July 7, 2024 • 33 mins
Alan Metcalfe was a seemingly successful businessman with a big turnout at his funeral. But was this ‘tech entrepreneur’ all he seemed to be? His death sparked a cascade of questions from 600 investors about what happened to their money. All 49 million dollars of it.
The Missing $49 Million is an eight-part investigative series by news.com.au, hosted by award-winning finance reporter Alex Turner-Cohen.
Got a tip? Email us: Missingmillions@news.com.au
Read more on this story at news.com.au
Subscribe to Crime X+ listen to this podcast ad-free.
Follow us on socials: Instagram: @newscomauhq Facebook: News.com.au TikTok: @news.com.au
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
We have gathered today to give thanks to God for
the life of Alan Miles Metcalf, and to a third
a Christian conviction that while death is the end of
human life, at marks a new beginning in our relationship
with God. Please let us stand together as we see
(00:23):
amazing grace.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I'm starting this story at the end, the end of
Alan Metcalf's life. This is his funeral. It's a Wednesday,
the first day of March in twenty seventeen. I'm looking
back at this scene immortalized on a YouTube video. It's
a video that I've now watched multiple times, and each
time I notice other small details. Count forty or so
(01:00):
people sitting in the pews of the church. The thirty
two degree day is hot, sweltering, and a few of
the men have actually taken off their suit jackets. Sad
faces stare up as the reverend begins his service. It's
just past one pm in a Uniting church in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Alan's widow, Mary Metcalf, takes to the stand to deliver
(01:23):
her eulogy. She cuts a striking figure with her larger
than life makeup and heavy jewelry, as well as a
long black lace veil draped dramatically over her face. Her son, Clayton,
towers next to her. Alan's only child, Mary describes her
husband as a gift from God.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I prayed to God when I was fifteen to send
me a husband who would be a kindred spirit, a
visionary who would not be afraid. God answered my prayers
in abundance to send me Alan Metcalts.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Alan was seventy years old and extremely overweight. In the end,
he died of a heart attack. He was a seemingly
successful businessman on the Gold Coast, a beachside city built
around shining skyscrapers. And watching the funeral, it seems like
Alan was pretty popular. More than ten people speak and
(02:18):
others send video messages from all around the world.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
My mother told me years ago, Peter, you'll count your
genuine friends on one hand. In your lifetime, Alan, you're
on my hand.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
We're not going to mourn him.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
We're going to celebrate his life, what he did in
the world, what they're still going to do in the
world because of Alan Metca.
Speaker 7 (02:44):
I truly believe he was a genius, and I trust
the history of books will prove out.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
To be the case.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Only that's not quite the story I find when I
pick up those history books seven years later and learn
about Alan Metcalf for myself. The words I'm hearing now
to describe him are very very different.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Deceitful, a conment.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
He was a scammer and a lunatic in a way.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
He struck me as being the kind of guy could
sell ice to the Esquimos, but you just wondered what
was the ice made of?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Depending on who you asked, Alan was a visionary or
a thief, a genius, or a fool who believed his
own fantasies. Now six hundred people are wondering which it was,
after putting their money, in some cases their life savings
into a scheme that Alan was running. Alan claimed he'd
found the secret to artificial intelligence in the Bible. He
(03:41):
told the world his company would be bigger than Google.
He was a messiah to his devout followers, able to
lead them to a promised land free from ever having
to work again, and guaranteed them with almost religious conviction,
truly biblical returns.
Speaker 8 (03:59):
Welcome to see World's TV. Just like magic, I'm going
to show you the easiest way to make money online.
So what is safe World's TV. It's more than just
a website and more than just a software application. It's
the world's first Internet television and e business platform.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Alan's investors were ordinary people, entire families, friend groups, pensioners,
people from all over the world. They believed in Alan.
They believed they were going to get their money to
pay for their retirements, or their kids' educations, or the
holiday of lifetime. Until suddenly Alan died. Those investors were
(04:41):
left asking what happened to their money, all forty nine
million dollars of it. I'll never meet him. He died
before I was even a working journalist, but he's consumed
my every spare thought. For the past year. The money
has gone missing. No one seems to know where it is,
and I'm setting up to find it. I'm Alex Turner Cohen,
(05:02):
a finance and investigative reporter from news dot Commeddy you
and you're listening to the Missing forty nine million. This
(05:28):
is episode one Judgment Day.
Speaker 7 (05:32):
Hello. I'm Alan Metcalf. In nineteen ninety nine, I was
fortunate enough to make the breakthrough discovery of the law
of thought that in the IT world is called universal logic.
Much to the surprise and disbelief of many people. I
found the law of thought in the Bible. We have
(05:53):
used the law of thought to develop what we believe
is the world's first artificially intelligent, mass distributable Internet robot
for television and electronic business.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
The voice you're hearing there is Alan Metcalf. He might
be dead, but Alan lives on in numerous YouTube clips,
A ghost in the machine. Let's go back to the
email which started me on the search for Allan's missing money.
Speaker 9 (06:22):
Hi, my name is Charlie Waynepin. I'm a resident of
the Netherlands that I'm writing about a financial investment that
I made in Australia back in December twenty thirteen. I
was informed that you're a journalist that writes sharp articles
concerning financial issues, including fraud. Therefore, I hope that you're
the right person that I can refer to for this matter.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
This is Charlie reading from his email. He explained that
he'd invested tens of thousands of dollars into a scheme
called Safe Worlds, as had many other Australians, and that
the founder of the scheme was now dead.
Speaker 9 (06:55):
Please let me know if this is something that you
would be willing to work on and if you can,
I will be very high happy to send you my
correspondence that I had for this project. Thank you in
advance for your consideration, looking forward hearing from you.
Speaker 10 (07:09):
When did this come in April? Didn't it?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It's been almost a year to the day. Actually, I
never would have imagined from that one email. This is
me talking to my boss, Sarah Sharples, the finance editor
at news dot com TODAU. She's the one that actually
first received that email from Charlie. Tell us about what
was happening that day When the email came in. What
(07:32):
did you think?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
You know?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
It was a tip off? You receive a lot of
tip offs. Was there anything about this one that stood out?
What do you remember now given how much ended up
coming out of this one email.
Speaker 10 (07:43):
Yeah, we do get a lot of tip offs, which
is where some of the best stories come from. I
remember receiving this email and he said he'd invested in
this company back in twenty thirteen, and he'd invested fifty
two thousand, which is a lot of money. And it
got really intriguing as well because the email talked about
(08:03):
what he'd been sold to invest in was a company
that was going to surpass Google and YouTube, so obviously
they're big players now. And then ten years later he
still hadn't seen any of his money or any return
on it. He'd been chasing it for ten years. The
founder had died, but the wife had taken over it,
(08:24):
which was a bit weird because, like he said, they
had no idea what her experience was.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And then what what did you do next?
