profited handsomely.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Peter spotted Alan around town driving me a gold plated
nineteen seventy six Fordlando, which he was surprised about because
he knew Alan was a family man. I start looking
into the tax benefit scheme that Alan used to encourage
investors into the movie business. Our newspaper article in the
Australian Financial Review had a withering view on the whole thing.
(20:51):
It's a sad but inevitable observation that some of the
greatest acts of creativity associated with the local film industry
involved no actors, no directors, and certainly no cameras. These
creations came from men in plush city officers whipping up
film projects out of thin air, eagerly adding up their
fees and dreaming up ever more tenuous methods of using
(21:13):
films to raise money. The article also referred to it
as a time on a tax dodge. Peter says he
couldn't agree more and.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
There was abused, would abuse people making shit movies and
they were never released or just bomb.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Alan went on to try to make thirteen more films,
The Kalkadoons and The Crocodile Man feature among them, but
it's unclear if they ever got off the ground. Looking back,
Peter has some choice words about Alan.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
He was a shyster so used cars Hausman but the
swagger of one. But he was organizing investors, but I
think a lot of money disappeared.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Another person I spoke to worked with Alan on the
Big Fish Down Under series but wanted to remain anonymous,
so we'll call him Liam.
Speaker 10 (21:58):
He was a mix of Trump, God and Musk, an
incredible networker.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Liam says Alan had a big falling out with a
key financial backer because he was spending too much money
on marketing. They never financed one of Allen's films.
Speaker 10 (22:11):
Again, I have heard that a Queensland film editor person
still talks about unpaid times.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
One well known filmmaker, Malcolm Florence, was named as someone
Allan owed money to but Malcolm has passed away and
his wife didn't want to be involved in this podcast.
Speaker 7 (22:27):
I think we ordinarily associate the eighties, especially in Queensland,
with a more lax regulatory regime.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
That's Professor Clinton Free again the White Collar Crime Expert,
to give you a bit of an insight into the
jungle Alan was playing in at the time.
Speaker 7 (22:42):
I think for anyone who is alive through that period,
the Fitzgerald Inquiry in Queensland in the late nineteen eighties
is really a strong marker in the regulatory consciousness of
this country. Revealed huge corruption of police politicians at the
at the highest level, and I think that is the
reality that our regulators have been strengthened considerably.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Peter remembers it very well firsthand.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Queensland was corrupt. They were seriously twenty times.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
And he says Alan made the most of.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
It, being founded by the corruption and corrupt Ellen was
like a piganlad.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
This was the era when Queensland was under the control
of Joe Bielki Peterson. He was at the center of
the corruption scandal and Alan knew him personally. Here's Mary
talking about it at Allan's funeral.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
He went on to National Party Management Committee with Joe
Bijokie Peterson for ten years.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Bilk Peterson resigned as the state's premiere in the wake
of the corruption inquiry, which ended the National Party's thirty
two years stranglehold in Queensland. Three former ministers and the
police commissioner were also jailed. So what did Alan do
once that house of cards collapsed? Fast forward to the nineties.
(24:01):
When I started this investigation, the first thing I did
was a litigation search on Alan, which is where I
checked to see if he's ever been taken to court.
Nothing came up. He was squeaky clean, pure, it seemed.
Months later, though, I had another thought. Alan had been
operating long before the Internet, so maybe his case hadn't
(24:21):
been digitized. Through a series of clunky search engines on
the court's website and a lot of back and forth
emails with the court registry, I hit the jackpot. I
found three civil court cases against him, two from the
same individual and one from the Bank of New Zealand.
The company's name had actually been misspelled, so it read
as the Bank of nez Zealand. But then I hit
(24:44):
another roadblock. I got this email from the Queensland Supreme Court.
The file you were seeking has unfortunately been destroyed. In
line with the Public Records Act two thousand and two
and general retention and destruction schedules, the files are destroyed
twelve years after the last action on the file. It
(25:05):
had been a lot longer than twelve years, but I
was desperate this would fill the missing years in Alan's life.
So I found an email address for someone named as
the person who suit Alan and fired something off. Within
an hour, he called me back, Hi.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Alex, this is calling you. Sent me an email today
at eleven fifty six am in relation to Alan. Metcalf I,
am who took Alan to court in nineteen ninety three
and happy to discuss the issues with you.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
He didn't want me to use his real name or voice,
so we'll call him Brody and this is a voice
actor relaying his words.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Alan was promoting his business. It was called the Harp Exchange.
You've got to realize that at the time there was
no Internet. The web browser that we see today didn't exist.
So the Heart Brokerage Exchange was basically a business. It's
a whole bunch of computers linked together around the world,
and if you were to buy or sell any businesses
anywhere in the world, you'd express your interest on the
(26:05):
HARP Exchange. So if you wanted to buy a business,
you can go my name's Alex and I'm a mechanic
in Indonesia and put it there and you could buy
and sell businesses. But to do this you had to
be a HARP member.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Sound eerily familiar to Safe Worlds. Brody thought so too.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
When you sent me this email out of the blue.
