Introducing Deep Cover Presents: Snowball

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Speaker 3 This is Justin Richmond, host of Broken Record. When it comes to the holidays, I believe you fall into one of two camps.

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Speaker 9 Pushkin

Speaker 10 Hey listeners. I'm Jake Halpern, host of the Deep Cover podcast.
I'm dropping by to share an episode of Deep Cover Presents Snowball.

Speaker 10 It's the tale of a family who lost everything due to one ruthless scammer.

Speaker 10 Snowball follows journalist Ollie Wards as he unravels the wild story of how his own family was taken in and taken down by a charming con woman from California.

Speaker 10 And he tries to find out where she is now. We're talking financial ruin, shattered trust, and a mystery that stretches across continents and decades.

Speaker 10 It's got all the twists and turns you'd expect from a high-stakes crime thriller.

Speaker 8 Only, it's all true.

Speaker 10 Here's a preview. I hope you enjoyed the story, which was meticulously investigated by Ollie Wards and the Unravel podcast team in Australia.

Speaker 10 And if you can't wait to find out what happens, binge episodes of Deepcover Presents Snowball early and ad-free with a Pushkin Plus subscription.

Speaker 10 Find Pushkin Plus on the DeepCover Cover Show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus

Speaker 15 this series contains occasional coarse language.

Speaker 16 I was the emcee at my brother's wedding.

Speaker 18 I did all the usual stuff, housekeeping, toasts.

Speaker 19 I tried to crack a few jokes.

Speaker 20 But inside, I had a nagging sense of unease about my brother's charismatic Californian bride.

Speaker 23 It was a feeling that some things just didn't add up.

Speaker 21 I didn't tell anyone how I felt.

Speaker 20 Probably couldn't have explained it anyway.

Speaker 24 My brother was happy. That's what matters, right?

Speaker 26 But maybe I should have paid more attention to that feeling, because within a few months, she had taken off to the US.

Speaker 16 It wasn't just my brother's marriage that fell apart.

Speaker 21 My whole family went down with it.

Speaker 16 And none of us ever saw her again.

Speaker 28 This woman's a bit kind of like, you know, not what she claims to be.

Speaker 30 She had this dark, vivacious, a surface skin look to her.

Speaker 9 I guess when you marry someone, you feel like you really know them.

Speaker 31 And that was her allure.

Speaker 32 You just followed her.

Speaker 34 She's a manipulative con artist.

Speaker 6 Stand by.

Speaker 34 We call her the Black Widow.

Speaker 12 The snowball is about to hit you.

Speaker 16 When my mum and dad found out that they had lost everything, it was during the Sunday lunchtime rush in a country New Zealand cafe.

Speaker 22 They had ended up running that cafe.

Speaker 25 And that day, Dad was serving behind the counter.

Speaker 37 Taking orders, passing them back to the chefs at the back, next order, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da.

Speaker 20 Then he noticed a guy joined the back of the line. It wasn't a random customer.
Dad recognised him. And when this guy got to the front of the queue, he ordered.

Speaker 37 And he said to me, I'll have a so-and-so and so-and-so.

Speaker 37 And I've come today

Speaker 37 to tell you that we are going to liquidate you.

Speaker 37 I almost fainted.

Speaker 39 I went blank.

Speaker 37 I could feel the draining of blood from my face. I must have been as white as a sheet.

Speaker 36 My mum realised something was up.

Speaker 40 I'm busy bringing in dishes and doing whatever.

Speaker 40 And then I looked at Dad.

Speaker 41 He'd stepped to one side and he

Speaker 41 came to me

Speaker 40 and he looked absolutely dreadful, utterly drained.

Speaker 41 And I just carried on.

Speaker 41 We didn't have time to reflect on things till later in the day and what they all meant.

Speaker 25 What it all meant was mum and dad had lost their life savings, more than a million dollars, and a few days later they found out they were homeless.

Speaker 37 A court bailiff presented us with a paper saying

Speaker 37 our house was to be forfeited to the bank

Speaker 37 And

Speaker 37 I said to the guy, I'm not going to sign that. And he said, it's going to happen.
You don't need to sign anything. He just threw it on the desk and walked out.

Speaker 22 My parents, in their 60s, went from living in a leafy Auckland suburb to squatting in the basement at my auntie's house.

Speaker 22 As my family tried to understand what had happened, they realised they might have been the victims of an elaborate con job.

Speaker 44 I was living overseas through most of this.

Speaker 15 Recently, I started learning about what happened and I kind of felt guilty I wasn't there when the walls fell down around everyone.

Speaker 22 So now I want to help figure things out.

Speaker 20 I normally work behind the scenes at an Australian radio station, Triple J, helping other people tell stories.

Speaker 21 But I knew I needed to investigate this story of my own.

Speaker 46 It was like the plot of a movie.

Speaker 44 one you'd never expect to feature a pretty average Kiwi family.

Speaker 15 Things got weird, and some of it's kind of funny.

Speaker 37 There's also a lot of randomness there with the story.

Speaker 31 Smuggled out of Armenia?

Speaker 48 What?

Speaker 31 Whoa.

Speaker 21 Explain.

Speaker 49 Oh my fucking God.

Speaker 7 Are you serious?

Speaker 50 I mean, can I talk about drugs?

Speaker 51 This is weird. This is not how a normal friendship works.

Speaker 53 We were like her little ducklings following behind her.

Speaker 37 Lots of little intrigues.

Speaker 38 $30,000.

Speaker 28 I don't know where this money went.

Speaker 55 They kind of knew that there was some fuckery.

Speaker 30 We joked that they were hired at his personality, bubbly.

