September 15, 2024 • 34 mins
Tipoffs are flooding in as the Alan Metcalfe investigation goes from a cold case to a live one. His links to Russia come to light, as well as the way he tore families apart.
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 (00:05):
Good afternoon, Alex. This information may be of some value
to you.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is an email I received two weeks after launching
my podcast. Suddenly my investigation was going from a cold
one to a live one.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I am a semi retired solicitor in Ipswich. I have
acted for mister John Kerry Smith over the last four decades.
In the nineteen nineties, he was also defrauded by Alan Metcalf.
He lost a prox seven hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I know, I said false profit was the final episode,
but more tip offs have come in and I have
to share them with you. Something that's always bothered me
was what Alan got up to in Russia right after
the Soviet Union collapsed in the nineteen nineties. After perpetrating
a string of fraud on Australian soil, he'd apparently visited
Russia for something to do with setting up online businesses.
(00:54):
While he was there, I discovered a few fragments on
the Internet, as well as one anonymous person who was
afraid of Russian heavyweights tracking him down if he told
me too much.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
In the nineties, he broke her to deal with Russia.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
The last thing I need is one hundred and fifty
kg Russian knocking down my door. It never sat right
with me that I couldn't find out more.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
My imagination was running.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Wild, picturing KGB agents and Cold War spies having tea
with Alan Metcalfe. And as it turns out, I'm not
far off at all. I'm Alex Turner Cohen, a finance
and investigative reporter from News dot com AU, and you're
listening to the Missing forty nine million. This is a
(01:45):
bonus episode leap of faith. I keep reading the solicitor's email,
which she sent an hour after I'd left the office
and gone home. A voice actor is reading it out.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I have acted for mister John Carey Smith over the
last four decades. In the nineteen nineties he was also
defrauded by Alan metcalf He lost to PROCs seven hundred
thousand dollars. John Smith started up one of the first,
if not the first, video chains, called Planes Video in
the eighties. He built enfranchised these stores in many states.
In Australia, Video Easy eventually took them over. When John sold,
(02:23):
Alan metcalf approached him to go into the business of
the Information super Highway, which he was told would emanate
out of Russia in the nineteen nineties. John advises that
Allan often spoke of God and had uncomfortable handholding sessions
at their meetings. I have contacted John, who now resides
near to Woomba, and he asked me to contact you
to let you know he is prepared to tell you
(02:45):
how Alan managed to defraud him too.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Do I want to talk to John Smith?
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Hell?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yes, so I reply and convinced him to let me
record our conversation over a video call. John is a
successful video mogul who in the nineteen ninety had recently
sold his business for lots of money. In a way,
it was kind of what Alan Metcalf had claimed he
strove to be, but Alan saw him as something else,
(03:10):
a prime target. I asked John how he heard of
Alan Metcalf.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
I was good friends with his brother, Neil, and we
were pretty close friends for many years. And Alan appeared
on the scene and must have heard about me through
Neil and took it upon himself to come and visit me,
using Neil as an introduction, you know, so that I'd
(03:37):
feel comfortable talking to him. And so I thought of
his Neil's brother, he must be.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Okay, So tell me a bit about Neil. What was
he like, what did he do?
Speaker 5 (03:48):
He had a factory in Carroll Park and manufactured bits
and pieces for electrical companies and things like that. He
was a successful businessman himself, but his brother in loved
on his doorstep with nowhere to live. And I'm not
quite sure why. I know his wife disliked Alan I
(04:13):
mentally she wanted him out of the place. She was
the main one who wanted him out. She'd just tell
me that he come and park himself in their place,
and they had no more privacy. They had her husband
and wife and a growing up boy. He got a
boy who was twenty odds or something living in their
(04:36):
house and they had no more privacy. And she wondered
why he wouldn't go, And she was the one that
actually told him me, he yes to go, him and
his wife and his son Clayton. And they stayed there
for quite a while, and in the meantime he found
out about me.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
This was in nineteen ninety three, around the time when
Alan sold his penthouse along the Brisbane River and when
the Bank of New Zealand and someone else was suing
him for unpaid debts. Clearly something had gone wrong, but
John was willing to give him the benefit of the
doubt and entertained having a meeting with him in his office.
Speaker 5 (05:13):
He was a dominant sort of a person, a very
dominant and he sort of took over whatever discussion or
meeting you had. When he set up a meeting, we
did start off with some prayers and you know, holding
hands and praying God. What have I just a cult
or something. It certainly made me feel uncomfortable, but I
(05:37):
was still a bearing one on this guy. He's a
brother with this flake that I know. He's a straight
shootor and a good guy. So I just sort of
brushed that aside virtually. But he did do it every
time he came. And then he had the audacity, like
down the track to set up his own meetings and
just walk in and use the boardroom that we had
(05:58):
at the time for his own meetings without even telling me.
They just loved there.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
And in those meetings, Alan was breaking his latest stroke
of genius at the time, a plan to create internet
servers to connect businesses around the world.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
The Internet was just starting, and that's the days when
it was all telephone hookups and you know, the phone
used to go at the hookup, and it wasn't actually
going in Australia as far as you could go on
and I like it is today, you couldn't go and
research something or there was just pictures because he showed
(06:37):
me some of the pictures from the US on his computer.
And he more or less suggested that there's a big
market in the business industry with people, and he particularly
emphasized Russia and America. That's where the connection is, That's
what he wanted to focus on.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
John ended up trusting in Alan's vision and initially invested
said two hundred thousand dollars into the project called Alpha Info,
and part of this plan involved John using his factory
space to set up one of these internet servers.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
He had a guy who came from the US and
he set up well, I thinks what they're called servers
of big machines and now he does the roof. The
way he initially spoke was that it would be up
and running and he'd start doing connecting some He wanted
(07:32):
to connect people in Russia that needed finance with Americans
or joint ownership or something like that in their businesses,
and he said that'll be up and running and that'll
play the bills in the meantime. But it never happened.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
John was coaxed to put more and more money in
and it ended up totaling seven hundred thousand dollars according
to an inflation calculator, that's one point five million dollars today.
Alan said he needed the funds to travel to and
from Russia and the US to set up these internet links.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
Traveled all over the world, him and his wife, and
as I said, he'd come back from well so called Russia.
But he may not have been in Russia, but he
said he had put these service in Russia too, in
the universities in Russia. I didn't know whether they were
going to Russia or Hungry. She came from Hungary, and
whether they were going spending time over there. I think
(08:30):
they did bring the mother over to Australia eventually. And
he was always in the US and always in Russia,
or so he said. Although he did live the high life,
they always looked like our first class. I couldn't imagine
him sitting in the economy anyway. Put it that way.
I don't think I couldn't imagine him sitting in with
(08:52):
the common people.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
John tells me that Alan would always return from these
trips immaculately dressed, looks like a multi millionaire. Whenever they met,
I asked him about the gift that Alan brought back
from Russia.
