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00:00I came across a profile of a man by the name of Max on a dating app.
00:07So I met Hamish through a very good friend who had investments with him.
00:13We actually met Hamish through our eldest granddaughter.
00:20Hamish knew exactly how to get them to hand him the money.
00:23He promised them fantastic returns on a short-term investment.
00:26He almost went, right, I can get you a million dollars.
00:32When Hamish found someone with access to money, he kept going back again and again until they
00:37were out.
00:38He used to always say your family, you know, I'm not going to let you end up with nothing.
00:46Everybody that Hamish came across from his perspective was a potential target.
00:51They didn't realize that they were standing face to face with a potential psychopath.
00:56Hamish McLaren was posing as a 41-year-old banker on a dating site calling himself Max Tavita
01:09when Tracy swiped right.
01:10A year into the relationship, he suggested that Tracy could do better with her superannuation,
01:16her retirement savings.
01:17He thought she could take care of it herself and casually suggested he could offer his expert
01:23advice.
01:25The discussion that we had was that he would manage the investments in line with all of
01:45the other things he was doing as part of his line of work.
01:48So, I filled in all of that paperwork and then what I did was I transferred my money
01:53out of my existing super fund.
01:57Max's name wasn't on anything and the self-managed super fund was set up in my name and to me it
02:04all seemed 100% legitimate.
02:08It was my life savings, $317,000.
02:15Hamish wanted other people's money but at the same time in this world, this romance con,
02:21he knew that Tracy had to be so convinced about it for such a long period of time that that
02:25would be the only way that he could eventually access her funds.
02:29Because we have to remember that these weren't opportunistic or impulsive scans that he just
02:35decided to do off the cuff.
02:36These were things that he had pre-planned for a long time, months, years even.
02:42That means that there were lots and lots of separate opportunities where he could have
02:47stopped his behavior, where he could have actually had genuine remorse and regret.
02:52But he didn't.
02:53Hamish met Peter and Lorraine through their granddaughter, Jane.
03:06He embedded himself in their lives and took one and a half million dollars of their money.
03:10That was their life savings and the compensation claim from Peter's workplace injury.
03:15He kept telling them that they were making incredible profits, but in reality he was just
03:20finding new ways to bleed them dry.
03:22He said, I'll meet you at the airport, get the papers for you to sign.
03:31The next flight was ready to leave.
03:34I had 10 minutes before it was going.
03:37And he arrived, he bought me a milkshake and put all this paperwork in front of me.
03:42He says, it's all to do with investments.
03:45And he just flicked the corners up and I signed them.
03:48Then he left.
03:49So I didn't have time to see the paper.
03:57Hamish set up a scheme where he was buying expensive cars using Peter's money.
04:02He was then driving them around, racking up expensive toll fines and parking tickets, all
04:07in Peter's name.
04:09We got in the mail a bill for a car that went through a toll.
04:15And I rang him up and he said, oh, don't worry about that.
04:18I'll fix that up.
04:19I said, but it's in Peter's name.
04:21And he said, yeah, it's in Peter's name.
04:24Remember, we're buying cars and I'm selling them.
04:29One of his investments, he'd buy the cars and sell them.
04:32But I was buying the cars and he was selling them.
04:36Karen met Hamish through a friend who made investments with him.
04:51He helped her borrow $1 million to fix a hole in her roof.
04:54But within days, that money had left her account.
04:57And within months, the mortgage repayments that he was helping her with had stopped
05:01and she was having trouble getting a hold of him.
05:06I rang him incessantly every day, all day.
05:10And I even rang his niece that I've been introduced to in London.
05:14And she said, please don't call me again.
05:16I don't know where he is.
05:19Just felt sick to my stomach, especially when it was getting towards loan repayment day.
05:26I had shingles.
05:29My hair fell out.
05:31I had alopecia.
05:33I was miserable, totally miserable.
05:38Karen got word through a good friend, Henry, that things were much worse than she thought.
05:43And then Henry had a very good friend who did work for Goldman Sachs in London.
05:48And this is one of the things that made Henry believe that he wasn't who he said he was.
05:54This friend went through the whole directory of Goldman Sachs globally and he said they'd never heard of him.
06:03Hamish didn't appear to have any real compassion.
06:08There was nothing there that would stop him from taking your money.