Speaker 30 She was rather lovely.

Speaker 12 He was broke. She took every fucking thing he had.

Speaker 22 The stranger things get, the more questions I have about what happened.

Speaker 21 Like, why did this American woman con my family?

Speaker 48 How did she just get away?

Speaker 44 And who really is Leslie Manoukian?

Speaker 16 In this season of Unravel, I'm going to find some answers.

Speaker 38 And to do it, I'm going to have to travel across the world to track Leslie down.

Speaker 22 I'm Ollie Wards, and this is Snowball.

Speaker 18 So, this is recording, is it?

Speaker 7 Is there an option to edit it afterwards?

Speaker 6 It's not a test.

Speaker 16 Surely, there's no better subject than yourself.

Speaker 18 So, it's one or two sentences to describe who I am.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 36 Okay, I'm a Kiwi male, late 30s,

Speaker 9 probably quite typical, trying to pay the mortgage and all the bills and look after everyone as best I can in the process.

Speaker 36 I guess my brother Greg is typical in lots of ways.

Speaker 20 He'd be happy with a $10 haircut, short back and sides, but he definitely has his quirks.

Speaker 25 Like he'll read a street map of a foreign city before bed like it's a novel.

Speaker 16 The other thing to know about Greg that partly got us into all of this is that that he loves everything to do with America.

Speaker 9 There's a term for people interested in Europe which is Europhile.

Speaker 58 I think I was an Americanophile.

Speaker 20 So like one night recently, I was brushing my teeth and I got a surprise show and tell.

Speaker 20 Greg, you've just come out and shown something.

Speaker 36 What do you got here?

Speaker 9 It's a $2 US note.

Speaker 7 And I'm told that they're quite rare and they're lucky for either the...

Speaker 7 I think it's the North Koreans.

Speaker 42 Anyway, that's me.

Speaker 5 Now this whole thing starts when Greg went off on his OE back in 2006.

Speaker 18 In New Zealand, your OE or overseas experience is kind of like a gap year after school or uni.

Speaker 43 It's where Kiwis live abroad, drink foreign beer, and have people laugh at us for the different words we have for stuff.

Speaker 46 Like chili bin.

Speaker 18 That's an eski if you're in Australia or a cooler box pretty much anywhere else.

Speaker 46 Chilibin.

Speaker 43 Anyway, as a Kiwi, it was easier for Greg to work in the UK than in the US, so he put his American dreams on hold and set himself up in London.

Speaker 35 One night he was at a house party, wearing his favorite American football-style jacket that makes him look like a high school jock.

Speaker 25 So he's wandering through the party.

Speaker 35 He steps outside to a courtyard and his ears prick up.

Speaker 9 North American accents used to catch my attention.

Speaker 20 In the corner of the courtyard, there's a woman with long dark hair smoking a cigarette.

Speaker 20 She's leading a conversation with the confidence just oozing out of her.

Speaker 9 Well, let's throw in there. Kim Kardashian lookalike.
Sophisticated female operative, ready to

Speaker 7 woo me as well.

Speaker 25 That sophistication might have been to do with her being a fair bit older than Greg.

Speaker 44 Leslie was late 30s.

Speaker 60 Greg was mid-20s.

Speaker 16 Greg's not a smoker, but he thought he had smoked too.

Speaker 20 He wanted to talk.

Speaker 60 And so he met Leslie.

Speaker 16 As they chatted in the dimly lit courtyard, Greg started to see the world in her, literally.

Speaker 7 It was more

Speaker 9 liked the concept of America as,

Speaker 9 you know, it's the biggest economy in the world. What they do actually matters to most people on the planet.

Speaker 20 I've never heard of another guy describing being attracted to a girl because of the size of her economy.

Speaker 17 But that's my brother.

Speaker 7 You know, if you're interested in politics, they are a superpower.

Speaker 16 Bit of a leap to a girl you meet at a house party, though, isn't it?

Speaker 29 Well,

Speaker 9 I guess that's how naive I was.

Speaker 44 Greg was also taken in by Leslie's wild story about why she was in London.

Speaker 9 So it originally was to escape from Hawaii because some bad people in Hawaii were trying to attack her, you know, because they'd frauded her and were trying to do bad stuff to her.

Speaker 9 And her mum and dad sent her to Europe to escape them.

Speaker 11 Leslie would tell everyone some version of the story.

Speaker 13 I actually heard it myself.

Speaker 45 It went like this.

Speaker 23 Before she was in London, Leslie owned the coolest bar, restaurant and nightclub on the island of Maui in Hawaii.

Speaker 17 The bar was called the Breakwater.

Speaker 60 Things were going well.

Speaker 16 Until one day Leslie caught the head security guard dealing drugs out of the back entrance. When she confronted him, he told her he planned to keep selling drugs.

Speaker 35 She shouldn't try to stop him.

Speaker 25 From there, things deteriorated with the locals.

Speaker 35 Like the electricity got cut off at the restaurant through a cousin at the power company.

Speaker 16 Leslie said it all culminated one night when she was at home.

Speaker 20 Hearing people breaking in, she hid under the bed.

Speaker 15 From there, She saw the head of security with some other guys come in carrying sugarcane knives.

Speaker 22 While they looked for her, they were talking about burying her in the fields.

Speaker 24 She was lucky, though.

Speaker 25 They didn't look under the bed. As soon as they left, Leslie went to the airport.

Speaker 20 Her dad chartered a plane, and she escaped to Europe.

Speaker 25 So according to Leslie, that's how she ended up laying low in London.

Speaker 20 And all of this was fascinating to Greg.

Speaker 23 He started introducing Leslie to his mates.