It's like a bolt of lightning, because I never had
to think about Clayton or Alan or Mary for many years.
So I searched you in news Corp. And lo and behold,
you've written the whole article one Alan, I read the
article and this and you know what, if you replace
(26:43):
that company name with HARP, it's literally just a repeat.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
There was another similarity with Safe Worlds that he also
realized while reading my article.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
No one bought equity into the business. No one lent
money to the business in any form of debt. So
no equity was issued and no debt was issued. But
the selling point of the business was you became a
member of the exchange. So when you pay the twenty
thousand or the twenty five thousand dollars. You're not getting
a bond or security, and you're not getting equity or
(27:18):
a share certificate. You're getting a certificate that says you're
a member of this exchange. But it's not debt and
it's not equity. So that's how Alan was able to
circumvent operation law. For lack of a better word, that's
how he was able to operate in the gray area.
Because if someone said, Allan knows me money, then the
(27:38):
question is where's the loan, where's the loan document? Well,
there was no loan document. My jaw dropped when I
read this article because I didn't know that this happened.
I'm literally reading it line by line what you wrote,
and it's kind of like, this is exactly hot, different names,
(28:00):
different investors. Instead of being a member of HARP, they've
issued this worthless equity that's not registered. If I just
summarize him, i'd call him a sophisticated swindler.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Alan approached Brody when he was looking for investors in
his HARP business.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
One day, Alan came to me and said, look, they
need I think it was either twenty thousand or twenty
five thousand. It doesn't seem like a lot of money today,
but twenty five thousand dollars was the equivalent of probably
a quarter of an apartment or some sort of house.
Alan said, I just need this money to help with
the business, and you know, pay it back. And what
(28:41):
I can do is you can be a member of HARP.
I think I waited two years and no repayment was forthcoming.
Then I made the decision that I need to seek
legal advice. Maybe I was the lucky one back in
nineteen ninety three when I actually had correspondence where he
said he would repay the money.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Brody took Alan to court and won the case, with
the judge ordering Allan to pay back the twenty five
thousand dollars. Brody had to sue Allan a second time
when the repayments briefly stopped, but in the end he
managed to recover it. All I also reached out to
the Bank of New Zealand, who also sued Alan, but
they declined to comment, citing privacy reasons. Brody and I
(29:24):
keep talking, and he remembers something else he'd forgotten about Alan.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
He would spend time traveling between Brisbane and the United States,
so he did travel a lot.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Alan, Mary and their son were also living in a
penthouse overlooking the Brisbane River in the prestigious inner city
suburb of South Bank.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
I think that penthouse. I'm going to get the numbers wrong,
but I think he paid something like a million dollars
back in nineteen eighty five eighty six. So one million
dollars today only gets you a three bedroom apartment, but
like in those days, you got the entire penthouse.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Later I checked this out and he wasn't far off.
Property records show that Alan and Mary bought the four
bedroom penthouse in nineteen eighty seven for eight hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. They sold it six years later for
one point one five million, not a bad return on
their investment. The year of the apartment sale, nineteen ninety
three was a busy time for Allan. Not only was
(30:24):
he dealing with his court case and selling the plush
family home, but he was also trying to rebuild Russia
after death of the Soviet Union. Allan claimed on his
profile that humanitarian aid workers and the mayor of Moscow
asked him to inspect the Russian privatization program and proposed
some advice. Because of his e commerce background. Liam, his
(30:46):
ex colleague from the movie industry, stays sporadically in touch
with Alan.
Speaker 10 (30:51):
He says in the nineties he broke it to deal
with Russia.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
In fact, that's the reason Liam wanted to stay anonymous,
meaning we've got a voice actor to read his word.
Speaker 10 (31:00):
The last thing I need is one hundred and fifty
kilo Russian knocking down my door.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Alan claimed he worked extensively in Russia and that his
business idea could be a digital Marshall plan that would
kickstart the Russian economy. Unfortunately, there's not much more I
was able to find out about Alan's time in Russia.
In the late nineteen nineties, Alan launched another company, and
this was called Safeworld's Australia.
Speaker 12 (31:24):
And New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
The company actually went public and was on the Australian
Stock Exchange which was called the NSX back then being
publicly listed when Alan was able to raise new money
from selling shares. But it also came with a load
of regulatory issues, including the need to file public accounts
and communicate with shareholders. But Alan was unable to deliver
(31:47):
the product or give shareholders proper updates. In the end,
he had to resign as director. Safeworlds merged with another
company and it was renamed E Business Systems. This company
of officially went into liquidation in twenty twelve. A small
amount of money was repaid to its investors. One person
involved in the project told me, I would have preferred
(32:10):
not to have met Alan Metcalf, and so there you
have it. Alan's genesis, the life story of a man
who rolled from fraudstar to tax dodger, to con artists,
to liar and then failed business executive. But as far
from over, Alan wasn't done with Safe Worlds yet. He
(32:31):
was about to launch his latest iteration that would kickstart
my year long investigation. I'm your host, Alex Turner Cohen,
and you're listening to the Missing forty nine million next time.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
He was like a medieval monk who had claimed to
have discovered angelic script, the language of angels, as if
it was something new, so that.