Speaker 10 (08:32):
I have to admit I read it and I filed
it away as something we needed to follow up, and
then we get so busy I forgot about it. And
he actually emailed me again and asked me if I
was interested and if not, should he take it elsewhere?
And I think that was a good tactic from him,
because I was like, oh, no, we're interested. And at
(08:55):
the time I was going on some extended leave, so
I passed it on to you, like, oh, yeah, this
could be interesting, I'll pick it up. You were very
casual about it.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I reached out to Charlie to find out more. Charlie's
been coming to Australia for work trips since the nineteen eighties.
He's made strong friendships on these visits, and it was
on one of these trips in twenty thirteen, when his
Ozzie friend David Gorman told him about Safe World and
Alan Metcalf.
Speaker 11 (09:23):
David and his friends already had bod shares and they
talked me into buying some as well. So I had
a look at it and it looked really interesting. That
looked like something futuristic. So I thought it was a
good investment, and so, you know, we put a whole
big part of our savings into it.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Charlie wasn't so wealthy that this was spare money he
just had floating around.
Speaker 11 (09:46):
No, that was life savings. We had just finalized everything
concerning the mortgage of our house and this was our
life saving that we were going to keep for a
direction retirement.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Still, it seemed like an offer too good to pass up.
Speaker 11 (10:00):
They seemed like a really good investment, especially knowing that
they were intending to take it to the stock exchange.
So I thought it was a chance of a life.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
David Gorman, the man who encouraged Charlie to invest, put
in twenty thousand dollars himself. I meet him at his
home in Sydney's North where he lives with his wife,
kids and two pugs.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
So I bought some shares at five cents, some at
ten cents, and some at a dollar, and he was
talking about selling them at would have been about one
hundred and fifty dollars a share, So that would have
been yeah, quite a few men for myself.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
He still remembers meeting Alan Metcalf, who seemed to have
an almost larger than life presence and a silver tongue.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I first met him at the Manly Pacific Hotel, it
was called then down at Manly. He always dressed pretty well, actually,
he always wore a suit and tie. He was medium height,
I think Biggish man, quite large. I think he's probably
had a few health issues. He was always out of breath,
(11:06):
but very approachable, flake very gifted.
Speaker 12 (11:09):
The gap.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
I think the way he was describing what safe worlds
can do, and this universal logic that he found in
the Bible, you know, if it came off, it came off,
but it sounded, I mean, it sounded, you know, intriguing.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
David works in the health industry and he's actually never
invested in anything before. He's not the kind of person
to rush into big financial decisions, but there was something
different about this opportunity.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Never was a risk taker. I'm not a risk taker,
same as my father. Very conservative. But my friend Michael Blake,
you know, the ex football he'd probably know him or
heard of him, got me into this about two thousand
and eight.
Speaker 7 (11:55):
Oh beautiful part.
Speaker 8 (11:57):
Why am I cave sending this troopers like screaming.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Over the twenty two?
Speaker 12 (12:02):
He's beat right, big work bag.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
I couldn't comes at him. He's back and found his brother.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
That's Blake back the back Michael Blake.
Speaker 8 (12:10):
Oh god, it's.
Speaker 7 (12:11):
Tapa, his younger brother.
Speaker 8 (12:12):
I have done so well up on my cave, Pap.
Speaker 12 (12:15):
That is champlaining football.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I speak to Michael Blake at his apartment in the
Northern Beaches of Sydney. A Holy Bible sits on the
table between us. Michael played professional football throughout the seventies
and eighties along with his brother Phil. He's not the
most technologically savvy guy.
Speaker 7 (12:34):
I might also just.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Get you to chuck your phone on, are you yeah?
Would you be able to put on the aeroplane mode?
Speaker 12 (12:39):
Or too much?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Just because apparently when Michael was there at the funeral,
he was actually one of the eight people that carried
Alan's coffin to the grave.
Speaker 6 (12:51):
I was a little bit disappointed in the funeral because
the people that talk are basically all talking about Safe
World and that business that he worked on. But he
was more than that. You know, that was only a
part of his life at that time. But as I said,
he was a bit of Alaric and he was a
good blake.
Speaker 12 (13:10):
He loved his sport. He's foot him and what have you,
and that.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
In fact, it was sport that drew Alan and Michael together.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
I was heavily involved in rugby league. I cracked first
grade the first time. I meant Allan was down at
Darling Harbor because one time that I invested, he was
over in Irvine, California at the time, and he even
I think he phoned me up and he wanted to
know it was Michael from Michael and Phil Blake from Manley,
and he said yes. It was.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
After that first meeting, they stayed in touch.
Speaker 12 (13:40):
Over many years. I became friends with Alan.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yes, So would you consider him a close friend or
what kind of level of friendship would you say there
was there?
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Well, we've probably ended up as class friends. So I
spent a lot of time with him over the years,
and he had a good sense of humor. You know,
he could be a little bit cheeky, and you know
he was pretty good company.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Michael had made decent money in his sporting career, and
outside of putting some into his family business, he hadn't
really invested before.
Speaker 6 (14:12):
I didn't really know what he was talking about, but
I knew I wanted to get in. He said it
was going to be bigger than Google, and that was
pretty big, so I thought I wouldn't mind a bit
of action with this. So my national investment was only
around five thousand dollars. But over the years, many years,
over a decade, we reinvested, reinvested, got the opportunity to
(14:34):
reinvest it, and because the program seemed to be building,
gathering momentum, nearly ready to take off, we kept on
putting more money in me and my family because we
wanted to help everyone that we knew, all our kids,
all our aunties and everyone like that.
Speaker 12 (14:53):
And we just thought, you know, how is this and.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
How much was it in total? Because I think who
said five thousand at the beginning? What was the total
final number? Like currently as it stands.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
Well, as we gradually build up. Even at one stage
there me and my two brothers. We got our souper
and made it a self managed fund and put that in.
So all up, over many years we probably put around
three hundred thousand in.
Speaker 12 (15:22):
That's the family.
Speaker 6 (15:23):
With Dad and my brothers, I actually probably raised over
a million dollars. The way people would get involved through
me is if I'm going to a football reunion or
catching up with people's school unions. You know, they's say, Blakie,
what are he up to? And I speak to him
about what I'm up to, and I'd mention Safe World,
how's supposed to be bigger than Google? It could be
(15:44):
worth having a look at and leave it at that,
And then they'd get back in contact with me, and
I said, well, don't speak to me, I know nothing
about it. Speak to Alan. And they'd speak to Alan,
get in contact with him, and they'd invest. You know,
they'd invest like five or ten grand or twenty grand.