Speaker 5 (09:07):
Well, they come back and were they like a couple
of excited school children walking in And said, guess what?
And he pulled them out of this cossack and he
took me more James from Russia. And I looked at
it and one of the hats you put on your head,
and I couldn't believe it. I thought, you know that's hardboard,
(09:28):
that that's my money. You spent my money to buy
me a kid. I might add it's still around that cossack.
I haven't got it, but some friend of my wife's
got it.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Is quite honestly bizarre. Another quirky story to be added
to an already long list in the Escapades of Alan
metcalf and this incident really sowed the first seed of
doubt for John.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
He'd had enough.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
I said, I can't keep just turning out money, especially
when you' haven't started yet. And he said that it's
on the verge, and I said, no, I can't do
it anymore. It was Just after that that I started
think that this whole thing could be a scheme. He's
(10:16):
just taken a ride, or living the good life or whatever,
but it could be a scheme.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Alan ended up abandoning the service he'd left in John's factory.
John ripped them out, but couldn't sell them because no
one knew what they were. I asked John about his friend, Neil,
Alan's brother, who got him involved in this Russian Alpha
project in the first place, wondering if the relationship had
soured it all. John tells me that Neil was dying
(10:44):
by the time he thought he was being scammed. He
didn't want to bother him with it at all, and
Neil Metcalf passed away shortly after from a brain problem.
I'm still not exactly clear on what this Russia project was,
another hair brained project of Alan's, an early iteration of
Safe worlds, both of the above, or something else entirely so,
(11:05):
I asked John. He's not sure either, as it's been
so long.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
This book here really explained it all as strictly private
and confidential, but I have no problem of sending it on.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
It arrives in the mail a few days later. Fifty
pages in a sleek black folder. These are the original documents,
and they're in surprisingly good shape. I immediately take photos
of every page so that I'll have it saved digitally forever.
It stated March nineteen ninety seven and is titled Alpha
Information Limited Business Plan. I feel like I'm holding history
(11:41):
in my hands. Alan Metcalf would go on to make
many of these to create his Safe World scam Big
Information booklets filled with buzzwords. They were as impressive as
they were vague. Here's the artificial intelligence program recreating Alan's
voice to read out his Russian business.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Alpha Information Limited has been incorporated to establish and commercialize
global information trading throughout the online distribution of the world,
the Information super Highway. Our goal is to establish the
number one online business information system in the world.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Alan went on to say that this business, Alpha Info,
would generate up to one point two five billion dollars
a year and had been valued at ninety two million bucks.
He said it would be up and running by the
year two thousand, another promise that didn't end up eventuating,
and family was important to Alan. His plans involved creating
(12:45):
a role for his son.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
The vice president will be responsible for sales and marketing
of the company's web servers. Clayton Metcalfe has been appointed
this position.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I look for references to Russia and there's a lot.
He wanted to start something called the Russian Business Exchange
and said it would establish reliable communication between Russia, the
US and Australia, and he'd actually got a deal with
the International University Moscow to make this happen. Allen was
very pleased with this university and the powerful people at
(13:19):
work in its halls, including people who'd been politicians and
KGB agents in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 6 (13:26):
Administrators at the International University Moscow are also influential in
the Russian system. The rector of the university is the
former Minister for Education for the Soviet Union. The dean
of the business school for former Russian military officers is
an influential member of Russian Parliament, an active general in
(13:49):
the Russian Air Force, and the former deputy chairman of
the KGB. These connections provide the company with the access
to decision makers in the Russian economy that is needed
to establish the Russian Business Exchange.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Russia was key to this vision. It absolutely had to
be set up in Russia.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
Russia is important to the development of Alpha Info's info
trading system because it offers low cost access to immediately
available large numbers of business opportunities that are of acute
interest to the business world.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
What does Allan mean by low cost, Well, he wanted
free labor and he was getting it from Russian university
students who'd been soldiers under the communist regime.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
The International University Moscow is seen by Alpha Info as
an ideal joint venture partner in Russia because it has
some four hundred business students, including an internal business school
for former Russian military officers that produces about fifty mature
MBA level students a year who are all seeking to
(14:58):
learn Western business world and find ways to participate in
the future of Russia. This pool of talent is important
to interface with the large number of Russian enterprises that
need our system and provide data input at relatively low
Russian rates. In return, the company provides the students with
(15:21):
a way of earning valuable income and career opportunities.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
I wonder how much these business students were being paid,
if anything, and just how deep did Alan's ties to Russia. Go.
There's a rumor that indicates Allan's Russian links didn't end there.
Let's go back a moment. Someone had commented on a
social media post about the podcast that Alan had got
them for one hundred thousand dollars. This person, called Bryce Hutchinson,
(15:51):
was indeed another victim of Safe Worlds. We speak over
the phone and he tells me that he heard Alan
had brought in Russian developers to set up the safe
world website. I want to meet him. It turns out
he lives on the Central Coast, just an hour and
a half north of Sydney. So I drive up. Bryce's bearded,
a young dad, and he takes me to the front
(16:14):
room of his house. It doubles as a beauty salon
where his wife runs a business. One of the first
things I want to know is what he's heard about
these Russian programmers.
Speaker 7 (16:24):
So he got something apparently I never saw it, but
he got some it guys that could encrypt when money
was transferred. There was no way of breaking into the system.
It was like having an encrypted phone now, you like.
And the big guys that were tech guys that got
into this, they saw the value in that because they
(16:44):
reckon it was like next to none.
Speaker 8 (16:46):
The security was that.
Speaker 7 (16:47):
Good for it that no one would be able to
match it.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
And this was Russian people that he brought him.
Speaker 8 (16:54):
You heard that or yeah, that's what I recall.
Speaker 7 (16:56):
It was two guys that were tech guys that he'd
involved in the Safe Worlds for the security side of it.
For when you were doing like e transfers, your transfer
and currency or doing any of that like it was
it was literally unhackable.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
There's not much more he can tell me about this.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Later I would go back to the former Safe Worlds employee,
Tarlie joy Grace to see if she knew anything about
these Russian hackers. She says it would have been before
her time working there, but says it is possible. Back
in Bryce's front room, I ask him more about the
one hundred thousand dollars investment he made into Safe Worlds.
(17:33):
And this is where things get even more interesting. Bryce
is the youngest victim I know of in this Safe
world scheme. He's only thirty three. He got involved with
Alan and Safeworlds when he was just seventeen years old.
Speaker 7 (17:47):
So about two thousand and seven, my father, Steve Hutcheson
invested in the company called Safe Worlds. I was about
seventeen years old at the time. I initially invested ten
thousand dollars in when I was seventeen, and then I
put larger amounts in as I was over the age
of eighteen. I did an amount for sixty thousand, and
(18:09):
then there was share splits and I did more and
more and more.