06:13You know, your personal circumstances didn't mean anything to him.
06:16For him it was just another mark.
06:18It was another person that he could steal money from.
06:22Hamish had absolutely no scruples when it came to conning people.
06:25When he met Simon in London, Hamish immediately set about his charm offensive, befriending him.
06:30And, as he always does, Hamish told him a stack of very sad but very untrue stories about his past.
06:43My first impression of Hamish, he's got a big smile, blue eyes, looks very healthy.
06:49Very clever, convincing, charming, intelligent guy.
06:55I found that time really interesting and I really liked the guy.
07:01And I thought there was a future friendship developing, you know.
07:06Hamish explained to me that he became an orphan when his parents died in a light aircraft crash.
07:16And that he went on to work for large banks, investment banks.
07:25For this con, Hamish was once again Hamish Maxwell.
07:28He presented himself as a genius mathematician who went to the prestigious university, MIT.
07:33He said he worked for Goldman Sachs, developing top secret trading algorithms.
07:39Very sort of dark and mysterious stuff.
07:42The whole thing just appeared to be amazing, but real.
07:49I'd never met anybody before that managed hundreds of millions of pounds for people like Goldman Sachs.
07:57I didn't have a set profile in my head of what somebody should look like,
08:01but he seemed eminently capable of doing it.
08:06And I started talking to my best pal, Steve, at the time.
08:12The general gist of the conversation was that Simon had met this chap.
08:17Very successful, you know, billionaire.
08:20And that this chap was going to give him a sort of leg up, as it were.
08:24Yeah, I was very happy for him at the time.
08:26During this period, my youngest son was having treatment.
08:35He had three operations already for his heart.
08:39I needed a fourth.
08:41It was a good three months before he could come out of hospital.
08:44And this was, as you can imagine, extremely stressful for the entire family.
08:53Simon has a disabled son who needed open heart surgery at the time.
08:58Hamish knew that extra money would be a vital lifeline for Simon, so he preyed upon that.
09:02The amount I invested with Hamish, if you can call it investment, was £50,000.
09:12The return on investment for the money that I'd put forward to Hamish was going to be about 30% to 40% earnings over the original window was two to four weeks.
09:24This just tiny alarm bell rang, which made me think, you know, this is too good to be true.
09:35Steve decided to do some digging.
09:38He wanted to find some presence of Hamish in Australia, but he couldn't find any records of Hamish Maxwell.
09:43He did know that Hamish was a fitness fanatic who loved marathons.
09:46So he set about trawling through running databases in Australia and eventually found a photo of Hamish finishing a marathon in Sydney.
09:57He rang me and said I found him, and his name's not Hamish Maxwell, it's Hamish McLaren.
10:05And that's where we start, Simon.
10:07There was quite a lot of information about this bloke, where he'd been a very naughty boy in Australia.
10:16Failed companies, bankruptcy, files.
10:20The feeling, finding that information out is, um, oh dear, we have got a problem, we are dealing with a villain.
10:29I think I went, I went pretty cold, you know, where you just think, right, you know, I didn't want it to be true, but it is true.
10:40So we hatched a plan that luckily for Simon worked.
10:46Simon and Steve had a plan to con the con artist and turn the tables on Hamish.
10:51Steve would tell Hamish that he knew of a number of wealthy individuals ready to invest.
10:55But before he could do that, Simon needed his £50,000 back.
11:00Steve pretended to represent these wealthy individuals.
11:04All you're doing is relying on somebody who's greedy and prepared to say anything and prepared to do anything to get hold of cash.
11:11So the carrot that he's got, you make him an offer of a much bigger carrot.
11:16And luckily, as I said, he took it.
11:22The money came back.
11:23To finally get the money back was just the most incredible sense of relief.
11:30The battle was over, it had been won from our point of view.
11:35We put Hamish's hat on, and so we scammed a scammer.
11:41And that was, you know, the final full stop in that story.
11:47When we think about what motivates somebody like Hamish, it cannot be overstated that it boils down to greed.
12:00I think that is the most important and simplest motivating driving factor for him.
12:08He just wants money.
12:09And he feels that the world owes him. He feels that he deserves things like other people's money.
12:15When you don't suspect somebody of being a fraudster or trying to con you, when someone says to you, this is my name and this is where I live.