One guy put in one hundred grand. But I suppose
they put it their money in because they trusted me.
(16:05):
But I always got them to speak to Alan.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Years later, a lot of his friends are not so
happy about this.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
When they find out how much that I've lost in it.
It makes them feel better.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Listening to Michael, I start to realize how much of
this comes down to belief. Michael believed in Alan, and
he believed in Alan's vision, and in turn, his friends
believed him.
Speaker 12 (16:29):
I've kind of.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
A bit taken aback because a lot of people invested
in even though it was five or ten or twenty
grand or whatever. People invested because they trusted me, and
I feel as it was a little bit used.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Probably while Michael Blake trusted Alan blindly, not everyone did.
(17:06):
Seen one, two three?
Speaker 5 (17:08):
How much is that doggie in the window room with
a waggedy tail? Nice? My name is David Richardson. I'm
a senior producer with Under Investigation with Lis Hayes, and
I operate from Channel nine's Sydney office in North Sydney.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
David Richardson is an investigative journalist who's been in the
industry for more than thirty years. He's also Michael Blake's
best mate, and when his friends started to talk about
safe worlds, alarm bells rang For David.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
My spider senses were tingling something bad. Alan had impressed
him with this concept of safe worlds, and Michael and
another one of our friends were interested in having a
deeper look at what Alan was trying to sell, and
they set up a meeting in town, and Michael asked
if I would come in and just act a third eye,
(18:01):
you know, just cast an ear over what was being
proposed and whether there was any danger involved, obviously with
my experience chasing down scammers and bad guys. So there
was a meeting in town and we all sort of
went in and met with Alan, who had rented an
office in the city, and my first impression of him
(18:23):
was that he was a hand grenade waiting to go off,
and he just didn't look healthy. He was massively overweight,
he was ruddy complexion, you know, he just didn't look
terribly healthy. But he could talk. He could really, really talk.
He was amazing. So he sat down and he started
to explain this Safe World's concept, which to me initially
(18:47):
seemed to be this combination of almost an alternate internet
marketing bizarre similar to Amazon or ali Baba or eBay,
but at the same time it had an e commerce perspective.
But then the big selling point that he was trying
to get across to us outside of that was the
(19:10):
creation of universal logic, and he said he had discovered
universal logic and the key to being able to allow
all computers to talk together. So for people who don't understand,
I'll try to put it as simply as I can,
because I had to go and get people to explain
it to me. Is that individual companies have their own
(19:30):
proprietary rights. So you've got Apple or DRL or HP
or them and all of their programmers right for them.
So that's why Microsoft often doesn't sink with Apple, and
Apple programs won't sync with Microsoft programs. The whole concept
of universal logic was that regardless of who the programmer
(19:51):
was or who the manufacturer was, the computers worldwide would
be able to talk to each other seamlessly, and that
was going to be the language of safe Woods effectively.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
David was skeptical, especially when he learned that this key
revelation that underpinned the whole scheme Allan was selling had
been made while reading the Bible.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
And being an ancient history nut. I said to him instantly,
or was that the ara mat Hebrew, Greek, Latin or English?
And he said English? And I just laughed. I said, Oh,
you've got to be joking, you know. If he had
said it was in the Aramaic. I might have sort
of believed part of it on the grounds that people
(20:36):
and you know, theologians and historians have been finding code
in the Original Bible for years, or what they deemed
to be code. But what he was talking about was
just tosh. You know, there were some scholars who believe
now that parts of the English Bible had code that
had been implanted by Elizabeth the first spy master, Francis Bacon. So,
(20:58):
you know, for him to suggest that, after so many
rewrites and translations, that somehow, miraculously this language or code
or something had somehow materialized in the Bible, and only
he had been able to find it, after the Bible
has been poured over by you know, thousands and thousands
of scholars and theologians. It was just too much for me,
(21:20):
and I just couldn't. I couldn't swallow it. And I
remember walking out of the meeting and the three of
us went up to the Tattlesules Club to have a
beer before we went home, and they said, what do
you think? And I said, yeah, don't go near it now.
I just don't buy it. To me, it just you know,
I thought it was just rubbish, complete rubbish.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
And there were other things that David found unbelievable too.
Speaker 5 (21:44):
I went down to look at an office space that
they were talking about buying, and it was the Manly
Rugby Union building, you know, Manly over the road from
the Manly Oval. I thought, my god, I mean this
story building, it costs an absolute bomb. How are you
going to pay for all of this? You know, they
(22:06):
were wandering around as if you know, oh yeah, we'll
put this here and this there and that there. And
I thought, my god, how are you going to pay
for all of this? And that was the problem, How
were they going to pay for any of it?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Alan did not successfully buy the building. The sale went
to a tender process in twenty ten, and a well
known property developer called John Nicholas snapped it up for
presumably millions. He wouldn't say. David also tells me there
was something else that made him doubt the whole thing.
Why was Alan so interested in his friends?
Speaker 5 (22:38):
They were not looking for big companies, And I thought,
what's going on? You know, they were looking for the
low hanging fruit. What it means is that you've come
to the table looking at small Mum and Dad investors
without having convinced someone with real nuse to put their
money on the table to start with. So he didn't
(23:02):
have a big computer company behind him, he didn't have
big computer programmers behind him. He had rented a lab
slash office complex in Silicon Valley that he talked about,
but I mean, I think the thing was for me
was that there was no big investor. I was just
(23:23):
really worried that, you know, I was going to have
friends who were going to lose their dough, but not
just that that they were being asked to go out
and use their contacts to try to get more investors.
And I thought, you know, I really feared that that
would then leave them exposed potentially if the whole thing backfired,
because they would be left holding the baby. And part
(23:44):
of the deal was that Alan would convince them that
I know, you know, you can become a major sales
operator here. And then this started to look like a
pyramid scheme. I wasn't interested in investing in any way,
shape or form. And you know, my advice to all
my into that particular point of time was that look,
just wait, at the very least wait before you start
(24:05):
pouring your money in because I just didn't see that
this was going to go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
And how did you feel when they kind of disregarded
your advice and went ahead and invested anyway.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Oh, I just thought it was silly, you know. I
thought it was silly, you know, But that's it. I mean,
these were my friends.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
David's friend Michael Blake didn't just invest in Safe Worlds.
As well as spreading the word in his network, he
started working for the company himself.