Speaker 8 (18:11):
Of my investment was pretty much one hundred thousand dollars plus.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah, that's a lot of money. So how were you
able to afford that at seventeen?
Speaker 7 (18:20):
So I borrowed the money off my dad to start with,
and then one of my good mates actually got me
a start on a job in the Sydney Howard Bridge
from an instruction company and then yeah, I was on
pretty good money there and sort of just paid the
initial investment off pretty much over three years.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
So were you paying it back to your dad like
with interest or how did that work?
Speaker 5 (18:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (18:38):
It actually was interested on It was ten percent interest
on the investment. I did sign something, just it was
more of an agreement of how I was paying the
money back and that he was going to charge me
the interest on the amount.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So if you reckon you invested one hundred thousand, you
would have paid about one hundred and ten thousand.
Speaker 8 (18:54):
It was probably around one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 7 (18:56):
Yeah, it was about one hundred and twenty thousand once
I finished paying it off.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, and Bryce was slaving away trying to make a
dent in his debt, working sixty hour weeks to pay
it off.
Speaker 8 (19:08):
Yeah, it was a fabuit of money to pay back.
Speaker 7 (19:09):
Look at the time, I was potentially earning probably between
sort of sixteen hundred and two thousand dollars a week
after tax. Clear like I was getting pretty good money,
so I could afford it. But yeah, it's a lot
of money to you know what I mean. I didn't
even like all my mates had nice cars in that
when they were younger and bought stuff and I was
on a good job and I didn't even do that.
I left that for years because I was paying this off.
(19:31):
So yeah, it was things like that when you look
back on, Yeah, and a lot. It's definitely a lot
of money to lose, like nine hundred dollars a week,
I'm not even paying that for my mortgage now. I
still remember it clear as day, transferring in the last
thousand bucks or whatever it was, and pretty much saying
like haha, Like the whole thing's done, like it's paid off.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
While there's no suggestion at all that Steve Hutchinson was
a scammer. He was a believer in Allan's message, meaning
Alan saw him as kind of a recruiter, even giving
him bonus shares.
Speaker 7 (20:02):
At a certain point. There was a few people that
were closer to Alan that were actually making sort of money,
not money back, but they were getting shares.
Speaker 8 (20:13):
So say, for example, they got someone to.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
Invest fifty thousand dollars, they might have got like twenty
five thousand shares. I wouldn't say you pressured me, but
he was like, oh mate, you're letting a good offer
go down, like all this sort of stuff. But I
just feel like he'd gotten that many people invested, and
was that deep in it himself that even if someone
told him it was a scam.
Speaker 8 (20:34):
He nearly wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 7 (20:36):
Luck he nearly think it was They were stupid and
he's on the biggest thing.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
But as we know, Safe Worlds never went anywhere, and
Bryce was soon regretting the mega investment he'd made into it.
Tell me a bit about how this changed your relationship
with your father.
Speaker 7 (20:53):
Yeah, look, I wouldn't say it was just Safe Worlds. Look,
I don't know, I don't we haven't had a real
good relationship. But obviously, yeah, that was a pretty big
blow with it as well, because I sort of, look,
I know there's risks in everything, but I took a
pretty big.
Speaker 8 (21:10):
Risk in it.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
When's the last time you spoke to him?
Speaker 7 (21:15):
Probably a couple of years ago now briefly over emails,
just over other stuff. But yeah, besides that, yeah, I
don't bring up the Safe Worlds to the thing at all.
He hasn't got a lot of people around him, Like
he's what in his late sixties now, he's got grandkids
he's never seen. So he's seen my son when he
was probably two or three years old.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Bryce reckens his father invested heavily into Safe Worlds, like
more than a million dollars, but I can't verify this.
I contact Steve Hutchinson afterwards to get his side to
all of this, and he's yet to respond. Bryce puts
me in touch with another Central Coast local who he
(21:55):
believes invested at Steve Hutchinson's urging. It's another case of
family ties, the father and son connection pulling someone into
Alan's orbit.
Speaker 9 (22:06):
My name is Glenn MacFarlane and I'm based in pel
Beach on the Central Coast. I'm fifty two years old
and I have my own building business.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
We speak in his sprawling kitchen, his cattle dog watching on.
There's a ute parked in his driveway.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
The house fields.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Newly renovated, with a big open space living room and
a massive stone bench top.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
We speak over.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Glenn tells me he built it all himself. It was
through this line of work that he met Steve Hutchinson.
Speaker 9 (22:34):
Steve was a brick cleaner and he was a contractor
to my father, who was a builder. He worked for
my father. So yeah, I knew Steve when I was
an apprentice to my father and met him a long,
long time ago. I remember Steve being a very motivated guy.
(22:55):
He was very very driven and positive personality. So I
trusted in that, you know, of what he had researched
and what he knew about it, and just him as
a person, you know, a bit of a leap of faith. Really,
just trusted in Steve as a friend.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
How much would you say you put in?
Speaker 9 (23:12):
Was fifty thousand dollars. Just finished building my own home
and had a mortgage, so there was a lot of
money at the time.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Steve Hutchinson was always upfront about the commission he received
for recruiting people to the Safe World's cause.
Speaker 9 (23:27):
He wasn't being paid cash, but was being given shares
for his contribution to bring people into the venture.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Glenn also believes that Steve put in a substantial chunk
of his personal fortune into the Safe World's project.
Speaker 9 (23:43):
I know it's an excessive a mian dollars that he'd
personally put in. I'm not one hundred percent sure of that,
but he sort of made made me aware that that
was his investment in it.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Apparently Steve had made some good money from other investments
and that went towards Safe Worlds. He also had a
wealthy partner at the time who chipped in as well.
They're no longer together. She's since remarried and she declines
to speak with me. It also put a strain in
Glenn's friendship with Steve. In fact, he says they don't
talk anymore.
Speaker 9 (24:18):
Very pushy. Yeah, he's very pushy with his belief in it,
so the point where his partner or ex partner now
was quite embarrassed that he pushed it so hard onto me.
Not so much door knocking, but yeah, just very very
pushy on the phone, and you know, was pitched that
I'd be crazy if I sort of didn't get involved
(24:40):
in that ground floor opportunity.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
As I leave his home, I can't help but feel
that Steve Hutchinson's name seems familiar. So I go back
through my notes and I'm right, this isn't the first
time someone has mentioned him to me. Do you remember
that retired couple Kim and Roy, who gave Alan some
of their money and then spent years helping him beta
test the product. I spoke to them in episode three.
(25:07):
This might help you remember.
Speaker 10 (25:09):
I think the worst part for me personally was when
he promoted for us to go out and find local
businesses and try and interest them in getting their own channel.
