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This story contains adult content and language.

Listener discretion is advised.

Welcome to the Knife.

I'm Hannah Smith.

I'm Patia Eaton.

Today, I'm I'm going to tell Patia a story about an international con man, and then we will have recommendations.

Let's get into it.

So,

I first heard about this story through someone who emailed me and said that she had a story about a con man.

I remember you telling me that someone had emailed.

This was a while ago.

Yeah, yeah.

And so as we do, I set up a preliminary call just to sort of hear more about the story.

So I talked with her on the phone for a bit.

She didn't end up doing an interview.

So I'm just going to use a different name.

We'll call her Sarah.

But basically she told me that she was working abroad in 2018.

She was in Portugal in Porto and she was working there.

She was kind of like going out and partying.

There was an expat scene.

How old was she?

20s or 30s.

Okay.

Had a job there, but would go out and was like part of the expat community.

Through just meeting people, she met this guy named Chad and they were friends for a year and a half.

She didn't really know him that well.

She said they kind of just like were in the same social scene together.

The things that she knew about him was that he seemed to be very wealthy.

He had this penthouse that he was renting and he would have these elaborate parties there with like a lot of drugs and partying.

And he also told her he went to Yale.

Fancy.

And she was just kind of like, I don't know, I didn't think much about him.

We were friends for a couple of years.

And then she ended up moving to Hong Kong for a job.

And then COVID hit.

And she was like in a hotel room quarantined for a couple of months just by herself.

And she said that at that time, Chad ended up becoming kind of a good friend of hers.

They would talk on the phone.

He would check in with her.

There was a weird thing where he, she had left some of her belongings in Portugal.

And so he offered to ship them to her.

He said, you know, I'll just cover the costs and then you can reimburse me.

And it ended up being like more money than she would have expected.

And looking back now, she wonders if he maybe got a couple hundred dollars out of her.

And then she had to fly home.

She had to fly back to the States because of, I don't know, some visa paperwork.

And somehow he said, well, I have points or I can get you a really good deal on a flight.

So he bought her a plane ticket, sent her the ticket, and then she reimbursed him.

And when she got to the airport, she couldn't get on the plane.

She thought that it was a problem with the airline.

It turns out it was just a fake ticket.

Okay, so he's really wealthy.

That's what she knows about him.

He's thrown these elaborate parties at his penthouse in Portugal, where she initially meets him.

They become long-distance friends when she moves to Hong Kong for a job.

Super wealthy guy needs to be reimbursed for shipping her some of her belongings.

But then on the flip side, we'll generously get her a plane ticket with points.

Yeah.

Okay.

But she said said around that time, a friend of hers in Portugal reached out to her and said something like, you know, Chad is not who he says that he is.

And apparently she heard through the grapevine that he had left Portugal, sort of fled and left behind this enormous bill at that place he was renting.

It was like $45,000 or something.

So There's a story there, but it's like, okay, so she lost maybe less than $1,000.

She lost a couple hundred hundred dollars and then she had this really big headache at the airport.

It's not a huge scam, but what she told me was that she later found out that he had way more victims and that this was like a small drop in the pool of what he had done.

How did she find out about all of his other scams?

I mean, she'd moved away from Portugal by that point.

She Googled him and she found this Facebook page that's dedicated to his victims.

When she found it, she said there were like 200 people in this group.

Oh my gosh.

But one of the people that she connected with through Facebook that she then connected me with is Chad's ex-wife, Jordana.

He scammed her too.

Yeah.

And her story is much more involved and spans multiple years.

And so we did an interview with Jordana, but ultimately for a couple of reasons, we're not going to use all of the tape for a full interview.

There is a legal aspect to her story that we actually cannot talk about legally.

So I'll explain that later.

But because of that, we're going to tell the story, but not with the full interview.

We will play clips from the conversation with Jordana.

We'll tell you as much as we can.

We'll tell you as much as we can.

That's right.

So Jordana's story starts.

She grew up in Hawaii.

She calls herself an island girl.

She loves living on an island.

She ended up moving to LA in her early adulthood 20s.

She studied acting.

She got some jobs.

She actually, you know, made some money.

She was a stunt woman for a while, which is such an interesting career, but she said she didn't really love it.

She met and married her first husband, Pete, and he was living in Bali, Indonesia.

And this was the kind of life that she wanted.

She was like, LA is too busy for me.

I want like a more island life.

So she moved there.

They got married.

They had a daughter in 2009.

And here's Jordana.

Sold everything I owned.

And at that time, I'd saved up a lot of money from the movie business and put my money in stocks and all that kind of stuff.

So I had a good chunk of money.

We opened up the first surf shop ever in Ulawatu.

And my business was pretty lucrative.

I had five houses that I owned.

And things were going pretty well.

But Pete started cheating on me with his second wife or whatever in Tsumbawa.

So, and that was about when my daughter was about one,

found that out.

And so so things became pretty rocky at that point.

Five houses.

Very successful surf shop.

Yeah.

Good for her.

She's doing well.

Yeah.

You know, but then her marriage ends and

she

has a child, but she is sort of, you know, newly single and she starts going out and meeting people.

And

through friends of friends, she's at a bar one night and she meets this guy, Chad, in Bali.

And she describes him as

very preppy he really stood out she

hung out with mostly surfers and Chad walks into the bar he's wearing Ralph Lauren polo shirts and is buying everybody a round of shots and is loud and sort of has that kind of frat boy energy to him

I would say love it, but no.

So she's, she's kind of like, who is this guy?

But then she finds out that he's actually living in Singapore, coming to Bali for business, and he starts to rent some of her properties when he's there.

So through that, she gets to know him.

And she had to come over to one of the houses to deliver something at one point.

And they sat down and hung out and talked for hours.

And she said that her opinion of him really shifted at that point.

He seemed to be a very cultured, educated person.

He said that he grew up in San Francisco, that he went to Dartmouth, and that he loved to travel and he could speak multiple languages.

