The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective see a side of life the average persons never exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Welcome back to Part two of my chat with Tracy Hawk. In part one, Tracy talked about a life and how a person who called himself Max Tavita came into her
life after her divorce. In Part two, we're going to discover pretty much everything that Max had told Tracy that led her to fall in love with him become part of her life was in fact a lie. Where we left part one was Tracy had been in a relationship with the person she knew as Max. For about eighteen months, she couldn't get in contact with him. She was worried about him, and then her good friend Kath contacted her and said, I think you need to have a look
at this. At that point in time, Tracy looked at the link that Cath had sent to her and found that the love of a life, Max had been arrested, and she then found out that he wasn't in fact Max. He was known by another name of Hamish McLaren. So, Tracy, welcome back to part two.
Thanks.
I've just tried to abbreviate this story. I like the fact that you're laughing, and we talked off Mike that sometimes you've just got to laugh at things because otherwise it just eats you up inside and you're just going to go, Okay, well this happened, believe it or not. This is what happened. So you've got your life set up, what you thought was pointed in the perfect direction. You'd found love again, you had your beautiful daughter, you had
your career going. Everything was tick tick tick, and then all of a sudden you find out that the person that had been in a relationship with for the past day then months. Wasn't in fact that person? Do you want to take it from there? Yeah?
So I saw the video and started talking to the detectives who are working on the case, and I found out pretty quickly that Max Devita was in fact Hamish McLaren and the extent of his crimes and what he had done. And that started the process essentially for me, for unraveling the previous eighteen months of my life, which had been completely fictitious with this man who had told me lie after lie after lie and in the process stolen my life's savings. So I was very quickly forced
to fall out of love with him. Took me nearly eighteen months to fall in love with him, and then within twenty four hours I had to fall out of love with him.
Can we just break that down and we'll put the finances aside and the betrayal, But when we talk emotionally, you don't fall in love overnight. You invest in love, the builds, and then for it to just cut off like that, it's painful for you. I would imagine it.
Was like a death, and I've experienced grief associated with death before, and some of those emotions were incredibly familiar to me, and in some ways that's the only way I could deal with it because I had to. I really had to get my head around very quickly the fact that this man that I was in love with
in fact never existed. So to view him as dead in my mind was the only way I could cope with the fact that I'd been so horrendously deceived, And so that was one thing, But that comes with a lot of grief as well, because somebody who is so present in your life, that you talk to multiple times a day, that you're building a future with that you very much see as part of you know, the rest of your life is suddenly gone, like they are when
they die. And the grief around that was was really odd because I was grieving a relationship that wasn't real relationship, but it felt real. And then I felt bad for grieving a relationship like that because he was a criminal.
So it was just so complex and so multilayered, and yet at the same time, I was, you know, having to face the fact that I'd given him my life savings and I was left with nothing apart from my income, my monthly income, and having to do all these very practical things like spending hours and hours with the investigators and the detectives putting my statement to together, spending hours on the phone with the ATO talking to them about
my non compliance uperanuation fund and what that was. Working on a fraudulent tax return that he had done for me that may or may not have been fraudulent. I didn't know. And you know, I did have some time off work. I had a very supportive employer at the time, but I couldn't lose my job. It was my only financial lifeline. And I had a huge job, a huge team.
I had to get back to work, and so there were all of these kind of conflicting things that were going on in my life that I was having to deal with, And yeah, it's safe to say it took its toll.
What you just explained there. I can't even see how you cape with that. There were so many things going on in your life, and you've got your daughter, the impact that it has on her, and we'll talk about that way. How you break the news to her because he had become part of her life and he's betrayal. So was what was your priority to find out what happened to your finances? Was that your first first priority.
It was really to deal with the detectives and the investigators because they were putting this case together. So people were coming forward, left, right and center after the crime Stoppers video, So it was really that was a priority, and that took a lot of time and effort and energy because exactly the way you were asking the question, tell me about your first date. They wanted to know everything right from the beginning. How did you meet, What day did you meet? When did you go on dates?
Who paid for the dates? What did you eat on the dates? Where did you go then? What car do you remember the number plate? What text messages have you got that you can share with us? What documentation did he provide? What fraudulent reports did he give you? When did you give the money? Where are your bank? Statements?
So lot I like them. They're the exact questions that should be asked, but that takes time. That takes time not just to sit down and actually type the statement or get the statement taken. It's getting all that information, yeah.
And remembering and recalling and trawling back through emails and text messages and what's happen?
And the thing that SAIDs me, tracing the person that you were relying on in your life at that time is no longer there because he doesn't exist, and he's a person that scores that. That's right, the sense of betrayal.
Yeah, I mean I was very much on my own at that point, and I knew to do it justice. I had to get all of that information, and I wanted to do the best job I could, because you know, part of me was also thinking, if I get all this information, then maybe it will help to find the money,
and maybe I can work out what's actually happened. And you know obviously that you know, we know now that there was no money returned, but at the time I was really trying to unpick what had happened, because what I believed was real for eighteen months or sixteen months was actually not. And so, and this is one thing that you know, really interesting thing about our brains is that we don't like unfinished stories. And so we either make up the ending, which I couldn't do because I
didn't know the pieces. No, I didn't have the pieces, or you live in this state of ambiguity where your brain cannot actually rest until you have this story compartmentalized and you have the full story, and because I couldn't get any answers, I was just I could not rest, I could not sleep, I could not eat. I lost six kilos in three weeks, and I'm not a huge human, so that's a lot, a lot, And it was just, it was so discombobulating, Like I just can't even sometimes
describe how confused I was during that time. I was highly anxious because you know, I didn't know if he was going to get bail, and I didn't know if he was still in jail. Like there was a lot going on. I became depressed because I was thinking about my future and how much I had lost and how
I was going to make that back. And then of course life goes on and you have a child that needs to get to school every day, you have a job that needs taking care of, and you somehow have to find the energy and the will to get out of bed and move forward, and all of that going on at the same time. Was just it was a lot. It was a lot.