Speaker 6 (24:36):
I ended up on advisory board. But I think that
was mainly because Allen liked me, and because of my
contacts and the contacts that my contacts had. But the
thing about the advisory board, we weren't.
Speaker 12 (24:50):
Listened to, you know.
Speaker 6 (24:51):
But if it had it came off and it was
big like it was, it would have been ridiculous because
I know nothing about it.
Speaker 12 (24:57):
I got no interest in it.
Speaker 6 (24:59):
I don't like using computer if everybody don't use the
internet unless I have to do, and that it would have
been we'd being involved in something this big, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
David watched his friends like Michael getting more and more
involved with Alan and investing more and more of their money.
He decided to do something, so he started digging, but
couldn't find any real signs of Safe Worlds being anything
like the potential global technology superstar was being preached.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
Us and the whole time too. In the background. After
about eighteen months was us pushing like, Okay, when are
we going to see this? When are we going to
see it? You know, show me universal logic, Show it
to me, Show me how show it to me. You know,
is it like cryptocurrency that it's just this dollar signs
in fresh air or is it real? I mean, show
(25:49):
me how this works, and show me the program, show
me the Safe world site in Australia, show me all
this stuff. And it was just so long in coming
that I thought, where's all this money? Because I knew
that there were people who were investing not just tens
of thousands, but hundreds of thousands. I knew people who
were investing their superannuation money. It just gobsmacked me that
(26:12):
people were willing to invest. But you know, because of
the IT boom and because of the success of companies
like Amazon eBay, everyone was looking for that next big
thing and they thought, well, if we can get in
on the ground floor, fabulous.
Speaker 6 (26:31):
He always used to say, trust me, trust me, and
I trusted him, but he didn't trust anyone else.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Michael Blake, the former footy player who became close friends
with Alan, started worrying he might have a problem.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
We had some pretty big guys that were willing to help,
and he wouldn't let go. He wouldn't trust them, basically
because he thought it was too big.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
One time, Alan even had a meeting with an IT
expert who had extensive contacts in the military.
Speaker 6 (27:00):
And said he was the smartest IT person he's ever met.
And he goes, Alan, you might have real artificial intelligence.
I'll sign an NDA shame if you got it, we'll
get it going, mate, and he refused to do it.
Speaker 12 (27:14):
He did, so I can't trust him. I can't trust him.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Do you think that was because he didn't trust him
all because he didn't actually have the product to show?
Speaker 12 (27:23):
Well, it didn't make sense to me, but maybe he
didn't have anything to shape.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
As I started to dig, I found more and more
people who had invested their money. One person put in
one point five million dollars. Entire families staked their fortune
on the venture. Michael Blake wasn't even the biggest recruiter
for Safe Worlds. Another man raised fifteen million dollars from
four hundred and fifty other people. Some of them wouldn't
(27:54):
speak to me because they were afraid it would impact
their chances of getting their money back. In total, Alan
managed to raise forty nine million dollars from his friends,
their families, and other small time investors. And perhaps that's
the craziest part of this whole thing. That's a lot
of money. To put in context. Forty nine million dollars
(28:14):
is about one hundred ferraris forty yachts. It's more than
twice the amount that infamous Sydney conwoman Melissa Caatics scammed
out of people, which was twenty three million. Forty nine
million could buy you forty nine houses in Sydney, well,
maybe more like Melbourne these days. If you looked at
(28:34):
Alan's website, you'd never guess that this was the business
he'd founded with that much money. Www dot safeworlds dot tv.
When I try to access it now I get an
Era four or four not found. But looking back at
old videos and screenshots of the website, I can see
an amateurish layout like something straight out of the nineties,
(28:55):
not a slick, multimillion dollar outfit, and By the time
Allan died, there was no one left working at the place.
Michael Blake tells me about how he heard that his
friend had died.
Speaker 6 (29:06):
I remember because I was at a care of beach
for a function for a weekend and that with a
few mates, and I was just walking along the beach
with a bit of a hangover when I got a
phone call from Mary saying I've got some bad news
for it. And I kind of knew before it's even
told me. He said, Alan's passed away. We're all in shop.
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Alan's death was a personal tragedy, but Michael realized there
was also something else left unresolved with his passing. Alan
had no heir to take over the business. No one
knew what was supposed to happen now that he was dead.
Speaker 6 (29:37):
As far as I understand, he had the algorithm in
a safety secure box or something in the Cayman Islands,
and that was the protection of the algorithm, and he
gifted it to charity if something happened to him and
Mary or whatever.
Speaker 12 (29:54):
He was very protective of it.
Speaker 6 (29:57):
He always said if it got in the wrong hand
and it could destroy the world.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
So Alan had been thinking about the future. But according
to Michael, he had planned so little for his death
that his wife and son were unable to front the
costs for his funeral.
Speaker 6 (30:14):
Just for paying some bills, internet bills, phone bills, the
registration of the liquid gold in the Cayman Islands or
wherever it was, and just a few things and that,
and you know, I probably lent him I don't know,
thirty or forty thousand dollars or.
Speaker 9 (30:34):
Something like that.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Well, and did they ever pay it back? Were you
just kind of never asked for it? Or how did
that work?
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Well?
Speaker 6 (30:42):
Mary said that she'll pay me back tenfold when the
Irish steel comes off.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
The Irish deal was supposedly where an irishman was going
to buy the whole business for more than a billion dollars.
And as for the liquid gold, Michael mentioned it was
linked to a digital currency business Alan had opened in
the Cayman Islands. I'll explain more in a later episode,
I promise. At this point, I'm going to pause for
a moment because, dear listener, I have a confession. If
(31:13):
you're thinking that Alan might not have been entirely upfront
with his investors, well I have to confess that I
haven't been entirely upfront with you. I said I'd started
this podcast at the end with Allan's funeral, but actually
this is just the beginning. Mike crusade to find the
missing money has taken me all over the country, to
most of the capital cities and also a tiny town
(31:34):
in Western Australia which could be the key to it all.
The search for the millions has also led me to
notorious tax havens like the British Virgin Islands, and had
me trying to track down an Irish billionaire. At times,
I've been looking over my shoulder for Russian cronies. My
investigation will take me from Australia's richest woman to this
nation's most controversial politician, all the way to Tea Party
(31:57):
and ex US President Donald Trump. It might have begun
at Alan's funeral, but his story is far from over.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
How could you do it?
Speaker 4 (32:08):
He was basically version point five of Trump As a question.
Speaker 7 (32:14):
I just said, Alan, this is just crazy.