They talked about wine.

He seemed to have like a pretty extensive knowledge about wine.

So in Jordana's story, he went to Dartmouth.

And Sarah's story, yeah,

he's been very busy.

Yeah, spoiler alert.

This might not be true.

Right.

So she's kind of like, okay, actually, he seems really cool and they become friends.

A few months later, she tells him she's going to Thailand on a business trip.

And I remember telling him that I was going to fly out to Chiang Mai.

And he said, wow, well, I'm going to be out that way too.

I'll meet you.

We'll do lunch.

And I was like, oh, okay, that sounds cool.

So I flew into Chiang Mai and he said that he was going to meet me at the airport.

And I thought, okay.

So I flew into Chiang Mai and he met me at the airport and he tried to kiss me.

And I was like, no, this is not what we're doing.

It's like that.

And he got really weird.

And we ended up going to lunch and he was just acting really, really strange.

I guess because I didn't kiss him and stuff.

And so I was like, what's going on?

And he was like, nothing, nothing, nothing.

And then he basically told me that he was in love with me and he wanted to marry me.

And if I was going to say no, he was never going to talk to me again.

And I kind of at this point, I was like,

well,

maybe I'll just go for it.

This guy's amazing.

He's money.

He's smart.

He's intelligent.

I actually kind of love this from Jordana because it's like, I think no one in like their most grounded version of themselves could be drawn in by something like that.

But she had been through so much right now.

She said her first husband, Pete, was cheating on her when she had a one-year-old.

That ends in divorce.

You know, now she's flying in somewhere for business and this guy likes her enough that he wants to meet her at the airport.

Very romantic.

Very romantic until she says, no, I don't want to kiss you.

And he freaks out.

But then it's like, well, here's this guy who does really like me and I'm pushing him away.

I mean, he seems successful.

If you have a daughter, I could see why you would be drawn to someone who maybe can offer some stability.

Yeah, totally.

The situation can be read multiple ways, right?

In hindsight, it feels pretty manipulative, but I can, I'm totally with you.

I can see how that would feel attractive.

He's this guy who has, you know, his life together and is, you know, very clear about what he wants, which can be really attractive.

Yeah.

And sounds super different from her first husband who was like surfer bro.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I live.

Very different.

Yeah.

So she jumps in.

They start dating.

And according to Jordana, things move very quickly.

He ends up moving to Bali and they get a place together.

She did say before he made the official move, she went to visit him where he was living in Singapore.

And this was a bit of a red flag for her.

He was living in this really big house, but there was hardly anything in it.

She was like, they didn't have a fork.

So he had a roommate.

So she questioned him about it.

But, you know, he had a way to explain it away.

He was like, well, you know, we're bachelors and we're working all the time.

And I never really meant to live here long term.

So it's just been a temporary thing.

I actually have a close friend who's ultra successful.

And in one of his houses, he was like, i don't need any dishes i'm just gonna postmates everything i mean i the way that i looked at him in that moment i probably looked like i saw a ghost but this this predates postmates so no excuses you need forks right i guess he he probably was eating out all the time but yeah why not have some forks it doesn't make any sense to me you gotta have at least one fork Yes, at least one fork per person who's living in the house.

And let this be standard.

Yes.

But, you know, yeah, okay, cool.

You're a bachelor.

Like it's a little bit of a red flag, but not a big red flag, right?

She also meets his colleagues.

He's working for a hedge fund in Singapore for a person who Jordana described as a billionaire, very successful.

And, you know, she meets Chad's coworkers.

So she knows that he does have a job and his coworkers seem very similar to him, you know, people with really good educations and that are wealthy.

So all of it's checking out.

He moves to Bali.

They get get a place together and Chad is paying the bills.

He's paying for rent, all the bills, everything.

But he's pressuring Jordana to escalate their relationship very quickly.

He really wanted to have a kid.

I did not want any other kids.

I wanted just one daughter and that's about it.

And he really wanted a kid of his own.

So he really was pressing that issue.

I ended up getting pregnant and we had this elaborate wedding at the Astana and it was the nicest place in Bali at the time.

So we flew out all my friends from LA and Hawaii.

My stepmom came, my brother,

and we put them up in villas.

And I think we spent almost $150,000 on this crazy, elaborate wedding.

I had a Dolce Gamana dress.

It was just, it was huge.

I can 100% say my wedding did not cost $150,000.

Wow.

Okay.

So kind of similarly to the way he acted at the airport, it was like, if we don't don't have a kid, then I'm going to blow this up.

If we don't have this big wedding, I'm going to blow this up.

Yeah.

A lot of pressure to move quickly, but also throwing her this really elaborate, beautiful wedding of her dreams, you know?

She focuses on planning the wedding, but there is another red flag that happens.

So she invites her family.

He invites his family, but he tells her, well, my dad isn't going to come to the wedding because I borrowed some money from him and haven't paid it back yet.

$30,000.

Sort of a drop in the bucket if you're paying $150K for a wedding.

Totally.

Like if I'm the dad in that situation, I'm irritated too.

Yeah.

Like, why did you borrow 30 grand if you had that kind of money to throw at a wedding?

Yeah.

And he says, I need to pay him back.

So he'll come to the wedding, but my money's all tied up right now.

So can I borrow some money from you?

And they're married anyway.

So like, why wouldn't she?

Yeah.

And she has the money.

Right.

She has had this successful business in Bali.

And so she agrees and she gives him $30,000 to pay to his dad so that his dad will come to the wedding.

You know, before they got married as well,

Chad had convinced her to sell off a lot of her properties that she was renting out.

And he presented himself as this guy who really understood finances.

And he advised her, you need to get out of this business, sell them off and put that money in an investment account so that it can grow.

So she did.

She said she had about $350,000, which was like the extent of everything she'd worked for in her life.

All that work in LA that she'd made money and then she'd built this business in Bali, you know, everything that she had still maintained throughout her divorce.