12:33You don't automatically think, well, hang on, let me double check that.
12:38I didn't suspect anything.
12:40You don't even question it.
12:41I met his brother-in-law, so his sister's husband, Chris, and I met a friend that he had grown up with.
12:54In one of those meetings, his friend called him Hambone.
12:59And I asked him afterwards, I said, why did Matt call you Hambone? What's that?
13:04And quick as a flash, he said, oh, when I was a kid, I was really skinny and my legs were really skinny.
13:12And everyone said I needed to put some ham on the bone.
13:15I needed to put some fat on myself.
13:17He said, that's why he called me Hambone.
13:21Must have been shitting himself.
13:23But I think he had a level of confidence and arrogance that made him believe that he could get away with it.
13:34So it just kept going.
13:45I found different names that had been paying him deposits and also receiving money from him.
13:51The trading company that Hamish was putting a lot of money into, that account had received millions of dollars.
14:00But he wasn't doing what he was telling all these victims he was doing and wasn't trading in the way that he was purporting he was.
14:08It was pretty much washing money.
14:11It was always a concern that he did have a pot of gold somewhere and was going to run away down the rainbow with it.
14:20So I had to make sure that I didn't let too many people know what I was doing.
14:24There was a degree of risk associated with that obviously.
14:29One of the people I spoke to admitted that they knew Hamish but there was nothing wrong and hung up the phone.
14:38Which at the time made me very nervous.
14:41I was concerned that I'd made the wrong move.
14:44But I guess you've got to kind of take risks.
14:48It was getting to a stage where there was, I'd be ringing him up and saying, are you going to put some money in?
15:04Always had an excuse and it would be waiting for somebody to put the money in or to change it over.
15:13I'd just about be talking to him every day.
15:17I went and did shopping and didn't have the money in the account that it was supposed to be.
15:23Couldn't pay for the groceries.
15:25So I rang him up and he said, oh, I'm sorry Loz, I'll quickly put something over.
15:29So I quickly put some money in the bank so I could pay for the groceries.
15:34But then it just got worse and worse and that we had everything maxed out and we just didn't have any money at the end.
15:44We did have our suspicions but I was holding on with the hope that if we hung in there that it definitely, it was going to be real.
15:56We would get the money.
16:00It was always saying that that money it will be, wait, you'll have at least 10 million in June.
16:13Hamish knew that if he could lay this scam out in the right way, he'd be able to make excuses as to why the money's not returned.
16:22To constantly delay and delay and delay so that that victim would be just always held at bay thinking that they don't want to take action against him because they don't want to rock the boat and possibly miss out on their pot of gold that's going to potentially come down the track.
16:43The fact that when Lorraine was anxious and worried about the future, Hamish went out of his way to comfort her and reassure her all the while knowing that he's in fact ripping her off in the background really speaks to his humongous lack of empathy.
17:02This guy has no compassion at all. He doesn't care about the lives he's damaging. He is extremely deceitful and he is a conniving piece of work.
17:15I reached out to a couple of the people that I'd seen in those bank statements. Some were just done completely with anything to do with Hamish. They couldn't talk about him.
17:31Like at least a quarter of the people ended up in tears on the phone. Some of them just hung up on me because they couldn't like mid conversation because they couldn't handle going back through that level of trauma.
17:46I think. I think it's an understated part of fraud that there is a financial loss, but there's an emotional toll. It is really tough to read the weekly text messages of, hey, I'm struggling. I need my money back. Where's my money?
18:06There was never enough to pay the loan. Put food on the table and ran the car. I sold a few things. Just scrimped. I'm very lucky. I have got some amazing friends. And when the money really dried up from Hamish, they knew I was in a real pickle. And so they not only helped me out, they bailed me out.
18:33It was pretty hard, you know, and having to tell my kids as well that I completely messed up. That was pretty tough.
18:42I thought I was a better judge of character. I'm angry that he duped me. I believed him. For a while there, I thought we were going to, you know, have this amazing friendship and it would go on until he started to lie and not pick up the phone and...
19:02Yeah.
19:03So at this time, Hamish, you know, was married, living with Bec, mother of three, and his teenage stepson, Jack. Jack was dating Jane. Jane was Peter and Lorraine's 16-year-old granddaughter.
