The OC Savior: Ep. 5, Devil in the Den

income tax payments. They all think those checks are going to the I R S, but really they're getting deposited into a secret bank account that Lizzie Mulder creates called income tax payments. That's bullshit, man, I mean, that's lack of moral accountability. And while Lizzie's victims lose hundreds of thousands to her clever scam, Jen Rodriguez's boss is about to blow them all out of the water, because how

much money did your boss end up losing? Millions? I'm Jonathan Walton and this is Queen of the Con The O C Savior, Episode five, Devil in the Den. Explain to me, how did Lizzie steal money from your boss? Blindly robbed her blind forensic accountant Jen Rodriguez intensely regrets being friends with Lizzie Mulder for a handful of years while working at the same company selling luxury experiences to high end clientele and her kids with my kids, What does that make you feel like? Now? What runs to

your head? You know in a moment, sometimes I feel like a bad mom because I opened my family up, and you know, I kind of invited the devil into the den. That makes me uneasy because I do have a sense of responsibility to protect my family, and you know, I made them a little bit more vulnerable than they needed to be, And that's uneasy for sure. That's a regret.

I feel the exact same way, like you invited this vampire into your world, and yeah, introduced them to people, vouched for them, vouched for them unwittingly helped them scam people, right, I know how you feel. Mari did that to me too, and Mary used our relationship to establish herself as this trustworthy person who knows, you know, my husband and I were good people. So like she uses our reputation to scam other people, and Lizzie Maulda did the same to you.

When you realize that your vision of seeing the good in people is what caused so much pain and hurt to so many people. I feel like you blame yourself. I mean, there's a level of respond instability, and you should. It's like a thing you have to go through. And there were so many things that as an accountant, as a controller, having a background, you know, knowing processes and protocol, and I just have to say, my husband always saw

through Lizzie's bullshit. He always knew, like he had such intuition, like there's something not right. But at the time, you know, I would have never assumed somebody would steal like that is like the furthest thing from my mind. I couldn't even like that wasn't a thing. I thought, maybe, you know, she's a little arrogant, yeah, and a little statistic yeah. But I never would have thought there was more to

that story. But he called it from the time he met her the first law and actually catches Lizzie in is that Salesforce database call that we talked about in the last episode. It's like a five thousand dollar subscription. I had told her, Lizzy, you need to pay this bill. There I'm shut down, and she had told me, I'm on the phone right now with the guy. Well, I was on the phone with the guy and she was texting me blow by blow, but I was on the phone with Salesforce and there was just no so you

knew every single text at that point. It was a lot lie. Yeah, how did you find out Lizzie was up to no good with the fraud part or everything? It seems like it was a cascading series of events that happened one after the other. We realize she's she's been scamming your boss. But but how specifically, like what was the first sign? That was the first sign with the Salesforce called? However, in that moment, being naive to all of this, there's no way I would have ever

put together that somebody created this being. I had no idea I was because it just seems so out of left field. Evil? Who could? Who still is it still is? Six years later, it's still on ad the mobile to me? However, what happened that really put it all into the tumbling snowball effect was one of our friends that Lizzie was good friends with called me and said, have you heard the rumors? There were rumors and what were those rumors

that Lizzie had done some nefarious things. She had a bank account in one of their other friends names and credit cards and their names. And Jesse discovered all this stuff when Lizzie was gone on a vacation. Remember Jesse is Lizzie's husband, and at that time she said, she's writing these checks and their two income tax payments. Well, I happen to have all the mail told all this. You think she talked to me, Um, that's a big fat no. She won't talk to me, but thankfully Jen will.