Speaker 32 Their relationship seemed

Speaker 32 a normal sort of relationship, aside from the fact that it got very intense very quickly. But you would expect that of Greg.
He's not a game player and he wears his heart on his sleeve.

Speaker 32 So if he's into you, you'd find out pretty quickly.

Speaker 50 My initial thoughts were that she was really open and friendly, maybe a bit too friendly, but

Speaker 7 what do you mean by that?

Speaker 50 She just gave a lot like she just

Speaker 51 um

Speaker 50 was pretty quick to chat and want to hang out and make plans and i remember thinking it was quite full-on that she was so open so quickly maybe that's it

Speaker 44 in london leslie managed a couple of bars

Speaker 28 She was very vivacious, bubbly, kind of effervescent personality,

Speaker 28 bubbly Californian type manner. You know, she was kind of quite engaging, very chatty.
You know, she knew how to sort of work people.

Speaker 44 Phil owned one of the bars Leslie worked in.

Speaker 16 He saw my brother coming in all the time.

Speaker 28 I can remember Greg. I remember Leslie bringing him into the bar and introducing me to him.

Speaker 28 Hell of a nice guy, typical sort of Kiwi in London, working hard and then he'd come into the bar during the in the evenings to wind down a bit.

Speaker 28 And he had a, you know, what I'd probably describe as a certain naivety about him at the the time.

Speaker 28 And I remember sort of thinking, you know, you had Leslie, who was this sort of very confident kind of, you know, thing, and there was Greg who was quieter and kind of, you know, so you could see the dynamic there.

Speaker 16 Leslie would hook Greg and his mates up with drinks.

Speaker 9 You know, we suddenly were invited to a bar, and there's bloody buckets of beer being brought to our VIP table in the corner in the city of London with

Speaker 42 business people around. And

Speaker 42 it was like, fuck I'm a backpacker

Speaker 9 and I'm in one of the world's financial capitals getting bear reined on me.

Speaker 36 So you felt like a bit of a rock star or something.

Speaker 58 Yeah I did, to be sure.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 16 Greg's friend Andy did wonder where it was all coming from.

Speaker 32 And she said, oh, it's all going on the tabs of different local law firms. So, you know, they'd all come to settle up and there'd be a few extra platters and bottles of wine.

Speaker 32 That's just one of her crafty ways of showing all her friends a good time, I suppose.

Speaker 22 Things were getting pretty serious between Greg and Leslie.

Speaker 20 And as the saying goes, first comes love, then comes me wanting to meet your new bae.

Speaker 20 I flew to London to meet my brother's American dream girl.

Speaker 44 My first impression was that Leslie knew stuff.

Speaker 22 She had been everywhere and done everything.

Speaker 20 I started saying all the time, Leslie knows, and she loved that.

Speaker 22 We joked about getting t-shirts made.

Speaker 23 I was only partly being sarcastic.

Speaker 20 Leslie told me about how she was from Orange County, California.

Speaker 22 She said that she was a trust fund type kid, and so were her friends. And she said that her dad was rich from selling tanks to the U.S.
Army.

Speaker 22 So it was all pretty impressive, but I have to admit, I was nervous that I'd end up together.

Speaker 44 Somehow, Leslie seemed to have a power over Greg, like he wasn't himself.

Speaker 22 I wondered if it was because she was so much older than him. But I didn't really dwell on that stuff, though, because I remember seeing how much Greg loved her.

Speaker 17 His arm was constantly around Leslie, so I was happy for him.

Speaker 18 After only a few months, they moved in together.

Speaker 22 Things were going quickly, but they were about to go into hyperdrive.

Speaker 18 The winter after they first met, Greg proposed to Leslie.

Speaker 20 It was snowing on Christmas Day, and they were at Disneyland in Paris.

Speaker 36 She honestly was buying everything:

Speaker 58 like

Speaker 9 Donald Duck, key rings,

Speaker 63 sherbets, elf, bloody hats.

Speaker 9 We had a really nice dinner at,

Speaker 9 I think, that movie, Johnny Depp, was in Pirates of the Caribbean. So they've got a really cool restaurant, beautiful food.

Speaker 64 But so you had a ring burning a hole in your pocket.

Speaker 7 Honestly, I don't even remember if I had a ring or I didn't. I don't think I did.

Speaker 64 But you remember the Johnny Depp

Speaker 7 Pirates of the Caribbean restaurant?

Speaker 9 Look, Ollie, the whole thing is

Speaker 9 the entire time I was in Europe, I was on a bit of a Cloud 9 anyway.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 it had been a great year.

Speaker 9 It was romantic, it was snowing,

Speaker 58 everything was cool, and I thought this is the right thing to do.

Speaker 35 How did she react?

Speaker 9 I think a little bit surprised, but also

Speaker 9 said yes pretty quick as well.

Speaker 31 So,

Speaker 7 yeah, mate, we were in love.

Speaker 16 Just after he proposed, Greg followed his fiancé back home to the superpower he had always wanted to visit.

Speaker 9 Yeah, first time in the United States.

Speaker 19 He expected New York to be paved in gold.

Speaker 23 Instead, it was dirty.

Speaker 9 That was my first impression, actually.

Speaker 9 was this is this is rough as guts.

Speaker 20 Then it was to the West Coast to stay in Leslie's childhood home in Orange County, California.

Speaker 44 Leslie always said that she was from a rich background, so you might imagine her house to be like a mansion off Laguna Beach.

Speaker 24 Nah.

Speaker 9 It's as

Speaker 9 middle-income America as you could possibly find.

Speaker 25 Leslie was warm and social, but it turned out that her mum and dad were the kind of parents that'll make you feel like you have to be on best behavior.

