Imagine a digital currency that can be traded throughout the Internet that was linked to gold. This is what the digital Gold Bank is all about.
Gold, the glinting promise of treasure that drove people from all around the country and the world to Australia back in the eighteen fifties during our gold rush, the influx of prospectors, helping to shape our country into the multicultural nation we now know. The precious metal is sometimes tilted as a recession proof investment, But what Alan metcalf is talking about in this YouTube video is not physical gold. It's a digital concept gold that you can't see or touch,
but which can be bought and traded entirely online. More significantly, this scheme is the first evidence I find of Alan's money going overseas.
Digital monetization means that through the safe world system, we can turn products and services into digital currency. Combined digital monetization with gold, and instantaneously we have a way to restore and sustain the credibility of the world economy. We also have a safe haven to hold the retirement savings of the world.
Everything Alan has just said seems a bit insincere to me, a bit like fool's gold. He can't have seriously believed it that his bank was going to single handedly kickstart the world economy and become a one stop shop for people to invest their retirement money. But it was becoming harder to squeeze more money out of investors, so in twenty fifteen, Alan came up with this wild plan. This was the latest add on to his original Safe World's concept,
which was already ambitious and confusing enough for investors. Now Safewolds was going to have its own currency and bank was called Digital Gold. Alan claimed to have the minus touch. His Digital Gold Bank would be a safe place for investors to store their money and watch it prosper, but it was also a haven of another type, a tax haven. Alan had started the business sixteen thousand kilometers away at
a place known as the Cayman Islands. I'm Alex Turner Cohen, a finance and investigative reporter from US dot com dot AU, and you're listening to the Missing forty nine Million. This is episode six Safe Haven.
I am in Grand Cayman Island today and have just taken the first step towards establishing the Digital Gold Bank.
This is the artificial intelligence program that we've been using throughout the series to recreate Alan's voice. Ai Allen is reading out an email that real Alan sent hundreds of shareholders in April twenty fifteen.
Today, I incorporated the Cayman's company Digital Gold Standard. The company can't be called the Digital Gold Bank until it acquires a banking license.
I'd vaguely heard of the Cayman Islands before I started this treasure hunt. It is located in the Caribbean and as a British overseas territory with a population of about sixty eight thousand citizens. The Grand Cayman is its biggest island, and its sanswept beaches and golden sunrises are popular with tourists. But that's not the main thing the Caymans are known for.
It's heaven for tax dodgers. The Cayman Islands is ranked as the greatest enabler of corporate tax abuse and topped the Haven score ranking according to analysis done by campaign group Tax Justice Network. Allan didn't shy away from its reputation, though Later in the email, he said.
Why has this new company been incorporated in Grand Cayman Because it needs to be an international entity that can operate globally without conflicting taxation interests. This does not mean that we are seeking to avoid paying taxation. We simply need to avoid paying double taxation. There is nothing illegal.
In this move.
He goes on to say he had legal advice on the issue. It's taken me ages to work out exactly what this part of his business was up to. What's helped is that Allan made several YouTube videos, so I've pieced some of it together.
Most honest economists today now agree that the world economy's current woes all started when Richard Nixon removed the Goal standard in nineteen seventy one. Debt and the systematic destruction of the world economy has been out of control since that time. Consequently, people everywhere now live in the hope of somehow restoring the Goal's standard. Share this hope.
It sounds sketchy when I look into it, though. Experts do seem to agree that President Nixon's decision to delink the US dollar from gold are sho in a new era of instability. I'm intrigued now, so I mine for more information. One Safeworld's investor sends me a document titled Digital Gold Standard investment memorandum. This booklet outlines Alan's plans for his alternate currency. In it, Alan said he.
Wanted to create a digital economy for the world that is backed by gold.
That's Alan's AI voice again. His memorandum to investors.
Continued, we will provide the way to monetize gold and silver and turn these valuable physical assets into an everyday common electronic currency. We will also be re establishing the gold standard that once existed and served the world economy.
So well, this is all getting a bit weird for me. People try maraid gold and silver futures all the time, meaning they already effectively function as an everyday common digital currency. There was more. His digital gold was going to be an alternative to PayPal, Alan said, and he even went a step further and planned to issue his users with their own gold paid debit card. Alan had a mock up and everything in the information booklet showing the shiny
debit card he was proposing. He only needed a small amount, he said, eight million dollars to get his gold bank off the ground, and gold and silver would be purchased with any leftover money. The best part, those who had already invested might be able to convert their shares into something real for the first time gold.