So this was her whole life's work.

And so she put it into an investment account.

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So they get married.

She said that meeting his family was a little odd.

They were just a little bit tight-lipped.

They didn't seem that close to Chad.

She said at one point, his mom and sister were walking around their home, and they had a huge home with like a security guard and a chef.

She said, even with like the weight of the U.S.

dollar, it doesn't matter.

Like it was still clearly.

It's opulent.

Yes, yes.

And she said that Chad's mom and sister were sort of walking around, like looking at things, sort of like they looked shocked or amazed.

And this was like a little confusing to Jordana because she was thinking, well, you guys are the wealthy ones.

This is where the money's coming from.

But okay, cool.

Like, I don't know.

You have some personal stuff with your son.

It's fine.

So they get married.

And then he says, let's go to Europe for a honeymoon.

And they plan this three-month-long European honeymoon And it is lavish.

And we rented Ferraris.

We had two Ferraris.

We had a red Ferrari and a black Ferrari.

We stayed at the St.

Regis hotels.

We stayed in presidential suites.

We went all throughout Rome, Italy,

Positano, the Amalfi Coast.

I mean, we just traveled forever and we stayed in the nicest homes.

It was an amazing trip.

It was just like, oh my God, this is amazing.

I'm living the dream.

I'm like

driving Ferraris.

We're staying in all these these fancy places we were shopping i mean i just bought gucci everything and i thought god this is i don't have to work anymore this is this man's amazing he speaks all these different languages and he did like everywhere we went he could speak a little french he could speak a little german he spoke a little italian he spoke portuguese almost fluently um so that was just like wow amazing everywhere we went he could speak a little bit of everything so it was just a lot of fun

it sounds fun yeah and he can actually speak these these languages okay but now i'm thinking like because we know a little bit like where this is headed

i don't speak any of those languages so someone could easily fool me and now i'm curious does he really speak all those languages it's a very good question actually okay quick little detour it reminds me of this moment whenever we were doing the cat cult story So the cat cult story is like this cult story, this woman, Cheryl Ruth Finn, ran this cult.

And part of her whole ideology was that she wanted her followers to adopt a lot of cats.

That's what we get them into heaven, et cetera.

But one of the things that she did was she would take her followers on these like sort of missionary trips to Europe.

But really, it seemed like she just wanted to travel, right?

She'd always be like, we have to go to Italy because there's some spiritual thing happening there.

But then they would just sort of be traveling and looking at art and eating good food.

And someone was telling me they went to this church with with her in Italy and she was like really like talking about how there were demons there.

She was fighting them.

And this person came up and was speaking to her in Italian and Cheryl started speaking back.

She does not speak Italian.

No.

She was speaking gibberish.

And then the person was like speaking back to her in Italian and she was saying something back.

And then they finally left.

And the person I was interviewing was like, I could tell by the way the interaction happened that she wasn't speaking Italian and the person was trying to understand what language she was speaking and was confused but the way that she told her followers was like God gave me the gift to speak to this person and we were battling spiritually or whatever oh this was a demon she was fighting off she was yeah it was like some sort of spiritual battle actually yeah I remember this from the tape that was so long ago but if you're someone who wasn't really like fully paying attention and you don't know Italian you could have seen that and thought oh well she's she knows Italian, or you know, you're also in so deep at that point, you're in Italy with her, you have to believe you're believing, yeah.

So, I do wonder now that you bring that up, it's like maybe something like this is happening.

Is he really speaking German?

I don't know, maybe he is, maybe he's not, but she certainly believed that he was, right?

Right, and I also think, I mean, similar to the story you just told about Cheryl Ruthven in Italy, it's like she's loving this trip.

And I think that we can all relate to like, if you're enjoying your life, you don't want to start believing that it's not real.

You want to just enjoy it.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah.

She has met a man who is wealthy and committed to her and loves her and threw her this elaborate wedding and is now taking her to Europe for three months.

Yeah.

Like that's something she wants to believe in.

I asked her who was paying for this trip and she was like, well, it was a mix, you know, sometimes he would pay in cash for things.

Sometimes he would ask me to put things on my credit card.

She said the Ferrari rental went on her credit card.

If a Ferrari rental was going on my credit card, I would say, we can have one Ferrari.

We don't need two different colors.

Yeah.

It'd be like, I don't know.

And by the way, can we just take the bus?

Yeah, public transport.

Yeah.

I think it's that thing of

she

was like, he just has money.

Rich people, they're sort of like, oh, will you cover this and I'll get you back?

It seemed like he gave off this vibe of, i'm not really concerned about it because obviously i'll pay you back because i have so much money and she said that he would pay her back sometimes he would pay her credit card statements as well so she just sort of felt like okay i'm gonna trust him with all of this he's got it under control sometimes i might have to put something on my credit card but no big deal they're married yeah

then about four months after they get married so they've been in europe for three months they come back her daughter needs to go back to the u.s for a medical procedure So Jordana goes back to the U.S.

with her daughter.

She's pregnant.

And

essentially, Chad ends up telling her, like, I think we should just move back to the U.S.

Like, don't come back to Bali.

We need to move back to the U.S.

I have business there.

Let's just go.

So she says, okay, and asked him how much they can afford in rent.

She's like, I'll start looking for a place.

He says, ten thousand dollars a month.

So they find a house in Sausalito and move in.

And she said, it is a very nice house.

They're renting it.

And, you know, he outfits the house.

They got furniture.

They ship a bunch of stuff from Bali, which is expensive.

They have two cars, a BMW and a Range Rover.

And at this point, something happens that makes Jordana start to question things.

This is when I started finding out about Chad.

when Hertz came to take the cars away from our house, which I thought we owned the cars.

So that's when I started finding out that we didn't own the cars.

And then I started questioning him.

And

he said, well,

I got to rent these cars

because we don't really have the money to buy cars right now.

We don't know if we're going to stay here.