I just in all the fact that you got through it, because I'm sure there would have been times when you think, I just don't want to be here, but you've got your daughter and everything else going on in your life. You're dealing to the police because they're the ones I would imagine that you were hoped to get some answers or some understanding, because where else where else do you turn. In conversations I've had with you, you were very impressed
by the police. Officers will mention their names. It's weak credits.
Yeah, the lead detective Tom said, was incredible, very young, and he had come across this case. He had landed on his desk and it was a reasonable amount of money and he wanted to look into it. And I think from what I've learned and you might be able to give insight to this too. But fraud is very,
very difficult. Not many copies like to touch fraud because it's a lot of paperwork and it's complex, and it's quite hard to prove fraud because in essence, people have freely given their money, you know, under deceit, but given money. So it's quite hard to prove.
I believe it's complex because quite often people come in and report something and you look at it from a purely legalistic point of view, and that you could say, well, it's a civil matter, it's a dispute between two parties and it should be resolved civilly. Therefore police have no position in there. But it sounds like you had a couple of young Yeah, highly made of the detectives that took the different view on something that should be explored. So full credit, but yeah, it can happen, and not
critical of police. There is that ambiguity between is it the civil matter or a criminal matter. And I know as a young detective, quite often you've got given a lot of frauds where you cut your teeth or learnt your trade, and they are confusing and quite often when they gave the courts, you don't really think the punishment fits the crime. Like when someone's had their life savings taken from them and we'll talk about other victims later on,
it destroys their life. They'd you've worked twenty years, your superannuation, everything, every hour you went to work, you were accumulating your superannuation and that's just been taken from you. I would imagine there was some low points, some low points where did you have support network. I bet your CAF came on the same and I hope she didn't say I told you so.
No, Cathoo would never say that and there were other friends that probably thought he was a little quirky as well. But you know, so no, I have a very tight group of girlfriends who just kind of rallied around me. I think Kath you know, stayed at my apartment for a few nights. She slept in my bed and she just held me, you know, And so I had some
incredible support at this point. I not very many people knew what had happened, and I wanted to keep that close because I didn't know what the outcome was going to be. Obviously, it was such a huge thing that had happened to me, and you know, then you layer on all the embarrassment and shame and all of that stuff as well. I wasn't kind of prepared to talk about it broadly. So I did have a very close
support network of people. But of course, you know, when anything big happens, you know, it's very acute and intense at the beginning, and people are very supportive, but then life goes on, you know, and that's just the way, that's just the way it works. And so I was sort of left her to figure out what I was going to do. But you're right, there were some incredibly low points, points where you know, I would wake up in the morning and remember what had happened and just think, oh,
I've got to do a whole. I've got to do a whole another day. And you know, the thought of that, you know, it just felt like this big, gray, heavy blanket just weighing really heavily on me. And I would have been quite happy to fly in bed all day and just cry. And you know, we spoke about my daughter just before, but I made a decision very early on that there would be no tears at the dinner table,
and I wasn't going to tell her what happened. And that was another reason I kept it very quiet, because you know, how do you explain a non compliance superannuation and a fraudulent criminal boyfriend to a six year.
Old Well, I was going to ask that question, how he had become part of her life, or the person we knew was Max had become a part of her life. She would be asking questions.
Well, interestingly, she didn't, you know, And it's a funny story, talk about laughing. It was about I think about nine months after we were doing the shower routine at night and she turns to me and she says, oh, Mom, we haven't heard from Max in a while. I just thought, I said, nah, he's been really busy with work, Sweatie, It's all good. And I just thought to myself silently, you've done a good job. Trace you've kept it from her, you know. And that was my intention back then, because
obviously it's very difficult to describe what had happened. I didn't want her to worry either about him as a person or the fact we didn't have any money or anything like that. She was so young, and I thought to myself in that moment nine months later, she'd never asked a question because she didn't actually see him very often. It was the odd holiday here and there, but on a week to week basis, he was just a guy on the phone. And of course she was at school
all day. And this is the wonderful thing about children is their life is the center of the universe. Don't give a shit about.
Us day, you know, friend at school, Yeah.
That's it. And and the fact that I think I just carried on was you know, it was. And I think having having something outside of yourself that's bigger than yourself is often the thing that gets.
You through that's an interesting point, beare.