Speaker 9 (32:16):
I can't do this.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
You claim that he was the savior of the or
could be the savior of the world if it all
turned out right for him, you know, and for us.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
There's a hidden partner there's somebody else involved in this
potentially is the other person's spider at the center of
the web. The only other alternative is that he's not
dead and that he's in fact living off the money.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
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
or contact me directly on our Alex dot Turner, Dashcohen
(33:02):
at news dot com Doreau, 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 Kerry Warren is the
editor of news dot com Doreay you
We have gathered today to give thanks to God for
the life of Alan Miles Metcalf, and to a third
a Christian conviction that while death is the end of
human life, at marks a new beginning in our relationship
with God. Please let us stand together as we see
(00:23):
amazing grace.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I'm starting this story at the end, the end of
Alan Metcalf's life. This is his funeral. It's a Wednesday,
the first day of March in twenty seventeen. I'm looking
back at this scene immortalized on a YouTube video. It's
a video that I've now watched multiple times, and each
time I notice other small details. Count forty or so
(01:00):
people sitting in the pews of the church. The thirty
two degree day is hot, sweltering, and a few of
the men have actually taken off their suit jackets. Sad
faces stare up as the reverend begins his service. It's
just past one pm in a Uniting church in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Alan's widow, Mary Metcalf, takes to the stand to deliver
(01:23):
her eulogy. She cuts a striking figure with her larger
than life makeup and heavy jewelry, as well as a
long black lace veil draped dramatically over her face. Her son, Clayton,
towers next to her. Alan's only child, Mary describes her
husband as a gift from God.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I prayed to God when I was fifteen to send
me a husband who would be a kindred spirit, a
visionary who would not be afraid. God answered my prayers
in abundance to send me Alan Metcalts.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Alan was seventy years old and extremely overweight. In the end,
he died of a heart attack. He was a seemingly
successful businessman on the Gold Coast, a beachside city built
around shining skyscrapers. And watching the funeral, it seems like
Alan was pretty popular. More than ten people speak and
(02:18):
others send video messages from all around the world.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
My mother told me years ago, Peter, you'll count your
genuine friends on one hand. In your lifetime, Alan, you're
on my hand.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
We're not going to mourn him.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
We're going to celebrate his life, what he did in
the world, what they're still going to do in the
world because of Alan Metca.
Speaker 7 (02:44):
I truly believe he was a genius, and I trust
the history of books will prove out.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
To be the case.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Only that's not quite the story I find when I
pick up those history books seven years later and learn
about Alan Metcalf for myself. The words I'm hearing now
to describe him are very very different.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Deceitful, a conment.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
He was a scammer and a lunatic in a way.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
He struck me as being the kind of guy could
sell ice to the Esquimos, but you just wondered what
was the ice made of?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Depending on who you asked, Alan was a visionary or
a thief, a genius, or a fool who believed his
own fantasies. Now six hundred people are wondering which it was,
after putting their money, in some cases their life savings
into a scheme that Alan was running. Alan claimed he'd
found the secret to artificial intelligence in the Bible. He
(03:41):
told the world his company would be bigger than Google.
He was a messiah to his devout followers, able to
lead them to a promised land free from ever having
to work again, and guaranteed them with almost religious conviction,
truly biblical returns.
Speaker 8 (03:59):
Welcome to see World's TV. Just like magic, I'm going
to show you the easiest way to make money online.
So what is safe World's TV. It's more than just
a website and more than just a software application. It's
the world's first Internet television and e business platform.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Alan's investors were ordinary people, entire families, friend groups, pensioners,
people from all over the world. They believed in Alan.
They believed they were going to get their money to
pay for their retirements, or their kids' educations, or the
holiday of lifetime. Until suddenly Alan died. Those investors were
(04:41):
left asking what happened to their money, all forty nine
million dollars of it. I'll never meet him. He died
before I was even a working journalist, but he's consumed
my every spare thought. For the past year. The money
has gone missing. No one seems to know where it is,
and I'm setting up to find it. I'm Alex Turner Cohen,
(05:02):
a finance and investigative reporter from news dot Commeddy you
and you're listening to the Missing forty nine million. This
(05:28):
is episode one Judgment Day.
Speaker 7 (05:32):
Hello. I'm Alan Metcalf. In nineteen ninety nine, I was
fortunate enough to make the breakthrough discovery of the law
of thought that in the IT world is called universal logic.
Much to the surprise and disbelief of many people. I
found the law of thought in the Bible. We have
(05:53):
used the law of thought to develop what we believe
is the world's first artificially intelligent, mass distributable Internet robot
for television and electronic business.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
The voice you're hearing there is Alan Metcalf. He might
be dead, but Alan lives on in numerous YouTube clips,
A ghost in the machine. Let's go back to the
email which started me on the search for Allan's missing money.
Speaker 9 (06:22):
Hi, my name is Charlie Waynepin. I'm a resident of
the Netherlands that I'm writing about a financial investment that
I made in Australia back in December twenty thirteen. I
was informed that you're a journalist that writes sharp articles
concerning financial issues, including fraud. Therefore, I hope that you're
the right person that I can refer to for this matter.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
This is Charlie reading from his email. He explained that
he'd invested tens of thousands of dollars into a scheme
called Safe Worlds, as had many other Australians, and that
the founder of the scheme was now dead.
Speaker 9 (06:55):
Please let me know if this is something that you
would be willing to work on and if you can,
I will be very high happy to send you my
correspondence that I had for this project. Thank you in
advance for your consideration, looking forward hearing from you.
Speaker 10 (07:09):
When did this come in April? Didn't it?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It's been almost a year to the day. Actually, I
never would have imagined from that one email. This is
me talking to my boss, Sarah Sharples, the finance editor
at news dot com TODAU. She's the one that actually
first received that email from Charlie. Tell us about what
was happening that day When the email came in. What
(07:32):
did you think?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
You know?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
It was a tip off? You receive a lot of
tip offs. Was there anything about this one that stood out?
What do you remember now given how much ended up
coming out of this one email.
Speaker 10 (07:43):
Yeah, we do get a lot of tip offs, which
is where some of the best stories come from. I
remember receiving this email and he said he'd invested in
this company back in twenty thirteen, and he'd invested fifty
two thousand, which is a lot of money. And it
got really intriguing as well because the email talked about
(08:03):
what he'd been sold to invest in was a company
that was going to surpass Google and YouTube, so obviously
they're big players now. And then ten years later he
still hadn't seen any of his money or any return
on it. He'd been chasing it for ten years. The
founder had died, but the wife had taken over it,
(08:24):
which was a bit weird because, like he said, they
had no idea what her experience was.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And then what what did you do next?
Speaker 10 (08:32):
I have to admit I read it and I filed
it away as something we needed to follow up, and
then we get so busy I forgot about it. And
he actually emailed me again and asked me if I
was interested and if not, should he take it elsewhere?