Speaker 10 (32:56):
One, this is just crazy.
Speaker 8 (32:57):
I can't do it.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
He was comparing himself to people like Edison and Ironsky,
you know, and people that are discovered penicillin, and you know,
like he was making a comparison with he had just
as a normalman had discovered this lure of thought.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Thanks for listening. A new episode is coming out weekly
Wherever you get your podcasts, Make sure you subscribe so
you don't miss an episode. Head to news dot com
dot Au to read more of my reporting on this story.
Do you know more? Get in touch through our dedicated
tip inbox Missing Millions at news dot com dot Au
(33:36):
or contact me directly on Alex dot Turner, Dash Cohen
at news dot com dot Au or look me up
on Twitter to get my details. I'm your host, Alex
Turner Cohen. Nina Young is the executive producer, sound design
and editing by Tiffany Dimack. Our editorial director is Dan Box.
Grant McAvaney is our legal advisor, and Kerrie Warren is
(33:58):
the editor of news dot com. Special Thanks to our
voice actors Andrew Bucklow, Andy Bellez, Rick Wilson and David
tan
If I'm going to find Alan's missing forty nine million dollars,
I need to understand more about the man himself. Had
he done something like his safe World scheme before? Who
was he, what was he like and how did he
get his start? Looking into someone's past is a tricky undertaking,
as I'm about to learn, and I had no idea
(00:23):
what I was in for and how far back. Unraveling
the mystery of Alan Metcalf goes.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Inn.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
He killed me A nine sixty nine and a car accent.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
This is Gary Avis. Gary might be eighty years old now,
but he remembers it all vividly, the dirt road where
he and his then colleague Alan Metcalf should have died.
We're speaking over the phone, so it's not a great recording.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
We told him at least four times to stop the
car or we're going to get out of the car,
and that's when he rolled up. I mean, it's a
lot of fun rolling a car in the middle central
Australia with nobody around in two hundred CA's from the
nearest down.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Did you think you were going to die in that moment?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Didn't that time to think a bloody thing? Roll five times?
Had ended up on its roof.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Alan and Gary were working together as life insurance salesman
at amp in Mount Isa in Queensland's northwest Outback, a
tiny Australian town even tinier back then. The cause of
the accident was simple. Alan was in his early twenties
and he was starting to make some serious money. Recently,
he'd bought a new car. His little Volkswagen Beetle was
(01:36):
upgraded to a VIP Valiant.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Also doing Alan, This car's too powerful for the speed
you were doing. You've never had a big car like this.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Alan was newly married to Mary. The young husband was
in a rush because he'd promised his wife he'd be
home in time for dinner. We should have died, but
they didn't. In fact, Alan Metcalf was just getting started.
He was about to launch his earliest recorded scale, but
it wouldn't be his last. I'm Alex Turner Cohen, a
finance and investigative reporter from newstock com do AU, and
(02:08):
you're listening to The Missing forty nine Million. This is
episode two genesis. Alan and Gary were down that lonely
road visiting a client. The papers in their work briefcase
(02:31):
went flying everywhere. After the crash, glass shattered all over them.
They tried to set the car on fire, the only
way they could think to draw attention as the desert
darkened around them. But Gary said it was the hardest
thing he'd ever attempted to do, and eventually he and
Alan just gave up. It took three hours for another
car to find them, and the police drove them home
(02:52):
to Mount Isa. They kept working at amp, but it
wouldn't be the last time Gary crosspaths with Alan metcalf
or her his name around town for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Mount Oz is a raw town, a rough town. Most
of the pubs had a bearfisted fighting champion. It was
an exciting town to be in as a young black,
and people were making a lot of money, serious money.
I mean five hundred and eighty bucks a week in
nineteen sixty six is a lot of money. Allan was
(03:24):
caught up in that sort of hype.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Gary's right, it was a lot of money like making
nine thousand dollars a week in today's world. In Allan's
own words from a video uploaded to vimeo discussing his past, he.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Said Mount Isaza was an interesting place because there was
great job opportunities.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
That's what attracted people, and there was good money to
be made in Mount Isa.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Alan grew up in Cannes, in Queensland's tropical north, but
he moved to Mount Isa for a mining job and
married Mary in nineteen sixty five. He was around nineteen
years old and she was about seventy. He became a
salesman at AMP shortly after, which is how Gary Avis
met him. Years later he'd be peddling the safe Worth product,
(04:09):
but then he was selling life insurance and he was
really good at his job, too good. In a eulogy,
Mary had this to say.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
Just before he turned twenty one, he was approached by
the AMP Society and he became Australasia's top salesman. Three
years in a row. He broke all sales records, which
he held for over a decade or even longer. Keep
in mind that mat iSER had a population of twenty
(04:38):
five thousand people, and yet he still beat all these records,
writing in excess of seven and a half million dollars
in whole of life policies.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
But Gary doesn't see how he never impressed me.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
He was nowhere near the top sales in Australia got
nowhere near he wouldn't be in the top fifty. I
think I know what he did. He probably signed up
what they call temstans, these people that don't exist.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So essentially he was selling insurance to dead people and
he was pocketing a hefty commission in the process.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
So like he probably got to check out to Highlight,
or he may not.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Someone else who knew Alan, who preferred to remain anonymous,
explain to me how it works. We're using a voice actor,
but these are his words.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
You would go to a local cemetery, a Nudge cemetery
or pick a cemetery, and you'd literally write the person's
name down. And back in those days, the insurance companies
would pay like two or three years commission to the
insurance agent for having signed someone on an insurance policy.