And I didn't have a backstop at home. It's just me. So who was going to make her lunch and get her to school and get her two activities? If I was a mess in beddle day, no one. And I think that's what helped me through. And there was some other tricks that I learned through my psychologist that was, you know things like that moment when you wake up
and you think I can't get through another day. You just break everything down into the smallest pieces so that every time you achieve that small thing, you get a dopamine hit. So I go, okay, what do I need to do first? Okay, you just need to sit up and put your feet on the floor. I can do that. So I did that, and then I was like, okay, I'm going to get to the kitchen and make myself a cup of tea because tea makes everything better in the morning. And I did that, and I went, oh,
well done, Trace like you've got to the kitchen. And I know this sounds so banal, but it is literally breaking down my day like that, And that's how I got through. And I think if I had a thought in the morning, Okay, I've got to get up, get the kid to school. Go run a team of people at eBay, deal with the MD go do this, run a campaign, cash a bus home, get her from daycare, take her to activities, make dinner, do the homework. If I had have thought about that in the morning, I
wouldn't have gotten out of bed overwhelmed. And you have these little dopamine hits. By doing the smallest things that over time, it gives you confidence that you can get through another day.
Okay. It's interesting the way that you describe that, and I think a lot of people could take a lot away from that. Those days that you wake up and you just overwhelmed. What's the first thing you've got to do. You've got to get out of bed, stupid to sit up? Yeah, okay, and just break it down. So let's take it. Say two months after what's happened, he's in custody, you still haven't got answers, You're confused. When do you start to realize you weren't he's only victim.
To be honest, it wasn't for a very very long time. I mean I knew I wasn't the only victim. I knew they were working with a lot of victims, but the detail surrounding that, though no it was illegal, it was a legal case of course, So there wasn't a lot of information. There was just like things comments like there are multiple victims, it's millions of dollars. They're the sort of answers that I got. Obviously, I was busy trying to piece together who this man was by going
into the internet. Now I had his real name, so I was doing a lot of that, and there was still some sort of things that I had to provide, like you know, dealing with the ATO and unwinding the.
Tax claim.
Yeah, the non compliance super Fund, all of those things. So those things went on for a long time. It wasn't until we went to the plea hearing, which I'm going to say was more than a year after he was arrested, and not long after I met Greg bear Up, and.
Could we just say people understand who Greg bear Up is. He's a journalist, a very decent person. We both speak very highly of him, Award winning journalist. Seat we added that Greg he'd like that, but he was a person that did the who the Hell is Hamish? Podcast? So when we're referring to Greg, that's who we're talking about.
Yeah, so he's actually really good mates with Kath.
That figures. I could the way you've described Kath and I know Greg, I could imagine them getting there. Curious minds, good buddies.
And Kath had encouraged me to meet Greg after this had happened, and I wasn't in a place emotionally or mentally to be able to do that, and so I didn't meet him for quite a long time. And then one day, about a year after Hamish was arrested, I woke up one morning and thought, I'm going to go talk to Greg and see what it's got to say. And meeting him and telling him my story, he was just, you know, his eyes were wide open and his mouth was on the table and he just couldn't believe what
had happened. And around the same time, Hamish's play hearing was coming up, and at this point we didn't know whether he was going to play guilty or not. And Greg said to me, do you want me to come with you? I said yes please, And Cath came, and I had another girlfriend come and they were like the tiger moms around me, and of course Greg was there, with his notepad. He was so fascinated and we were the only people in the courtroom.
Yeah, that shocked you. I remembered how it was mentioned in the book that was.
No investigators weren't there was no family there, there were no other victims there. Now I don't know what they or knew I think going.
On, we've caught the fact that you've mentioned that. I think victims are sometimes or people involved in court matters because there's processes that go through, and sometimes people that know courts know that there's not going to be a lot mentioned there. It's going to you're going to sit around all day and it's going to take two minutes, and then then the matters heard before we get into the court matters and what he was charged with. I would imagine that was going If I was in your situation,
I'd be desperate to have a conversation going. Yeah, a thousand questions that you would have to ask of him. Is that what was going through your mind? Did you have questions? Or is it almost you've cut it off? What's I'm not even interested what he's got to say, because I couldn't trust anything he's got to say.
Well, all of that but I did actually talk to him after he was arrested, talk us through that. So I had multiple conversations with him. He got my phone number and he called me from jail, and I'd never received a phone call from anyone.
In jail before Col's recorded.
That call's been recorded. Do you accept it? You get six minutes? I mean, it certainly wasn't on my vision board growing up, but here I am. And I took the calls because I was so desperate for information. And this was in the first couple of months after he was arrested, and he called and he was sort of, you know, very chummy with me. I guess, babe, tea, you know all of this. And I was just peppering him with questions because you know, the police couldn't tell
me anything, his family wouldn't talk to me. I had no answers, and so I thought maybe I could get the answers from him. What is your real name, what is your identity? Are your parents alive? What about your sister? Where did you live? What's this? What happened? Where is the money? You know? I had so many questions for him, and he was just so off handish with me, you know, it's just a name, Tea, don't worry about a name.
It's just a name, but it's your identity. It's who you said you were for the whole time we were together. You know, I don't know who you are, like, who are you? It's just a name.
He's still still commun you or trying the con.
Wise in there no level of compassion or empathy, and so these conversations, you know, we had a few conversations over the time. Of course I couldn't ring him. He would ring me, and I pretty quickly realized that I wasn't going to get anything from him that I could trust.
And then the letters started. So he sent me five letters over the time, and they were, you know, musings about how tough things were for him in jail and how long it took him to get a pen, and how none of the food was edible and poor baby. I feel so sorry for him, and you know, and then you know, a whole bunch of rambling memories about things that we had done to elicit a level of nostalgia.