Speaker 16 Her mum, Betty, with almost permanently pursed lips, and her dad, Andrew, had a squint through glasses that was somehow at the same time suspicious and disinterested.

Speaker 31 I was put in a room next to her parents, and she was put in her old room that she grew up in.

Speaker 31 Bed in the same place, the same TV, VHS, cassettes underneath the TV.

Speaker 44 Remember, Leslie was nearly 40 years old at this point, but it was a separate bedroom situation.

Speaker 9 At this house, there was a camera above the front door,

Speaker 9 like a CCTV camera.

Speaker 7 And I thought, oh, yeah, okay.

Speaker 9 I asked about it, you know, why you guys got security, and I remember the answer was, the Hawaiians.

Speaker 17 Something about that didn't add up for Greg, but he was on his best behaviour and let it go.

Speaker 20 He had bigger things on his mind.

Speaker 16 He was about to get married.

Speaker 16 To make immigration and paperwork stuff easier, as well as to avoid any discomfort with Leslie's conservative parents, they arranged to get hitched quickly at a courthouse in Santa Ana.

Speaker 25 Betty and Andrew seemed happy for them.

Speaker 16 Betty put on a nice dress, Andrew put on a jacket, and he drove them to the courthouse in his Cadillac.

Speaker 23 The ceremony was brief. The registry office was no frills, just a vase of flowers in the corner.

Speaker 44 Greg was happy, but he was feeling far away from home.

Speaker 20 And also, Greg thought making things official would change the sleeping arrangements, but it didn't.

Speaker 23 Yeah, separate bed situation.

Speaker 58 I was

Speaker 9 quite keen to

Speaker 9 not have that situation, but I respected it.

Speaker 58 But you were married now.

Speaker 6 Well, that's what was sort of.

Speaker 42 You know, I thought, hey, what else do I need to do here?

Speaker 7 Hey, man,

Speaker 7 I've done the deed, but I want to do the deed. Her parents were very, very conservative.

Speaker 36 It didn't matter too much, though, because they weren't planning on staying.

Speaker 16 As much as Greg was intrigued by America, he thought it would be easier to settle at home in NZ, where they were going to have a proper wedding.

Speaker 36 But when it came time to leave California, it seemed like Betty and Andrew didn't really want their daughter to go.

Speaker 9 They took us out to the airport to LAX and

Speaker 9 they cried shitloads when we left.

Speaker 64 But it was all, you know, moving to New Zealand for a new life. What was their thoughts on that?

Speaker 9 Oh, look, mate, I don't remember ever any optimism of Lieslie moving to New Zealand.

Speaker 9 I honestly distinctly remember them being really sad, her leaving America again.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Now, whether that's because

Speaker 9 it's a loved one leaving to another land

Speaker 29 or

Speaker 9 another reason, who fucking knows?

Speaker 64 Like, what do you mean by that?

Speaker 7 What would another reason be?

Speaker 9 Like, knowing that she's going to get in trouble again somewhere else.

Speaker 9 They can't keep an eye on her.

Speaker 6 I don't know.

Speaker 20 It's late at night as Greg and I talk on the couch.

Speaker 25 We've never talked about all this stuff.

Speaker 20 I've kind of just wanted to help him forget.

Speaker 23 But now that we're talking, the more we get into what happened with Leslie, the more tangled up we get.

Speaker 64 I remember that the story was her

Speaker 64 dad worked in the armaments industry and, you know, we've heard that she's a trust fund baby and there's all this money in her family and you know she's from this sort of rich background and everything.

Speaker 63 So. None of that's true.

Speaker 36 Say that again.

Speaker 9 Well, none of that's true, less the part that...

Speaker 9 And her dad told me that

Speaker 9 he built water tanks for the US Army.

Speaker 58 Not armaments.

Speaker 9 It was water tanks.

Speaker 9 I think she told me he built tanks.

Speaker 5 for the US Army, which to be fair is kind of true.

Speaker 7 But when somebody says that they're building tanks for the army, you don't think water tanks.

Speaker 9 Look, he was a smart guy, he was an engineer.

Speaker 9 So he was Iranian. He was born in...
Sorry, he was actually... He was born in Tehran, but he was Armenian.

Speaker 16 Leslie's dad. Yeah.

Speaker 9 Or sorry, no.

Speaker 9 Adopted father. I never...

Speaker 9 No one's,

Speaker 9 as far as I know,

Speaker 9 more least of all us, has met the

Speaker 9 biological parents. She was adopted.

Speaker 64 Right, okay.

Speaker 7 I didn't know that.

Speaker 64 But man.

Speaker 9 That brings in the other piece

Speaker 9 that actually is where the trust fund supposedly came from. It was from her biological parents and what she got left behind, and then she was adopted out.

Speaker 7 So somebody adopted a baby with a trust fund?

Speaker 6 Well,

Speaker 9 this is where, like, you know, there's so many facets to someone's personality or stories or all or otherwise.

Speaker 9 Eventually,

Speaker 9 you actually just kind of give up asking and accept some of it and

Speaker 9 live in the moment and move on.

Speaker 9 It just seems like bullshit, you know?

Speaker 9 Well, most of it is.

Speaker 18 I knew the story had lots of strange tentacles, but as I'm asking Greg this this stuff, every answer seems to sprout more bizarre limbs for me to understand. Even just basic, really basic questions.

Speaker 11 Like, how old is Leslie?

Speaker 9 Yeah, she's obviously a bit older than me.

Speaker 64 How much older?

Speaker 31 Well,

Speaker 9 she had two birth dates, so I never actually knew.

Speaker 64 What do you mean she had two birthdays?