And I did do that. And I'm an introvert and
a shy person, and I don't talk much, so this
was a big effort for me. But I did it
(25:30):
because I wanted to get prosperity for our family, and
at the time I still believed that it was happening,
so I involved a lot of people and tried to
interest other people in joining in. It was embarrassing when
I look back.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
He was comparing himself to people like Edison and Ironsky,
you know, and people that had discovered penicilla, and you know,
like it was made in comparison that he had, just
as a normal man, had discovered this law of thought
and claimed that, you know, he was the savior of
(26:11):
the or could be the savior of the world if
it all turned out right for him, you know, and
for us.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Well, when I listened back to my interview with them,
it was Steve Hutchinson who introduced them to Safe Worlds.
Steve was a customer of theirs, and he convinced them
to get involved. They were encouraged by the fact he'd
got his own son to invest.
Speaker 10 (26:33):
I know this fella, Steve's his name, first name. He
got his son, or so he told us. I think
his son invested quite a lot of money in it too,
so you know, he was involving family investing in it.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
So he's partner of the time.
Speaker 5 (26:51):
She invested money as well.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
He was always kind of like Alan in a way,
chasing money, chasing the next kind of.
Speaker 10 (26:57):
Optionity introduced us to it, but it wasn't just this company.
He also introduced us to others shares, other share companies,
so he wasn't just sort of fixated on safeworlds. He
was looking for opportunities that might pay off.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Then the Safeworld's platform started to falter.
Speaker 10 (27:15):
I did try and reach out to him.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
At one stage, Kim showed me a message she sent
to Steve Hutchinson which is still unanswered to this day.
So he was one of Alan's super distributors, bringing people
into the safeworld scheme from all over the Central Coast,
much like Rodney McKay, the guy who raised fifteen million
dollars for Alan over in Western Australia and who invested
(27:40):
one point five million dollars of his own money into
the scheme as well. Most of the tip offs I
receive actually relate to rod McKay. It's all stuff I
already know or things I can't verify. But one email does.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Catch my eye. This is what it says.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
A member of my family was is in this scam.
Apparently he was one of the first and contributed to
the loss of my grandmother's farm and all her life savings,
a very distressing and damaging influence on our extended family.
Thank you for investigating this. It would be nice to
know where that bastard put the money. I look forward
(28:18):
to pissing on his grave. The reference to a farm
immediately makes me think of rod And as it turns out,
this was a relative of Rod's, someone in the McKay clan.
He doesn't want to share his name, but is happy
for me to record this conversation.
Speaker 11 (28:35):
I think Rodney was always looking for that big thing,
you know, the big payday investment, you know, something that
goes really really well. But it just seemed everything that
he tried just never worked out, never panned out.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
It seems like a parallel of Steve and even Allan himself,
and Rodney then came into a lot of money to
make his dreams more possible.
Speaker 11 (28:56):
The farm to begin with, so my grandfather died in
his early sixties. He had a form of cancer, and
it's my grandmother's farm then, and Grannie she ended up
there was a lot of the property, was quite a
large property, and so they sublet or they let out
a lot of the fields to other farmers in the area.
(29:16):
Uncle Rodney had brought out or taken his share of
the farm, and then he'd solved that at some stage
what I thought is that parts of the farm had
been sold off to help. I'm assuming the money went
to my grandmother in terms of living costs and just
running costs of the property.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Rodney put part of the inheritance into Safe Worlds instead,
according to my source.
Speaker 11 (29:38):
In essence, he was probably trying to do the right
thing by his family. But there was no discussion about
what to do with the money from the farm or whatever.
It was just like, he's going into this. I questioned
from the start, but where's where is this information? Where
is it written?
Speaker 8 (29:53):
Where is it?
Speaker 11 (29:54):
Because I was at the same time i'd been when
we'd heard about it, I was doing my own research
just to try to find out something about it, and
all over found was, you know, like near little snippets
of information about Alan Metcalf and you know, he's he's deluded,
claim that ai he found in the Bible, and yeah,
that sort of rubbish. So and as soon as I
(30:16):
saw that, as soon as I'd read that, I said
to mom and Dad and my brothers, this is a
scam or this doesn't sound right. As soon as people
start talking about God being the or the Bible being
the source of this information, it's just like, oh, yeah,
this is wrong.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Losing the farm and the inheritance was a financial blow
for the family, but it was also emotionally devastating for
them and for his grandma.
Speaker 11 (30:42):
I always just thought she was going to stay at
the farm forever. Before grandmother she she didn't really want
to leave the home. She'd been born and raised in
that region, that area. The property of her parents had
been just down the road, and there are all these
old family connections and houses and whatnot all over the shop,
so she really didn't want to leave.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
She had to leave Geraldon and move to a nursing
home south of Perth for people with literally nothing left.
Speaker 11 (31:10):
The home is almost brand new, the care is really good,
facilities are just great. But the only way you can
get into these places is if you have absolutely nothing.
So no money, no property, no investments, nothing, You're on.
It's called the Little Sisters of the Poor because these
people are exceptionally poor.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
There's no suggestion that Rod was trying to scam anybody,
but as we've reported in past episodes, he was a
true believer. To say it's left the McKay's with a
sour taste in their mouths is an understatement. There's a
deep schism in their extended family, one they'll all probably
take to the grave.
Speaker 11 (31:52):
I'm upset and angry. I'm really angry, and I'm annoyed
with Rodney because you know, at the time this is
all happening, we're out of like, you know, we're not
fourteen or fifteen her old kids that maybe the opinion's
not as valued as much. But we were adults. You know,
we're working with professionals, We've lived overseas, we've experienced a
lot in life, and then to hear that this is
(32:14):
something based in God and the Bible and all that
sort of rubbish, it's just like devastating. I can't recall
speaking with Rodney. Oh so maybe ten years or so
before you'd see him, you know, three or four times
a year at least, you know, at family events or
catch ups, Christmas, that sort of stuff. My aunt was very,
(32:37):
very upset about it because it was there was no consultation.
My mum was really upset as well, but Mum doesn't
like to get involved in conflict. My dad is still
really angry about it, to the point that he wouldn't
forgive Rodney for what's happened. He won't I don't think
there won't be any forgiveness there from my dad.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
So that olultimately is Alan's legacy, broken families, broken promises.
Instead of turning water into wine, he turned millions into nothing.
His followers believed in him his vision. Now some of
them might never be able to afford money to pay
for their retirements, or their kids' educations or the holiday
(33:20):
of a lifetime. Alan scam is over, but there's always
another scam about to begin, So be careful out there.
I'm your host, Alex Turner Cohen and this was the
Missing forty nine million. Thanks for listening. Head to news
(33:44):
dot com dot au to read more of my.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Reporting on this story. Do you know more?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Get in touch through our dedicated tip inbox Missing Millions
at news dot com dot au or contact me directly
on Alex dot Turner Dashcohen at news dot com dodau
you 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
(34:11):
editorial director is Dan Box. Grant McAvaney is our legal advisor,
and Kerry Warren is the editor of news, dot com,
dot au,
Good afternoon, Alex. This information may be of some value
to you.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is an email I received two weeks after launching
my podcast. Suddenly my investigation was going from a cold
one to a live one.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I am a semi retired solicitor in Ipswich. I have
acted for mister John Kerry Smith over the last four decades.