One of my greatest mentors, John Toms, like he always said, this is how you touch people is through stories. That's why I'm here with you. It's because, yeah, through this podcast, my story is going to touch a bookkeeper or a friend, a parent, a child, whatever, whoever. They're going to hear the story and hear your story and say, oh my gosh, this is a thing like yes, Gen Rodriguez, a more benevolent creature you will never find anyway. After Jenny, here's

the rumors that Lizzie is scanning people. She does what any good friend would do. I called Lucy and said, there's some things going on and rumors going around. Are you okay? And the panic and the fear in her voice. I mean, unless she is really a phenomenal actor. It felt to me her panic and fear in her voice is what made it really real for me, was because I realized, oh my, that she really did do this, like this is real. After that phone call, Jen gets

very suspicious that things aren't adding up. She suddenly worries Lizzie is involved in something criminal. So gend decides to take matters into her own hands in an attempt to figure out what Lizzie's up to. I used to carry the mail from my boss and give it to Lizzie. I used to transfer back and forth, like you know. I'd get her mail and I'd give it to her. I never would open her mail because it just wasn't part of my duty or my responsibilities. I just was

a courier for the mail. And I happen to have a stack of her mail, and I ripped open a big statement right then and there and saw right there on the bank statement that there was a check for eight thousand dollars to income tax payments. And I literally almost vomited, Oh my God, like vomited, because you knew at that point that that's going into Lizzie's account. Well, I didn't even go to that place yet because that was even like we you have account with income tax payments,

like what it was so unfathols. It's like dreaming up the Game of Thrones, Like how could you dream that up? Like like there were so many layers, because I don't think most people would think they could open an account at a bank called income tax payments. People think the bank would flag it, but you would think they won't. They won't. Lizzie Malder takes income tax payment checks from

Jen's boss for five years. She would sit down with her and prepare her quarterly numbers based off her business sales and revenue, and she would say, okay, this is what you need to pay for your estimated taxes, and she would prepare payment, she would sign the check, she would take the check, she would leave her house and go and deposit the check directly into our bank account

income tax payments. But her bank account was really Molder Financial and Consulting, And then she had a d b A underneath that account is income tax payment, which was really clever because technically, in Bake jargon, the income tax payment, the d B A is technically a third party d b A which means doing business as so they're technically not clients of the bank, which is this great banking law.

It's a loophole that she either was a complete genius or she got really lucky because she's letting now the bank off the hook. Yes, because income tax Payments technically didn't open the account, Mulder Financial did, so she created a layer. And this is very common in con you know, like when you have money wiring, you do a lot of layering because it helps to hide it. Lizzie Mulder

is a crafty one for sure to create layers. As Jen says, not only does Lizzie use a d b A called income Tax Payments to open a new bank account, Detective Iraqi and uncovers Lizzie actually has Jesse, her husband opened that bank account for her, so she's not directly connected to it at all. Every month in Lizzie's Bank of America account that we found actually completely by accident. So when you execute a search warrant to the bank, you have to be very specific. I need all the

accounts under this name, this social security number. So Bank of America returned the search warrant and I had Molder Financial Right, which is Lizzie's accounting business. And when I got that search warrant back, I'm looking at it and I'm not really seeing anything suspicious. Had a balance of like eight grand, you know, ten thousand in deposits, twelve thousand in withdraws, you know, just normal everyday transactions. And I called Bank of America and I said, something's wrong

here because this woman is cashing these checks. And the Bank of America investigator, they're very limited on what they can tell us. They could, they have to stay within the search warrant. And so the investigator, which is usually a retired cop right says, well, there's another account here, but it's not under Lizzie Moulder. She's an authorized signer

on the account. So like if your husband has a bank account and he adds you as a signer, you can essentially go into the bank and cash a check, right, but it's his account. But it's his account, and if Detective Moracian issues a search warrant on you, his account is not going to show up. So what Lizzie had done is she created Income Tax Payments dB A doing business as under Jesse Moulder, her husband, and then added herself as a signer, and that is completely intentional distance herself.