19:25Over a long period of time, Hamish put a lot of work into earning Jane's trust. He would take her surfing. He would help her with her homework. He became something of a mentor to her.
19:38I just said to her one day that, why don't you ask Hamish about doing what he does? So, I mean, you can make a lot of money doing that.
19:51Hamish always had a great radar for what people wanted. And I think in Jane, he could clearly see someone who was really bright. She was a school captain. She was very ambitious. She wanted to be something other than a girl in a, you know, sleepy surfing town north of Sydney. And he fed that throughout the relationship.
20:08She came to me and she said, Hamish is talking about going overseas and going to Princeton. And he thinks that he can get me into Princeton. It was a great opportunity. And, um, yeah, I just thought everything was just falling into place for her, for Jane.
20:30Of all the things we found out about Hamish, this was by far the most shocking. He managed to, I suppose, morph the relationship from a mentorship to actually become a sexual partner.
20:48We're talking about the relationship between a 51-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl. It was pretty clearly a predatory relationship.
20:59I actually think that he was grooming her from about 15, 16 when I look back at it.
21:13Hamish had been deliberately, carefully, secretly grooming Peter and Lorraine's 16-year-old granddaughter Jane over a series of months.
21:20One night when they were all together in Sydney, Lorraine saw an interaction between Hamish and Jane and the penny suddenly dropped.
21:29I just looked at him and I said, how long has this been going on? And he looked at me and he said, I'm sorry, Lossie.
21:41When he answered that, I just couldn't believe that that would happen.
21:50I just felt absolutely dumbfounded and numb.
21:57Another cruel layer to all of this is that Hamish wasn't even particularly interested in Jane for Jane.
22:02He was using Jane to get access to her grandparents.
22:05So not only did this completely detonate Jane's life, it also led to the detonation of Peter and Lorraine's lives too.
22:13It affected her a hell of a lot.
22:17She was beautiful, very intelligent, beautiful personality.
22:24Good at sports, good at everything really and she's just a mess now.
22:30Just his ego, he's going to win no matter what.
22:34What he did to Jane was just despicable.
22:41He's a very cruel man.
22:44Very sick man, I think.
22:48He seems to be sexually attracted to the 16-year-old girl.
22:51Meanwhile, he was lying to his own wife, Beck, and he was ripping off this young girl's grandparents.
22:57So this really shows that there's almost no boundary that he won't cross.
23:02There's no level of depravity that he won't stoop to.
23:06It's almost like he has no moral compass whatsoever.
23:09When you actually think about it, already the power imbalance with that age gap of having a 50-year-old and a 16-year-old having a relationship like that.
23:19Like, it's very difficult, I think, for a 16-year-old to really comprehend what they're getting into.
23:24When you do that with a psychopath, it's just a million times worse because there is no sense of remorse or guilt.
23:31When you have a relationship with Hamish, he just moves on.
23:36She felt very, very guilty. Very guilty.
23:40I don't think she should have been guilty.
23:42It's him that should have been the one that should ask for forgiveness.
23:50For Peter and Lorraine, realising that he had been having an abusive relationship with their granddaughter was horrifying.
23:57But he also had this enormous power over them.
24:01They couldn't cut him out of their life because to do so would give up any hope of ever seeing any of their money ever again.
24:07I think he has many of the characteristics of a narcissist, somebody that has narcissistic personality disorder.
24:17So they have an inflated sense of their own self and their own abilities.
24:22On top of that, a narcissist has a need for attention and for admiration.
24:28And then, on top of all of these things, you have a sense of entitlement as well, that they want things from other people.
24:35Hamish wanted other people's money. He felt that the law didn't apply to him.
24:39There were some threats. If I went to the police, I would bring the whole thing down. Everything will fall apart.
24:54But one of the go-to threats that he had was, you know, if the police come and find me, I'll run away to some beach in some faraway island and you'll never find my money ever again.
25:04My friend who introduced me to him said she was going to help the police because she was now very desperate.
25:12Then I spoke to Henry again. He said, you have to go to the police now. I'm surprised you haven't gone, you know, ten months ago.
25:21I had three victims who were willing to provide statements initially and knew all the other victims.
25:28The hardest part was convincing these other victims that this was fraud and there was no investment.