In the nineteen nineties, he was also defrauded by Alan Metcalf.
He lost a prox seven hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I know, I said false profit was the final episode,
but more tip offs have come in and I have
to share them with you. Something that's always bothered me
was what Alan got up to in Russia right after
the Soviet Union collapsed in the nineteen nineties. After perpetrating
a string of fraud on Australian soil, he'd apparently visited
Russia for something to do with setting up online businesses.
(00:54):
While he was there, I discovered a few fragments on
the Internet, as well as one anonymous person who was
afraid of Russian heavyweights tracking him down if he told
me too much.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
In the nineties, he broke her to deal with Russia.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
The last thing I need is one hundred and fifty
kg Russian knocking down my door. It never sat right
with me that I couldn't find out more.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
My imagination was running.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Wild, picturing KGB agents and Cold War spies having tea
with Alan Metcalfe. And as it turns out, I'm not
far off at all. I'm Alex Turner Cohen, a finance
and investigative reporter from News dot com AU, and you're
listening to the Missing forty nine million. This is a
(01:45):
bonus episode leap of faith. I keep reading the solicitor's email,
which she sent an hour after I'd left the office
and gone home. A voice actor is reading it out.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I have acted for mister John Carey Smith over the
last four decades. In the nineteen nineties he was also
defrauded by Alan metcalf He lost to PROCs seven hundred
thousand dollars. John Smith started up one of the first,
if not the first, video chains, called Planes Video in
the eighties. He built enfranchised these stores in many states.
In Australia, Video Easy eventually took them over. When John sold,
(02:23):
Alan metcalf approached him to go into the business of
the Information super Highway, which he was told would emanate
out of Russia in the nineteen nineties. John advises that
Allan often spoke of God and had uncomfortable handholding sessions
at their meetings. I have contacted John, who now resides
near to Woomba, and he asked me to contact you
to let you know he is prepared to tell you
(02:45):
how Alan managed to defraud him too.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Do I want to talk to John Smith?
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Hell?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yes, so I reply and convinced him to let me
record our conversation over a video call. John is a
successful video mogul who in the nineteen ninety had recently
sold his business for lots of money. In a way,
it was kind of what Alan Metcalf had claimed he
strove to be, but Alan saw him as something else,
(03:10):
a prime target. I asked John how he heard of
Alan Metcalf.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
I was good friends with his brother, Neil, and we
were pretty close friends for many years. And Alan appeared
on the scene and must have heard about me through
Neil and took it upon himself to come and visit me,
using Neil as an introduction, you know, so that I'd
(03:37):
feel comfortable talking to him. And so I thought of
his Neil's brother, he must be.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Okay, So tell me a bit about Neil. What was
he like, what did he do?
Speaker 5 (03:48):
He had a factory in Carroll Park and manufactured bits
and pieces for electrical companies and things like that. He
was a successful businessman himself, but his brother in loved
on his doorstep with nowhere to live. And I'm not
quite sure why. I know his wife disliked Alan I
(04:13):
mentally she wanted him out of the place. She was
the main one who wanted him out. She'd just tell
me that he come and park himself in their place,
and they had no more privacy. They had her husband
and wife and a growing up boy. He got a
boy who was twenty odds or something living in their
(04:36):
house and they had no more privacy. And she wondered
why he wouldn't go, And she was the one that
actually told him me, he yes to go, him and
his wife and his son Clayton. And they stayed there
for quite a while, and in the meantime he found
out about me.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
This was in nineteen ninety three, around the time when
Alan sold his penthouse along the Brisbane River and when
the Bank of New Zealand and someone else was suing
him for unpaid debts. Clearly something had gone wrong, but
John was willing to give him the benefit of the
doubt and entertained having a meeting with him in his office.
Speaker 5 (05:13):
He was a dominant sort of a person, a very
dominant and he sort of took over whatever discussion or
meeting you had. When he set up a meeting, we
did start off with some prayers and you know, holding
hands and praying God. What have I just a cult
or something. It certainly made me feel uncomfortable, but I
(05:37):
was still a bearing one on this guy. He's a
brother with this flake that I know. He's a straight
shootor and a good guy. So I just sort of
brushed that aside virtually. But he did do it every
time he came. And then he had the audacity, like
down the track to set up his own meetings and
just walk in and use the boardroom that we had
(05:58):
at the time for his own meetings without even telling me.
They just loved there.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
And in those meetings, Alan was breaking his latest stroke
of genius at the time, a plan to create internet
servers to connect businesses around the world.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
The Internet was just starting, and that's the days when
it was all telephone hookups and you know, the phone
used to go at the hookup, and it wasn't actually
going in Australia as far as you could go on
and I like it is today, you couldn't go and
research something or there was just pictures because he showed
(06:37):
me some of the pictures from the US on his computer.
And he more or less suggested that there's a big
market in the business industry with people, and he particularly
emphasized Russia and America. That's where the connection is, That's
what he wanted to focus on.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
John ended up trusting in Alan's vision and initially invested
said two hundred thousand dollars into the project called Alpha Info,
and part of this plan involved John using his factory
space to set up one of these internet servers.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
He had a guy who came from the US and
he set up well, I thinks what they're called servers
of big machines and now he does the roof. The
way he initially spoke was that it would be up
and running and he'd start doing connecting some He wanted
(07:32):
to connect people in Russia that needed finance with Americans
or joint ownership or something like that in their businesses,
and he said that'll be up and running and that'll
play the bills in the meantime. But it never happened.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
John was coaxed to put more and more money in
and it ended up totaling seven hundred thousand dollars according
to an inflation calculator, that's one point five million dollars today.
Alan said he needed the funds to travel to and
from Russia and the US to set up these internet links.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
Traveled all over the world, him and his wife, and
as I said, he'd come back from well so called Russia.
But he may not have been in Russia, but he
said he had put these service in Russia too, in
the universities in Russia. I didn't know whether they were
going to Russia or Hungry. She came from Hungary, and
whether they were going spending time over there. I think
(08:30):
they did bring the mother over to Australia eventually. And
he was always in the US and always in Russia,
or so he said. Although he did live the high life,
they always looked like our first class. I couldn't imagine
him sitting in the economy anyway. Put it that way.
I don't think I couldn't imagine him sitting in with
(08:52):
the common people.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
John tells me that Alan would always return from these
trips immaculately dressed, looks like a multi millionaire. Whenever they met,
I asked him about the gift that Alan brought back
from Russia.