We're also aware of the increasing interest among investors to roll over their existing stock market holdings into gold and or silver. Converting retirement accounts into gold and or silver accounts is increasingly popular.
Shares for this digital gold standard were selling for just zero point zero one CeNSE each. The minimum investment was two thousand dollars. He was selling them the same way as Safe World shares, through a bank transfer to a US or Australian account. Allan said people were already interested in asking questions.
If Safe World's TV shares are so valuable, why is the company selling lots in this offer at such a low price. Because early stage funding is valuable. Investors who are prepared to invest at the early stage of business establishment expect and should get rewarded over and above what later stage investors receive. The company is exploring the opportunity to use our superior technology to produce a private and secure digital wallet to support the goalpaid debit card.
Okay, this part I recognize it sounds like some of the cryptocurrency schemes that have become huge in recent years. They're a kind of digital payment system similar to what Alan is pitching, and since launching, cryptocurrencies have been wildly volatile. Alan even reference Bitcoin the world's biggest cryptocurrency later on in the INFOMEMO.
In an electronic economy, electronic money is required. Because of this, we now see an increasing number of digital currencies being created and aggressively promoted to exploit this reality. Among these, Bitcoin is probably the most well known. The problem with all the cyber currencies that are currently available is that they are not universal in nature, They are proprietary, and in some cases, like Bitcoin, their origin is unknown.
He's right. Bitcoin's origin is kind of unknown. It was set up in two thousand and nine by someone calling themselves to Toshi Nakamoto, only no one really knows who Nakamoto is. Apart from that, Bitcoin is pretty well established as a transparent, digital only payment method. Alan seemed to be proposing an alternative to it.
When people hear digital gold, especially today, some people think about bitcoin because it's often referenced as digital gold.
This is Tommy Honan, an analyst at Australian cryptocurrency exchange platform swift X. He's from Brisbane and we meet when he comes to Sydney for a conference. I want to know what digital gold was. Was it cryptocurrency? Is this where investors money could have got to I send Tommy the Digital Gold information memorandum before our face to face interview.
It's almost like a white paper where Alan proposes his methodology and what problem he's attempting to solve with his gold bank concept, and something about it instantly strikes Tommy.
I believe that the project white paper itself lends itself directly from what a crypto white paper would look like, our blockchain project would look like.
The blockchain is central to how cryptocurrency operates. Essentially, it's a way of recording every transaction anyone makes through crypto.
Blockchain gives us the ultimate transparency. Every transaction that goes on chain is tracked. It is something that is filed essentially in a ledger, in a book of transactions that can be available on chain and visible to everyone at any time.
Alan's own idea echoed this, as he.
Declared nothing could be more transparent than this.
Tommy also found that Allan's reasoning was quite similar to the fears that led to the creation of cryptocurrency.
The world was on fire in terms of global markets. We just see in the GFC kind of play out thanks for failing. The Fiat currency system was under a lot of strain. You know, you would have heard about bank runs happening across the globe. I know people that are definitely in that camp where they don't want to hold money in the banks. At that time, the original use case was, yeah, we don't trust anyone, so we
want to create our own currency. We're not kind of self costody it as well, so no one nobody in the world can get access to my money, and the banks can collapse, the governments can collapse, but my value is still safe. So that's where it started. That's not where we are today.
And maybe that fear that everything could collapse around you did make Allen look at gold as a safe investment.
Gold as an investment class is kind of almost prehistoric for some people. I guess it is an order demographic type of investment.
You're saying that the digital version is almost is essentially like having like a bar of gold kind of at the bottom of your bed, but it's being held almost digitally somewhere.
I mean, yeah, it's it's not great practice told pull in underneath your bed I like to put but it is. I guess that's the reality of it.
So to recap, cryptocurrency started out because its early users deeply distrusted governments and banks. They wanted to store their wealth in crypto, safe from the financial woes of the world. At the time Allan was selling digital gold. Very few people had even heard of cryptocurrency. One bitcoin was worth two hundred and fifty US dollars and now it's worth
sixty seven thousand US dollars. There were only five hundred and fifty digital currencies operating back in twenty fifteen, and now there's more than three thousand as it's all become more mainstream.