So using your own money, you could give a thousand
dollars to the insurance company and they would give you
(05:50):
three thousand back. So a lot of dead people were
for udulently registered as owners of insurance policies.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
AMP did not respond to requests for comment. While trying
to find out more about Alan and his involvement in
tombstone scams, I come across an expert who can help.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
My name's Clinton Free, and I'm a professor here at
the University of Sydney Business School.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Professor Free has researched con artists and fraud for a
long time and he's noticed some common and disturbing traits
among offenders. We talk in his office and swap stories
about some of the interesting characters we've come across through
our work.
Speaker 7 (06:25):
I think some really interesting research in this space refers
to something called the dark triad of personality traits, and
those things are narcissism, machiavelianism, and psychopathy. And there's research
which shows that con artists or scammers tend to have
a much more elevated sense of the dark triad personality traits.
(06:47):
And narcissism refers to grandiosity, selfishness, importance of their self image.
Machiavelianism is that capacity to manipulate and convince others gain
other people's confidence for your own benefits. And psychopathy is
just a lack of empathy, so not being alert or
(07:08):
attendant to other people's plights and being very self oriented
in the way that one thinks. And I think where
we see those sort of personality traits come together, we
see a very effective scammer, a very effective con artist.
But I think there's a category of white collar offenders
who where there's a lack of empathy for victims, where
(07:31):
there's grandiosity, and when there's a sort of exceptional ability
to manipulate others and gain their confidence and trust, that
is incredibly potent and dangerous in our society.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So you've obviously been doing a lot of work in
white collar crime for many, many years, and you actually
mentioned that you'd heard the name Alan metcalf before through
your work. So could you tell me a bit about that,
because that kind of came as a shock to me,
But I thought, maybe it's a really small world, or
maybe he's been on some kind of radar for a while.
Speaker 8 (08:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (08:04):
So, as part of a research project that I was
working on with a colleague, we had some research assistants
review internet sources for the names of people who had
received either custodical sentences or who'd been the subject of
inquiries or court cases going back several decades, because we
were trying to identify people who we might be able
(08:26):
to speak to. And one of the things we did
come across was Allen's name in Hansart where he'd been
identified as perpetrating a variety of scams, so he was
named publicly. So we had this sort of list which
we whittled down, and what we tried to do was
move from that to talk to people inside prisons. And
(08:48):
obviously Alan wasn't in the latter category, so we never
went forward there. But he certainly was someone who has
been known and cited in Parliament as being associated with whitechrime.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Hansard is the official parliamentary record. Following Clinton's lead, I
discovered that Allan's time as a salesman was indeed mentioned
there nearly twenty years later by Queensland MP Jeff Smith,
part of Labour's Townsville branch. He said Allan was recognized
as amp's top salesman by routing the system, but that
(09:28):
the insurer woke up to it after customers didn't pay
their fees when they fell due.
Speaker 9 (09:33):
The AMP undoubtedly had grounds for civil and perhaps other action,
but because of its embarrassment and the potential loss of
goodwill due to the inevitable unfavorable publicity, the AMP simply
cut its losses and its ties with mister metcalf.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
That transcript from nineteen eighty five, which a colleague of
mine has read out, is still accessible today. Jeff's scathing
speech to Parliament has helped me piece together what Alan
did next. He didn't leave Mount ol straight away, even
after the Tombstone scandal.
Speaker 9 (10:02):
With the advantage of some inside knowledge, he managed to
discover certain license and permit expiry dates, and as Minus
tend to be casual about such matters, he was able
to move in and register certain holdings in his own name.
The original and rightful owners would then be obliged to
negotiate a financial sediment with him to regain possession.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Jeff liken this to a modern day version of claim jumping,
something where people would take plots of land during the
gold Rush. It would be in today's terms like stealing
a domain name off the Internet as it expires and
then holding it to ransom. But that wasn't all.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
He was coorforded and then a strong self promoter, and
he told himself very.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Well, that's Murray Byrd, an expert on the history of AFL.
