Snowball - Episode 2: The Great Houdini

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This episode contains occasional course language, and we've used some voice actors to bring emails to life. The last time my brother saw Leslie Minouchian, she was getting on a plane. He thought she was just taking a holiday to see her family in the US. But just before Leslie turned to go through the gate, she said those words, the snowball was about to hit you.

And Greg was so shell shocked.

We didn't really know what that meant. No, well, how would manifest itself? What snowball?

Within a couple of months, my parents had lost more than a million dollars, their home and their retirement, and Greg was heartbroken. As paperwork surfaced from the failed Dragonfly Cafa. Dad started to find some hectic stuff that didn't make sense. Leslie Minuchi and had left behind a trail of clues about what she had done, and the more my Dad discovered,

I need to clear this up.

Don't call yourself Houdini.

Held it up to the light and everything merged.

That person has a border placed on it.

It's just like a finger and it it's a big metal phone.

It's so weird. That is weird. It is weird.

Oh my fucking gosh, are you serious? We pointed that out?

What buck God.

When Leslie left Forever the Dragonfly Cafa had only been open for five months, Dad and Greg could finally look at the books.

Felt like it was a bit of a relief that she was out of the way so we could start trying to work out what the fuck was going on.

What Greg and Dad found wasn't pretty. The Dragonfly was in serious debt. If the business didn't get turned around quickly, the whole thing would collapse. My family pulled together to save the Dragonfly. Mum worked as a waitress, my dad behind the counter. My brother Simon and his chef mates were in the kitchen.

When Mum and Dad came up. I just remember it being like whoa, and then whoa, but and then after like two or three woes. As the woes went keep on getting worse. Even though they were getting worse, it wasn't really a surprise. You're like, I wonder what the next woe is going to be.

They tried their best to turn things around, but the business debts weren't getting paid down fast enough. Mum, dad and Greg were worried and they didn't want to do anything wrong, so they voluntarily handed control of the business to administrators, some suits from Auckland, whould do whatever they needed to for the debts to be repaid. It was the administrators who ended up pulling the pin. The cafe,

That was a terrible time. And we were walking along the beach looking at this pew de cauetward tree and in a way sort of jokingly saying, there's a lot of foliage up there. It will be sort of where the proof we could live under this tree. We sat down on the wharf walkworth and had a little cry about it.

We both sunk to our knees and sat on the wolf. We cried. We just were destroyed. We went angry. We were just destroyed.

To make things worse, the global economy was going into meltdown.

It was a parallel with the world economy at that time as well in the United States.

Housing market has spread across the international.

Stock markets around the world, embracing for a potential melt or.

It just has a sharp his average and not just down the road, but right now. The Dragonfly wasn't worth what Leslie had bought it for just a few months ago. Selling it all, even including our house, didn't cover the more than one point five million dollar alone. The debt to kiwibank was short, about one hundred and fifty grand My parents had less than nothing. My Auntie Robin and Uncle Merv renovated their basement so my parents could move in.

If we hadn't had the backing of families, our families, I don't know where we would have ended up.

Mum and Dad even went to ask if they were eligible for any welfare payments.

At one stage we went to see if we could get a flat to live in and work an Incomebrihige is so hard to deal with. We had a young lady of about twenty one. I'm only guessing it twenty She said to us, said what are we going to do? And she said, I don't know.

You just got to sort it.

And we've lived with that saying ever since, it's been quite good.

If you don't know, you just saw that. If this was a hard time for my parents, it was even harder for Greg. He had to watch Mum and Dad get turfed out of our family home.

The house that you know we all sort of spent twenty odd years as a family was well in the past. Everyone was split. I was off. I don't know where I was. I think I was flanning in Mount Eden. Simon had gone his way. Mum and Dad were living at someone else's house as well.

And while all this was happening, he was coming to terms with the fact that his marriage was over. Did you miss her? I mean, like, you know, yeah I did.

I sort of thought that maybe we things could be worked out and she had come back down, But then each week it got more and more out of the realms of possibilities.