Absolutely a niche tech that not many of the average people would have been involved with. In twenty fifteen, the market was a lot different than how it is today. Big Kind was worried about two hundred and fifty dollars. Today, I think at the time of recording it's about sixty seven thousand US. But there was about five hundred and fifty digital currencies back in twenty fifteen. There's three thousand plus today, and the entire crypto market was only worthd
about four billion. I think we're just shy of two and a half trillion. At the time of recording, it was a much different world even back in twenty fifteen. It's less than you know, nine years ago, but it was a completely different world back then.
As Tommy was pouring over all the information I'd sent to him before our chat, he spotted a glaring issue, a sign that Digital gold Standard had a problem and was never really going to go anywhere. He brings it to my attention.
For our currency to be truly digital, it needs to be built in the cloud, needs to be built on chain, needs to be built within a block So I guess we have no evidence at this point that actually that project itself was built on chain.
And while I've looked, I haven't been able to find any evidence of a blockchain transaction happening through Allen's Digital gold Standard.
It is quite an interesting case, and there is question marks around whether it actually was built on chain or not. Without that address, it's virtually impossible to find out and to track where the value was coming from, whether specific digital gold tokens were being minted or not. That is almost impossible, like I said, to track until you have the blockchain that it was potentially built on, if it's bitcoind if it's ethereum Selana, whatever blockchain it was.
Despite this glaring floor in Allen's vision, Tommy says there was something to what he was selling. Other cryptocurrencies have been set up back on the value of gold.
Yes, it was innovative at the time. You fast forward twenty twenty four, we have projects like this kind of everywhere. Today. We have tokens that are backed by track the price of gold, and they're kind of quote unquote derivatives of gold.
I have one final question for Tommy, why would Alan set this company up in the Cayman Islands.
Cama Islands is seen as one of the most conducive environments or geographies for innovation. They allow more things to happen where. Things you can do in the Cayman Islands you can't do in Australia because the regulations won't potentially allow you or it hasn't been thought of yet. And then the tax heaven kind of elements that you've mentioned as well, cost of business, cost of running businesses in those areas, they are generally cheaper as well.
So maybe Allan had something. It wasn't perfect, but it could have maybe worked.
Maybe.
Despite what Tommy says about the advantages of basing your business in the Cayman Islands, they're not really renowned for their transparency. When I look into Digital gold Standard, I find one reference buried in a one thousand page document on the Cayman Islands Gazette. Digital gold Standard is listed alongside thousands of other businesses that the island's regulator struck
off in twenty nineteen because of unpaid administrative fees. I track down a document that says Digital gold Standard was registered in twenty fifteen when Alan started sprooking the idea to investors. Alan's wife, Mary Netcalf, is listed as the sole remaining director of the business. Digital gold Standard only had a registered share capital of forty one thousand Cayman Islands dollars, which is about seventy four thousand Ausie dollars.
Suggests that Allan's lofty goals of raising eight million dollars didn't happen. This document also confirms that Digital gold Standard had been shut down in November twenty nineteen. What I haven't been able to do is track down anyone who actually invested in this Digital gold scheme. But Warren Bardon, a Western Australian farmer, comes to the rescue the.
Right further money. He started selling digital gold standardshaws.
You might remember I spoke to Warren in episode four when I visited Geraldton. So you bought into this digital goal.
I didn't go into that.
I'd put enough into it the Metcalf idea, and I wasn't going to put any more.
But Warren's late father, Vaughan did. I didn't even know for sure that anyone had actually invested in Allan's gold venture until now. Vaughan Bardon has recently passed away, and I'm actually speaking to Warren from his father's home as he's still sorting out his dad's estate, including looking after all the cattle left behind.
I think he trusted it a little bit more than me.
Why do you say that he put did you?