Speaker 5 (09:07):
Well, they come back and were they like a couple
of excited school children walking in And said, guess what?
And he pulled them out of this cossack and he
took me more James from Russia. And I looked at
it and one of the hats you put on your head,
and I couldn't believe it. I thought, you know that's hardboard,
(09:28):
that that's my money. You spent my money to buy
me a kid. I might add it's still around that cossack.
I haven't got it, but some friend of my wife's
got it.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Is quite honestly bizarre. Another quirky story to be added
to an already long list in the Escapades of Alan
metcalf and this incident really sowed the first seed of
doubt for John.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
He'd had enough.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
I said, I can't keep just turning out money, especially
when you' haven't started yet. And he said that it's
on the verge, and I said, no, I can't do
it anymore. It was Just after that that I started
think that this whole thing could be a scheme. He's
(10:16):
just taken a ride, or living the good life or whatever,
but it could be a scheme.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Alan ended up abandoning the service he'd left in John's factory.
John ripped them out, but couldn't sell them because no
one knew what they were. I asked John about his friend, Neil,
Alan's brother, who got him involved in this Russian Alpha
project in the first place, wondering if the relationship had
soured it all. John tells me that Neil was dying
(10:44):
by the time he thought he was being scammed. He
didn't want to bother him with it at all, and
Neil Metcalf passed away shortly after from a brain problem.
I'm still not exactly clear on what this Russia project was,
another hair brained project of Alan's, an early iteration of
Safe worlds, both of the above, or something else entirely so,
(11:05):
I asked John. He's not sure either, as it's been
so long.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
This book here really explained it all as strictly private
and confidential, but I have no problem of sending it on.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
It arrives in the mail a few days later. Fifty
pages in a sleek black folder. These are the original documents,
and they're in surprisingly good shape. I immediately take photos
of every page so that I'll have it saved digitally forever.
It stated March nineteen ninety seven and is titled Alpha
Information Limited Business Plan. I feel like I'm holding history
(11:41):
in my hands. Alan Metcalf would go on to make
many of these to create his Safe World scam Big
Information booklets filled with buzzwords. They were as impressive as
they were vague. Here's the artificial intelligence program recreating Alan's
voice to read out his Russian business.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Alpha Information Limited has been incorporated to establish and commercialize
global information trading throughout the online distribution of the world,
the Information super Highway. Our goal is to establish the
number one online business information system in the world.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Alan went on to say that this business, Alpha Info,
would generate up to one point two five billion dollars
a year and had been valued at ninety two million bucks.
He said it would be up and running by the
year two thousand, another promise that didn't end up eventuating,
and family was important to Alan. His plans involved creating
(12:45):
a role for his son.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
The vice president will be responsible for sales and marketing
of the company's web servers. Clayton Metcalfe has been appointed
this position.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I look for references to Russia and there's a lot.
He wanted to start something called the Russian Business Exchange
and said it would establish reliable communication between Russia, the
US and Australia, and he'd actually got a deal with
the International University Moscow to make this happen. Allen was
very pleased with this university and the powerful people at
(13:19):
work in its halls, including people who'd been politicians and
KGB agents in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 6 (13:26):
Administrators at the International University Moscow are also influential in
the Russian system. The rector of the university is the
former Minister for Education for the Soviet Union. The dean
of the business school for former Russian military officers is
an influential member of Russian Parliament, an active general in
(13:49):
the Russian Air Force, and the former deputy chairman of
the KGB. These connections provide the company with the access
to decision makers in the Russian economy that is needed
to establish the Russian Business Exchange.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Russia was key to this vision. It absolutely had to
be set up in Russia.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
Russia is important to the development of Alpha Info's info
trading system because it offers low cost access to immediately
available large numbers of business opportunities that are of acute
interest to the business world.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
What does Allan mean by low cost, Well, he wanted
free labor and he was getting it from Russian university
students who'd been soldiers under the communist regime.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
The International University Moscow is seen by Alpha Info as
an ideal joint venture partner in Russia because it has
some four hundred business students, including an internal business school
for former Russian military officers that produces about fifty mature
MBA level students a year who are all seeking to
(14:58):
learn Western business world and find ways to participate in
the future of Russia. This pool of talent is important
to interface with the large number of Russian enterprises that
need our system and provide data input at relatively low
Russian rates. In return, the company provides the students with
(15:21):
a way of earning valuable income and career opportunities.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
I wonder how much these business students were being paid,
if anything, and just how deep did Alan's ties to Russia. Go.
There's a rumor that indicates Allan's Russian links didn't end there.
Let's go back a moment. Someone had commented on a
social media post about the podcast that Alan had got
them for one hundred thousand dollars. This person, called Bryce Hutchinson,
(15:51):
was indeed another victim of Safe Worlds. We speak over
the phone and he tells me that he heard Alan
had brought in Russian developers to set up the safe
world website. I want to meet him. It turns out
he lives on the Central Coast, just an hour and
a half north of Sydney. So I drive up. Bryce's bearded,
a young dad, and he takes me to the front
(16:14):
room of his house. It doubles as a beauty salon
where his wife runs a business. One of the first
things I want to know is what he's heard about
these Russian programmers.
Speaker 7 (16:24):
So he got something apparently I never saw it, but
he got some it guys that could encrypt when money
was transferred. There was no way of breaking into the system.
It was like having an encrypted phone now, you like.
And the big guys that were tech guys that got
into this, they saw the value in that because they
(16:44):
reckon it was like next to none.
Speaker 8 (16:46):
The security was that.
Speaker 7 (16:47):
Good for it that no one would be able to
match it.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
And this was Russian people that he brought him.
Speaker 8 (16:54):
You heard that or yeah, that's what I recall.
Speaker 7 (16:56):
It was two guys that were tech guys that he'd
involved in the Safe Worlds for the security side of it.
For when you were doing like e transfers, your transfer
and currency or doing any of that like it was
it was literally unhackable.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
There's not much more he can tell me about this.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Later I would go back to the former Safe Worlds employee,
Tarlie joy Grace to see if she knew anything about
these Russian hackers. She says it would have been before
her time working there, but says it is possible. Back
in Bryce's front room, I ask him more about the
one hundred thousand dollars investment he made into Safe Worlds.
(17:33):
And this is where things get even more interesting. Bryce
is the youngest victim I know of in this Safe
world scheme. He's only thirty three. He got involved with
Alan and Safeworlds when he was just seventeen years old.
Speaker 7 (17:47):
So about two thousand and seven, my father, Steve Hutcheson
invested in the company called Safe Worlds. I was about
seventeen years old at the time. I initially invested ten
thousand dollars in when I was seventeen, and then I
put larger amounts in as I was over the age
of eighteen. I did an amount for sixty thousand, and
(18:09):
then there was share splits and I did more and
more and more.