And I think that was a good tactic from him,
because I was like, oh, no, we're interested. And at
(08:55):
the time I was going on some extended leave, so
I passed it on to you, like, oh, yeah, this
could be interesting, I'll pick it up. You were very
casual about it.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I reached out to Charlie to find out more. Charlie's
been coming to Australia for work trips since the nineteen eighties.
He's made strong friendships on these visits, and it was
on one of these trips in twenty thirteen, when his
Ozzie friend David Gorman told him about Safe World and
Alan Metcalf.
Speaker 11 (09:23):
David and his friends already had bod shares and they
talked me into buying some as well. So I had
a look at it and it looked really interesting. That
looked like something futuristic. So I thought it was a
good investment, and so, you know, we put a whole
big part of our savings into it.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Charlie wasn't so wealthy that this was spare money he
just had floating around.
Speaker 11 (09:46):
No, that was life savings. We had just finalized everything
concerning the mortgage of our house and this was our
life saving that we were going to keep for a
direction retirement.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Still, it seemed like an offer too good to pass up.
Speaker 11 (10:00):
They seemed like a really good investment, especially knowing that
they were intending to take it to the stock exchange.
So I thought it was a chance of a life.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
David Gorman, the man who encouraged Charlie to invest, put
in twenty thousand dollars himself. I meet him at his
home in Sydney's North where he lives with his wife,
kids and two pugs.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
So I bought some shares at five cents, some at
ten cents, and some at a dollar, and he was
talking about selling them at would have been about one
hundred and fifty dollars a share, So that would have
been yeah, quite a few men for myself.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
He still remembers meeting Alan Metcalf, who seemed to have
an almost larger than life presence and a silver tongue.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I first met him at the Manly Pacific Hotel, it
was called then down at Manly. He always dressed pretty well, actually,
he always wore a suit and tie. He was medium height,
I think Biggish man, quite large. I think he's probably
had a few health issues. He was always out of breath,
(11:06):
but very approachable, flake very gifted.
Speaker 12 (11:09):
The gap.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
I think the way he was describing what safe worlds
can do, and this universal logic that he found in
the Bible, you know, if it came off, it came off,
but it sounded, I mean, it sounded, you know, intriguing.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
David works in the health industry and he's actually never
invested in anything before. He's not the kind of person
to rush into big financial decisions, but there was something
different about this opportunity.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Never was a risk taker. I'm not a risk taker,
same as my father. Very conservative. But my friend Michael Blake,
you know, the ex football he'd probably know him or
heard of him, got me into this about two thousand
and eight.
Speaker 7 (11:55):
Oh beautiful part.
Speaker 8 (11:57):
Why am I cave sending this troopers like screaming.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Over the twenty two?
Speaker 12 (12:02):
He's beat right, big work bag.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
I couldn't comes at him. He's back and found his brother.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
That's Blake back the back Michael Blake.
Speaker 8 (12:10):
Oh god, it's.
Speaker 7 (12:11):
Tapa, his younger brother.
Speaker 8 (12:12):
I have done so well up on my cave, Pap.
Speaker 12 (12:15):
That is champlaining football.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I speak to Michael Blake at his apartment in the
Northern Beaches of Sydney. A Holy Bible sits on the
table between us. Michael played professional football throughout the seventies
and eighties along with his brother Phil. He's not the
most technologically savvy guy.
Speaker 7 (12:34):
I might also just.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Get you to chuck your phone on, are you yeah?
Would you be able to put on the aeroplane mode?
Speaker 12 (12:39):
Or too much?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Just because apparently when Michael was there at the funeral,
he was actually one of the eight people that carried
Alan's coffin to the grave.
Speaker 6 (12:51):
I was a little bit disappointed in the funeral because
the people that talk are basically all talking about Safe
World and that business that he worked on. But he
was more than that. You know, that was only a
part of his life at that time. But as I said,
he was a bit of Alaric and he was a
good blake.
Speaker 12 (13:10):
He loved his sport. He's foot him and what have you,
and that.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
In fact, it was sport that drew Alan and Michael together.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
I was heavily involved in rugby league. I cracked first
grade the first time. I meant Allan was down at
Darling Harbor because one time that I invested, he was
over in Irvine, California at the time, and he even
I think he phoned me up and he wanted to
know it was Michael from Michael and Phil Blake from Manley,
and he said yes. It was.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
After that first meeting, they stayed in touch.
Speaker 12 (13:40):
Over many years. I became friends with Alan.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yes, So would you consider him a close friend or
what kind of level of friendship would you say there
was there?
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Well, we've probably ended up as class friends. So I
spent a lot of time with him over the years,
and he had a good sense of humor. You know,
he could be a little bit cheeky, and you know
he was pretty good company.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Michael had made decent money in his sporting career, and
outside of putting some into his family business, he hadn't
really invested before.
Speaker 6 (14:12):
I didn't really know what he was talking about, but
I knew I wanted to get in. He said it
was going to be bigger than Google, and that was
pretty big, so I thought I wouldn't mind a bit
of action with this. So my national investment was only
around five thousand dollars. But over the years, many years,
over a decade, we reinvested, reinvested, got the opportunity to
(14:34):
reinvest it, and because the program seemed to be building,
gathering momentum, nearly ready to take off, we kept on
putting more money in me and my family because we
wanted to help everyone that we knew, all our kids,
all our aunties and everyone like that.
Speaker 12 (14:53):
And we just thought, you know, how is this and.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
How much was it in total? Because I think who
said five thousand at the beginning? What was the total
final number? Like currently as it stands.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
Well, as we gradually build up. Even at one stage
there me and my two brothers. We got our souper
and made it a self managed fund and put that in.
So all up, over many years we probably put around
three hundred thousand in.
Speaker 12 (15:22):
That's the family.
Speaker 6 (15:23):
With Dad and my brothers, I actually probably raised over
a million dollars. The way people would get involved through
me is if I'm going to a football reunion or
catching up with people's school unions. You know, they's say, Blakie,
what are he up to? And I speak to him
about what I'm up to, and I'd mention Safe World,
how's supposed to be bigger than Google? It could be
(15:44):
worth having a look at and leave it at that,
And then they'd get back in contact with me, and
I said, well, don't speak to me, I know nothing
about it. Speak to Alan. And they'd speak to Alan,
get in contact with him, and they'd invest. You know,
they'd invest like five or ten grand or twenty grand.
One guy put in one hundred grand. But I suppose
they put it their money in because they trusted me.