Yeah, Warren invested twenty thousand dollars, so Vaughan Bardon handed over more than that. Vaughan did it believing hoping that his kids, like Warren and his sister his grandkids, would be set up for life. I know that because he registered some of the shares in their names. Vaughan Bardon died still not knowing what had happened to his investment, the investment he made into both Safe Worlds and Digital gold Standard. Are you okay with us maybe taking a
few photos of these documents. Up until now, I haven't actually seen a Digital Gold shareholder certificate, but Warren has found one among his father's things, Digital gold Standard incorporated under the laws of the Cayman Islands. It reads it's the fortieth share certificate that was issued, so at least thirty nine people invested before Vaughan Bardon. Right at the top is a dollar sign in a circle that looks like a weird take on the bitcoin symbol, which is
a bee combined with a dollar sign. I've posted the certificate up on the news dot com dot a U website if you want to look for yourself. When my producer Nina Young sees the piece of paper, her mind is made up. Now that I've seen a certificate, the Digital gold doesn't exist.
Mm.
Looks fake.
That's the most fake certificate I've ever seen.
As crazy as all this gold stuff is, there's something else Alan kept hidden from shareholders over the years. Safe Wards had also got mixed up with another notorious tax haven, the British Virgin Islands, also based in the Caribbean. The Virgin Islands has half the population of the Caymans, and it's actually ranked as the best tax haven. The Cayman Islands comes in second and Bermuda comes in third place. There's a strange correlation between tax havens and beautiful beaches.
I'm not sure why. In twenty eighteen, Alan's investors believed that they'd found proof of a money trail that ended at the British Virgin Islands. Years earlier, Alan had registered two businesses there, IBS BVII Limited and IBS Shareholders Holding colimited. The IBS part stands for Internet Business Systems, but when I hear this, I think of another abbreviation for IBS,
irritable bowel syndrome. Perhaps an unfortunate acronym choice there by allan. Anyway, investors believed their money had been transferred to these companies in the British Virgin Islands without their knowledge or consent. Here's an email a group of investors sent to Safforlds in twenty eighteen. As their outrage grew.
The shareholders are aware that in twenty ten, a share exchange of sixty six million, six hundred and seventy four thousand and twenty three shares took place in the USA. The shares in Safe World Internet TV, Inc. An unregistered company, were exchanged for IBS Inc. Shares, a bankrupt company. The shares exchanged were then transmitted to IBS Shareholdings Co. Limited of the British Virgin Islands. This transaction is illegitimate and thus invalid, and.
Going back through my files, I dig out old emails Allen sent to investors in twenty twelve which support the idea of a link to the Virgin Islands. He wrote he'd reached an agreement with investors to transfer their shares into the IBS business for tax reasons.
The shares will be held in trust until Safe World's Television Inc. Is listed and the shares can be sold. If they were issued now, it is most likely that the value of the shares would be taxable in the hands of the recipient. A British Virgin Islands corporate da has been established.
Could this be it? As Safe World's never went public, does that mean the shares and therefore the money is still there in that trust? A literal pot of gold locked up in a company called IBS, which is registered in another opaque island, tax haven, on the other side of the world. This feels like a pretty amazing moment. But straight away I'm thinking what does this mean for the six hundred people hoping to see their money again?
Because how are all these Australian shareholders, especially the ones in places like Garyalton, going to navigate the tricky processes in the British Virgin Islands to recover their money? And what if I'm wrong? So I dig deeper. Alan started IBS BVII Limited in nineteen ninety nine, the same year he had his epiphany where he discovered the law of thought buried in the Bible. This seems important because Alan appears to have kept this company seek it with no
mention to shareholders. He'd already started a business in the Caribbean Sea years earlier when they were giving him their money. Another company was then registered in the British Virgin Islands in twenty twelve, this one called IBS Shareholders Holding Co Limited. This lines up with when Alan claims to have struck an agreement with his investors. For a moment, I think I may have stumbled across the final resting place of the missing forty nine million. But as I keep skimming
over these documents, I'm disappointed. Both companies were dissolved in July twenty twenty three by pure coincidence. That was a week before I first contacted Mary Alan's wife trying to find out more about him as part of this investigation. So if there was any money still in those businesses, where could it have gone. It's not a simple case of X marking the spot. Unfortunately, the fact he.
Set up in the British Virgin Islands is interesting to me because I've traced money to the Camans before and I had bank records. But when I was comparing, like, what's the benefit of setting up a company in the British Version Islands versus the Caymans. British Version Islands, you don't have to disclose who owns what, and it seemed like it was a much greater hurdle than even in the Caymans.