And I'm renting the cars because I have to look at the piece because he was going to open an investment company in San Francisco.

And he always said that if I don't have a fancy house and if I don't have fancy cars, then nobody's going to invest in my company.

And I thought, okay, well, you're spending like $3,000 a month for these cars.

I was like, why can't you just buy a car instead of spending like $3,000 to $4,000 a month for these cars?

It doesn't make sense, you know, like all this stuff doesn't make sense.

I mean, she's right.

It doesn't make any sense.

It's also like thinking that she was pregnant and already had one child she was caring for.

That means you are just so busy.

Like you can wake up and start thinking about all these questions that are coming up for you about your life and your husband's choices, but then you've got to go take care of your kid and you're pregnant.

You're going to a bunch of appointments.

You're trying to figure out your living situation.

It's like your, your world is spinning.

You don't have time to just sit down and like be a sleuth about it.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, she's also figuring out custody situation with her daughter because her daughter's father is still in Bali.

So they're sort of trying to figure that out.

She has so much going on.

And she said, Chad just kind of always had, again, a way to talk about things and explain things to her.

She did say when Hertz came to get the cars, Chad wasn't home.

And Jordana asked them what was going on.

And they said, well, he hasn't paid for over three months on these.

So that was alarming to her.

And then, you know, she started to think about what he was spending money on.

He had rented this office space in downtown San Francisco to get his investment company going.

She had visited the office and she knew it was an expensive part of town and he had outfitted it with all new computers.

He had hired his friends.

She said he took some of the people of the company out to a holiday party at this very expensive restaurant and the bill was like $5,000.

So she was just thinking, why are you spending all this money when you're just getting your company going?

So the question started to add up.

And, you you know, she didn't know Chad's family very well, but she knew that his sister lived in Oakland.

So at this point, she decided that she needed to make contact and try to get some answers.

And I just called her one day and I said, Hillary, I need to talk to you about something.

Can you meet me?

And I just started telling her all kinds of stuff about Chad.

You know, he went to Darmut and she confirmed that he never went to Darmouth.

He went to Chatsworth in Southern California California for like a month or something, never graduated college.

And I said, well, he's from San Francisco.

And she goes, no, we're from Texas.

And I was like, okay.

And

just, I think there were some other things too.

And she just basically confirmed with me.

I remember she said to me, she goes, you got to get away from him.

Wow, everything he told me was a lie.

I didn't know.

I was always kind of scared of Chad too, because he was just so, every time I questioned him about something, he would get really defensive.

And then he always had a good answer, but he was just really, get really angry that I questioned him or asked him anything.

He, he always kind of kept me down and just made me just,

he didn't want me to know anything about him.

I couldn't even get the computers at home.

He changed the passwords constantly to the computers, which I always thought was weird.

I just couldn't know anything about his life.

He was gone constantly.

I was at home by myself like a lot.

And then we started having financial problems with rent.

We couldn't make rent.

That's so strange because she had met his sister at the wedding.

It's like, I can remember the first time I met my now husband's family.

You know, you make small talk.

I don't know.

I guess I'm surprised that more didn't come up at the wedding.

But if his family was in a situation where they thought everything was weird, they probably wouldn't.

talk to her too much or or give her too much information because you might feel like well this is a wedding i I don't want to like

start a problem here.

Yeah.

I also wonder if maybe they thought that she was in on it.

Yeah.

If he had a history of doing things like this, she didn't go into detail about that, but the fact that he owed his dad $30,000, you have to think there was something going on there.

So I wonder if they thought maybe she's part of this.

I don't know.

Right.

Because when you're on the outside of something, it's like, how could you not know?

Yeah,

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So this is obviously a horrible situation that Jordana finds herself in, especially.

Yeah, she's like eight months pregnant at this point, and they're married.

And, you know, she's worried, but she doesn't know what to do.

She calls her best friend, but her best friend is kind of like, well, I don't know what to do.

Maybe there's an explanation for this.

Another thing that's happened that, you know, is a trend in a lot of controlling relationships is that he's kind of isolated her from her family and from a lot of her support system.

Some of that is because she said some people in her family really didn't like him.

So then that kind of created some distance.

She had, when they first moved back to the States, planned on going out and getting a job.

And he

strongly advised her against it, pretty forcefully, saying, that will make me look really bad.

If you start going out and getting a job, it's going to look like I don't have all this money to support you.

Plus, you're pregnant.

So she sort of agreed.

So she doesn't have a job.

She doesn't, you know, have a support system.

And she has no choice but to just trust him right now.

She's eight months pregnant.

What's she going to do?

Yeah.

He's really becoming more and more controlling, like she said, with the computer password and stuff.

stuff.

But, you know, she has a safety net, that $350,000 that she put into an investment account that she's continuing to get statements on it.

And it's accruing, you know, money.

And so she has bigger concerns about Chad, but she's thinking we need to address the current problems, which is that we're behind on rent.

So let's get out of debt.

So she tells Chad, okay, look, why don't we dip into my money and we can pay our back rent rent and we'll at least just like get ahead of things, but until your company takes off.

And that is when he looks at her and reveals that there is no more money.

Whoa, that's so scary.

Finding out basically that I don't have any money.

Well, what I think is, is that he had access to my bank account.

I think I paid for my wedding.

I think I paid for the honeymoon.

I paid for my wedding dress.

I paid for my ring.

I paid for, I paid for everything.

And I didn't know I was paying for everything.

So

that's kind of when I realized that he was using all my money to do everything that we were doing.

But she was getting statements and he worked at the hedge fund where he said he had invested her money.

It's a little strange.

She put the money in a bank account.

in a bank in Bali.

He went with her to set that account up and she didn't didn't think that he had access to it.

She doesn't know how he did this.

She thinks that maybe he bribed someone working at the bank.

He somehow got involved and was able to send her fake statements while he actually took all the money out and was just using it.