Speaker 64 I feel like I ask, what do you mean a lot?

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's fine.

Speaker 9 Well, in this situation, you should.

Speaker 9 It was either eight or ten years, I think.

Speaker 64 What do you mean she had two birthdays?

Speaker 9 She had two different passports as well.

Speaker 48 What?

Speaker 31 Whoa.

Speaker 31 Wait.

Speaker 21 Explain. Explain.

Speaker 63 So

Speaker 9 there was a US passport,

Speaker 9 but there was other documentation with different birth dates.

Speaker 7 You didn't think that was strange?

Speaker 58 Well,

Speaker 31 yeah, sure, but there was,

Speaker 9 you know, plausible reasons.

Speaker 7 Which were what?

Speaker 7 Um,

Speaker 61 I think for memory it was

Speaker 61 smuggled out of Armenia.

Speaker 31 The passport was smuggled out of Armenia?

Speaker 9 No, she was.

Speaker 12 Wow.

Speaker 9 So we've got that piece plus all the Hawaiians attacking her.

Speaker 7 Mate,

Speaker 9 she's an enigma.

Speaker 42 Oh, Oliver.

Speaker 31 Hey, bro.

Speaker 46 I want you to meet my older brother, Simon.

Speaker 62 My name's Simon.

Speaker 55 I'm your brother.

Speaker 20 I'm the youngest of us brothers.

Speaker 44 Greg is in the middle.

Speaker 22 Simon's the oldest.

Speaker 15 Simon can be intimidating, but he's also charismatic.

Speaker 54 Like he'd gate crash your party and then be the life of it.

Speaker 38 He's got a shaved head, thick black beard.

Speaker 5 Can you, like, in a few sentences, just describe yourself for people listening? Like, you know, how would you, in a couple of sentences, sum yourself up?

Speaker 45 I don't know.

Speaker 39 I'm an artist.

Speaker 12 A lover.

Speaker 55 No, no, I'm a brother.

Speaker 31 Like, what do you mean?

Speaker 44 For Kiwis at home like Simon, when Leslie Minoukian turned up, she was pretty full-on.

Speaker 46 She was a real different character to have around.

Speaker 55 No, it was just a bit...

Speaker 55 It was a bit weird.

Speaker 55 And to tell you the truth, the only interaction I've ever had with an American, I think, like a proper American, like she's like the quintessential kind of Kelly chick with that strong accent.

Speaker 55 I'd just seen that on TV.

Speaker 65 Just interactions with her.

Speaker 55 I remember it feeling a bit like TV, just because you know what I mean, sort of like an intensity, yeah, man, a wicked intensity.

Speaker 65 It didn't seem like this huge love affair,

Speaker 55 but Greg's quite interesting, anyway. He's quite an interesting guy.
So, something that may seem strange in another situation, I'm like, oh, this is just Greg, this is my brother.

Speaker 11 Greg's Kiwi mates also found Leslie quite buzzy.

Speaker 50 They were very quick to get wrapped up in Leslie because she was like the life of the party. She'd roll up with you know her Jaeger meister and to be honest back then I was 10 years ago I was 24

Speaker 50 so here's this chick who was like just paying for everything like she was always I mean can I talk about drugs she was always supplying weed and

Speaker 50 Jaeger meister.

Speaker 28 It's a quick way to a 24 year old's heart weed and Jaeger Meister.

Speaker 50 Oh 100% right.

Speaker 62 Most people were like sweet as but for some others it was a bit much.

Speaker 50 Like, for instance, if she said, come over, we'll have a drink of wine, we'd go over there and have a really expensive bottle of red or something, and I'd mention, oh, yeah, that's a really nice bottle.

Speaker 50 She'd turn up the next day with like a whole case of the stuff and be like, this is for you.

Speaker 66 Every time we caught up, she was always showering us in gifts, like giving us literally gifts. paying for everything, free alcohol.

Speaker 50 This is amazing.

Speaker 66 But when it was every catch-up, I started to be like, this is weird.

Speaker 51 This is not how a normal friendship works.

Speaker 68 Don't put it near me.

Speaker 25 What needs to come near you to record you?

Speaker 68 Venus looking at me.

Speaker 31 A what?

Speaker 20 That's my mum, Julie, describing my microphone.

Speaker 36 Mum's a tall lady.

Speaker 18 She used to be self-conscious as a teenager.

Speaker 59 One time she danced with her friend in the girls' bathroom because she didn't think any of the boys would want to dance with a taller girl.

Speaker 69 But now she owns it.

Speaker 18 She's pretty sassy and sarcastic.

Speaker 30 Could you just put it sort of over there, down there?

Speaker 5 Can you start by just

Speaker 38 why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 31 Hello.

Speaker 30 I'm the mother of three boys

Speaker 30 who I thought I would not survive their upbringing.

Speaker 68 I love the three of them to bits.

Speaker 30 The one we're going to speak of is our lovely Greg,

Speaker 30 who is a kind,

Speaker 30 far-seeing,

Speaker 30 intelligent,

Speaker 30 good-looking young man. And that people used to even say he looked like Tom Cruise.

Speaker 30 So that must be a measure.

Speaker 30 But in that, it seems there's been a bit of vulnerability.

Speaker 17 My brother is kind, but I gotta say, he doesn't look like Tom Cruise.

Speaker 62 I reckon Mum thought Leslie looked like a movie star, too.

Speaker 30 She was rather lovely. She had this dark,

Speaker 30 vivacious,

Speaker 24 a surface skin and look to her.

Speaker 30 Personality, bubbly,

Speaker 30 very ya-ya American.