When he was writing a book on it a decade ago,
he met Alan to find out more about the early
days of the sport in regional Queensland, Alan had become
involved in the mining town's emerging afi else In his
spare time, his sales skills were put to good use
trying against sponsors for the team. Years later, Allan would
(11:08):
set up a website describing his own pass in Mount iSER.
He claimed he was the founder and secretary of the
mount Is Australian Football League and the North Australian Football Championships.
That's simply not true, according to Murray.
Speaker 7 (11:22):
Definitely wasn't the faner of the mount Is completely he didn't. No,
he wasn't the fan of the Northern Stroane Football League which.
Speaker 8 (11:28):
Was just a really a one off carnival, as he.
Speaker 7 (11:32):
Played a part in the promotion of that and the
genesis of the idea of it. But yeah, I could
be so for sure about being the founder. I think
he's stretching in a bit to say he's the founder
of that as well.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Alan worked as a sports journalist. Jeff Smith said that
Alan went on to launch his own paper in Mount
Isa called The Advertiser.
Speaker 9 (11:53):
It is sufficient to say that the paper closed and
Metcalf left town with the investors in the Advertiser looking
for their money. He then moved on to Townsville.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Their shift to coastal Queensland happened in nineteen seventy eight.
By then Alan and Mary had their young son, Clayton.
Speaker 9 (12:09):
In tow Metcalf went into a publishing business that produced
magazines entitled Rugby League North and Townsville Woman. Both the
ventures eventually folded, with a number of supplies and printing
firms still being owed substantial sums of money. Metcalf's projects
are widely different, and they bear little relationship to each other.
I am sure that the whole thing is suspect.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Jeff Smith, who launched this stinging attack on Allen's business
activities in Parliament, is still alive. He's ninety years old.
I knew it was a massive long shot, but I
really wanted to talk to him. I contacted Labor headquarters
to see if they had any way of getting in touch,
and I even managed to track down a home phone
number for him.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
The number you have called is not connected.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Please check the number.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
This be calling again.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Not connected.
Speaker 10 (13:02):
To check the number before calling again.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Looking for another lead to help me understand who Alan was.
Something caught my eye in his speech. Jeff said that
another politician had mentioned Alan metcalf in Parliament before him.
So I went to the library and dug through the
archives and what I found next honestly gobsmacked me. It
was blinking at me in black and white from the screen.
Speaker 11 (13:25):
Quite frankly, mister Metcalfe is one of the greatest convent
to have resided in North Queensland.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
That was a voice actor reading out the nineteen eighty
four handsard transcript of Kenneth Mechlagott, another labor politician from
Townsville who went on to become the Queensland Health Minister.
Speaker 11 (13:41):
I'm very concerned about mister Metcalf's record in business, very
concerned about this is one of the greatest conments.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
As well as Alan's track record of scamming at AMP
and his failures in the publishing world. Kenneth also plugged
another hole for me about Alan's early years. Alan had
attempted a political career with the Nationals, an Australian political
party known to represent farmers and other regional voters. I
wanted to talk to Kenneth Mcalligott, but unfortunately he passed
(14:09):
away in twenty twenty one. There was one thing I
could easily fact check to see who was lying, Kenneth
or Allen. Kenneth claims that.
Speaker 11 (14:17):
Allan stood for election in the seat of Townsville South
in nineteen eighty and made no impression on the vote
of the sitting member, mister Alex Wilson, But.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
On Allan's own profile, he claims he was narrowly beaten
in this election. I find the election results. Now it's
time to bring in an.
Speaker 12 (14:34):
Expert testing one two three.
Speaker 13 (14:38):
My name is Jessica Wang and I work at NCA Newswire, so.
Speaker 12 (14:42):
We used to work together. Jess is a good friend
of mine. She's a great journo. And can you tell
me a bit about what you do at NCI newswiy
So what do you specialize in there?
Speaker 13 (14:51):
I cover state politics for New South Wales. I'm sort
of a cross You're across the other states as well,
just as part of the job.
Speaker 12 (15:00):
That we're looking into. So Alan Metcalf, he's this colorful
character from Queensland. I'd be looking to him for about
a year now, and he was actually running in an
election campaign in the seat of Townsville in nineteen eighty.
So he says on his profile that he lost by
a tiny margin in the seat of Townsville. You know,
(15:21):
it was like a hare's length that he lost by.
But another politician who spoke in parliament about it said
that Alan lost by landslide. He lost by a country mile.
So I don't want to put any pressure on you, jests,
but in some ways the whole podcast could hinge on you,
because this is the moment where I can realize if
(15:41):
Allan is a bit of a truth teller or not
so much. So I might just show you the results
of the election, and I just want you to tell
me straight away what your first thoughts are. Analyze it
as a political journalist. So you're looking at the document
right now.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Did Alan Metcalf lose by a huge amount or by
a tiny as he claims.