I guess for me about those good times like paddleboarding it, you know, Tamarama and the times he spent in Byron and oh, you know what we ate, what we drank like just memories really, And then it moved on to him really encouraging me to go and see him and visit him. And I saw these communications, these letters, in these phone calls, as you know, it was like he was dangling a three hundred and seventeen thousand dollars carrot
in front of my face. And of course there was a part of me that wanted to go and see him and see if I could get that money back, because I'd lost everything, and you know, but I quickly realized that there was absolutely no way that I could ever trust anything that came out of his mouth, and it was likely that it was all just going to be another lie, and so it was just a waste of time, just a big fat waste of time.
It sounds like an obvious thing to come to the realization, but I can also understand why it would be harder to do than to harder to just cut him off without at least trying to get answers. But it sounds like he was just still conning and manipulating and trying to control the narrative. And that's the what I call it, the sickening side of fraudsters is that they've always got an excuse. They're always trying to manipulate. Even when they're caught, you don't get them to Yeah. I don't know if
it would have helped. But if he fell on his sword and said, look, I can't help it, just a con artist, you're better off forgetting about me, blah blah blah. I'm sorry I deceived you some acknowledgment like that, but you've got nothing like that. No, it's just a name. I don't know. Actually, he's got a point there. What are you want about Tracy? What are you winging about it? It's just a name, Hamish, Max, whoever, whoever I feel like being that day. Okay, so you've had the communications,
When did you start to see some light? Like the world would have been pretty dark when it first happened. At what point did you say, okay, i'm seeing I'm making progress. I can see some light at the end of the tunnel.
To be honest, I think it was after the plea hearing that Greg came along too. So in getting back to that keep the charges. Yes, so he played guilty, which was great in a sense because I knew then I wouldn't have to go through a core process and you know all of that. It just have some downsides as well. You know, you don't get to make a victim impact statement, you don't get to face him head on.
In that session, they went through a document which was called the Statement of Facts, and we didn't you know, it wasn't spoken about in detail, it was just it was quite legal. And Hamish was there. Hamish appeared that day. He came up from the from the bottom and well I knew him as Hamish at that point. I know, it's always so confusing, which we just interchanged the names.
But he came out from underneath and he was sitting in that glass box and he was flanked by two bodyguards and he was in his prison greens and I just kept staring at him. He wouldn't look at me, and I was flanked by my Tiger moms and Greg and we went through that sitting and that hearing and they talked about this document called the Statement of Facts, and afterwards and he went away downstairs. The guards took
me away. The DPP, who was acting on behalf of the victims, came up to me and said, I believe you're a victim. I'm really sorry about what's happened. I'll be acting on behalf of all of you. And I said, you know, thank you. Is there a chance we can have a copy of that document? And there was a hesitation to give that to me, and then Greg flashed his journalist badge and we had a copy in a hot minute, and we went across to a cafe opposite and that is the moment where I realized the extent
of what he had done. The other fifteen victims were listed how much money they had lost, under which circumstances they had lost them and Greg and I just poured over this document and that's when Greg said to me, this is a podcast. This is non article in the Weekend Astray and this is a podcast. And that's where it started. And so Greg got the go ahead to investigate for the better part of the next year and
write the podcast. Who they held is Hamish And as he was doing that, he would keep me informed and he would tell me the things that he was finding out, or he'd come across the name and he said, have you heard who? Have you heard this person?
Was he?
Who's this person? And I would give him my version of it if I had heard of them, and he would put the pieces of the puzzle together. It was an investigative piece, of course. And so that is where the sky opened up for me because I started to get answers and that unfinished story that I had in my head where I couldn't rest started to become clear. And Greg was the person that would call me and go, oh, my god, guess what I just found out. He's got
a wife and Greg's got it. I mean, you know Greg as well, he's got a great sense of humor. He's very caring and compassionate, but he's really funny as well. Man, so his sense of humor actually really resonates with me. He's got a wife, really, oh that's interesting, and you know, he'd tell me a bit about that and then that story, and I said, can I can you ask her if it's okay if I talk to her. He provided me with her phone number and we connected and we've become
firm friends through our shared experience. So I really believe that that's when it started happening for me. And knowing that there were other people in the case, people like Lisa Hoe, businessmen, you know, people that were far more probably business savvy than me, old, or whis all of
those things had also been fooled by him. And I think with anything in life, when you know that you're not alone, that other people have been through something similar and you can relate to them, then there's a level of comfort in that. And I think that's where things started to improve for me.
That makes a lot of sense. And I would imagine from your point of view too, you would be sort of being hard with yourself, going how could I be so stupid? Why did I let this happen? Am I the most stupid person in the world? And then you see the list of other people that have been conned by I've just got a list here, and I've got it from your book, just to give a sense of it,
and we can talk about any specific one. I've only mentioned the names that have been mentioned in your book, and there's some anonymous, but these are the other victims that have earned the amounts of money that they lost.
Lisa Hoe eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Glenn and Vicki Picard six hundred and seven thousand dollars six hundred, Karen Lowe nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a Sydney woman five hundred and sixty four thousand dollars, a triathlete four hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars, a woman introduced to Hamish seven hundred and sixty eight thousand, surf shop co owners thirty three thousand, a woman not identified one me and the nineteen thousand A woman introduced to Hamish
eighty thousand. These are people's lives that have just been destroyed. And there was one elderly couple that the person had to go back to work and because that was their superannuation, that was their savings.
That's right.
Do you want to just highlight one or two of the stories to understand the impact that actions like Hamish have on people.
