Why Smart Women Podcast
Welcome to the Why Smart Women Podcast, hosted by Annie McCubbin. We explore why women sometimes make the wrong choices and offer insightful guidance for better, informed decisions. Through engaging discussions, interviews, and real-life stories, we empower women to harness their intelligence, question their instincts, and navigate life's complexities with confidence. Join us each week to uncover the secrets of smarter decision-making and celebrate the brilliance of women everywhere.
Why Smart Women Podcast
When Tracy met Hamish. Pt.1
What if the most intelligent among us could still be deceived by the allure of a charming con artist? Join us for an eye-opening episode featuring Tracey Hall, who courageously shares her story of being scammed by none other than Australia's infamous fraudster, Hamish McLaren. Disguised as Max Tevita, he exploited Tracey's desire for connection, spinning a web of lies that nearly lasted two years. We unravel how subtle "beige flags," or those easily overlooked inconsistencies, played a role in this deception, inviting listeners to question how they perceive trust and authenticity in relationships.
He didn't have a digital footprint, so he said his name was Max Tevita. He'd had this long-standing career in finance in New York. He had all of these accolades that he spoke about, and yet I couldn't find anything on the internet about him. He didn't even have a LinkedIn profile.
Speaker 2:You are listening to the why Smart Women podcast, the podcast that helps smart women work out why we repeatedly make the wrong decisions and how to make better ones. From relationships, career choices, finances, to faux fur jackets and kale smoothies. Every moment of every day, we're making decisions. Let's make them good ones. I'm your host, annie McCubbin, and, as a woman of a certain age, I've made my own share of really bad decisions. Not my husband, I don't mean him, though I did go through some shockers to find him, and I wish this podcast had been around to save me from myself. This podcast will give you insights into the working of your own brain, which will blow your mind. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I'm recording and you are listening on this day. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Well, hello smart women, and welcome back to the why Smart Women podcast.
Speaker 2:This week, I have the absolute pleasure of chatting to Tracey Hall. Now, for those of you who are in Australia, you'll probably know who Tracy Hall is, but those of you who listen to the podcasts that are overseas may not, but she's going to talk about herself and her extraordinary story idea that really, really smart women can still make mistakes and really, really smart women can get scammed. Because Tracy was scammed, and you can listen to the story of the entire scam on a podcast called Tracy who the hell is Hamish? Who the hell is Hamish? Who the hell is Hamish? And you can also read her book, which is called the Last Victim, and that was that was published last May and may I say it's an excellent read, and thank you so much for coming today to DY.
Speaker 2:We've had to move locations because the original place we were going to record in our studio they were building and there was jackhammits, so we've had to come up here and we're now in the air conditioning unit with yo-yo and rider. So welcome, tracy. Thank you for having me an absolute pleasure. Um, so it's an astonishing story. I'm sorry to have to ask you to you know, trawl through the whole thing again. Do you mind talking about what happened? No, not at all.
Speaker 1:Uh, it was early 2016 and I'd been separated from my husband for just over a year and I was working a really big job at eBay in the city of Sydney. I was getting my head around single parenting my five and a half year old. I had moved us into a new apartment and, you know, things were. Things were starting to flatten out a little bit and I thought, well, I'd like to have some companionship, I'd like to meet somebody.
Speaker 2:Fair enough.
Speaker 1:So I swan dived into the dating pool, that is, you know, dating apps in Sydney.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And I swan dived.
Speaker 2:Swan dived yes.
Speaker 1:And you know, I think it's fair to say I wasn't looking for another husband, I wasn't looking to be swept off my feet. I really just wanted to meet someone who I could share my time with when I had it, someone who had similar values and morals and interests and, yeah, just someone to have a bit of a laugh with.
Speaker 2:Really, you found more than that, though, didn't you?
Speaker 1:Oh, I certainly did so. I went online and I swiped right on a man called Max Tevita and he was a chief investment officer for a family office, worked in finance for 25 years and we started a long-term, real-life, intimate relationship that went on for nearly a year and a half. July 2017 that I woke up to a Crimestoppers video online of an unidentified man being arrested outside of his Bondi Beach apartment for swindling $7.6 million from 15 victims, and his face was blurred out. But of course, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that man was my boyfriend, max Tevita. But actually it wasn't Max Tevita. His name was Hamish McLaren and he happens to be one of Australia's most prolific con men that's an extraordinary story.