And by now, she's somewhat isolated from her friends and family who never really thought highly of Chad.

And his own family is telling her to get away from him, but she just moved and she's about to have a baby.

And where's she going to go if she doesn't have any money?

I mean, I think she said exactly that.

It's like, she's not going to go sign another lease.

She can't.

No.

She doesn't have a job.

She doesn't have income.

She doesn't have any money.

But where am I going to go?

What am I going to do?

There's nowhere for me to go.

I'm, you know, I'm.

I have no money.

Now I feel like I'm really stuck with this man.

It was horrible.

And that's when I really became

really, really, I just remember living with him and just feeling, I mean, the entire time, like I was just living in this bubble in my head.

And I was just walking around like I was just a zombie.

I wasn't even like a real person.

I was just, I remember just being foggy and waking up and felt like I was living.

Not even in a movie.

I mean, movie, you're like, even like, there's a clear picture.

I was just a foggy mess.

And what she ends up finding out is that

back when she was living in Bali, Chad had met some of her mutual friends and through them had found out that she was recently single from her husband and that she had all of these businesses.

And she believes that then he started intentionally renting her properties in order to get to know her and then pursue her romantically for this intention.

So she was like targeted, targeted someone that she thought was like falling in love with her.

Yeah.

But she doesn't really have a choice of what to do right now because she's giving birth to her child.

She goes into the hospital.

Chad is nowhere to be seen.

He's out partying with his friends, according to her.

She said he showed up a couple of days later, drunk.

And the next months are a blur for her.

She is just trying to survive, you know, with this newborn.

He's again, not around.

She doesn't know what he's doing.

He's out in San Francisco hobnobbing with people.

And a few months go by.

I think she said like six months to where she finally kind of was out of that like haze of having a newborn baby and just thought, I have to get out of here.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

I'll just go stay on a friend's couch or something.

She packs up.

I think her daughter was with her dad at this point.

And she's leaving and Chad comes home, confronts her, and it's not a good situation.

He assaults her, he sexually assaults her, and she'll later learn that she has gotten pregnant again from that.

And this is all taking place still in California.

Wow.

Yeah.

And she's starting to realize that he's incredibly violent and dangerous.

There's another incident in which he's physically violent and she does call the police and he's arrested on domestic violence charges.

Ultimately, she decides not to press charges, you know, which is,

I think, understandable.

It's one of those things that's hard to sort of get from the outside, but from, you know, different people we've talked to in the context of everything that she's going through mentally and physically at this time.

It's just where her head was at.

She was worried that if she pressed charges, then, you know, he wouldn't be able to help her out financially.

He's her only lifeline at this point, even though he's abusing her.

You know, it's a complicated, horrible situation that she's in.

Yeah.

I mean, she needs to get the money back that he took from her

to survive.

But at this point, you know, they're still living in these, this, this huge home that's like $10,000 a month.

And they're late on their payments.

The electricity is being turned off because Chad's not paying the bills.

And then she finds out that he's starting to get sued by people in the area.

So we actually looked into that and there are multiple civil lawsuits against him from that period of time, early 2015, when he was still living in the Bay Area.

So the first lawsuit, it looks like it was filed in 2015, in May of 2015.

The plaintiff who's suing Chadwick Hauser is, I might be pronouncing this wrong, Rothgar Investments Limited.

And it says, you know, breach of contract.

And we couldn't find much else about it, but that's in May of 2015.

And so there's another lawsuit that comes into play in

April of 2015.

So I guess that predates this last one by a month, but Chad is alleged of owing more than $300,000.

He's being accused of fraud.

Yeah.

Wow.

And it looks like the person who filed this complaint is saying that he loaned Chad $300,000

and that Chad said he owned a condo in San Francisco and he used that to secure the loan, which he did not.

And also seems like he just didn't pay this money back.

But you can assume based on the information that Jordana gave that he was starting this investment company, that he was starting to get all of these investments or loans from people, but not paying anyone back.

Yeah, it sounds like it was more Ponzi scheme-esque.

Like, okay, I'm going to tell Geordiana, my wife, that I've invested her life savings.

It's growing since I've invested it so well.

I'm going to send her fake statements.

And in the meantime, I'm going to tell this guy to give me $300,000 as a loan and that I have all of these assets.

And then he's spending all of it and runs out.

Can't find someone else to fraud, I guess.

And then it, of course, crumbles.

Yeah.

So all of this is going down.

And, And,

you know, his scams are catching up to him.

And then they find out they're getting evicted from their home.

And so this is another point in the story where it's one of those things that I think Jordana felt like she didn't have any options.

But he basically said, we're moving back to Bali.

She's pregnant again.

So she goes.

They move back to Bali.

She also does have some community in Bali.

Yes.

So at least, you know, she has friends there and her eldest daughter's father still lives there.

Yeah.

So they move back.

She has her second child with Chad, who is also a son.

But things just get progressively worse.

And essentially, Chad confiscates both of their children's passports and refuses to let Jordana have access to them.

So eventually...

things get so bad that they do end up splitting up.

But this is after an incident in which he's tried to run her over with a car and she ends up in the hospital.

I mean, this is a horrible, violent man.

And she doesn't really understand why, but he finally agrees to sort of let her go, let her move out and get her own apartment.

He offers to help pay for it, which is in contrast to previously when she tried to leave him.

He had told her things like, you'll never be able to leave me.

So she doesn't really understand why,

but

she is now trying to figure out a plan.

You know, she is living in her own apartment.

They're sharing custody of the sons and she doesn't have access to her children's passports.

I think it was just a control thing of trying to control because I ended up finding a place to live and Chad decided that we were going to split the kids.

So at that point, I was at his mercy.

I didn't really know what I was going to do.

I wasn't going to leave my kids in Indonesia.

I wasn't going to leave my kids with him.

And I thought, well, if I can get my own place and Chad said, well, I'll help you find a place, you know, and I'll help pay for the rent and all that kind of stuff.

