INTRODUCING — Snowball

4m

Ollie Wards' family lost everything after their brush with a charming Californian con woman. As he embarks on a quest to find out how she did it, why she did it, and where she is now, he opens the door on a mystery that spans decades and across continents.

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Transcript

My brother married an American con artist.

I find myself in a murky world of con artists and swindlers.

This isn't the kind of story you would expect to happen to a pretty average Kiwi family like mine.

I was just gobsmacked as to what's going on here.

I just remember it being like, whoa.

She had this dark, vivacious.

And then, whoa, a surface skin and look to her.

And then after like two or three woes, she's a sociopath.

It wasn't really a surprise.

You're like, I wonder what the next woe is going to be.

What happened cost us everything.

I held it up to the light and everything merged.

In the end, my parents lost more than a million dollars.

We'd been done.

Mum and dad ended up homeless.

We just were destroyed.

It all started when my bro Greg was a backpacker in London.

Yeah, she's very bubbly, effervescent personality.

He met Leslie Minoukian.

She has a laugh that could, you know, you hear it across the room.

A confident, charismatic Californian.

Well let's throw in there.

Kim Kardashian lookalike sophisticated female operative.

She knew how to sort of work people.

Ready to

woo me as well.

Greg was wooed.

I was an American a file.

So he brought his American dream girl home to New Zealand.

When you marry someone, you feel like you really know them.

Within a few months, Leslie had taken off to the US, and none of us ever saw her again.

I was living overseas when all of this went down.

I normally work at an Australian radio station, helping other people tell stories.

Now, I'm going to investigate the story of my own.

It was so weird.

Smuggled out of Armenia?

What?

Whoa.

Explain.

It is weird.

It is weird.

And as I start digging through what happened,

weird doesn't even really cover it.

She got on the wrong side of the local mafia.

She witnessed

murder.

Or she got home and invaded at her house or something like that.

They're going to kill me tonight, Dad.

Got on this chartered airplane.

Parents had to pay for a private jet to come get her before the mafia killed her.

Oh, God.

There's just so many questions.

How did this happen?

Why did this American woman con my family?

Why did you do this?

How did she just get away?

Oh, shit.

She's done it again.

Who else has this happened to?

Does the name Leslie Minoukian mean anything to you?

Oh, you bet.

Never forget her.

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

And that was her allure.

You just followed her.

I don't think she ever thought she would actually get caught.

It just started getting shadier and shadier.

When I got home, there was a bong load, a martini, and a blowjob, and I just didn't think about it.

F off, screw you.

This is your karma.

And who really is Leslie Minoukian?

Like, a part of me believes that she's just like

a really broken person.

You'll never really know what was real or not.

To find answers, I'll have to get past her big shot lawyer to the stars.

Can you believe this jerk?

Oh, my fucking God.

As your lawyer, I'm starting to make threats also.

Are you serious?

And I'm going to travel across the world to track Leslie down.

What are we getting ourselves into?

Okay.

I'm running.

Stand by.

I'm Ollie Wards, and I want you to come with me

for the new season of Unravel.

It's about to hit you.

This time, things really do get personal.

She's walking just in front of you, bro.

Where?

In the middle.

Join me for Snowball.

Okay.

Oh, yeah, I see her.

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Damn it.