And does she know about everything that happened? I mean, I don't even know if she knows that the house got sold and everything.

I think I probably yelled at who went on the phone and said a few things like.

That, and.

Yeah, yep, but obviously not the whole She didn't live it, did she, So she wouldn't know.

But would it even be fair to say it was all Leslie's fault anyway? After all, my parents kicked in money to a business venture that failed. Like Dad said, they stuck their neck out, it didn't pay off. They weren't forced to back Leslie's loan. It would be fair to say that my parents and Greg were naive to put so much into the deal just on trust. They made a bad call investing in the Dragonfly, and in two thousand and eight, people all over the world were

The Bank of America's statement was crucial to the bank recognizing that Leslie had funds to be able to sustain the business.

Dad hadn't seen any of this when the deal was done. Leslie had her own dealings with Kiwibank, but as soon as he found this Bank of America's statement, he could tell it looked dodgy. Looking at the statement now, it's pretty sketchy. The numbers on the closing balance of more than five million sort of trail off on a slight angle. The ins and outs of the transactions don't even add up properly. The closing balance is wrong by six hundred

Sometimes I'd go to the store and sort of reminisce about how it was with my own stuff around me, and I was just kort of sitting in this little storeroom with all of our household goods. Everything was there totally packed in and for some reason, I was just going through the drawers of this chest of draws and I found a Barclay Bank statement, and then I found a copy of the America Bank of America statement, and

This might not have been the first time Leslie had made good use of a photocopier. Last episode, we heard someone say that Leslie had admitted to twinking out, photocopying and faking up her driving record, but this took it to another level. It looked like she had faked up a bank statement showing the balance of her trust fund.

That was a fundamental wow moment for me. That was the ultimate and fraudulent activity when you present that to a bank and they accept it. I was sitting there on the stall just looking at the stuff, and it was a moment where suddenly everything seemed to fall into place. We had been done.

Dad couldn't believe this hadn't been picked up, and honestly I can't either. Some people have suggested to me that Leslie would distract people with flirting, but I wondered if it was really possible. With all these professionals like at the bank, could they be influenced by that kind of thing? I asked Dad what he thought.

Well, I think she certainly pursued that line with a lot of people, including the bank people. One of them, Mike, is quite astounded to see her give him a big gobby kiss. What do you mean at gobby mouth to mouth job? As we were leaving a meeting.

Gobby means something different in Australia. Anyway, when my parents figured all this out, they knew that it was time to go to the bank and show them the fake documents that had been under their noses the whole time. Mom and Dad went to Kiwibank's head office in Wellington.

So this guy said, look, you said, I know it's bad news, but you got to go home and live with it. And I got so angry. I said to him, you are talking about a family that have no home, and you're telling us to walk out of here. And by this stage David had presented the form showing the fraud and how easy it was to pick up, and he actually said to these manage men, he said, look at it. He said, I found it. He said, your janitors should have found it. Why didn't you find it?

And what did they say? Oh?

Ah?

They were totally embarrassed, very very embarrassed about this. And I suddenly realized that I was in command here, and I can remember saying, now, we'll go home now, but we'll reconvene the meeting tomorrow. All right, tomorrow afternoon, I'll present you with my claim and we'll see where we go from there, right, And he said okay, So off we went, and we went off to pub and had a rub and coke and a lot of laughter because

Kii Bank did initially offer some compensation to Mum and Dad, but later the offer was retracted. The bank's lawyers had decided that they didn't owe Mum and Dad anything. Mum and Dad had been relying on the bank to make sure Leslie's finances were sound, but the bank basically said that they should have been doing their own checks. I wanted to talk to Kii Bank about all this, but they just said we do not comment publicly on specific consumer issues and won't be doing so in this circumstance.

My lawyer rang and told me he had a conflict of interest situation. He was dealing with Leslie and he was dealing with us, and he saw the two starting to split apart.

Did you find that ominous? You're the longest client in the scenario. Why are you going?