Speaker 8 (18:11):
Of my investment was pretty much one hundred thousand dollars plus.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah, that's a lot of money. So how were you
able to afford that at seventeen?
Speaker 7 (18:20):
So I borrowed the money off my dad to start with,
and then one of my good mates actually got me
a start on a job in the Sydney Howard Bridge
from an instruction company and then yeah, I was on
pretty good money there and sort of just paid the
initial investment off pretty much over three years.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
So were you paying it back to your dad like
with interest or how did that work?
Speaker 5 (18:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (18:38):
It actually was interested on It was ten percent interest
on the investment. I did sign something, just it was
more of an agreement of how I was paying the
money back and that he was going to charge me
the interest on the amount.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So if you reckon you invested one hundred thousand, you
would have paid about one hundred and ten thousand.
Speaker 8 (18:54):
It was probably around one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 7 (18:56):
Yeah, it was about one hundred and twenty thousand once
I finished paying it off.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, and Bryce was slaving away trying to make a
dent in his debt, working sixty hour weeks to pay
it off.
Speaker 8 (19:08):
Yeah, it was a fabuit of money to pay back.
Speaker 7 (19:09):
Look at the time, I was potentially earning probably between
sort of sixteen hundred and two thousand dollars a week
after tax. Clear like I was getting pretty good money,
so I could afford it. But yeah, it's a lot
of money to you know what I mean. I didn't
even like all my mates had nice cars in that
when they were younger and bought stuff and I was
on a good job and I didn't even do that.
I left that for years because I was paying this off.
(19:31):
So yeah, it was things like that when you look
back on, Yeah, and a lot. It's definitely a lot
of money to lose, like nine hundred dollars a week,
I'm not even paying that for my mortgage now. I
still remember it clear as day, transferring in the last
thousand bucks or whatever it was, and pretty much saying
like haha, Like the whole thing's done, like it's paid off.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
While there's no suggestion at all that Steve Hutchinson was
a scammer. He was a believer in Allan's message, meaning
Alan saw him as kind of a recruiter, even giving
him bonus shares.
Speaker 7 (20:02):
At a certain point. There was a few people that
were closer to Alan that were actually making sort of money,
not money back, but they were getting shares.
Speaker 8 (20:13):
So say, for example, they got someone to.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
Invest fifty thousand dollars, they might have got like twenty
five thousand shares. I wouldn't say you pressured me, but
he was like, oh mate, you're letting a good offer
go down, like all this sort of stuff. But I
just feel like he'd gotten that many people invested, and
was that deep in it himself that even if someone
told him it was a scam.
Speaker 8 (20:34):
He nearly wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 7 (20:36):
Luck he nearly think it was They were stupid and
he's on the biggest thing.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
But as we know, Safe Worlds never went anywhere, and
Bryce was soon regretting the mega investment he'd made into it.
Tell me a bit about how this changed your relationship
with your father.
Speaker 7 (20:53):
Yeah, look, I wouldn't say it was just Safe Worlds. Look,
I don't know, I don't we haven't had a real
good relationship. But obviously, yeah, that was a pretty big
blow with it as well, because I sort of, look,
I know there's risks in everything, but I took a
pretty big.
Speaker 8 (21:10):
Risk in it.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
When's the last time you spoke to him?
Speaker 7 (21:15):
Probably a couple of years ago now briefly over emails,
just over other stuff. But yeah, besides that, yeah, I
don't bring up the Safe Worlds to the thing at all.
He hasn't got a lot of people around him, Like
he's what in his late sixties now, he's got grandkids
he's never seen. So he's seen my son when he
was probably two or three years old.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Bryce reckens his father invested heavily into Safe Worlds, like
more than a million dollars, but I can't verify this.
I contact Steve Hutchinson afterwards to get his side to
all of this, and he's yet to respond. Bryce puts
me in touch with another Central Coast local who he
(21:55):
believes invested at Steve Hutchinson's urging. It's another case of
family ties, the father and son connection pulling someone into
Alan's orbit.
Speaker 9 (22:06):
My name is Glenn MacFarlane and I'm based in pel
Beach on the Central Coast. I'm fifty two years old
and I have my own building business.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
We speak in his sprawling kitchen, his cattle dog watching on.
There's a ute parked in his driveway.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
The house fields.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Newly renovated, with a big open space living room and
a massive stone bench top.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
We speak over.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Glenn tells me he built it all himself. It was
through this line of work that he met Steve Hutchinson.
Speaker 9 (22:34):
Steve was a brick cleaner and he was a contractor
to my father, who was a builder. He worked for
my father. So yeah, I knew Steve when I was
an apprentice to my father and met him a long,
long time ago. I remember Steve being a very motivated guy.
(22:55):
He was very very driven and positive personality. So I
trusted in that, you know, of what he had researched
and what he knew about it, and just him as
a person, you know, a bit of a leap of faith. Really,
just trusted in Steve as a friend.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
How much would you say you put in?
Speaker 9 (23:12):
Was fifty thousand dollars. Just finished building my own home
and had a mortgage, so there was a lot of
money at the time.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Steve Hutchinson was always upfront about the commission he received
for recruiting people to the Safe World's cause.
Speaker 9 (23:27):
He wasn't being paid cash, but was being given shares
for his contribution to bring people into the venture.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Glenn also believes that Steve put in a substantial chunk
of his personal fortune into the Safe World's project.
Speaker 9 (23:43):
I know it's an excessive a mian dollars that he'd
personally put in. I'm not one hundred percent sure of that,
but he sort of made made me aware that that
was his investment in it.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Apparently Steve had made some good money from other investments
and that went towards Safe Worlds. He also had a
wealthy partner at the time who chipped in as well.
They're no longer together. She's since remarried and she declines
to speak with me. It also put a strain in
Glenn's friendship with Steve. In fact, he says they don't
talk anymore.
Speaker 9 (24:18):
Very pushy. Yeah, he's very pushy with his belief in it,
so the point where his partner or ex partner now
was quite embarrassed that he pushed it so hard onto me.
Not so much door knocking, but yeah, just very very
pushy on the phone, and you know, was pitched that
I'd be crazy if I sort of didn't get involved
(24:40):
in that ground floor opportunity.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
As I leave his home, I can't help but feel
that Steve Hutchinson's name seems familiar. So I go back
through my notes and I'm right, this isn't the first
time someone has mentioned him to me. Do you remember
that retired couple Kim and Roy, who gave Alan some
of their money and then spent years helping him beta
test the product. I spoke to them in episode three.
(25:07):
This might help you remember.
Speaker 10 (25:09):
I think the worst part for me personally was when
he promoted for us to go out and find local
businesses and try and interest them in getting their own channel.