25:34With Karen, I think it was tough. If you've been chasing this guy for three years, why would you risk talking to the police?
25:44You know, there was some hesitation there to proceed.
25:47For me, it was making sure that I didn't lose these people back into his web of lies.
25:53Towards the end, I was so desperate. I called Tom and said that I will now come in and give you my statement.
26:10Then Tom hinted that it's over. There's no, there's no money. You know, he's, that he's done.
26:17Right up until doing that, I hoped that I was wrong and that we would get the money.
26:26We had done some covert surveillance on him, effectively a body wire on a witness.
26:34It was a successful strategy because we got to hear exactly who he said he was.
26:40The witness just kept asking questions about everything that he said and the answers that he gave didn't make sense.
26:50And the ones that he said he had evidence for, the evidence didn't exist.
26:53So when you hear it on a recording, there's no arguing.
26:58It was very clear evidence of dishonest representation.
27:01So at this point, the priority for us was making sure we could arrest Hamish and keep him bail refused.
27:13Because if we made a move on him and he had the ability to flee, then he would flee.
27:19In the end, I had enough evidence of deception.
27:21It was all about speed then, because the longer I left him out in the world, the more he would just steal.
27:27As soon as I got to a point where I thought I could keep him in jail, I went and applied for the search warrant.
27:32We'd been in Byron Bay for the weekend. I was up there doing a presentation for a conference and he had said he'd come up, he'd go surfing in Byron for the weekend.
27:56I did my presentation, we met up with family, we met up with friends and then I flew home on the Sunday night and I think he drove home on the Monday.
28:07I think we spoke that night, said goodnight, went to bed and the next morning I was up super early.
28:14It was school holiday so I was ferrying kids to different activities, having to get into the city for work.
28:20And it got to about four o'clock and I hadn't heard from him.
28:26What Tracy didn't know was that Tom and a team of New South Wales police officers had been watching Hamish's Bondi apartment for a few days.
28:35Now that he was back from Byron Bay, they were preparing to arrest him.
28:39So when Hamish stepped outside, they swung into action.
28:42When I got there, I told him exactly what he was being charged with and who it related to and how much, you know, we were alleging he stole.
28:55And at that point he got pretty quiet. I think he wasn't expecting that much to come on him that quick.
29:13He just went really quiet, almost like a vacant look in his eyes and one little tear rolled down his face.
29:32I won't forget that because it's probably the only time I think you'll ever see any kind of emotion out of him.
29:39The next morning, I still hadn't heard from Max.
29:49I called Bondi police because I just wanted them to check.
29:55I just felt like something was wrong.
29:57Gave them all the information, Max DeVita, his birth date, his address.
30:03In the meantime, a girlfriend of mine had called me and said, you know, how are you?
30:09And I said, I haven't slapped a wink.
30:11I'm worried about Max.
30:13Something's wrong.
30:14And she said, I've just seen something on the internet and I'm going to send you the link.
30:20And you need to take a look at it and you need to call me straight back.
30:23My stomach just dropped.
30:30I called her straight back and I said, you know, my God, that's him.
30:35What's happened?
30:36No.
30:37And at that point, there was no name.
30:40There was no details.
30:42It was just him being arrested.
30:43And I thought, God, that must be a mistake.
30:45Like, this is a mistake.
30:49I called back Bondi police and they said, the name of the person and their age that you said that lives at that address is not the person that lives at that address.
30:58And I said, yeah, it is.
31:00It is.
31:01It's Max.
31:02And they said, no, it's not Max.
31:05At Hamish's apartment, search warrants uncovered a huge amount of bank statements and fake documents.
31:14Police seized two laptops and two mobile phones full of damning messages from people desperate to get their money back from Hamish.
31:21We offered him the chance to be interviewed and he refused.
31:25But I just said to him, you know, I've got a lot more people to look at here.
31:29And, you know, he said to me, these are all just people who've made bad business decisions.
31:36And I just said to him straight, I don't believe you.
31:38You're a liar.
31:39And I'm going to be spending the next good chunk of my time making sure that I get you for all I can.
31:48Everything just spun out of control from that point in time.
31:52And I was frantic to get information.
31:55I had no idea.
31:57His brother-in-law, Chris, had texted me, Tracy, please call me back on this number urgently.