I mean, everyone was impacted in their own way, and I think even if you lose ten thousand dollars, that's a lot of money. But some of these figures are huge. And the ones that I felt the deepest level of compassion and empathy for were the retirees because in some aspects I knew that I could I had another twenty five years of working in me, I could make that money back. And these were people who had spent their whole lives working their clackers off, and they had worked hard.
They were honest people, and you know, they'd done well. They've been clever with their money. They'd brought up children and grandchildren, and they were due to have a really lovely later life and he took that away from them. And they don't have the ability to make up that money because they're not working anymore. And you know, so to rectify those losses are very difficult for elderly people. We know that a lot of elderly people are being scammed.
So those ones within the case were the hardest, you know, the hardest ones for me. And I got to know these people really well throughout this process, throughout the podcast and throughout the court process. And you know, the grandparents
in the case that has been widely documented. You know, the husband in that relationship had had a work accident and had suffered brain injury and the money that Hamish took from them was part of his compensation payout, and you know, he knew that money was coming to them and still took advantage of it. And they went from what was going to be a comfortable retirement supporting him to wondering how they were going to pay their groceries every week. And I just they were the ones that
hit me the hardest. Relationship breakdowns because of the pressure. You know, there was there was one couple in their relationship didn't survive and that's that's you know, that's a thirty year marriage that's broken up by someone else's wrongdoing. But of course, you know there's a whole bunch of reasons that that may have happened, but you can't deny
the pressure that that would have put it on the relationship. Yeah, So things like that really got to me because there's just not a lot of time for those people to rectify the financial losses.
Yeah, I think you took comfort in the fact and that you've lost your finances and someone, I'm not sure or if it's someone that you were seeing helping you with advice or one of your friends, said that, Okay, let's take stock of your life. You've got a beautiful daughter, you've got a great job, and you've got years where you can regain money, and you look at it that way. You have to look at the positives.
Otherwise you stay in that really sad, depressed, anxious victim stage where life is never going to get better if you stay there, so you have to you have to look at the things you do have. And I think, you know, I talk a bit in the book about my trip to India after my dad died, and one of the things that I draw on every day from that trip is these people who have nothing yet o
the happiest people you've ever met. Yeah, and you know, that was a really great life experience for me to, you know, have a year doing that because you know, subsequently I've experienced a great deal of loss, and you know, I draw on I draw on those people and their attitudes towards life who have nothing and yet just have so much love and joy and family and you know, all of those things, and they're having a great life. They're not thinking about what they've lost, They're just thinking
about what they've got. So I draw on that a lot.
I think it's amazing that you can find solos in drawing from people like that. But I do understand where you're coming from. And the pity, not pity is not the right word, but the empathy that you have for the older victims that don't have a chance to rebuild, and the impact it's had and I'm not sure if the courts fully get it the impact of fraud, Like there will be public outrage if someone's injured, and quite rightly say violence is a terrible thing, but if someone's
been attacked, there's outrage. But when you look at the damage of fraud, when life savings people who have worked their whole life and it's just been taken from them, what for? What was the motive? The motive was just pure greed on behalf of someone. Was it just a reaction where you've ever reacted. No, this was a planned, a deliberate action over a period of time to rip these people off and not care one bit about the
consequences of your actions. The courts tell us about the sentencing day, you be and the brothers and sisters gathered together.
We did. We all went and we thought we were going to get an outcome on the first day and the courtroom was full of people. It was full of media, which shocked the judge because I don't think he realized the extent of what he was dealing with. And everything was recorded, and of course.
Before had the podcast started at this stage. Okay, it's amazing that the interest that gets with a little bit of media.
Attention, and I think, you know, in this case, it was I feel grateful that the Australian invested time, energy, money great in investigating this, because there's no way we would have found out or I would have found out the extent of the information that I'm now privy to because of Greg's investigation. And I think it did bring a level of interesting to the public domain of this particular case, but of you know, of this type of
fraud in general. And so the court was stactful and we went through the process and it took a lot longer than I thought it would, and at the end of it, the judge said, I'm not going to rule today. I need some time. I need time to look at all this. It was a lot of information, There were a lot of victims, there was a lot of detail. Hamis shows not to speak, which is his right, but yeah, there was nothing from him other than a one page letter of which part was read out by the judge
and he us just come back a week later. So I guess it was like a lot of sort of build up to no kind of outcome on that day, which was disappointing in a sense, but also to you know, there was comfort in that because I knew that the judge was going to take some real time to look deeply. Spent a week doing that, and then we came back
the next week to a different court. There was just as many media there, there were more people in the gallery, and he gave his judgment and to your point where you know, it's not always this type of crime is not always sort of treated with the same level of seriousness of other crimes. I feel like in this case,
the judge really really took his time. He spent I want to say, the better part of two and a half hours reading out every victim, details surrounding every victim, how much they lost under which circumstances, and really took his time to acknowledge each of the circumstances, which, in the absence of being able to do a victim statement, a victim impact statement, or being able to talk or whatever, that felt you.
Had someone speaking for you.