Yes?

I did think that was a bit odd. Then I thought he was obviously armored with Leslie. She was the future. We were the present, but not so much the future.

We'll be right back.

Not knowing where else to turn, Mum and Dad took all the documents to their local member of parliament, a guy called Rodney Hyde, and it just so happened that Rodney Hyde had quite a profile. He was the leader of a political party called Act. And he didn't just act, he also danced. The Honorable Rodney Hyde was a surprisingly popular contestant on New Zealand's Dancing with the Stars.

Up next Rodney Hyde And after that first fox trot, the question is has he got a little cheeky chut chacha left in.

Him dancing the chut cha? Or Rodney Hyde and Crystal Stewart please take to the floor.

Mum and Dad felt like they were finally getting somewhere because Rodney Hyde took a keen interest in their case. Rodney wrote a strongly worded letter to the bank suggesting that their lax checking of Leslie's documents was negligent and asked them to reverse their position, but the bank didn't budge. The only other thing my parents could do was report the whole thing to the police.

You have reached the New Zealand Police non emergency line.

Dad had a couple of meetings with Auckland's top fraud cop, a Welshman.

So I'm Mahal Jones, I'm a detective respect at the moment at the time when this file came in. I was the acting detective senior sergeant in charge of Auckland City Fraud Squad as it was then. Certainly, if the suspect we were in New Zealand, it would be something that we would have allocated and looked at. Unfortunately, with her already having left the country ex standard practice at

Unless Leslie came back to New Zealand, the cops wouldn't do anything. By skipping the country, Leslie could leave it all behind. Is it any part of the practice as well to sort of let the US authorities know that they've done something like that.

I'd only do that if I really expecting to transfer a file that had sufficient evidence on it to warrant an investigation. In America, a lot of fraud files is to get to that level you actually need to speak to the suspect. Because you're looking at bank accounts, a handwriting samples to get to that point. It's quite a long road.

It seems like kind of a loop. With Leslie gone, they couldn't investigate her, but without an investigation in New Zealand, they couldn't tell the US. Therefore, no one was going to investigate. But what all this meant was pretty simple. Even if Leslie had committed blatant fraud, she was gonna get away with it. As Dad and the administrators kept investigating what happened at the Dragonfly, they found more shady surprises.

I felt it would be better to respond to you via email as I have difficulty most of the time understanding the key we accent, and I apologize for that. We are extremely sorry for the situation everyone is in. Betty has been praying for a turnaround of the situation, and we all do care about your welfare and success.

But he goes on to say stuff like the cafe should never have been sold.

We feel that you should have received advice from at least three or four different experts. There are many brokers out there that at least would have given you the option to refinance. Your main concern seems to be that Leslie was not properly regretful of her contributions to the failure of the business. However, I am not sure what gave you this impression. As far as our empathy for you, it is more than you realize.

He sees they don't appreciate my mom and dad blaming the loss of their home on Lesley.

You are an adult who has had your own businesses in the past, and you must have known the risk involved in this type of business.

Fear enough, Dead new the risks. But based on Leslie saying she had her trust fund to back everything up, here's the strange thing. It seems like Betty and Andrew think Leslie's trust fund is real, or at least they're trying to convince my parents it's real.

Unfortunately, she does not have the freedom to access her trust fund for any amounts to help the Dragonfly with the financial distress it was in. Leslie does not have control of this trust fund, nor do we. I want to reiterate that we do not want to be involved in any way whatsoever and would appreciate being left out of this situation. Sincerely, Andrew.

Despite the evidence that shows Leslie sending money to Andrew, when my dad reached out to them, it was pretty clear they didn't want a bar of the whole situation. Leslie warned Greg not to send the documents to her parents, but then Mum and dad did exactly that. They emailed Betty and Andrew with attachments showing evidence of fraudulent documents and money transfers to them in the US.