32:03Chris.
32:04And in brackets, he wrote Hamish's brother-in-law.
32:08And I called him straight away.
32:10I said, Chris, who the fuck is Hamish?
32:16The moment I realised that Max DeVita was Hamish McLaren was when I was on the phone call to Tom.
32:23I just pulled over on the side of the road, halfway between the police station and lunch,
32:29and called Tracy and had a conversation with her,
32:33that I'd basically locked up her boyfriend, but he had a different name.
32:39She was pretty sure of what she was telling me,
32:43that the guy I'd arrested, his name was Max DeVita.
32:46I couldn't make sense of any of it because suddenly I'm being told that it's not his name,
32:55it's not his age, he is not who he said he was,
33:00and that in fact he is a serious criminal.
33:04And that's when the world came crashing down.
33:12I said to her, you know, have you given him any money?
33:16And she said, yeah, I have.
33:19And I think she asked me, is that money gone?
33:22And I said, probably.
33:24I remember thinking, I've just kind of ruined someone's entire world on a phone call.
33:33I think I vomited.
33:34I hung up.
33:36I felt so physically ill.
33:39Like, a visceral reaction in my body.
33:43I was in shock.
33:50Just speaking to Tracy, there's a whole other element to what I thought was just a fraud star.
33:56He's also willing to be in a relationship with someone to steal money.
34:01Which is just another level on top of what was already a terrible person.
34:06The betrayal was so deep.
34:11It was a betrayal on a financial level, of course.
34:15And I'd lost everything.
34:18But the emotional betrayal felt worse.
34:23Because I had trusted him.
34:26I loved him.
34:28It made me feel so disgusting.
34:32That he was lying in a bed next to me, pretending to love me.
34:38And in his head, he is plotting to destroy me.
34:45I was very, very, very happy when they caught him.
34:49When they got him.
34:50For sure.
34:51Yeah, that was...
34:53It was a good day.
34:54It was on the news and that's how I found out.
34:58One of my granddaughters rang and she said,
35:01Have you seen the news?
35:02And I said, No.
35:03She said, Well, watch it.
35:05Because Hamish has just been picked up.
35:08It's a scam.
35:09Yeah, I was gobsmacked and absolutely dumbfounded.
35:18On the 14th of July, we were meant to get the payment that Hamish was saying that we would get.
35:28And that was 10 million.
35:29Then, of course, on the 11th of July, he gets picked up.
35:36The biggest challenge with fraud cases is proving whether or not it's a criminal offence.
35:43Because there is always a lot of ambiguity and that's why they succeed.
35:47Because they create a shroud of ambiguity around them.
35:50Which makes it difficult for you to get to the bottom of what's going on.
35:53You're talking about a situation which can easily be explained away by the fact that these people did give Hamish their money willingly.
36:04They were deceived, but they did give it away willingly.
36:07Tom Zadrovic knew in taking on this case that he would need a mountain of very rock-solid, credible evidence to keep Hamish behind bars.
36:15After he was arrested, Hamish was refused bail and held in remand awaiting trial.
36:26And over the coming months, Tom went to work finding more victims to include in the case.
36:31Tom's hard work paid off.
36:34In the end, the charges were expanded to cover 15 victims and more than $7.5 million worth of stolen money.
36:39But remarkably, it seems that even being behind bars wasn't enough to deter Hamish from conning.
36:46There were allegations that he was ripping off some of his fellow prisoners.
36:49He's a master manipulator and he's in an environment where he's got access to a lot of people for a lot of time.
36:56He still managed to generate income for himself.
37:00There's no stopping him really, I don't think.
37:04He has become so adept at being able to con people that it's become normal for him.
37:11Because that is really the only way that he has been making money for his entire career.
37:18So it's all he really knows.
37:20So it's not surprising that he's going to try and do it in prison.
37:24He eventually pled guilty to fraud, multiple counts of fraud.
37:32It was good because I guess the victims didn't have to go to court,
37:35but it also saved every single thing he'd ever done being publicised on public record.
37:40So I think it was more for him than for anyone else.
37:42I went along to the court because I wanted to make sure that he was going away.
37:59It was only at the hearing that I got to meet everyone properly.
38:02And then I realised how many people there were affected.