She must have known it wouldn't come up in a search warrant like that's pretty fucking meticulous. Either that or she didn't care if Jesse got caught. Most con artists are psychopaths, incapable of feeling empathy for other human beings, so maybe she really doesn't care if her husband, Jesse gets caught. The other thing about psychopaths is they're compulsive and convincing liars, and most victims don't discover the lie

until it's way too late. Part of what she did, too, is she diminished my knowledge to my boss because my boss would never listen. If I would say, hey, this doesn't quite make sense, you would get batted down. So she was programming your boss against you, and you against your boss. She probably was I swear, divide and conquer. It's every con artist's first move. Don't you think Lizzie was talking ship about Jen to Jen's boss, And that's one of the reasons maybe Jen's boss was so dismissive

when Jen would points out things. Detective Iraqian is now keenly aware of the entirety of Lizzie Malder's m O. One of the things Lizzie was famous for is in a roundabout way, making people feel stupid, right, like, you know what, you run a podcast, I'm an accountant. Let me handle it, right, you just focus on your podcast. That's kind of how she would talk to people. And every single victim I talked to said the same thing.

They said, Yeah. Every time I would start asking questions, she would just get dismissive or she would throw a temper tantrum and just get angry, like consulted, how dare I? How dare you? I? Pepper died right, and and so Jen's are very like not m a stake kind of person, and Lizzie kind of browbeats people into hey, you you stay in your life. And that's how Lizzie operates. And Lizzie's lane is her income tax payment bank account scam, but that isn't the only method she employs. Took con

money out of Jen's boss. Lizzie was supposed to get a quote for business insurance and it was supposed to be for five and Lizzie wrote the check for five thousand, and my boss caught it and she was able to get the money back, which was kind of interesting, but she made it out to this mystery person that was supposedly this insurance agent and that wasn't even real. When I went on vacation is when she had a heyday because she took the checks that I wrote to vendors

and cash him into personal check. Did she write checks to Lizzie Molder or her company or income tax payments? It wasn't even to anything. It was to other vendors. But the bank never caught it. Oh, so she just deposited us checks in her account. Boy, banks are sloppy. You think when you write the name on the check that only that person can cash it, but it's not

the case. And the reason why in for all of us consumers and people that want to get their money fast, is because check deposits are automated and so they go through so unless something is flagged, then it's not caught. Often there were so many checks that didn't have signatures that she didn't even they weren't even signed, but they never got caught and the bank cashed them. And the

bank cashed them without even catching it. So many Lizzie steals more than eight hundred thousand dollars from Jen's boss, which is a fortune, but the financial fallout Lizzie scams create and I r s penalties and legal fees is way more than that. How much money did your boss end up losing millions, millions of dollars because of Lizzie Mulder? Gosh,

that would devastate anyone. And in the same way that my con artist, the Irish Heiress changes the actory of my life, forever con artist Lizzie Maulder changes the trajectory of Jen's life too. At the time, you were not a forensic accountant, So this whole experience with Lizzie Maulder inspired you to become out of almost necessity. Yes, first of all, I've had sixteen or eighteen years of accounting experience, day to day operations, being a controller, reconciliation, like all

the things that you do to run a business. But at the time, when I was younger, a forensic accountant was when you know, you sue a partner and you need to go through their books, or you're getting divorced and you need to go through your ex husband's books. Forensic accounting wasn't hey, let's look at fraud. This is fairly new. It's now more a thing than ever. I mean, it's really not new, but we're experiencing it more so.

At the same time, Jen is going through all her boss's financial records to ferret out exactly how Lizzie Maulder scammed her. She's studying for an entirely new career. I threw myself into school and I got a master's in forensic accounting Digital forensics with the concentration data analytics also, because that's what it really boils down to is looking at a lot of data. You are amazing and I'm

not the only one who thinks so. Jen was friends with Lizzie Moulder, and Jen started discovering this fraud before I even called her. Detector Jordan Moracian quickly figures out that soon to be forensic accountant Jen Rodriguez is about to become a powerful ally. Jen's boss. She's operating this business and she's got Jen Rodriguez who is doing a lot of the accounting and bookkeeping, and she's also got