Speaker 13 (16:02):
Well, looking at what I have here, he only got
twenty five point five percent of the votes, whereas the
winning candidate, Alex Wilson from Labor, he got forty eight
point nine percent with the votes, so you can tell
that he wasn't even close to winning from a numbers
point of view. So the candidate who won got six
six hundred and sixty seven votes, whereas Ala Metcalf got
(16:23):
three four hundred and eighty one. If you'd look at
the two party preferred vote, Ala Metcalf was on forty
two point four percent and Alex Wilson got fifty seven
point six percent, you couldn't even say that he turned
the seat. He sort of helped the National sort of
clawback more ground in the seat because Labor won with
the swing of six point six percent. That means that
(16:44):
Labor essentially got six point six percent more of the
votes so than before in that essentially increased their ground
by six point six percent in the area. But yeah, absolutely,
he wasn't anywhere close to winning.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Speaking in Parliament, Kenneth also added this as a final
comment on Allan's political career.
Speaker 11 (17:05):
I am aware of a strong rumor that circulated in
Townsville to the effect that mister Metcalf owed the National
Party seventeen thousand dollars as a result of that campaign.
I place credence on the veracity of that rumor, because,
as honorable members will recall, that campaign was a very
expensive one to be candid. Allan Metcalf could not have
(17:25):
paid for it.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
The National Party wouldn't give me a comment on any
of this. The political chapter of his life behind him,
Alan moved on. By now, it was well into the eighties.
Australia's film scene was thriving and would forge some of
the all time greats in its crucible like Puberty Blues
and Crocodile. Dundee and Alan wanted in on the action.
Speaker 8 (17:49):
I awak and recollect Metcalfe was going to turn Towns
Fall into the new Hollywood of Australia. He intended to
make it the film capital of the world.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
This is Bob Bleasdale, an editor who worked with Alan
on a TV series set in northern Queensland called Big
Fish down Under.
Speaker 9 (18:07):
Like I had just slowly.
Speaker 7 (18:12):
Fish, This line is fifteen feet long and weighs more than.
Speaker 12 (18:16):
A metrical time.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Back.
Speaker 7 (18:20):
Is a big game fishing a contested fact with the
biggest game.
Speaker 9 (18:23):
Fishing, White Shop.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Alan was the executive producer, so it fell to him
to pull the funding together.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
It was the first, the very first fishing videos that
produced out of Australia for their time, the old very
big budget, so it was a amount of money he raised.
I don't know how much it was. I know farmers
were definitely is the main source of revenue on the
Big Fish down Under. Definitely came. Farmers were worthy investors
(18:58):
because they would occasionally throw into one of every now
and then were dropping to the edits week to have
a chat and see that his money was still being
put to good news.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
In nineteen eighty the government introduced something known as the
TENBA tax offset. It meant if you invested any money
in the Australian film industry you got a one hundred
and fifty percent tax deduction on all of it. You
also got a fifty percent tax holiday on any profits made.
This might sound boring, but what it meant was money,
(19:27):
lots of it.
Speaker 8 (19:29):
It really said film industry going bananas. There was money
coming from every where.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Bob is right. Between nineteen eighty and eighty eight, nearly
a billion dollars was invested in Australia's film industry. Peter
will is a designer who worked with Alan in Townsville
and he saw how Alan convinced people to invest the
film bombs.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
But you know you've written off the attacks for the year.
Speaker 12 (19:56):
Yeah, so you still are. It's still ahead.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
To the product. Gay look as a matter where the
film goes well not. It just saved yourself fifty thousand
dollars in tax.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
This isn't a great recording, but what Peter's saying is
that Alan's pitch to investors was simple. No matter how
the film performed, they would get a massive tax right off,
so they'd be silly not to give him their money.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
I think he took a lot of leeway out of
the generous film brand scheme that was going on at
the time. I think he profited handsomely.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Peter spotted Alan around town driving me a gold plated
nineteen seventy six Fordlando, which he was surprised about because
he knew Alan was a family man. I start looking
into the tax benefit scheme that Alan used to encourage
investors into the movie business. Our newspaper article in the
Australian Financial Review had a withering view on the whole thing.
(20:51):
It's a sad but inevitable observation that some of the
greatest acts of creativity associated with the local film industry
involved no actors, no directors, and certainly no cameras. These
creations came from men in plush city officers whipping up
film projects out of thin air, eagerly adding up their
fees and dreaming up ever more tenuous methods of using
(21:13):
films to raise money. The article also referred to it
as a time on a tax dodge. Peter says he
couldn't agree more and.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
There was abused, would abuse people making shit movies and
they were never released or just bomb.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Alan went on to try to make thirteen more films,
The Kalkadoons and The Crocodile Man feature among them, but
it's unclear if they ever got off the ground. Looking back,
Peter has some choice words about Alan.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
He was a shyster so used cars Hausman but the
swagger of one. But he was organizing investors, but I
think a lot of money disappeared.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Another person I spoke to worked with Alan on the
Big Fish Down Under series but wanted to remain anonymous,
so we'll call him Liam.
Speaker 10 (21:58):
He was a mix of Trump, God and Musk, an
incredible networker.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Liam says Alan had a big falling out with a
key financial backer because he was spending too much money
on marketing. They never financed one of Allen's films.