And I did do that. And I'm an introvert and
a shy person, and I don't talk much, so this
was a big effort for me. But I did it
(25:30):
because I wanted to get prosperity for our family, and
at the time I still believed that it was happening,
so I involved a lot of people and tried to
interest other people in joining in. It was embarrassing when
I look back.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
He was comparing himself to people like Edison and Ironsky,
you know, and people that had discovered penicilla, and you know,
like it was made in comparison that he had, just
as a normal man, had discovered this law of thought
and claimed that, you know, he was the savior of
(26:11):
the or could be the savior of the world if
it all turned out right for him, you know, and
for us.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Well, when I listened back to my interview with them,
it was Steve Hutchinson who introduced them to Safe Worlds.
Steve was a customer of theirs, and he convinced them
to get involved. They were encouraged by the fact he'd
got his own son to invest.
Speaker 10 (26:33):
I know this fella, Steve's his name, first name. He
got his son, or so he told us. I think
his son invested quite a lot of money in it too,
so you know, he was involving family investing in it.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
So he's partner of the time.
Speaker 5 (26:51):
She invested money as well.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
He was always kind of like Alan in a way,
chasing money, chasing the next kind of.
Speaker 10 (26:57):
Optionity introduced us to it, but it wasn't just this company.
He also introduced us to others shares, other share companies,
so he wasn't just sort of fixated on safeworlds. He
was looking for opportunities that might pay off.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Then the Safeworld's platform started to falter.
Speaker 10 (27:15):
I did try and reach out to him.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
At one stage, Kim showed me a message she sent
to Steve Hutchinson which is still unanswered to this day.
So he was one of Alan's super distributors, bringing people
into the safeworld scheme from all over the Central Coast,
much like Rodney McKay, the guy who raised fifteen million
dollars for Alan over in Western Australia and who invested
(27:40):
one point five million dollars of his own money into
the scheme as well. Most of the tip offs I
receive actually relate to rod McKay. It's all stuff I
already know or things I can't verify. But one email does.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Catch my eye. This is what it says.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
A member of my family was is in this scam.
Apparently he was one of the first and contributed to
the loss of my grandmother's farm and all her life savings,
a very distressing and damaging influence on our extended family.
Thank you for investigating this. It would be nice to
know where that bastard put the money. I look forward
(28:18):
to pissing on his grave. The reference to a farm
immediately makes me think of rod And as it turns out,
this was a relative of Rod's, someone in the McKay clan.
He doesn't want to share his name, but is happy
for me to record this conversation.
Speaker 11 (28:35):
I think Rodney was always looking for that big thing,
you know, the big payday investment, you know, something that
goes really really well. But it just seemed everything that
he tried just never worked out, never panned out.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
It seems like a parallel of Steve and even Allan himself,
and Rodney then came into a lot of money to
make his dreams more possible.
Speaker 11 (28:56):
The farm to begin with, so my grandfather died in
his early sixties. He had a form of cancer, and
it's my grandmother's farm then, and Grannie she ended up
there was a lot of the property, was quite a
large property, and so they sublet or they let out
a lot of the fields to other farmers in the area.
(29:16):
Uncle Rodney had brought out or taken his share of
the farm, and then he'd solved that at some stage
what I thought is that parts of the farm had
been sold off to help. I'm assuming the money went
to my grandmother in terms of living costs and just
running costs of the property.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Rodney put part of the inheritance into Safe Worlds instead,
according to my source.
Speaker 11 (29:38):
In essence, he was probably trying to do the right
thing by his family. But there was no discussion about
what to do with the money from the farm or whatever.
It was just like, he's going into this. I questioned
from the start, but where's where is this information? Where
is it written?
Speaker 8 (29:53):
Where is it?
Speaker 11 (29:54):
Because I was at the same time i'd been when
we'd heard about it, I was doing my own research
just to try to find out something about it, and
all over found was, you know, like near little snippets
of information about Alan Metcalf and you know, he's he's deluded,
claim that ai he found in the Bible, and yeah,
that sort of rubbish. So and as soon as I
(30:16):
saw that, as soon as I'd read that, I said
to mom and Dad and my brothers, this is a
scam or this doesn't sound right. As soon as people
start talking about God being the or the Bible being
the source of this information, it's just like, oh, yeah,
this is wrong.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Losing the farm and the inheritance was a financial blow
for the family, but it was also emotionally devastating for
them and for his grandma.
Speaker 11 (30:42):
I always just thought she was going to stay at
the farm forever. Before grandmother she she didn't really want
to leave the home. She'd been born and raised in
that region, that area. The property of her parents had
been just down the road, and there are all these
old family connections and houses and whatnot all over the shop,
so she really didn't want to leave.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
She had to leave Geraldon and move to a nursing
home south of Perth for people with literally nothing left.
Speaker 11 (31:10):
The home is almost brand new, the care is really good,
facilities are just great. But the only way you can
get into these places is if you have absolutely nothing.
So no money, no property, no investments, nothing, You're on.
It's called the Little Sisters of the Poor because these
people are exceptionally poor.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
There's no suggestion that Rod was trying to scam anybody,
but as we've reported in past episodes, he was a
true believer. To say it's left the McKay's with a
sour taste in their mouths is an understatement. There's a
deep schism in their extended family, one they'll all probably
take to the grave.
Speaker 11 (31:52):
I'm upset and angry. I'm really angry, and I'm annoyed
with Rodney because you know, at the time this is
all happening, we're out of like, you know, we're not
fourteen or fifteen her old kids that maybe the opinion's
not as valued as much. But we were adults. You know,
we're working with professionals, We've lived overseas, we've experienced a
lot in life, and then to hear that this is
(32:14):
something based in God and the Bible and all that
sort of rubbish, it's just like devastating. I can't recall
speaking with Rodney. Oh so maybe ten years or so
before you'd see him, you know, three or four times
a year at least, you know, at family events or
catch ups, Christmas, that sort of stuff. My aunt was very,
(32:37):
very upset about it because it was there was no consultation.
My mum was really upset as well, but Mum doesn't
like to get involved in conflict. My dad is still
really angry about it, to the point that he wouldn't
forgive Rodney for what's happened. He won't I don't think
there won't be any forgiveness there from my dad.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
So that olultimately is Alan's legacy, broken families, broken promises.
Instead of turning water into wine, he turned millions into nothing.
His followers believed in him his vision. Now some of
them might never be able to afford money to pay
for their retirements, or their kids' educations or the holiday
(33:20):
of a lifetime. Alan scam is over, but there's always
another scam about to begin, So be careful out there.
I'm your host, Alex Turner Cohen and this was the
Missing forty nine million. Thanks for listening. Head to news
(33:44):
dot com dot au to read more of my.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Reporting on this story. Do you know more?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Get in touch through our dedicated tip inbox Missing Millions
at news dot com dot au or contact me directly
on Alex dot Turner Dashcohen at news dot com dodau
you 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
(34:11):
editorial director is Dan Box. Grant McAvaney is our legal advisor,
and Kerry Warren is the editor of news, dot com,
dot au,
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