Speaker 30 You know how Americans have the accent where they go, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya. I know, I just know.

Speaker 30 So I thought, oh, yes, that's just American, and we got on with it.

Speaker 47 Mum ended up hanging out with Leslie like every day.

Speaker 68 Each day

Speaker 30 she would get up and make me take her somewhere. Like, let's go.
And I was happy to do it, for goodness sake.

Speaker 36 What was their kind of plan, though? I mean, what were they going to be doing?

Speaker 30 of a hospitality nature.

Speaker 30 One day she'd been trawling through things up in a bedroom and she came down and she said, I've found it. I've got it.
She said, this is a sign I have to buy this place.

Speaker 30 What was the sign? The sign was that she had a big dragonfly tattooed across her back.

Speaker 27 So the cafe is called the dragonfly. She's got a dragonfly tattoo.
It's a sign.

Speaker 48 It's meant to be.

Speaker 62 The dragonfly cafe was in a small town called Matacana, an hour's drive north of Auckland.

Speaker 26 Around Matacana, lush native bush and farms sit next to sandy white beaches.

Speaker 20 There's a farmer's market vibe. Sometimes ducks waddle around town from the river, which is lit up by fairy lights at night.

Speaker 20 The Dragonfly was on the main road leading into Matacana.

Speaker 26 At the front, a gift shop sold scented candles and beach house knickknacks.

Speaker 25 On the back patio, the cafe looked down a slope towards a natural waterfall, all surrounded by native bush.

Speaker 27 If you looked back up towards the cafe, you'd see a house with a log cabin feel to it with exposed wooden beams.

Speaker 16 This is where Greg and Leslie would live.

Speaker 30 It was lovely,

Speaker 30 super staff.

Speaker 37 Do you remember how much it was going to be worth?

Speaker 24 Over

Speaker 68 a million

Speaker 30 because it had the house with it and the beautiful land and the business.

Speaker 39 Okay, ready to rock and roll.

Speaker 22 And finally from our fam, this is my dad, David.

Speaker 37 I am a Kiwi fellow who has had lots of jobs, met lots of people.

Speaker 37 I feel fairly comfortable in myself.

Speaker 37 I have developed a fairly strong Christian faith and I think that's served me very well.

Speaker 17 My whole life, Dad has looked the same. He's got a round, warm face, incapable of showing anger, square glasses, silver grey hair, just only on the sides.

Speaker 59 Maybe it's because I've been away from home for so long, but sometimes I hear Dad like Murray, the manager from Flight of the Concords.

Speaker 24 Oh, you're like a cool-looking pair of idiots.

Speaker 20 Dad was there to help Leslie get set up when she came to New Zealand.

Speaker 37 So she needed a lawyer in order to look at properties and do some conveyancing. And I thought, poor girl, she doesn't know anybody.
She can have our lawyer. So I introduced her to our lawyer.

Speaker 18 This Auckland-based lawyer had been acting for mum and dad for 25 years. When my parents bought their house in 1982, he was there.

Speaker 54 Dad bought a business that hired out party equipment.

Speaker 25 He worked on that. It made sense to get him on the job for Leslie too, now that she was part of the family.

Speaker 25 With that sorted, Leslie went to New Zealand's state-owned bank, creatively titled Kiwi Bank, Bank, and she asked for a loan.

Speaker 54 The conditions included Leslie proving to KiwiBank that she had a trust fund.

Speaker 18 She was able to show the bank that she had 5 million US dollars in her trust fund and 5,000 coming to her each month for life.

Speaker 5 But Leslie had only just come to New Zealand and she was still on a tourist visa.

Speaker 54 Another condition of the loan was having a Kiwi Guarantor.

Speaker 11 Dad had just sold his party hire company and retired, so it seemed natural for them to get involved.

Speaker 37 There were a lot of people that were sort of saying things,

Speaker 37 you know, cautioning us,

Speaker 45 are you sure?

Speaker 37 That's a huge thing to do.

Speaker 37 And I was thinking, Leslie seems to be on top of all this. She has all this fantastic references from running restaurants over in America and in Hawaii.

Speaker 37 She talks the talk.

Speaker 37 She convinced our lawyer that it was a good thing to do.

Speaker 38 I tried to talk to this lawyer but he didn't want to be interviewed.

Speaker 25 In a case that happened later he said he never told mum and dad that it was a great venture.

Speaker 20 He said he doesn't give that kind of advice to his clients.

Speaker 22 But dad remembers things differently.

Speaker 37 He said to me, you don't have to do anything, David, because

Speaker 37 I would say she's a human dynamo. It's his words.
She is a human dynamo. We're thinking, every now and again, you've got to stick your neck out, you stick your neck out, and it'll pay off.

Speaker 37 So we guaranteed a loan, a 100% loan, to purchase $1.5 million worth of property and business.

Speaker 37 It was an awful lot on trust here,

Speaker 42 on my part and our part.

Speaker 37 Huge amount.

Speaker 37 We did stick our necks out.

Speaker 60 Greg and Leslie moved into the house at the Dragonfly over the last few months of 2007.

Speaker 20 Greg wouldn't have much to do with the cafe.

Speaker 44 He had his own job.

Speaker 17 Leslie was in charge.

Speaker 62 But soon my brother Simon got roped in on the food side of the business.

Speaker 55 So I may have embellished the story, but I remember being just a few days before the cafe opened, she had a blue with the chef.

Speaker 55 And then, so I was just like the chef.

Speaker 7 Isn't he he quit? Some French guy and he quit.

Speaker 17 When the cafe reopened, there was a lot of buzz around it.

Speaker 24 Things were going well.

Speaker 20 Leslie was making an impact on the chilled-out Matacana community.