This is Leah Wheatolta. She's an ex FBI agent turned private detective. Leah runs her own podcast called Data Sleuth, where she specializes in following money trails, which is how I heard about her. She has long dark hair and glasses and listens patiently as I tell her what I
know about the late Alan Metcalf. The private detective is right about the hurdles I had to jump over to find out information, any information at all about companies and the British Virgin Islands, and why it's so popular for businessmen and women trying to keep a low profile Without knowing what the company is. It's impossible to find out
who's behind a business in Theridish Virgin Islands. You can't just run a director search based on someone's name, something that I usually rely on for many of my investigations in Australia. But luckily I know about Alan's two companies. I managed to find two documents on the companies. Those are the documents I was looking at earlier. They don't
say who directs these businesses. I'm certain these are Allan's companies, though they match with the company names shareholders found and also the US law firm that Alan used sometimes, Dwayne Morris was listed as being involved in starting the companies. When I tell Leah, the ex FBI agent, about the Allan Metcalf case, she tells me.
This it may even be that he set up businesses there because it's confidential, but the money isn't necessarily in the British versions.
It's like a gut punch after feeling like I was so close to the end of the rainbow. Now it seems that was nothing but naive optimism, So the money might not be there after all, and possibly it never was. Effectively, I feel like I'm back to square one. Frustrated, I decide to pick lee as brains on what I should do next. Where do I start? I've got this, you know, deceased man with forty nine million dollars to his name, and a lot of investors who are wondering where the
money's are gone. So where do I start? Where would you start?
All of this tracing money typically comes from bank statements, credit card statements, and so my experience of tracing money is really broad because it all comes from the same type of information typically, and it's the same whether it's in a divorce or some sort of partnership dispute, or some sort of con artist criminal case, civil case. I think what makes kind of what you're doing interesting is
that you don't have access to that information. So trace money in the way that I'm talking about that's what you would need, some sort of lawsuit from the victims or a lot enforcement agency. However, all is not lost because the same thing. You can kind of work these things backwards. So maybe I'm probably getting ahead of your questions, but maybe you know you don't have bank statements credit
card statements to work from. But I have thought through several ways that you can kind of back into that information. So I realized some of these things may not be available because it happens so long ago. But I think it would be really interesting if any of the investors still have copies of any of the wires or checks that they wrote to him, and to see if they got a copy of that canceled check or information from the bank that might tell you and them where their money was deposited.
As Lee is talking, I make a note to follow up and see if any of the investors I've spoken to have got this kind of paperwork. I do know some of the investors still have records of their bank transfer. When I follow them up, I learned that Alan had set up two bank accounts, a Commonwealth Bank account going to a Brisbane branch and also a City Bank one in California. For American investors.
Did he have an office. If he had an office, did he pay for a lease? If he has a lease, can you get a copy of that please?
I keep making notes. Alan briefly had offices in Irvine, California, but the landlord won't tell me anything. Later I would have more luck with Alan's Australian landlords. Alan had an office in the city center of Brisbane. The owner tells me.
It looks like metcalf Ibs. Safeworld moved into three hundred and twenty Adelaide Street on the twenty ninth of December in two thousand and six. They didn't commence paying the lease until January twenty fifth, two thousand and seven, due to early access incentive. It was a ten desk private office with an internal meeting room and reception area. The contact on a lot of these records is a Michael bertrand I also found a Mary metcalf working for Safeworld's
Internet television that vacated in around twenty eighteen. I do have the bond and lease amounts for these tenants, but due to privacy, we were preferred not to disclose those amounts. But from what I can see, these were all paid in full.
When I look from Michael bertrand online, I find one that could fit the bill. Investors have been searching for the accountant of Safe Worlds, wanting to ask this unknown person some hard questions. Could this be him? When I reach out, though multiple times, he never gets back to me. Whoever he is, it doesn't change the fact that Alan's Brisbane office was in a good location. It was a big office, enough room for ten people to work in there,
and in an expensive part of the city. The landlord says the rent was between six thousand to eight thousand dollars a month. That means Alan paid around eighty four thousand dollars a year, So for the ten years the office was rented out, it would have totaled something close to a million dollars. Now, that would count for some of the money Alan's investors put into the business, but not the whole forty nine million dollars, not by a
long shot. As I feel Leah in on everything I know, she points something else.