Yeah, it felt like there was some advocacy on our part all the victims, A lot of the victims were in the courtroom that day. And then he sentenced Hamish to sixteen years, which was one of the largest sentences given for white collar crime, this type of white colo crime in New South Wales. Because we went in there with Tom and Chris and the detectives saying, you know, it's probably going to be a couple of years. He'll
probably get a couple of years. I think Greg was saying, you know, if he got five or six years, that'd be a good outcome. So these were the numbers that we had in our head. And of course when sixteen years was said, it was like holy Molly, like that's incredible. And then there was a parole period. I think it was a twelve years non parole, and he really really gave the extent of his personal wall of his point of view about the deep impact that this type of
crime has on our community. So that was great. But then of course it was appealed and the sentence was reduced to twelve years nine.
Years nine years on the bottom non parole.
And part of that reasoning was they felt that the judge was not impartial enough, too much on the side of the victims, which you know, and the thing I've learned about the court process, it's very technical. There's no emotion. It's based on technicalities, it's based on what's happened in the past. It's based on these You know, there was a twenty five percent discount on his sentence because he
pleaded it guilty. And it's like, what, I didn't know these things existed, Like I've learned a lot, of course, but you know things like that, and you think. This is not about often what's right or wrong, or the impact or the magnitude. This is based on technicalities.
Has has any of the money been recovered by pleading guilty? Did he say yes, this is where I've been funneling the funds and here there's no So you know, I have a And it sounds like you have respect for the courts in that they took on board the detail that the judge that originally sentenced tamish. But the question that I asked from a layman's point of view, I'm forgetting myself of being a detective from a layman's point of view. Okay, So that tallied up. It was millions
of dollars that were fraudulently taken from people. It's pretty hard to spend millions of dollars in a short period of time, So therefore that cash has to be somewhere. We've got a blake that's doing now nine years jail gets out. If we don't know where that money is, what's to suggest that the is me speculating? So I don't want to get ourselves in the trouble have access to that money that's never been recovered.
Well, I mean, I think the only person that knows the answer to those questions is Hamish. As part of this case, it was we were told that there was no money anywhere in Australia. So they had investigated to a point where they there was no money. They couldn't
see any money sitting in any bank account anywhere. And I think this is the other thing that I've learned about, you know, investigating fraud, is that the you know, Tom's job and the police role is to arrest people like Hamish, prove that he has fraudulently deceived people and stolen money and put him in jail for as long as period of time as possible. Right tick. They did that, and they did a bloody good job. Their job is not to go find my money.
You're recovering the money.
It's not and they're not required to do that, they're not incentivized to do that. They may not have the technology certainly stretch for resources, as we know, and so you know, they did what they needed to do to get the outcome they got and that's just the way
the process works. But potentially had you know, and this is another problem with people who've lost all their money to crime and fraud, is that we don't have the money to go and pay a private investigator to go trace you know, offshore bank accounts or you know where that money could possibly be. And those private companies are probably the ones that do have the time and the skills and the resources and the ability to go and
do that. But unfortunately, when you've lost all your money to crime like this, you didn't have you don't have the funds to go pay someone. So it sort of ends there. But I mean, he certainly didn't spend money the way that, you know, in line with what he had at his fingertips. Now he could have used that money to go pay people off maybe I don't know, you'd think that that would be able to be traced or seen, could be offshore, or maybe he gambled it
on the poke's down at the DYRSL. I mean, I don't know.
You just don't You just don't know, and it's frustrating there. And I think a lot of people are surprised when they do report fraudulent crime to police, think great, the police are onto it. Now we're going to get their money back. You articulated it very well. The role of the police is to establish whether and the fence is being committed and if it has gathered the evidence, present that evidence to the courts and then the courts can decide.
But it's not. If we can find where the fund's gone have gone, it makes the case easier to prove. But if you can't, and you can still prove it without finding where the fund funds have gone. But is there a level of frustration that you have knowing that that money's out there and just don't know where it is?
Well, I guess it's still an open question in my mind. Is it in fact out there? I suspect that it is, but I don't know that for sure. I have had to come to the point in my life where I've had to let that go. So I came to a conclusion and a realization and an acceptance that I would never get that money back because I felt like the longer I stayed in a place of wandering and hoping and feeling like I had my hand held out hoping
that someone would give me that money back. Was it just felt like I was sort of in it's still in that victim state.
Or.
At the mercy of what everyone else was doing to, you know, to go and find it or whatever. So I just accepted that I would never get that money back, and I've chosen to spend my energy on rebuilding my finances, rebuilding myself, and making sure that I have a great life. And that's the only way I could do with it.
Seems like a smart way to deal with it. Smart doesn't make it easy, But I understand where you're coming from the fact that you're out speaking about it now on this podcast you book the Last Victim and also the podcast Who the hell is Hamish? I forget? Is it Max or whatever? Just before I go in the that little spill. Was he using Max for all the other victims? Was that he's or was it just different names alone?
Well, mostly people knew him as Hamish. The other victims all knew him as Hamish. Okay, I was the only one that knew him as Max. Tavita.
He must have thought you just needed to find the mad.
Special special a Max. I think he was busy at that point in his life, early in twenty sixteen, building this new persona. He's had multiple names over. I was reached out by a woman just last week who knew him when she was in her twenties and he pretended to be a music producer. She's a singer and she knew him as Hamish Hamilton. So you know, every day I hear a different story, there's something else. But yeah, he was busy building this persona. And a woman locally
who I know through a group of friends. She actually was friends with one of his nieces and growing up when they were young, and obviously knew him as Hamish and what have you. And in early twenty sixteen, was at a birthday party, fortieth birthday party, Hamish was there, walked over to this group of people and introduced himself as Max. And this friend turned around and she goes, fuck off, Hamish, it's you know, Sally or whatever it was. You know, I'm not going to say her name, but
oh yeah, yeah yeah, and just brushed it off. And she never thought about it. Twice until the podcast came out and she met me. She said He introduced himself as Max to me, and I knew him as Hamish from when I was sixteen, so I think back then he was starting to build this.