(16:05):
But I always got them to speak to Alan.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Years later, a lot of his friends are not so
happy about this.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
When they find out how much that I've lost in it.
It makes them feel better.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Listening to Michael, I start to realize how much of
this comes down to belief. Michael believed in Alan, and
he believed in Alan's vision, and in turn, his friends
believed him.
Speaker 12 (16:29):
I've kind of.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
A bit taken aback because a lot of people invested
in even though it was five or ten or twenty
grand or whatever. People invested because they trusted me, and
I feel as it was a little bit used.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Probably while Michael Blake trusted Alan blindly, not everyone did.
(17:06):
Seen one, two three?
Speaker 5 (17:08):
How much is that doggie in the window room with
a waggedy tail? Nice? My name is David Richardson. I'm
a senior producer with Under Investigation with Lis Hayes, and
I operate from Channel nine's Sydney office in North Sydney.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
David Richardson is an investigative journalist who's been in the
industry for more than thirty years. He's also Michael Blake's
best mate, and when his friends started to talk about
safe worlds, alarm bells rang For David.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
My spider senses were tingling something bad. Alan had impressed
him with this concept of safe worlds, and Michael and
another one of our friends were interested in having a
deeper look at what Alan was trying to sell, and
they set up a meeting in town, and Michael asked
if I would come in and just act a third eye,
(18:01):
you know, just cast an ear over what was being
proposed and whether there was any danger involved, obviously with
my experience chasing down scammers and bad guys. So there
was a meeting in town and we all sort of
went in and met with Alan, who had rented an
office in the city, and my first impression of him
(18:23):
was that he was a hand grenade waiting to go off,
and he just didn't look healthy. He was massively overweight,
he was ruddy complexion, you know, he just didn't look
terribly healthy. But he could talk. He could really, really talk.
He was amazing. So he sat down and he started
to explain this Safe World's concept, which to me initially
(18:47):
seemed to be this combination of almost an alternate internet
marketing bizarre similar to Amazon or ali Baba or eBay,
but at the same time it had an e commerce perspective.
But then the big selling point that he was trying
to get across to us outside of that was the
(19:10):
creation of universal logic, and he said he had discovered
universal logic and the key to being able to allow
all computers to talk together. So for people who don't understand,
I'll try to put it as simply as I can,
because I had to go and get people to explain
it to me. Is that individual companies have their own
(19:30):
proprietary rights. So you've got Apple or DRL or HP
or them and all of their programmers right for them.
So that's why Microsoft often doesn't sink with Apple, and
Apple programs won't sync with Microsoft programs. The whole concept
of universal logic was that regardless of who the programmer
(19:51):
was or who the manufacturer was, the computers worldwide would
be able to talk to each other seamlessly, and that
was going to be the language of safe Woods effectively.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
David was skeptical, especially when he learned that this key
revelation that underpinned the whole scheme Allan was selling had
been made while reading the Bible.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
And being an ancient history nut. I said to him instantly,
or was that the ara mat Hebrew, Greek, Latin or English?
And he said English? And I just laughed. I said, Oh,
you've got to be joking, you know. If he had
said it was in the Aramaic. I might have sort
of believed part of it on the grounds that people
(20:36):
and you know, theologians and historians have been finding code
in the Original Bible for years, or what they deemed
to be code. But what he was talking about was
just tosh. You know, there were some scholars who believe
now that parts of the English Bible had code that
had been implanted by Elizabeth the first spy master, Francis Bacon. So,
(20:58):
you know, for him to suggest that, after so many
rewrites and translations, that somehow, miraculously this language or code
or something had somehow materialized in the Bible, and only
he had been able to find it, after the Bible
has been poured over by you know, thousands and thousands
of scholars and theologians. It was just too much for me,
(21:20):
and I just couldn't. I couldn't swallow it. And I
remember walking out of the meeting and the three of
us went up to the Tattlesules Club to have a
beer before we went home, and they said, what do
you think? And I said, yeah, don't go near it now.
I just don't buy it. To me, it just you know,
I thought it was just rubbish, complete rubbish.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
And there were other things that David found unbelievable too.
Speaker 5 (21:44):
I went down to look at an office space that
they were talking about buying, and it was the Manly
Rugby Union building, you know, Manly over the road from
the Manly Oval. I thought, my god, I mean this
story building, it costs an absolute bomb. How are you
going to pay for all of this? You know, they
(22:06):
were wandering around as if you know, oh yeah, we'll
put this here and this there and that there. And
I thought, my god, how are you going to pay
for all of this? And that was the problem, How
were they going to pay for any of it?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Alan did not successfully buy the building. The sale went
to a tender process in twenty ten, and a well
known property developer called John Nicholas snapped it up for
presumably millions. He wouldn't say. David also tells me there
was something else that made him doubt the whole thing.
Why was Alan so interested in his friends?
Speaker 5 (22:38):
They were not looking for big companies, And I thought,
what's going on? You know, they were looking for the
low hanging fruit. What it means is that you've come
to the table looking at small Mum and Dad investors
without having convinced someone with real nuse to put their
money on the table to start with. So he didn't
(23:02):
have a big computer company behind him, he didn't have
big computer programmers behind him. He had rented a lab
slash office complex in Silicon Valley that he talked about,
but I mean, I think the thing was for me
was that there was no big investor. I was just
(23:23):
really worried that, you know, I was going to have
friends who were going to lose their dough, but not
just that that they were being asked to go out
and use their contacts to try to get more investors.
And I thought, you know, I really feared that that
would then leave them exposed potentially if the whole thing backfired,
because they would be left holding the baby. And part
(23:44):
of the deal was that Alan would convince them that
I know, you know, you can become a major sales
operator here. And then this started to look like a
pyramid scheme. I wasn't interested in investing in any way,
shape or form. And you know, my advice to all
my into that particular point of time was that look,
just wait, at the very least wait before you start
(24:05):
pouring your money in because I just didn't see that
this was going to go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
And how did you feel when they kind of disregarded
your advice and went ahead and invested anyway.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Oh, I just thought it was silly, you know. I
thought it was silly, you know, But that's it. I mean,
these were my friends.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
David's friend Michael Blake didn't just invest in Safe Worlds.
As well as spreading the word in his network, he
started working for the company himself.
Speaker 6 (24:36):
I ended up on advisory board. But I think that
was mainly because Allen liked me, and because of my
contacts and the contacts that my contacts had. But the
thing about the advisory board, we weren't.
Speaker 12 (24:50):
Listened to, you know.
Speaker 6 (24:51):
But if it had it came off and it was
big like it was, it would have been ridiculous because
I know nothing about it.
Speaker 12 (24:57):
I got no interest in it.