Out Pennsylvania, where his business was registered in the States. It is a state that is very favorable to like privacy and things like that. Interesting proof that you are still in business. A lot of times people will set up companies in Delaware, and I believe Nevada maybe as well, because they will also have some of those like really protective you know, you can't find out as much information about it. So again it's just like another why set
up there, especially if you're not from there. It's kind of an odd place to set something up.
Learning all this makes me wonder. Several people have claimed that Alan wasn't a fraud, just incombatant and that Safefood was just mismanaged. From what Leah is saying, though, it seems like Alan was pretty business savvy, like he knew exactly what he was doing and then suddenly he died. After Alan's death, it seems like his plans started to unravel. His wife, Mary had to make sense of what he left behind. She was left footing the bill for a
substantial debt. I put in a freedom of information request to the Fair Work On Budsman, an Australian government department that deals with workplace disputes. I had no idea what I would find if anything, but my request strikes gold. I learned that a full time Safeworlds employee had left the company but never received their final wages they were owed forty one thousand dollars. They'd been trying unsuccessfully for three years to recover their lost money while Mary was
the new boss. In twenty nineteen, they lodged a formal complaint with the Fair Work On Budsmen. Safeworlds haven't done a single payment after I left, the worker wrote, please help me get my unpaid salary. Mary Metcalf told the Fair Work On Budsman that her company was experiencing cash flow issues and she was trying to sell Safefworld's assets to repay them. The matter has since been marked as resolved,
so presumably this person was paid. Remember Rod McKay, the hardcore investor from Geraldton we heard from in the last two episodes who recruited four hundred and fifty others from his hometown and then sent a string of wild emails casting doubt on the whole Irish deal. This might jog your memory.
You have overseen the demise of a fifty million dollar company made up predominantly of mum and Dad investors.
He issued the company a new threat, saying if there was no implementation of a marketing strategy for the sale of Safe.
Worlds, a class action may well result.
At the same time, Charlie Weinbein, an investor from the Netherlands, was also getting increasingly desperate. He's the one who tipped me off to this scheme in the first place. He and his wife put all their spare cash into Safe Worlds in twenty thirteen. The Dutchman has been trying for a decade to find out what happened and if you'll ever see a scent of his missing money. In twenty twenty two, he decided to engage a lawyer.
We were having a few beers together with a friend of mine who is a lawyer, and I explained him the whole situation with Safe world and I said I wanted a lawyer to write a letter just to get more information, because all I wanted to know is where is the money, where is the investment, and what is the investment and who are the investors. That's all the
information that I really wanted to note. But the reaction that I got back was, of course, that there was no way that I was going to see or hear anything. I didn't get any direct answer at all, and that says enough for me. That says enough.
That's not a good sign This lawyer sent off several legal letters in twenty twenty two.
There never has been any proof of investing my client's money as promised. My client has now come to a point where he no longer accepts any excuse not to refund his money. Therefore, I summon you to immediately return his invested money of fifty two thousand Australian dollars as otherwise we will have no other choice than to take you to court.
Mary replied, this was obviously a startup company with the hope of early success, but of course without any guarantee. There never were, nor are there funds set aside to fulfill such a non existent guarantee.
Lacking the funds, Charlie did not go to court. He doesn't think he'll be getting his money back, but he's still fighting. Just a few months after his legal bid failed and he received this response from Mary, Charlie reached out to me to see if I could help him. I met Mary Metcalf at her house in the Flesh last episode. But after everything I've now learned, there's so much more I want to ask her, so I email Mary a long list of questions.
Dear Miss Cohen in addition to your surprise visit to my home and subsequent email, I must tell you that I am in no position financially to respond in detail to your various interrogations. I frankly have no confidence that the facts will be reported fairly and properly. However, I do refer you to the details in my previous emails, the information I gave to ASEIK, and the reports I try to provide to shareholders regularly. Yours, sincerely, Mary metcalf ps.
There never has been any bank accounts in Cayman or British Virgin Islands. The suggestion is just not true and very upsetting.