Lizzie who's the accountant. And so when Jed, who is very meticulous, is sending these records to Lizzie and Lizzie's refusing to send things back Jen starts getting suspicious and going to her boss, who's a friend. But in Jen's boss's ear is this Pepperdine educated accountant who's very manipulative. And you have to understand the personality of Jen Rodriguez's boss. You know, if she were to take her car to get washed and they were to say, would you like

us to wax it, she'd say, I don't know. You guys do the car wash. You do whatever you think you need to do, and just tell me how much. Right. She's not a numbers person, you know, And that's why Lizzie was able to get so many checks out of her. Jen discovered very early on, like before things got really bad. Jen discovered a check that was out of place, like, hey, this doesn't make sense. This check was cashed twice or whatever,

and Jen contacted Lizzie. Lizzie blew up, and Jen brought it to her boss's attention, and within minutes Lizzie had cleared it up. Lizzie had an email from a fake person saying, our mistake, we didn't mean to cash that check. We've refunded you the money. Here you go, and and Lizzie immediately deposits some money back and account. Jen, who can't see the account, just sees this email and it's like, well, I'm gonna keep my eye on her. But it looks like it was a mistake. But it wasn't a mistake.

It was it was part of the Czech frond scheme. Jen and Detective Iraqian hit it off almost immediately. How did Detective Morakian enter your life? Okay, so we met first only on the phone and called yes, I think he had reached out to my boss, and then my boss gave him approval to talk to me and he called me, and I remember I was in the car with my husband and my son, and I remember thinking like, this is really a thing, like a police police officers calling me, you know, And I got to talk to him.

And shortly after that phone call, Jen Rodriguez becomes instrumental in the Lizzie Mulder investigation. Jen Rodriguez is really kind of the person that helped keep me organized and also helped explain that scheme because that's tricky to follow, It's very tricky. Jen Rodriguez is really good with numbers, so she starts assisting Detective Miraqian with untangling the complicated financial web of scams that Lizzie Mulder pulls on her boss.

So you had an accounting background, yes, and you started helping detective Miraqian with all these numbers, trying to trace the money and figure out put the pieces together. And so then I start telling him where the money had gone. It had already tracked that it was going to this one, found the A, B A. And I was able to find just some little pieces that I knew, not knowing that I was like really doing detective work, but just trying to follow the money. Right, money's gone, you gotta

follow the money. Common sense. So we talked and we put it together. You know, it developed so organically because he had skills and tools and things that I didn't have. Like so I would say, can you subpoena death? And like if we get the bank records, we can find that. You would point out things that he didn't necessarily know he needed, or he would say like we could do this, and I be like, oh, if we could do this, we could get that. Like H and R block was one.

I think he had a subpoena because I was like, well, if we could see she used H and R block to file all these taxes, we can see where the money went. So that was like one thing. He was able to do that. So at first I felt like sometimes we were throwing pasta against the wall to see what it would stick. I probably wasted a lot of energy and time because I was just trying to find everything.

Right now, I know that you need to have a little bit more our focus intention when you're working, but I was just consuming everything I could because I wanted to understand you wanted justice and they wanted to hopefully find the money. I thought, Oh, if I could just get the money, it'll I'll be okay. You can help

your boss, Yeah, they'll be okay. Gen Rodriguez is truly a godsend for Detective Miraqian because the Lizzie Maulder case is quickly getting insanely complicated and expansive as Detective Miraqian starts finding more and more victims and tries to convince each and every one of them to press charges. The deputy disattorney who prosecuted my case, my con artist told me at the onset because it would be like twenty

something court appearances over like more than a year. It took so much of my time and off work and everything. He said, most people in your position just stopped coming to court and we have to drop the chargers. You have to drop the case, Like that's not happening. But I understand. It can wear you down and people don't want to dissipate, and if you don't participate, they there's no case. They dismiss it. And I stayed on these victims.

They all have my personal cell, which is amazing. I was calling them, checking in with them, just keeping them from giving up. And it wasn't because I'm this great detective. It was because I had put so much of my time into it that I didn't want to lose it based on someone deciding last minute they wanted to back out. It would have been incredibly frustrating and it would have been a disservice to everybody else. Yeah. I was taking calls at all hours of the night to keep victims

in in the fight. Right, My wife, who never complains about anything, started complaining. She started saying, you're always on your face this case. It's sucking up. You'd think Laguna Beach p D would be circling the wagons right about now and assisting their ace detective with this incredibly complicated and far reaching case. But you'd be dead wrong. I didn't get very much suppoor from my department. Why they

run a business. Essentially, we're gonna Beach PD runs a business, and their businesses the entire community, not just this one victim, right, which I understand. But I think police departments as a whole, not the one I work for now, But I think police departments as a whole. Stop looking at people as people your case number eighteen dash zero zero one seven one, you know. And I kept trying to explain to my command staff, this is bigger than Laguna. I had a

number of detectives blow me off from other departments. I had some that were very helpful. Newport Beach PD was very helpful, but there were a couple other jurisdictions that, yeah, dude, whatever you want to do with this case, that's yours.