Speaker 10 (22:11):
Again, I have heard that a Queensland film editor person
still talks about unpaid times.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
One well known filmmaker, Malcolm Florence, was named as someone
Allan owed money to but Malcolm has passed away and
his wife didn't want to be involved in this podcast.
Speaker 7 (22:27):
I think we ordinarily associate the eighties, especially in Queensland,
with a more lax regulatory regime.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
That's Professor Clinton Free again the White Collar Crime Expert,
to give you a bit of an insight into the
jungle Alan was playing in at the time.
Speaker 7 (22:42):
I think for anyone who is alive through that period,
the Fitzgerald Inquiry in Queensland in the late nineteen eighties
is really a strong marker in the regulatory consciousness of
this country. Revealed huge corruption of police politicians at the
at the highest level, and I think that is the
reality that our regulators have been strengthened considerably.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Peter remembers it very well firsthand.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Queensland was corrupt. They were seriously twenty times.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
And he says Alan made the most of.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
It, being founded by the corruption and corrupt Ellen was
like a piganlad.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
This was the era when Queensland was under the control
of Joe Bielki Peterson. He was at the center of
the corruption scandal and Alan knew him personally. Here's Mary
talking about it at Allan's funeral.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
He went on to National Party Management Committee with Joe
Bijokie Peterson for ten years.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Bilk Peterson resigned as the state's premiere in the wake
of the corruption inquiry, which ended the National Party's thirty
two years stranglehold in Queensland. Three former ministers and the
police commissioner were also jailed. So what did Alan do
once that house of cards collapsed? Fast forward to the nineties.
(24:01):
When I started this investigation, the first thing I did
was a litigation search on Alan, which is where I
checked to see if he's ever been taken to court.
Nothing came up. He was squeaky clean, pure, it seemed.
Months later, though, I had another thought. Alan had been
operating long before the Internet, so maybe his case hadn't
(24:21):
been digitized. Through a series of clunky search engines on
the court's website and a lot of back and forth
emails with the court registry, I hit the jackpot. I
found three civil court cases against him, two from the
same individual and one from the Bank of New Zealand.
The company's name had actually been misspelled, so it read
as the Bank of nez Zealand. But then I hit
(24:44):
another roadblock. I got this email from the Queensland Supreme Court.
The file you were seeking has unfortunately been destroyed. In
line with the Public Records Act two thousand and two
and general retention and destruction schedules, the files are destroyed
twelve years after the last action on the file. It
(25:05):
had been a lot longer than twelve years, but I
was desperate this would fill the missing years in Alan's life.
So I found an email address for someone named as
the person who suit Alan and fired something off. Within
an hour, he called me back, Hi.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Alex, this is calling you. Sent me an email today
at eleven fifty six am in relation to Alan. Metcalf I,
am who took Alan to court in nineteen ninety three
and happy to discuss the issues with you.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
He didn't want me to use his real name or voice,
so we'll call him Brody and this is a voice
actor relaying his words.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Alan was promoting his business. It was called the Harp Exchange.
You've got to realize that at the time there was
no Internet. The web browser that we see today didn't exist.
So the Heart Brokerage Exchange was basically a business. It's
a whole bunch of computers linked together around the world,
and if you were to buy or sell any businesses
anywhere in the world, you'd express your interest on the
(26:05):
HARP Exchange. So if you wanted to buy a business,
you can go my name's Alex and I'm a mechanic
in Indonesia and put it there and you could buy
and sell businesses. But to do this you had to
be a HARP member.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Sound eerily familiar to Safe Worlds. Brody thought so too.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
When you sent me this email out of the blue.
It's like a bolt of lightning, because I never had
to think about Clayton or Alan or Mary for many years.
So I searched you in news Corp. And lo and behold,
you've written the whole article one Alan, I read the
article and this and you know what, if you replace
(26:43):
that company name with HARP, it's literally just a repeat.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
There was another similarity with Safe Worlds that he also
realized while reading my article.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
No one bought equity into the business. No one lent
money to the business in any form of debt. So
no equity was issued and no debt was issued. But
the selling point of the business was you became a
member of the exchange. So when you pay the twenty
thousand or the twenty five thousand dollars. You're not getting
a bond or security, and you're not getting equity or
(27:18):
a share certificate. You're getting a certificate that says you're
a member of this exchange. But it's not debt and
it's not equity. So that's how Alan was able to
circumvent operation law. For lack of a better word, that's
how he was able to operate in the gray area.
Because if someone said, Allan knows me money, then the
(27:38):
question is where's the loan, where's the loan document? Well,
there was no loan document. My jaw dropped when I
read this article because I didn't know that this happened.