Unbeknownst to me, he had found another girl, a girl that he wanted to be with.

He ended up ripping her off too.

So that was, he wanted me out of the picture so he could go on to his next victim.

So that was his thing.

That has to just be so confusing because you're relieved that for whatever reason, he's allowing you to live in your own space, but having to like keep things.

I mean, peaceful is the wrong word, but like you're shared custody of your sons.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, she's not going to leave her kids in Indonesia.

You know, she might never see them again.

Yeah.

And, you know, she's trying to sort of

play this horrible game of, you know, not angering him to both protect herself and her children while also trying to figure out like, how does she get out of this?

And she's also in a foreign country.

She knows people in Bali, but it's not like the same as being in the U.S.

where she understands sort of, you know, the laws or whatever.

They're different there.

But she does hatch a plan.

She needs to get passports for her sons.

She ends up sort of figuring out where these passports are.

And the way that she describes going about trying to get them up to date is a little bit like

she contacts this guy.

I don't know how she's met this guy, right?

She calls him a corrupt cop guy.

But he claims he can help her get the passports, get them updated.

She specifically tells him, do not tell Chad any of this.

Keep this between us.

I went to him and I told him that, you know, Chad was a con artist and I'm paying for the passports.

You need to give them to me.

Please do not give them to Chad.

Give them back to me because I had to go to like the embassy in Jakarta and all that kind of stuff to get them up to date.

So anyways, I remember dropping the boys off with Chad.

And I remember thinking, I might not ever see my kids again.

I remember thinking that.

Just like, I think I'm making the biggest mistake of my life right now.

He had them for the week, and he was supposed to drop them off to me.

But then, you know, that next weekend and stuff, and supposed to be there at my house at like 11.

Ends up being like noon.

And he's like, Oh, there's a lot of traffic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, Okay, one o'clock comes.

Oh, we decided to have lunch.

Goes on and on and on.

And then it just went on to like three, four, five,

six.

And I never heard from him.

And

I just knew that he

got the passports and tricked me.

And the next morning, I went up to, I got up at like six o'clock in the morning.

I took my car and I drove to the Indonesian, the Dembatar airport, and drove all the way up to the top of the parking where nobody parks.

And

that's where his car was parked with the boys'

car seats in it.

And he was gone

so

um he he got the passports he paid more money for the passports to the guy

so the person that jordana went to for help like totally desperate just turned around and basically outed her whole plan to chad who then kidnaps really the boys and leaves the country without asking their mom yeah

i cannot even comprehend what that would feel like as a mother i mean, anyone, I think, can see how traumatizing that would be, especially because like she has no means.

He's her source of income.

And again,

she's in a foreign country and he's left the country, she assumes, but he could be anywhere in the world.

Yeah, it's horrible.

She said that she

basically ended up flying back to the States to LA and staying on a friend's couch.

She's, you know, frantically calling him, trying to get a hold of him, trying to get any information.

Her kids are two and one at this point.

She said that she heard nothing from him for three months, for three months.

She had no idea.

So she goes back to the U.S.

I mean, who do you call?

Like, do you call the police?

Do you call the FBI?

I mean, what do you do in that situation?

They're taken from Bali, but they were born in the U.S.

And And she has another daughter whose dad is in Bali.

So she's back and forth.

I mean, that's just like chaos.

Yeah, she said she made a report with LAPD.

She was in contact with Inner Pole.

Okay.

I mean, that seems like the right steps to take, but...

But then it's sort of like, they're like, cool, we'll take the report.

So then she starts just.

doing whatever she can.

She makes Facebook posts.

She's trying to spread the word.

She at one point goes up to the Bay Area where Chad's Chad's parents are, Chad's dad and stepmom are, and is like posting pictures around everywhere of her kids and of Chad just to try to get them to sort of pay attention to her and get involved.

Literally, she said she's not sleeping.

She's trying everything that she can.

So this is where we get to the point of the story where we can't really say a lot legally, but essentially, you know, she's doing everything that she can going through all of the channels reporting nothing is happening she's desperate so her friend says well I know this guy through film and TV the actor Basil Boz

I'm just looking at his website best known for his role in NBC's the blacklist I've never seen that he's an actor he's done a lot of things but yes he's an actor And he is one of the founding members of this organization called Association for the Recovery of Children.

And so her friend puts Jordana in touch and they end up taking on Jordana's case.

Now, we can't say anything about that because I was in contact with them and Jordana signed an NDA.

They're very secretive, I guess, about their organization.

Told me a little bit about this.

So Jordana tells this story

on tape.

And then we, like just our normal process, you reach out to this person and and say, hey, can you tell me about this story I heard and your perspective on it?

And then you hear back.

Yeah, they did not want to talk.

They basically

said,

don't use that tape because

we are litigious.

So I said, okay, we won't.

So we are not going to talk about any of the details.

There's probably a lot that we don't even know.

Jordana didn't tell us all of the details, but just to be safe, we're not going to go into any of them but what I will do is you know on their website they do have some of their missions listed with photos and Jordana is actually on there so because it's on their website I can read it because it's public information and it's a picture of Jordana and her two kids Hauser Boys 2016 Europe it says according to our intelligence Chad Hauser and his mother Peggy Hauser, blazed a corruptible path through the United States and foreign countries, stealing money from individuals and institutions.

In February of 2016, they illegally abducted Harrison, age two, and Pierce, age one, from their legal custodial garden mother, Jordana Hauser.

In a joint operation between ARC, Association for the Recovery of Children, and the Swiss police, the children were recovered on June 10th, 2016.

Peggy Hauser was detained while Chad Hauser escaped apprehension.

A warrant for Chad and Peggy Hauser's arrest is currently in effect in the U.S.

Wow.

I wonder if it is still in effect?

I think so.

Yeah, Jordana said that if Chad comes back to the U.S.

at this point, he'll be arrested.

Wow.