New Yeah, getting it done. Is parents alive?
I believe they are. Yeah, I believe they are.
Okay, It's just adds to the layer of deceit, doesn't it.
Yeah. I mean, who lies about their parents dying? If you've had a parent die, you don't lie about that.
That's the thing. You couldn't. You couldn't do it, even if it served a purpose. You're not going to not going to do that. Getting back to the question I was going to say, the fact that you've come out publicly speaking about this on the podcast with your book, how do you feel about that? Do you feel it's making you is it cathartic? And do you feel like you're giving people their heads up? Hey look at me. It can happen to anyone. Yeah.
I think it's really important to tell these stories. And I've come to terms with my story, and you know, I talk about it publicly in corporate settings as well, because I'm so passionate about this not happening to anyone else. And I feel that if we talk about it, if we educate, you know, there's so much shame around these stories that if they are kept in silence and in secret and in the dark, it's just going to keep happening.
And the more we talk about it, the more we educate, the more sort of resilience we're going to be both financially and emotionally as a community and as a society. And part of it for me is advocating on behalf
of victims. So, you know, I tell a story where there's this seventy five year old woman that I sat across the dinner table from and her grown up children were flanked either side of us, and she had heard my story and knew I was writing the book and listened to the podcast, and she started telling me how she lost her divorce settlement when she was in her early forties. The kids were probably preteens, and she had not told anybody for thirty five.
Years because it's shame or embarrassment.
Shame, embarrassment. She didn't want to admit it had happened. The kids sort of knew bits and pieces, but she sat across the dinner time and she was crying. She was telling me this story, and I was thinking that poor woman, that poor woman who is held onto that story for thirty five years because she's so ashamed and she's so embarrassed, and she just wanted it to go away. And you know, it's stories like that that just fuel
my fire. And I think if we can talk about these things and release, you know, release those feelings from someone, that's got to be doing something good as well. But mostly it's around education around scams and fraud, because this is an extreme story. This is most people will never ever ever experience anything like this, but we are all being targeted with scams and fraud every single day. They're getting more sophisticated with AI, with technology, with scammer farms
in Southeast Asia. There is the likelihood that you or someone you know will lose money to a scam. And so my purpose in life now is to educate people using my story as that you know, something to make people sit up and listen, and also to help people realize that it can happen to anyone, and we just need to be more vigilant, We need to be more aware, and we need to help, you know, become more resilient as a community.
Aware of it. I think a couple of points from what you just said about the victims coming forward and the shame, like I can't point out enough from a policing point of view, you guys are victims. There's nothing to be ashamed of. It's not the shame doesn't come We've been a victim. That's you know, we should be able to put our hands up. I know where people
are coming from. You don't want to feel like you were duped or stupid or that, but I think you out speaking the way that you do, it's clearly you're not. You're not some innocent person that could be easily manipulated, little tricked, and that can happen to you. So an important thing that that message comes across be aware of the scams. What advice would you give people? And as
you said, you're one with Max is an extreme. We're talking online dating, we're talking finances, we're talking talking everything. But would you look back and go if there's something that little instinct or something that just go that little bit further and check if you've got a doubt, because there might be something there is that even if you don't.
Have an instinct. Because one of the things that I found really hard to reconcile with myself was that there was no part of my intuition that kicked in. Sure, I thought it was quirky, there was some There were some quirks, but I mean, who doesn't have a quirk in their forties, you know, plus a history and all of that sort of stuff. I you know, I think we can yes intuition. You think your intuition is going
to kick in. Mine didn't. And I always prided myself on having a really good intuition to be able to read people. So even if it doesn't kick in, I would say, whenever you're thinking about you know, you're presented with information that has to do with you know, with money or you know, from a digital perspective, there are so many things you can do. So you know, there are resources online where you can just type in you know e toll scam and you see a bunch of
articles come up. If you're not sure, if you are on shore, don't click on the link. I think we all know those. If you are approached for an investment, that's a bit of a red flag. You know, you don't generally get calls out of the blue from your bank about the latest term deposit rate that they've got going very very rarely. You know, if you are investing with a financial advisor, you can go onto the ACIIC
website and check that they've got the right credentials. You can check that they're able to advise you on you know, on superannuation for example. You can also check if they've got a red mark against their name, if they've been banned, if there are any complaints. So there are places you can do if you get an email, there are websites where you can do a domain look up and you
can see when that domain was registered. So there was one recently and the woman was approached by ing about a term deposit and the URL and the email address that she got. I plugged that into the particular website and the domain was only registered halfway through last year. Now I'm pretty sure irong has been around longer than since June last year. So first, first red flag. Next one is that domain is registered to a country in
the Caribbean that has no tax triple red flag. So you start to look, but it looks like it's ig it's it's just a derivative of that in terms of the UROL. Now, these are just some simple.
Tips, right, practical tips.
Practical tips. Do a reverse image search. There are some websites that are fantastic if you put a photo in and it tralls the internet and finds the same person or that same picture, and then you can click on it and see and see what that article is about. So you know, there's those sort of things. If someone doesn't have a digital footprint, big red flag.