38:07Terribly sad to hear other people's stories.
38:11People who had literally lost everything.
38:16When we did get to the sentence date, I was nervous because the first question someone asks you is,
38:24how long do you think they'll get?
38:26What do you think the outcome's going to be?
38:29The general ballpark that I had given a lot of people conservatively was three years.
38:34I just said that was the kind of my benchmark.
38:36And as long as I get more than that, I've got to be happy.
38:41You're still numb sitting there listening to it all and thinking,
38:45well, is he going to go to jail or not go to jail?
38:49Hamish requested to be videoconferenced in that day.
38:55And the judge said no.
38:57And Hamish came up from below ground and sat in the little cage in the middle,
39:05scribbling notes, never looked up once.
39:09That was quite confronting, seeing him that day.
39:13This was a really important moment for the victims,
39:15to hear the full scope of Hamish's offending read out in court.
39:20And the judge was very clearly not going to be rushed.
39:22He took two and a half hours to go through every case and every person's circumstances
39:27and provide in detail an account of what Hamish had done and what he'd taken from all these people
39:32and the really detrimental impact that it had had on their lives.
39:36It was very quiet.
39:37We were all waiting on bated breath.
39:39When the judge read out the sentence, we were all, it was just, you could hear a pin drop.
39:49The judge was running through the sequences and the victims and the sentences issued to each.
39:55As I was writing them down, I think one of the first ones was three years straight off the bat.
39:59Mr. McLaren, will you stand while I pass sentence?
40:06In my opinion, you conducted yourself as if you would never be brought to account.
40:14You conducted yourself as if you would not have a judgement day.
40:17You were mistaken. That judgement day is today.
40:24For the 17 matters, I impose an aggregate sentence of 16 years imprisonment with 12 years non-parole.
40:35At that point, you had a room full of people who he had hurt, whose lives he had blown up.
40:41They didn't know what to do initially. There was just complete silence.
40:44You can remove Mr. McLaren from the court.
40:57It was massive. It's the largest sentence I'd ever had and it was, it was deserved.
41:06There is a number that I would think is too much.
41:10I just remember feeling just immense relief that Hamish would be in jail and I didn't have to worry about him.
41:20I was relieved, exhausted, emotional and I was just glad that it was done.
41:24Yeah, amazing. More than expected. Yeah. Yeah. More than we thought.
41:31So Hamish, he's dealt a life sentence to all of the victims that are in court today.
41:3616 years isn't long enough as far as I'm concerned compared to what he's done to a lot of people.
41:46Seeing Hamish go to prison for a long time was a big relief for his victims.
41:50But the $60 million question was, and still is, what happened to all that money?
41:56Many people are convinced that it's all gone.
41:59That he spent it in a lavish lifestyle with private jets and fast cars and big properties.
42:03But others are convinced that there's still plenty out there, hidden away overseas in some hard to reach place.
42:11There's an allegation that at least $14 million is in an offshore account in the British Virgin Islands.
42:18And that he has moved money through a Singapore account and laundered money through that Singapore account.
42:23There's allegations of property ownership in Panama and in Mexico.
42:29And there's also an allegation of a boat worth $600,000 US dollars.
42:35I believe there's a good chance that Hamish has assets overseas.
42:39I believe there's a good chance that somebody overseas is helping him to hide those assets.
42:44And I believe that there's a good chance that we can find those assets.
42:47Two years after his court case, Hamish won an appeal to have his sentence reduced by 25% down to 12 years.
42:57He'll now be up for parole in 2026.
43:01I think the longer he stays in there, the better.
43:04He can't harm anybody, because I don't believe he would change at all.
43:09When I think about Hamish getting out of jail, I have major concerns.
43:18And my concerns are that he will just do this again.
43:22The guy doesn't know what else to do.
43:25He's done it his whole life.
43:28He's not going to be a barista, is he?
43:31He actually doesn't know what else to do.
43:34This will happen again.
43:38He's a nasty, lying, cheating fiend.
43:44Without a doubt, I think he will try again.
43:49I think he'll reinvent himself.
43:52Another name.
43:54I think he'll have another go at it.
43:56I don't think he knows any other way to live.
43:58He's a thief.
43:59I don't think he'll have another go at it.
44:11I think he'll have another go at it.