I don't want any part of it. Cool right. So when I say they weren't cooperative or weren't helpful, what I mean by that is I was trying to get them to shoulder some of this investigation right, to put some hours in so you're not taking calls with your wife in bed at night, or I'm not driving all the way out San clement A to interview the victims when they could send their local people. So you didn't get much support. You kind of inadvertently recruited Jen because

nobody was helping you. And here you have Jen who's savvy with numbers and accounting and knows all this stuff. She kind of became your investigator. She like helped you with this case, right, And that's why I'm always very quick to give her credit. You know, Jen would get spreadsheets done for me on Excel that would normally take

me an entire day. I'm just a beat cop, right, I'm just a guy who goes out knuckle dragging beat cop who has a grease board and he's writing a bunch of numbers on a grease board that could be erased by the cleaning crew. And I've got do not a race on it, it's not scientific. Whereas I've got gen Rodriguez sending me an Excel spreadsheets and like I would lose the check, got you can't find this one check And she'd be like, oh, I got it, check

your email. I mean just very organized. Jordan and I were like obsessed, Like I mean, I literally left like one hour a night for like three years. You know, we had to get to it. We had to get to all the answers, and those answers are coming from a multitude of directions. While victims like Jay and Marla Avery from jack Wines show up and report Lizzie Mulder directly to police, but when we did talk to Jordan Rocky, he was like the first person not to make me

feel crazy. Other victims first surface as random names on some of Lizzie's forged documents, victims like Mike Cochrane. Lizzie Mulder entered our life when I was the owner and operator of print shop down in Irvine. But by far the most bizarre twist in this con case is the day Jesse Mulder Lizzie his husband shows up but Laguna BEACHPD, seemingly out of the blue and drops a dime on his wife. I'm walking out of the station and in walks Jesse Moulder. I need to talk to a detective. Wow,

I mean literally like just like that. I look at him, I'm a detective, how can I help you? And he says, I'm a firefighter And I think my wife is scamming her clients out of money, and I'm afraid that she's got me involved in it. All right, let's talk. So Jesse's with a friend of his who is an attorney, not necessarily his attorney, but an attorney. So we sit down in the conference room and Jesse proceeds to tell me this story. And I don't know that he's married

to Lizzie Moulder. So Jesse sits down with me. He tells me how he's a brand new firefighter in the city of Orange. He's married to a woman named Lizzie or he called her Aizabeth, and she's an accountant. And I came home because I thought she was cheating on me. I started going through the mail and I found all these bills for all these different people, and all these credit cards that are in her name and in the name of her business, and I think she's scamming people

out of millions of dollars. And I didn't put two and two together yet, and I said, well, what's your wife's name? And he goes Elizabeth Mulder, but she goes by Lizzie and I went, okay, uh, yeah, we need to talk next time. On Queen of the con the O C. Savior, Lizzie Mulder and Bushes. Detective Morackian, how the hell did that happen? Lizzie showed up, quote unquote, just showed up, happened to be in the neighborhood, but in the end it comes back to bite her hard.

So yeah, out con the con at that point, and they coned me at first. I played queen of the con. The O C. Savior is a production of A y R Media and I Heart Media, hosted by Me Jonathan Walton, Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions and Eliza Rosen for A y R Media. Written by Jonathan Walton, Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman. Sound design by baked ZD Media, mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggy.

Sound editing, audio and studio engineering by Matt Jacobson. Legal counsel for A y R Media, Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for I Heart Media. Maya Howard You