But it's interesting that he was with his mother.

So his biological mother, who was, who had been in Texas, who I think Jordana had never met, but not 100%.

She met the stepmom.

Yes, was with him in Europe.

with these kids that he had kidnapped.

So it sounds like his mother was kind of part of this whole scheme.

Wow, that is so scary, especially because like,

as a mother, how could you do that?

How could you not say like, you might not like your ex-wife, you might not get along, but you can't take her kids from her and leave the country and not say anything.

And not tell her if they're okay,

anything for months.

So ARC is just this organization that is not associated with any government agency, but they have former CIA, FBI, people working for them to help recover children in the cases of parental abduction or trafficking.

Yeah.

So that's what happened.

So she did get her children back.

I know a lot more than I knew then.

I pretty much know a lot of what he does.

So

I've had probably a good, in, I mean, the thousands for sure of people that have shared.

For some reason, after I recovered my children and kind of went back to Oregon and all that kind of stuff, I still would get, I would get tons.

We had a website up about Chad.

I never did the website.

Everybody thinks I did, but there was a website about Chad.

So when you Googled Chad, it would come up with all of his schemes and all that kind of stuff.

It ended up going down for some reason.

I think Chad figured out about it or something.

But I would get a lot of

emails and Facebook messengers of all these stories of all these people that Chad had ripped off.

And they wanted to know, kind of like, or is this real?

Or, you know, we were friends.

Why would he do this to me?

And, you know, we, we, we went out skiing together.

We did, we went to Puerto Rico together and all this stuff.

And he was my friend.

And I mean, tons.

It was almost like three a day for like years that people would just like, I'm like, you're never getting your money back.

He's not your friend.

This is what he does.

You know, it's just, I was a target.

Everybody's a target.

He's never had one friend in his entire life.

You know, his family, it's not, it's not close with anybody.

It's funny because I I never knew what a sociopath was before.

And what I, and to try to understand it, I remember the LAPD, the detective there, he was like, you're never going to understand it because you're not that.

You can never understand it because you're not like somebody that goes down the street and is a serial killer and just goes, kills random women just for fun.

That's pretty much what Chad does.

He goes and ruins your life for fun.

He doesn't care that you're going to be homeless.

It's just what he does.

He doesn't think about what we think about, you know, like, oh my God, this is going to be Jordana and her her poor kids, you know, no, there's nothing he doesn't give a shit about his kids.

I'm close with his family.

I mean, we were just out in San Francisco when I just saw his real dad and his stepmom, which I'm actually really close with them.

He's known where I'm, where I'm at all this time.

He's never reached out and sent a card.

He could.

He could send it to his dad.

His dad could send it to the boys.

I mean, he's never, ever reached out to do.

anything.

He does not care about anything.

And I don't know why he took the kids.

I think it was a ploy to, I think he told everybody that i was dead you know and like i think it was like another con oh these poor kids you know i'm i'm dad by myself i don't know i don't really know i i don't even question it anymore because i don't give a crap about that guy anymore at all he's a horrible human being he's ruined a lot of people's lives he ruined i say he ruined my life more than anybody because i was not rich and a hedge fund person or anything.

I worked really hard to have what I had.

And that was all I had.

And it took me about, I have my own business now, but took me a good 10 years to get back on my feet.

I mean, I was literally, really dying for a lot of years.

That's interesting that she's now close with his father and stepmother.

I mean, that for me really like brings into focus how obvious it is that what he's doing is malicious if his own father is like, yeah, this guy's no good and we're on your side here.

Yeah.

And they want to be part of their grandsons lives and they are and so that's a nice part of the story that they have been able to connect and she also said that she does feel some comfort that you know legally he's not allowed to come back into the u.s so there's some level of safety there but what a saga that she had to go through yeah wow and so i checked out this facebook page yeah okay so tell me about the facebook page so there's a ton of different people posting that he has defrauded them one woman montana brunette um looks like she lives in toronto and this is a public facebook page anyone can access it says that he claimed to her to own multiple properties i think in france she posted a screenshot reaching out to maybe a realtor or someone that he said he was associated with and the person responds never heard about this person thanks like oh wow Complete lie.

Yeah.

And then another person posts that he went to college with Chad, ran into him in Hong Kong in 2012.

And he was like asking his, this friend who's posting, do you know an attorney, my cheating ex took the kids?

It's like, well, she didn't take the kids.

Oh, Chad said that.

Chad said that.

Wow.

She didn't take the kids.

Well, and what's interesting about this post is this person, Greg, says, I went to college with Chad, ran into him in Hong Kong around 2007, remained in contact for years.

Around 2012, he asked for an attorney, something about his cheating ex.

So then Jordana comments, Chad never went to college.

Roasted.

Good job, Jordana.

Well, 2012 is interesting.

I wonder if he was just making up some story because

they were together then.

But she was starting to see the writing on the wall.

Like,

this guy's not who he says he is.

The money isn't what he said it was.

In 2012?

Is that wrong?

I think it was more like 2014-ish, I think, is more like when that's happening.

Yeah, I have no idea then what he would have been talking about.

They moved back to Bali in 2015.

But we're doing that thing where we're trying to like rationalize it.

He could have just been doing some sob story.

Totally.

I need money for an attorney.

My ex, she cheated and took the kids.

Yeah.

Like he basically just wanted money, probably.

He's trying to get money.

Oh, yeah.

So many people on this page compare him to Anna Delvey.

Interesting.

Yeah.

How many people are on the Facebook page now?

Yeah, it has almost 500 members.

497 members are on the page.

There's people all over the world commenting that he has defrauded them.

And it's the same story.

It's like presented himself as someone who was super wealthy, very successful.

And then little snafu, need to use your credit card.

And then just start, in one case, one woman says that he used it without her authorization many, many, many times and continued using it after she reported him.

It's horrible.

And it's always just too, we see with stories like this that someone is able to get away with it for so long because they do things like change locations, fly to a different country.