I wasn't expecting a thesis in return, but wow, this response just makes me have more questions. So she says she's not in a position financially to respond. Does that mean Mary doesn't have any money at all? Does the company not have any money? If so, where's the forty nine million gone? And she says there are no Cayman or Virgin Island bank accounts. I guess what I've found proved that the companies were registered there, but not necessarily
that there were bank accounts set up overseas. So doesn't mean the money isn't there either. When I replied to her, hoping to at least clarify all of this, she never gets back to me. It's really frustrating. I feel like I've just been on a big loop. And while I have more of an idea of what Allan was up to after this line of investigation, still no solid lead
and what he did with all the money. Investors occasionally receive an email from Mary telling them she's still looking for buyers and that's all they ever hear about Safe Worlds. The most recent one was in January this year. Michael Blake, the former footy player who was once one of the largest supporters of Safe Worlds, gave the business three hundred thousand dollars of his and his family's fortune. Now he thinks it will take a miracle to ever see that again.
I don't know she's trying to sell, or how she's getting her contacts, or if she's going out to meetings or whatever. You know, if something happens which will be way at a left field, in a miracle, it would be it would be nice.
Yeah.
All these years since Alan first made these grand plans, Michael is wondering what happened to the secret code he talked about that was supposed to revolutionize the world and make all the investors rich in the process. You might remember him questioning this in the very first episode.
As far as I understand, he had the algorithm in a safety secure box or something in the Cayman Islands that was for the protection of the algorithm, and he gifted it to charity if something happened to him and Mary or whatever. He was very protective of it. He always said if it got in the wrong hand, it could destroy the world.
Mary strongly denies this, saying that the source code has never been located in the Cayman Islands. But this seems to contradict what other investors have heard and what Allan himself said. Another investor, Phil Bardon, originally from Geraldon but who's now based in Perth, is also feeling frustrated.
I don't trust many people nowadays. I don't buy shares either. There's a lesson that you'll learn.
Phil remembers Alan telling him something interesting at one of the conferences in Perth, Western Australia.
At this meeting, people are, I think questions and he wouldn't answer it. And one stage, I said, okay, if I went passes, what happens to the secret he's got? And they were told, I'm a thing by Alan Lloyd's what that was in a safe somewhere? I see if he dies tomorrow, what's going to happen all this information? And I was told that, oh, it's in a safe in a safe place.
Did they say where?
No, didn't say. But it just seems so far fast that I questioned it, basically only months after I invested the money, because they were saying it's in a safe place, and what does that mean?
A few hours north of Perth in Geralton, Phil's cousin, Warren Bondon, is also having his own serious doubts.
Another thing that worried me when Alan was in Drip and he made a statement that the company takes a lot of money to kick down. It's taken two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month. He said that in public, and I thought, well, it can't be possible.
Even paying rent and wages. It seems hard to believe that Safe Words was costing that much a month. But even if Alan had been spending two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month on the business. That's three million dollars a year. So in the ten years he was trying to develop the software, that's thirty million dollars, So still a deficit of at least nineteen million dollars. Where
did the rest of it go? Alan had everything planned out, registering offshore businesses, navigating tricky, non transparent tax jurisdictions, now being prime offers real estate in the heart of a major Australian city. Everything had been thought through, everything except his succession plans. It got Warren and a few others thinking.
People said, he's probably over there and enjoying his money, over in somehwland somewhere.
To be honest, the first time I heard Warren say this, I kind of dismissed it. Alan was dead, or at least he had a funeral. But now, after following the trail of the missing forty nine million to the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, I feel like I know less about it than when I started. I find myself going back to what Warren said about Alan living large on an island and asking myself, could it be possible? Is Alan really still alive? And has he got his
money with him. That's next time on the Missing forty nine million, that.
Did right back and said, I hope it's going to be an open casket, And people are like, that's pretty heavy thing to say. But now looking back at it, he probably had every right to ask, because I don't know. No one knows exactly if he's one hundred percent that there's no bed, no destiny, you have proven to any investors anything like that.
A couple of people just say, are you sure he's dead? Should we go and dig up the coffin.
You have to be extremely clever and you have to have a lot of discipline to be able to fake your own death, because you know, you've got to cut everything out of your life, even family. You have to start again somewhere under a new assumed identity, and once you do that, there's always a risk.
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