Speaker 44 Here was this California power business lady shaking things up.

Speaker 25 The local magazine did a write-up.

Speaker 56 Now, under its new owner, Leslie Minoukian, who has previously owned restaurants in Lake Tahoe in the US and in Hawaii, Dragonfly is getting better by the day.

Speaker 59 Meanwhile, preparations were underway for a massive wedding. But it soon became clear that none of Leslie's Trust Fund friends from America were going to make it.

Speaker 20 She said none of them could hack the 13-hour flight to Auckland.

Speaker 59 So Kiwi girls that Leslie had known for only a matter of months started getting the call up to the bridal party, like Carla, who was back in London.

Speaker 50 I remember sitting at my desk in

Speaker 50 Hoxton and in my office and I remember thinking, fuck, this is so weird, and sort of saying to a few of the girls in the showroom, like, so I've just asked me to be a bridesmaid to this girl I barely know in New Zealand in January.

Speaker 44 One of the other bridesmaids, Alicia, hadn't hadn't known Leslie for long either.

Speaker 67 I was asked to be a bridesmaid, which was quite surprising. I think she said something about her cousin couldn't come.
So I think I was kind of filling in.

Speaker 67 Like, she didn't really have any family here. And

Speaker 67 yeah, I mean, I guess I was happy to do it because we were, you know, we were close at the time.

Speaker 18 After everything that went down, my mum stopped referring to it as the wedding.

Speaker 26 She renamed it.

Speaker 18 In our family, it's now known as the event.

Speaker 20 The event happened on a blue sky summer day, just after Christmas, in a small colonial era church with painted white arches and stiff wooden pews.

Speaker 50 And it just was really surreal. It was like I was kind of acting.
I was acting in a sitcom or something. Like that was my role to arrive.
And then I was going to go walk, you know, down the aisle. And

Speaker 50 it was so weird.

Speaker 22 The ceremony was pretty standard. A priest, those Bible readings from every church wedding ever.

Speaker 69 Love is patient, love is kind.

Speaker 27 After that, the party started straight away in a hall next door.

Speaker 16 I was living in London by this point and I had flown home especially for the wedding.

Speaker 22 I was happy to be the MC.

Speaker 17 I remember making a joke like, geez, I go away for a couple of months and I come back and Greg's got a cafe, a house and a waterfall.

Speaker 20 I can't find any recordings of that night.

Speaker 20 Pretty much everyone we know in New Zealand was there.

Speaker 25 More than 150 people came. There were even wedding crashes watching from the deck.

Speaker 17 But here's the weird thing.

Speaker 17 Almost all the guests were from Greg's side.

Speaker 60 The only guests that weren't already friends or family of Greg's were Leslie's parents, Betty and Andrew.

Speaker 55 There were two people.

Speaker 55 Yeah. No friends, no family.

Speaker 55 I think the weirdest thing, and I think the weirdest thing for everyone just about the event was the parent thing, her parents, and just how

Speaker 55 I think there was a lot of these. They were just standoffish.
They were just like, I don't know.

Speaker 55 It was just fucking weird. I don't remember really being able to talk to them at all.
Like, there was no really interaction.

Speaker 30 They were very quiet and you couldn't raise a lip of a smile. You couldn't get a word out of them.
They looked

Speaker 30 very.

Speaker 30 She looked very pale and

Speaker 58 colourless.

Speaker 23 The best man, Nat, made a special effort with Leslie's parents.

Speaker 32 They were very, very hard to try and make them feel welcome. So I just remember at one point just walking away and thinking, oh, well.

Speaker 70 I remember joking with Nat about the fact that potentially, you know, are Leslie's parents, even her real parents, or did she just ring in a couple of actors?

Speaker 40 They seemed a little bit stand-in, like, because they were sort of a bit there but not there.

Speaker 50 We joked that they were hired actors because

Speaker 50 I don't know, they just, oh, because they definitely didn't fit the profile of like who you think her parents would be.

Speaker 50 And they were kind of weird and quiet and there wasn't like a lot of love and like vibing relationship between the two like you would expect from a parent and child.

Speaker 55 Like, I don't know, like, I honestly, like, to this day, I have no idea if that's her parents. No idea.

Speaker 55 I wouldn't be surprised if that's not. I don't remember seeing any kind of love going on.

Speaker 25 I remember Betty and Andrew.

Speaker 57 They bought me a pair of Levi jeans as a gift.

Speaker 38 That was cool.

Speaker 57 But they didn't really talk to me either. I still don't know what they knew about what was going on or what their role was in all of this.

Speaker 55 I think they kind of knew that there was some fuckery involved. You know what I mean?

Speaker 20 It wasn't long after the wedding that people started to notice some of that fuckery.

Speaker 50 I was up in Remier shops and I bumped into Leslie and she had just come out of the public library

Speaker 50 She was showing me this document that she had sent over from the US because she was trying to get her driver's license in New Zealand, but she had to submit like a driving record from the US.

Speaker 50 And we were having a laugh because she had all these DUI and some like suspended licenses or something. Like a she had a few things, and she was in the public library.

Speaker 50 No joke, she was twinkling out these

Speaker 50 from her record that obviously she had asked for and been sent over from the US, twinking these out and then re-photocopying them and then touching them up and re-photocopying them until it looked legit.

Speaker 44 By the way, twink is one of those words that people laugh at us, Kiwis, about.

Speaker 17 It's wide out, liquid eraser, twink.

Speaker 50 And I just remember standing on the road with her

Speaker 50 so vividly, just her showing me the document and her and I having a laugh about it. And I was thinking, wow, like

Speaker 50 that's, I think, was the first time I was like, she's like, she's got some secrets, you know, like you're hiding some stuff.