Speaker 6 (24:59):
I don't like using computer if everybody don't use the
internet unless I have to do, and that it would have
been we'd being involved in something this big, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
David watched his friends like Michael getting more and more
involved with Alan and investing more and more of their money.
He decided to do something, so he started digging, but
couldn't find any real signs of Safe Worlds being anything
like the potential global technology superstar was being preached.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
Us and the whole time too. In the background. After
about eighteen months was us pushing like, Okay, when are
we going to see this? When are we going to
see it? You know, show me universal logic, Show it
to me, Show me how show it to me. You know,
is it like cryptocurrency that it's just this dollar signs
in fresh air or is it real? I mean, show
(25:49):
me how this works, and show me the program, show
me the Safe world site in Australia, show me all
this stuff. And it was just so long in coming
that I thought, where's all this money? Because I knew
that there were people who were investing not just tens
of thousands, but hundreds of thousands. I knew people who
were investing their superannuation money. It just gobsmacked me that
(26:12):
people were willing to invest. But you know, because of
the IT boom and because of the success of companies
like Amazon eBay, everyone was looking for that next big
thing and they thought, well, if we can get in
on the ground floor, fabulous.
Speaker 6 (26:31):
He always used to say, trust me, trust me, and
I trusted him, but he didn't trust anyone else.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Michael Blake, the former footy player who became close friends
with Alan, started worrying he might have a problem.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
We had some pretty big guys that were willing to help,
and he wouldn't let go. He wouldn't trust them, basically
because he thought it was too big.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
One time, Alan even had a meeting with an IT
expert who had extensive contacts in the military.
Speaker 6 (27:00):
And said he was the smartest IT person he's ever met.
And he goes, Alan, you might have real artificial intelligence.
I'll sign an NDA shame if you got it, we'll
get it going, mate, and he refused to do it.
Speaker 12 (27:14):
He did, so I can't trust him. I can't trust him.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Do you think that was because he didn't trust him
all because he didn't actually have the product to show?
Speaker 12 (27:23):
Well, it didn't make sense to me, but maybe he
didn't have anything to shape.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
As I started to dig, I found more and more
people who had invested their money. One person put in
one point five million dollars. Entire families staked their fortune
on the venture. Michael Blake wasn't even the biggest recruiter
for Safe Worlds. Another man raised fifteen million dollars from
four hundred and fifty other people. Some of them wouldn't
(27:54):
speak to me because they were afraid it would impact
their chances of getting their money back. In total, Alan
managed to raise forty nine million dollars from his friends,
their families, and other small time investors. And perhaps that's
the craziest part of this whole thing. That's a lot
of money. To put in context. Forty nine million dollars
(28:14):
is about one hundred ferraris forty yachts. It's more than
twice the amount that infamous Sydney conwoman Melissa Caatics scammed
out of people, which was twenty three million. Forty nine
million could buy you forty nine houses in Sydney, well,
maybe more like Melbourne these days. If you looked at
(28:34):
Alan's website, you'd never guess that this was the business
he'd founded with that much money. Www dot safeworlds dot tv.
When I try to access it now I get an
Era four or four not found. But looking back at
old videos and screenshots of the website, I can see
an amateurish layout like something straight out of the nineties,
(28:55):
not a slick, multimillion dollar outfit, and By the time
Allan died, there was no one left working at the place.
Michael Blake tells me about how he heard that his
friend had died.
Speaker 6 (29:06):
I remember because I was at a care of beach
for a function for a weekend and that with a
few mates, and I was just walking along the beach
with a bit of a hangover when I got a
phone call from Mary saying I've got some bad news
for it. And I kind of knew before it's even
told me. He said, Alan's passed away. We're all in shop.
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Alan's death was a personal tragedy, but Michael realized there
was also something else left unresolved with his passing. Alan
had no heir to take over the business. No one
knew what was supposed to happen now that he was dead.
Speaker 6 (29:37):
As far as I understand, he had the algorithm in
a safety secure box or something in the Cayman Islands,
and that was the protection of the algorithm, and he
gifted it to charity if something happened to him and
Mary or whatever.
Speaker 12 (29:54):
He was very protective of it.
Speaker 6 (29:57):
He always said if it got in the wrong hand
and it could destroy the world.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
So Alan had been thinking about the future. But according
to Michael, he had planned so little for his death
that his wife and son were unable to front the
costs for his funeral.
Speaker 6 (30:14):
Just for paying some bills, internet bills, phone bills, the
registration of the liquid gold in the Cayman Islands or
wherever it was, and just a few things and that,
and you know, I probably lent him I don't know,
thirty or forty thousand dollars or.
Speaker 9 (30:34):
Something like that.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Well, and did they ever pay it back? Were you
just kind of never asked for it? Or how did
that work?
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Well?
Speaker 6 (30:42):
Mary said that she'll pay me back tenfold when the
Irish steel comes off.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
The Irish deal was supposedly where an irishman was going
to buy the whole business for more than a billion dollars.
And as for the liquid gold, Michael mentioned it was
linked to a digital currency business Alan had opened in
the Cayman Islands. I'll explain more in a later episode,
I promise. At this point, I'm going to pause for
a moment because, dear listener, I have a confession. If
(31:13):
you're thinking that Alan might not have been entirely upfront
with his investors, well I have to confess that I
haven't been entirely upfront with you. I said I'd started
this podcast at the end with Allan's funeral, but actually
this is just the beginning. Mike crusade to find the
missing money has taken me all over the country, to
most of the capital cities and also a tiny town
(31:34):
in Western Australia which could be the key to it all.
The search for the millions has also led me to
notorious tax havens like the British Virgin Islands, and had
me trying to track down an Irish billionaire. At times,
I've been looking over my shoulder for Russian cronies. My
investigation will take me from Australia's richest woman to this
nation's most controversial politician, all the way to Tea Party
(31:57):
and ex US President Donald Trump. It might have begun
at Alan's funeral, but his story is far from over.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
How could you do it?
Speaker 4 (32:08):
He was basically version point five of Trump As a question.
Speaker 7 (32:14):
I just said, Alan, this is just crazy.
Speaker 9 (32:16):
I can't do this.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
You claim that he was the savior of the or
could be the savior of the world if it all
turned out right for him, you know, and for us.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
There's a hidden partner there's somebody else involved in this
potentially is the other person's spider at the center of
the web. The only other alternative is that he's not
dead and that he's in fact living off the money.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
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
or contact me directly on our Alex dot Turner, Dashcohen
(33:02):
at news dot com Doreau, 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 Kerry Warren is the
editor of news dot com Doreay you
Popular Podcasts
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com