Andrew and Betty some facts. Shortly after the bank loan for the business and startup funding was obtained, Leslie transferred US twelve five hundred dollars to you on the twenty fifth of September. Our conclusion is that you both had knowledge of what was happening, and we're a party to the deceit.

Not long after my dad sent that email, Leslie wrote to Greg asking for a divorce. She said it was the last straw. I read some of what Leslie said to Greg. He hadn't seen this divorce letter in over a decade, Like I just want to read some of this letter to you. It says, dere Greg, I'm filing for dissolution of our marriage and would appreciate your signature as soon as possible. I am sorry that things have ended this way.

It's just all crap.

There's one particular paragraph here, which is I am sorry that now you will never really know what was real or not? Oh, what was real or not? But I kept asking and pleading not to push and allow me to do things on my terms.

And allow me to do things on my terms, but you just didn't trust me enough to let me finish what I started.

I didn't run from the mask.

I laughed because I was not going to set back and be told what to do by your family. I did not work with people up in my face making demands.

She's a sociopath. She's trying to kill the lily, blame other people, manipulation. So what I make of that is just total crap.

To be honest, what do you think she meant by I'm sorry, you will never really know what was real or not.

Yeah, so that's the I guess. When you marry someone you want to you feel like you really know them. So to have her say that was quite tough because it actually shows that she was holding out. She said, you know you don't really know me. Well, she was the one preventing me from knowing. And when I think, I recall when I read that, I thought of Hawaii and all of the stories from there, and I thought to myself, I've just become the new Hawaii. Hawaii was

My dad still had heaps of questions, like was Leslie's trust fund real? She seemed to have faked the proof she gave to the bank. But the weird thing was Kiwebek also had other documents and even people who seem to have vouched for the existence of this trust fund. Some attuney called Eric t. Weiss Esquire head written to the bank saying.

This letter is confirmation that Leslie R. Minooki and receives five thousand US dollars per month allowance for the rest of her life from a trust fund set up by her grandfather.

So who is this guy, Eric t weiss Esquire. Well, according to his letterhead, he worked at a place called the Colonial Trust Company in Newport Beach, California.

No, I do not know an Eric t. Weiss and my name is Walter Barr. I'm chairman of Colonial Trust Company, which is a South Carolina State chartered trust company. We have offices in Spartanburg, Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston, South Carolina. We have no branches outside of South Carolina. And that was confusing to be carl Trust or on the Bank America statement. That old statement looks wrong to me. We

So the only company of that name that was open then has never heard of Leslie or Eric t Weiss esquire, so who is he? Dad went looking for him, and he did find an American lawyer named Eric t Weiss. He sent him a fax. They still love fax machines in the US. Dad was pretty worked up about what had happened, so this facsy scent was intense.

Sir, you may wonder who it is that is writing to you. The fact is you probably know much much much more about me than I know about you. I wish to address this imbalance, so I think it is time to lay some cards on the table.

Well, you know, the language is somewhat accusatory, and I guess in reading the letter, the first thing that comes to my mind is that somebody has been wronged using my name and rightfully believes that the person who wronged them is me. My name is Eric t Weiss. I'm

An adversary, Sir, this Eric t Weiss joined my dad's hunt. Now they were all looking for Eric t Weiss esquire.

Being an attorney. As long as I've been an attorney, there are there are ways to find out names of attorneys where they practiced throughout.

The United States.

There is an Eric L. Wise in Atlanta, Eric Georgia Wise in Eric Jersey City, Eric in Iwis, and Eric.

But there just wasn't any sign of another era Eric T. Wise anyway Lavinia, and an Eric G.

Wise in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Much to my surprise, I am the only Eric Tys practicing law in the United States.

It's strange because can We Bank told Dad they had spoken to Eric t Weiss. He had given his phone number and seed to Cole if the bank needed anything else. Apparently they did. Cole Eric T Wess verified the existence of this trust fund. So who was on the other end of that phone call?