There's so many things that you just said there. I'm trying to because I was a victim of fraud last Sunday, wake up at five am in the morning, text from the bank, is this your credit card? Blah blah blah to cancel my credit card? That was someone accessing my account and got a little canceled, and then the reissuing them the credit cards and all that can strike strike anyone. The things that you just outlined there, there's about twenty points, all of which were very good. We need to put them.
We need to They're on my website.
On your website, please please, I'm going to make a note because I need that type of advice. What's your website.
It's Tracyhall dot com dot Are you okay?
Yeah, all right, let's have a look there because they were so practical. I'm actually writing this stuff. Yeah, I am going to look.
I'll I'll send you the document. There are so many things, there are so many resources. I think the hard thing, Gary is that they just sit everywhere. You know, the banks are trying to do it, the insurance companies are trying to do it. We've got the National Anti Scams Commission, which is being set up by the A Triple C, which is doing wonderful work. I mean, it's a big job to do, but there's all this information everywhere. There's scam watch, dot gov, dot AU. I think is the
I've got it on the list. But there are places you can go to educate yourself. There are places you can go to figure out what you need to do if you have been scammed. The problem is it's in all of these different places, and you know, it's quite hard to know.
To stay on top of it because it continually evolves too, because one scam's gone by the way side, and then the next one comes in exactly. Yeah. Yeah, So we do need to apply that due diligence to what we're doing, because we're all vulnerable to it, aren't we.
And yeah, and Vulnerability comes in so many ways. You don't have to be looking for love on the internet. You know, there is research that says we are significantly more vulnerable after a major life event, so divorce, death, a major illness, or a natural disaster. And what they say is that we shouldn't be making any big decisions during those times because we are more vulnerable. Now. They're commonly the times when you have to make the biggest decisions.
You know, where am I going to live with the kids? How I've got to set up new bank accounts, how do I fund you know, my treatment or whatever hover it might be. And you know, it forced me to realize that vulnerability comes in those ways. But it also could be you know, you could have just had a baby and you haven't slept for three weeks, so you're tired. That's vulnerability. You could be a CEO traveling the world going through different time zones and have jet lag. That's vulnerability.
And vulnerability is part of the human condition. We're not going to stop being vulnerable. And it's nothing wrong. We've been vulnerable. It's just that these types of people and these types of scams pray on that vulnerability, and that's where we have to be more vigilant and just be aware. And I think you're right thinking critically about the information that's presented to you. And I have no problem saying
that I didn't think critically enough. I was just relieved that someone who I thought loved me was going to help me with something.
Yeah, and look with Tracy from a sense of betrayal, like when you bring the emotions into It's one thing to do the fraud schemes, so it's next level when you're putting you through the emotional trauma of what happened to you. And it's a sad place if we've all got to look out for that for every new relationship that's formed. But yeah, what happened to you could happen to anyone.
So that's yeah, I say, be skeptical, not cynical. Wow, I kind of look at it now. And you know, people say, what advice are you going to give to your daughter and her friends that they make their way into the dating speed And you know, it isn't get one hundred points of ID. It isn't to go looking for all the red flags because that's a very cynical place to live. It's a shitty world if that's what you're looking for, But it is to be more curious
and more boldly. If you're not getting the answers, you won't be like cath ask again, ask again, and be skeptical, but don't be cynical. And so that's you know, Hamish is operating at a top one percent of psychopathic vendors, Like here's an outlier. Most people aren't like that. So you can't go looking for Hamishes in a world full of ordinary good people. So that's my advice is just be skeptical. Okay, not cynical.
All right, that's good advice your life now, Yeah, you're in a good.
Place, are in a great place. Yeah, I mean I'm working hard. I'm obviously going around talking to a lot of corporates and educating people, advocating for victim support, obviously publicizing the book. But yeah, I've made this my work. Now, this is what I do full time. And yeah, so it's great. I'm really enjoying it. It's a hussle, it's a challenge, but you know, I feel like it's making an impact, which I'm really proud of.
Like the passion that you got for in the spring in your step. I can see it. So if there's one positive that's come out of this, that's the work that you're doing now. And I think it's great that you're able to articulate it so clearly, in so specifically and personally, so people can look what can happen to Tracy, It can happen to any of us. So great with the work that you've been done the book. Let's give
the book a pitch. So it's the last victim. As you can see, I've got quite a few tags in there. Had a great read on the weekend. Spent my weekend reading it, and I was angry, I was happy, I was sad. It was all the things, and it feels yeah, it was really a good read. Where can people get the book online?
Through Amazon or your nearest bookstore. Obviously in bookstores Big w is stocking them. Or you can get an audiobook through Spotify or Audible, and there's e books available as well, so I check away you want to do it?
Great stuff, Well, thank you so much for coming on I catch killers and sharing your well, I'm going to call incredible story because it is a story from start to finish. I'm reading reading No that can't happen, but it has happened, and you've come out smiling, and.
That's great to say, thanks for having me.
Thanks for coming on. What an impressive person Tracy Hall is. If someone like Tracy can be a victim of a fraud, so like Hamish McLaren, I think it shows that any could be. We all need to be careful. But the crime that was committed on Tracy was absolutely despicable, not only stealing your love but also your life savings. There's a lesson for all of us that we all could be victims, and it was an important message in such an impressive person, Tracy Hall.