I'm literally reading it line by line what you wrote,
and it's kind of like, this is exactly hot, different names,
(28:00):
different investors. Instead of being a member of HARP, they've
issued this worthless equity that's not registered. If I just
summarize him, i'd call him a sophisticated swindler.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Alan approached Brody when he was looking for investors in
his HARP business.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
One day, Alan came to me and said, look, they
need I think it was either twenty thousand or twenty
five thousand. It doesn't seem like a lot of money today,
but twenty five thousand dollars was the equivalent of probably
a quarter of an apartment or some sort of house.
Alan said, I just need this money to help with
the business, and you know, pay it back. And what
(28:41):
I can do is you can be a member of HARP.
I think I waited two years and no repayment was forthcoming.
Then I made the decision that I need to seek
legal advice. Maybe I was the lucky one back in
nineteen ninety three when I actually had correspondence where he
said he would repay the money.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Brody took Alan to court and won the case, with
the judge ordering Allan to pay back the twenty five
thousand dollars. Brody had to sue Allan a second time
when the repayments briefly stopped, but in the end he
managed to recover it. All I also reached out to
the Bank of New Zealand, who also sued Alan, but
they declined to comment, citing privacy reasons. Brody and I
(29:24):
keep talking, and he remembers something else he'd forgotten about Alan.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
He would spend time traveling between Brisbane and the United States,
so he did travel a lot.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Alan, Mary and their son were also living in a
penthouse overlooking the Brisbane River in the prestigious inner city
suburb of South Bank.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
I think that penthouse. I'm going to get the numbers wrong,
but I think he paid something like a million dollars
back in nineteen eighty five eighty six. So one million
dollars today only gets you a three bedroom apartment, but
like in those days, you got the entire penthouse.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Later I checked this out and he wasn't far off.
Property records show that Alan and Mary bought the four
bedroom penthouse in nineteen eighty seven for eight hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. They sold it six years later for
one point one five million, not a bad return on
their investment. The year of the apartment sale, nineteen ninety
three was a busy time for Allan. Not only was
(30:24):
he dealing with his court case and selling the plush
family home, but he was also trying to rebuild Russia
after death of the Soviet Union. Allan claimed on his
profile that humanitarian aid workers and the mayor of Moscow
asked him to inspect the Russian privatization program and proposed
some advice. Because of his e commerce background. Liam, his
(30:46):
ex colleague from the movie industry, stays sporadically in touch
with Alan.
Speaker 10 (30:51):
He says in the nineties he broke it to deal
with Russia.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
In fact, that's the reason Liam wanted to stay anonymous,
meaning we've got a voice actor to read his word.
Speaker 10 (31:00):
The last thing I need is one hundred and fifty
kilo Russian knocking down my door.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Alan claimed he worked extensively in Russia and that his
business idea could be a digital Marshall plan that would
kickstart the Russian economy. Unfortunately, there's not much more I
was able to find out about Alan's time in Russia.
In the late nineteen nineties, Alan launched another company, and
this was called Safeworld's Australia.
Speaker 12 (31:24):
And New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
The company actually went public and was on the Australian
Stock Exchange which was called the NSX back then being
publicly listed when Alan was able to raise new money
from selling shares. But it also came with a load
of regulatory issues, including the need to file public accounts
and communicate with shareholders. But Alan was unable to deliver
(31:47):
the product or give shareholders proper updates. In the end,
he had to resign as director. Safeworlds merged with another
company and it was renamed E Business Systems. This company
of officially went into liquidation in twenty twelve. A small
amount of money was repaid to its investors. One person
involved in the project told me, I would have preferred
(32:10):
not to have met Alan Metcalf, and so there you
have it. Alan's genesis, the life story of a man
who rolled from fraudstar to tax dodger, to con artists,
to liar and then failed business executive. But as far
from over, Alan wasn't done with Safe Worlds yet. He
(32:31):
was about to launch his latest iteration that would kickstart
my year long investigation. I'm your host, Alex Turner Cohen,
and you're listening to the Missing forty nine million next time.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
He was like a medieval monk who had claimed to
have discovered angelic script, the language of angels, as if
it was something new, so that.
Speaker 10 (32:56):
One, this is just crazy.
Speaker 8 (32:57):
I can't do it.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
He was comparing himself to people like Edison and Ironsky,
you know, and people that are discovered penicillin, and you know,
like he was making a comparison with he had just
as a normalman had discovered this lure of thought.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Thanks for listening. A new episode is coming out weekly
Wherever you get your podcasts, Make sure you subscribe so
you don't miss an episode. Head to news dot com
dot Au to read more of my reporting on this story.
Do you know more? Get in touch through our dedicated
tip inbox Missing Millions at news dot com dot Au
(33:36):
or contact me directly on Alex dot Turner, Dash Cohen
at news dot com dot Au or look me up
on Twitter to get my details. I'm your host, Alex
Turner Cohen. Nina Young is the executive producer, sound design
and editing by Tiffany Dimack. Our editorial director is Dan Box.
Grant McAvaney is our legal advisor, and Kerrie Warren is
(33:58):
the editor of news dot com. Special Thanks to our
voice actors Andrew Bucklow, Andy Bellez, Rick Wilson and David
tan
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