There was a phone number that I was able to do a reverse check of the number online and was able to contermine that it came out of California. The number is the home number for Andrew R. And Betty R. Minukian of California. And then I concluded that perhaps Eric t wise to fake Eric t Weiss was really Andrew R. Minukian.

The phone number for Eric t Weiss's esquire given to Kiwi Bank was actually just the phone number for Leslie's parents' house. And that wasn't all. Eric had another illusion to reveal. Eric knew he shared a name with someone famous. He sort of casually mentioned to Dad that Eric Weiss was also the real name of the great escape artist, Harry Houdini.

Lady and gentleman, Oh my fucking god, are you serious?

Who pointed that out?

Back when Dad was learning all of this stuff, He didn't share it with my brothers. So I told Simon about Eric t Weiss and the Great Houdini.

Okay, so that's that's bizarre.

If you don't call yourself Houdini, you know when you're doing your fraud.

Well, no, it's it's it's beautiful. She's just taking the fucking pass, mate. So that makes me a lot more angrier. Well, I didn't know that. Yeah, that totally changed the game for me. Really, yeah, that's quite calculated, and like, I don't know, It's just like a finger, isn't it. It's a big It's a big metal finger that's fucking out there.

Oh my god.

I was just gobsmacked as too. What's going on here? How could this be? It was just one of those moments where I can't figure it out, and I actually still can't.

This whole Eric t Weiss thing added a new layer to the mystery. Dad was keen to get to the bottom of who was in on the scam, who wasn't, and how it all worked. More clues turned up leaving in a hurry and under the pretense that she'd be back. Leslie had left a lot of stuff around the house at the Dragonfly, nothing valuable, mostly clothes, but there was a diary and a few documents, and this one piece of paper that had a word clearly scrawled on it.

Being able to look at her emails, I can tell you there was an awful lot of stuff going on. I have to say that there were thousands of emails. It wasn't any fraudulentcy on my part. I acquired a past word, and while I didn't tell her I was looking at them, it did give me an awful lot of information.

So did you save her emails?

I have saved some of them, the ones that were interesting.

How often would you go in there and look at least once a week? So weird? It is weird. It is weird. Why how many do you have? Oh?

I only kept the ones that have great interest, and I did little sort of excerpts from them.

Dad tells me that for about a year he was copy pasting the interesting stuff into word documents until the past word got changed. I can totally understand why Dad did this. The walls had fallen in around him. The bank didn't seem to want to act on any of this stuff, and neither did the police. He had no other way of getting more definitive answers about the extent of Leslie's fraud and at this point, neither do I. All of the emails Dad saved are in the box

I have always been fascinated with fast things. My closest friends would tell you that adrenaline is my best friend. I'm always looking for the most extreme high through HELLI morning offal desk, kayaking with the glaciers, hiking the backside of Half Dell, to scuba diving with the hammerheads of the Cocus Islands. I am sad to have a glowing personality, and at times I believe this is true because of all the great friends that I have. But I see

We'll be right back.

Those last few words are in capital letters. By the way, I am a survivor. She'll often emphasize the line in capitals. Looking through Leslie's other emails, there's more that sticks out to me. There's insight into her relationship with her parents, mainly Betty, Leslie's mum. She seems to do most of the emailing a lot of the time. Betty seems nice. She even asks after my parents, how is everything there?

Oh?

How are Julie and Dave?

Please tell them hello for me, love Mom.

This makes me think maybe they don't know about Leslie's tricks in some ways, could they be victims too? Firstly, there's just so much admin going on of Leslie trying to send money to her mum. It's a constant dance of her explaining holdups and sending cash back to her parents.

I can send you money Western Union. I'm going to try to send you a little money first from Greg's account. Greg was using my computer the other night while waiting for me to call him for a ride, and the rabbit ate my computer cord again.

It seems like while Leslie was spending the Dragonfly startup money, she was also keeping up appearances and n zed with her mum's credit card. Here's an email from Leslie's mum, Betty.

Leslie, this is the last time you're going to use our credit card. I know you are short of money, and that's why I'm giving this to you. But you are a grown woman with a husband and a business, and we are your poor parents who are in deep shit debt.