He used slightly different versions or spellings of his name.

So there's those little tricks like that.

But of course, you know, if this is your life, you've created a life where you're just always having to run and always having to lie.

What is the end point?

Right.

You know, he's never coming back here.

He'll be arrested and he knows that.

One of the posts says he was arrested in Copenhagen in 2022, but then let go.

And I mean, I don't know anything about that, but I assume like if you're being arrested in Copenhagen for something you did somewhere else, that's probably pretty complicated because what do you do?

Bring in all of those people to try a case or, you know, however it works there.

Like, that's probably very expensive and difficult.

Yeah.

Also, he seems like he is able to get out of things.

Like that posting from the ARC website that his mom was arrested and he was, he couldn't be found.

Like, what happened?

He evoked it.

He raped his own mom.

Yeah.

And then he's like arrested and Copenhagen, but then let go.

So yeah.

One of the members of this group posted a poll for the other members.

The options, I've lost money to Chad and he has yet to pay it back.

And then there's a bunch of others.

The two with the highest percentage by far, 40% say, I've lost money to Chad and he has yet to pay it back.

44%, I've never met Chad, but have friends or family affected by losing money to him.

Wow.

Well, we really appreciative that Jordana spoke with us and good to be aware that Chad is out there.

He's still out there.

Yeah.

And I don't think Ark wants to speak with us, but if they change their mind.

Yeah.

They really did not, but I would love to do an interview with them.

That sounds really

cool.

Yeah.

Okay.

So let's do some quick recommendations.

Do you want to before we wrap up?

All right.

So

I'm halfway through a podcast and I'm really liking it.

It's called In Her Defense.

and it's about a woman named Helen Nasland who was convicted of killing her husband on their Alberta farm.

Okay.

But she had been suffering so much abuse for decades and decades by her husband.

By her husband.

And the neighbors, the interviews with her son, it really paints a picture of like

how

difficult her life was and and whether or not she killed him, like she had no other way to get help in her mind.

That was reality for her.

And so I think the interviews are really powerful.

And it's just one of those podcasts that makes you think like you, you meet someone and you really have no idea what they're going through or you are unsure how to help.

So you don't do anything because You don't want to say the wrong thing.

You don't want to make a problem where there isn't one or offend someone, but they understood something was off about the marriage, but not everyone knew the extent of the abuse.

They had a son in 1984, so he does a lot of the interviews.

I actually found the story because I read about an interview he did and then saw there was already a podcast.

Oh, gotcha.

What is his stance?

Well, I guess you don't want to give it away.

Yeah, I don't want to give anything away, but the interviews are very telling and at least really made me think, you know, if someone is in a dangerous situation, I'd rather them be irritated that I called someone and told someone than look back later.

And that's not to say these people did anything wrong.

I wasn't in their shoes in that moment, but to hear that a lot of people had an idea something was happening is, it's sad.

Yeah.

It just makes me think, I want to learn more about what qualifies as self-defense because you would think that that would qualify as self-defense.

It also makes me think about that, that story of that woman who was being trafficked and she killed her trafficker.

Young, she's young.

I didn't even know.

Was she a minor?

Maybe.

I think she was a minor.

And then she's being charged for that, for his murder.

Yeah.

I can't recall if she's a minor or just a very young adult, but either way, yeah, I know, I know what you're talking about and it's mind-blowing because I can only imagine what someone's psychological state is in that moment.

You're just trying to survive.

That sounds like a good podcast.

I will check it out.

Okay, I have a podcast as well.

I actually heard about this from the podcast Queen's Instagram.

They do a lot of recommendations.

Sea of Lies.

Have you heard of this one?

I have seen it on the charts when you go look for ours.

Sea of Lies from Uncover.

It's a CBC podcast.

And

I think I'm four episodes in out of seven.

It's really good.

I'll just read this first little descriptor.

A body is pulled from the ocean and a race against time to capture one of the world's most wanted criminals begins.

What I like about this podcast is I think they do a really good job of structuring the show.

They keep you interested

and there's twists and turns.

And as you go, the story keeps unfolding in a way that's really satisfying and interesting.

So I would recommend it.

Cool.

I'll check it out.

Real quick, because I mentioned it.

I just looked it up.

Crystal Kaiser was 17 in 2018 when she shot Randall Vohler and

he had been abusing her and filming it for more than a year before she killed him, before he was killed.

And

last year, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

She accepted a plea deal.

It's like, how could that be?

She was a minor.

She was being abused.

You know, obviously it's complicated, but like to define self-defense, but I don't know.

It's, it just doesn't seem just.

It seems like she was clearly trying to defend herself from a very horrible, violent situation.

Yeah.

And I mean, even thinking about that cat colt story, which is wildly different than this one.

It's like, I imagine in a situation where someone is exercising that level of control over another person, let alone a child.

It's like, you don't know up from down.

Like, you don't know what to do to get out of something peacefully, if that's even a realistic option.

Yeah, I don't know a lot about the case, but it sounds

very unjust.

Well, that is our episode for today.

Thanks for listening.

We'll see you next week.

If you have a story for us, we would love to hear it.

Our email is theknife at exactlyrightmedia.com, or you can follow us on Instagram at the knife podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.

This has been an exactly right production, hosted and produced by me, Hannah Smith, and me, Tayshia Eaton.

Our producers are Tom Breifogel and Alexa Samorosi.

This episode was mixed by Tom Breifogel.

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.

Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

I just think the process and the journey is so delicious.

That's where all the good stuff is.

You just can't live and die by the end result.

That's comedian Phoebe Robinson.

And yeah, those are the kinds of gems you'll only hear on my podcast, The Bright Side.

I'm your host, Simone Boyce.

I'm talking to the brightest minds in entertainment, health, wellness, and pop culture.

And every week, we're going places in our communities, our careers, and ourselves.

So join me every Monday, and let's find the bright side together.

Listen to the bright side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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