Speaker 21 And up at the Dragonfly cafe things were starting to go wrong

Speaker 67 we ran out of water so we didn't have access in the kitchen to water and so greg and likewise were kind of running back and forward to the house trying to get like bottles of water trying to get stuff to wash the dishes and there were just so many days like that where something was going wrong and there was just

Speaker 67 no fixing it. I don't think Leslie was around for much of that.
I remember her coming in really strong at the beginning and then kind of not being around and all our staff were like,

Speaker 67 what's happening?

Speaker 31 There was one moment where it was a bit of a watershed moment for me and that's when the milk supplier for the cafe arrived and I sort of said g'day how are you

Speaker 48 and

Speaker 48 he basically said that he'd never been paid for milk. It wasn't his first attempt at getting money.
I could tell that he was a bit worked up about it.

Speaker 31 And,

Speaker 42 you know, I thought,

Speaker 48 this is not right.

Speaker 39 And I recall

Speaker 39 talking to Leslie about it, and she sort of, as she did, with lots of things, I'll take care of it.

Speaker 48 Don't get involved, leave it to me.

Speaker 15 The dragonfly was becoming a total cluster.

Speaker 54 A bunch of people were saying they weren't getting paid.

Speaker 9 I became very frustrated that I couldn't access any information.

Speaker 48 I couldn't ever get to the bottom of anything.

Speaker 7 Leslie

Speaker 48 almost got angry at me for attempting to

Speaker 48 try and help and get more involved. The more it happened, the more angry she got at me, the more frustrated I got, and that became a real strain.

Speaker 37 I started to feel very uneasy and we needed to find out what was going on.

Speaker 37 We weren't able to find out a heck of a lot from the bank. We weren't actually owners of the business.

Speaker 37 We weren't signatories to anything. Even Greg wasn't able to find out a lot of stuff.

Speaker 26 But you were the guarantors, and

Speaker 22 you know, you guys had put money on the line, but

Speaker 16 you had signed up to be the guarantors, but not signed up to be able to see anything.

Speaker 36 Isn't that weird?

Speaker 37 You could say it like that, but I did follow my lawyer's advice that she knows what she's doing. She's a human dynamo.

Speaker 5 Leslie would spend most of the day locked in the house, which had become a sanctuary from the outside world and the questions people were starting to ask.

Speaker 43 A date was set for a meeting where an accountant was going to start combing through the books, but Leslie didn't show up.

Speaker 18 Greg knew he needed to do something, so he came up with a plan.

Speaker 64 If she was here, she would

Speaker 36 block us learning about what the reality was.

Speaker 9 I told her to go and see her parents and go over holiday, get out of the country.

Speaker 64 And you actually thought that would be an opportunity to look around properly. It was the only way.

Speaker 31 Yep.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 64 what was, you know, if you don't mind me asking, like, what was the kind of relationship like at that point?

Speaker 9 Frosty.

Speaker 9 Just completely untrusting on both sides.

Speaker 22 At pretty short notice, Leslie booked a flight to America to visit her family.

Speaker 21 So my mum and dad would have to step up and look after the cafe.

Speaker 24 As Greg drove her to Auckland Airport, things were tense.

Speaker 44 There was a lot unsaid.

Speaker 19 But Greg wanted to work this whole mess out and get back to life with Leslie when she got back from the States.

Speaker 6 So we're parked, checked in,

Speaker 36 formalities are done.

Speaker 9 It's me and Leslie now walking upstairs to the actual departure gate

Speaker 9 where

Speaker 6 there's not a lot of love going on.

Speaker 9 There was probably a nervous

Speaker 6 but cold hug.

Speaker 9 Hope to see you again.

Speaker 6 Let's try and work this out.

Speaker 7 And she

Speaker 9 right at at the last moment

Speaker 6 put it right out there

Speaker 6 that Greg

Speaker 7 the snowball is about to hit you

Speaker 36 next episode the snowball hits

Speaker 41 we cried We just were destroyed.

Speaker 33 That was a fundamental wow moment for me when you present that to a bank and they accept it.

Speaker 53 Adrenaline is my best friend.

Speaker 10 That's quite calculated.

Speaker 49 That's fucking up there.

Speaker 34 Somebody's been wronged using my name and rightfully believes that the person who wronged them is me.

Speaker 30 I found it. He said your janitors should have found it.

Speaker 36 How often would you go in there and look?

Speaker 27 At least once a week.

Speaker 12 It's so weird.

Speaker 12 It is weird.

Speaker 7 It is weird.

Speaker 69 Snowball is hosted and produced by me, Ollie Wards.

Speaker 44 Big ups to my brave brother Greg and my entire family for letting me tell this story. Unravel's totally stoic and awesome supervising producer is Tim Roxburgh.

Speaker 69 Our super diligent audio producer is Emma Lancaster.

Speaker 38 Assisting with audio production is Shane Anderson, who is also our whip smart fact checker.

Speaker 26 Sound designed by the very creative, left and right panning John Jacobs and Tim Jenkins.

Speaker 69 A big thanks to my prolific and legendary mates from flight facilities for the funky ass Unravel theme song.

Speaker 26 Additional music by the talented tunesmith Bryce Halliday.

Speaker 16 You can check out some behind-the-scenes stuff over at my Instagram at OllyWards, O-L-L-I-E-W-A-R-D-S.

Speaker 43 Unravel is a product of ABC Audio Studios, led by the above, thoughtful, and patient Kelly Reardon.

Speaker 27 And Unravel's expert and excitable executive producer is Ian Walker.

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