So maybe Betty suffers from Leslie's creative approach to money management too. But what about Andrew. The phone number provided by Eric t Weiss to Kiwibank was their home number, but the bank manager reckoned. He called the number and spoke to Eric. Could that have been Leslie's dad, Andrew playing the role of Eric t Weiss. If things weren't

Good morning, Andy and Mattie. Hope this email finds you well. I have had several lengthy conversations with a banker friend of mine, and the paperwork on the trust money that Leslie received on your behalf is a very tricky situation.

I can see these emails from Eric to Lesley's parents because they seem to show up in Leslie's account. She's c seed or they've been forwarded. Eric writes a lot like Leslie. He puts random words in capitals, and he's often explaining delays and money transfers to her parents.

Sarah from the accounting office of Sony did leave a message with my assistant letting us know that the money will be available on Wednesday. They will fed extra cashier's check to you to receive by a Thursday.

Eric also passes on advice to Leslie's parents about what to do in some situations, like here, Eric suggests what to say to my mom and dad.

If he starts whining about his present financial situation. Apologize for his loss, but state you feel that he should have had at least three or four different opinions before making this final decision.

Reading through these emails, something seemed strangely familiar. I started to recognize some of the words in this email. Eric is talking about how the administrators were called into the Dragonfly, and he's saying that my family shouldn't have placed the business into voluntary administration. I realized, I've heard that somewhere before.

We feel that you should have received advice from at least three or four different experts.

Leslie's dad said all the same stuff to my parents when he wrote to them.

There are many brokers out there that at least would have given you the option to refinance.

It seems like he's just rehashing what Eric said to say.

Just say, there are many brokers out there who would have bailed you out for at least six months. Yes, maybe had a higher interest rate, but at least they would have made it through the winter, so could have put the property up for a salement.

Ugh. I feel like I'm playing a game of pickup sticks, just where every stick is actually a thick piece of bullshit. Okay, So Eric t Weiss sends advice to Leslie, who forwards it to her dad, Andrew. Andrew follows instructions and sends all of this bullshit my dad. So it seems like Leslie could be using this fake persona Eric t Weiss, to get her parents to say whatever she wants them to say. If Eric t Weiss is just a character

Hi, Leslie, hope this email finds you well At the moment, I'm back in Bangkok, still dealing with legal issues, Leslie. I was happy to hear that you made it back to the States. I am sorry that things have not gone so well for you.

So is Leslie emailing herself as Eric. What is going on?

It will be worth it one day, Leslie, Leslie, do not.

I was happy to.

Hear that you made it actually secure for life by your dad. That hummer you keep talking about.

If only Leslie used this much imagination running the Dragonfly, and if she can pull off such complicated lies, Leslie must have had practice. There must be other people that have been conned. I need to find them, and I know where I have to start. Before Leslie met Greg, she was in Hawaii. I have to find out what

This is obviously not an ordinary crime or set of circumstance, but from the normal successful life my family once led, I find myself in a murky world of con artists and swindlers. We are battling them and I will find out the truth. Any information, advice may be a point in the right direction, would be invaluable.

And before long Greg got a reply.

Checked the letterbox and an interesting looking Manila folder type envelope, quite chunky in the letter box and had some US postal marks on it, and I thought, wow, this is this is going to be interesting.

So interesting that it's going to help me discover what really happened in Hawaii.

Going to help you.

Yes, hi, chi phone, it's Ollie Ward's here. The ABC journalispits this town is very small.

We can't cooking it wireless, so everyone talks to everyone about everything.

Does the name Leslie Minoukian mean anything to you?

Oh, you've bet never forget her.

I was to the point where I wanted to.

She had all these fantastic ideas of what was going to happen and was all sung together by dreams.

Really, I don't care whether you're in Hawaii, you're in California, you're in New Zealand, or wherever.

You get what you give the scammer. And she's lucky she left.

That's next time on Snowball.