Speaker 2:so can I just ask, right back at the beginning, when you first met him and during that 18 months, did you have an inkling? Did you? Did things come into your consciousness and you thought there's something wrong here, but you overrode it with their red flags, like during that period, did you get any inkling that something was wrong?
Speaker 1:When I was in it, I can honestly say no Wow. In retrospect and as I review and reflect on all of the experiences and the conversations and what you know eventually unfolded then. Yes, of course, and I guess you know, if they were big red flags at the time then I would have seen them, I think. I like to sort of describe it like they're beige flags at best beige.
Speaker 1:I like that you know, and so at the time, no, there was not one part of me, not one part of my intuition or my logic that. That said, you know, this doesn't feel right now in saying that there were things that were quirky about him. So beige flags, what do you mean? Like what? There were things that were quirky about him, so things, for example, like he was really resistant to introduce me to his sister and her children. I'd met his brother-in-law, but there was a lot of resistance against meeting his close family and friends that he talked to all the time. So that was a bit that felt odd to me, especially after a long period of time of being in a relationship. He was also quite socially awkward, I would say he wasn't keen to spend a lot of time with my friends. Uh, he wasn't keen to spend a lot of time with my friends, um, but of course, at the time, this was all explained away by the fact that I was a single mom.
Speaker 1:I only had a certain number of hours in a fortnight that I could see him, or that we could see each other, and how that was presented was you know, tress, I'd love to go out for dinner with your friends, but I haven't seen you for a week and a half and I'm just, I really just want to spend time with you, and in those early stages of our relationship we were getting to know each other and there's a part of that that is really seductive, you know. There's a part of that that makes you think, oh wow, he just wants to spend time with me and you know that was his craft. Craft, that's what he was so good at, but it was, you know, in retrospect, I think you know it's a bit weird that he didn't want to come and have dinner with my mates or introduce me to his family. Another thing that I think was was weird, you know, the flags were that he didn't have a digital footprint. So he said his name was Max DeVita.
Speaker 1:He'd had this long-standing career in finance in New York, he had all of these accolades that he spoke about, and yet I couldn't find anything on the internet about him. He didn't even have a LinkedIn profile. Now, when he would tell me things, I would come home, I would Google them. Of course, I would look for information that could confirm what he had spoke about. But quite often, annie, it was like 1130 at night. I had just done a huge day working at eBay in the city. I was stretched, I was tired. I ended up putting my phone on the side table, falling asleep up the next morning at 6am and I did it all over again and I just let it go. I wasn't curious enough, I wasn't bold enough to go go deeper into that.
Speaker 2:Did you ask him?
Speaker 1:Yes, and of course, because he was a professional and he's doing this craft for 30 years.
Speaker 1:He had the answer you know, why don't you have a LinkedIn profile? He said I like to fly under the radar. I invest for some of the wealthiest families in Australia. It's not, I don't need to have my profile out there. They don't want my profile out there. And I think it's also interesting to think about the depth of answer that he gave. So if I said why don't you have a LinkedIn profile, it was never just oh, I don't believe in LinkedIn and that's the end of the story. The manologue that went with that answer went on for minutes and minutes and minutes, and every piece of information he gave made sense, based on everything he had told me previously.
Speaker 1:So, the confirmation bias was like okay, yep, that makes sense, tick, tick, tick, tick, and I didn't question it.
Speaker 2:You know, and that's, I guess, my learnings from that, it was that I should have questioned it harder yeah, and I think the problem with all of this is especially in the aftermath of these events, and I know, when I very first met you, you know you talked about the fact that you felt silly to some degree, or yeah, of course, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Sort of shame around it.
Speaker 1:How could I like? How did I let this happen? How did I miss it?
Speaker 2:And yet we know, we absolutely know now, it is the easiest thing in the world and it is not the fault of the recipients of scamming that it happens to them because our brains, we are programmed to believe we are, we are absolutely programmed to, to, to live in a tribe and to believe what people say to us, because it's how we belong, yeah, and belonging and to be loved. So you've got in there. You've got the idea of motivated reasoning and it makes perfect sense. It's when we reason around something to reach the outcome that we are motivated to reach. So, of course, it's perfect. You want him to be the genuine article, right, you want him to be. So you know, you, you look to a certain amount and then you put the phone down and your brain goes well, that's, it makes sense enough, talk to him the next day and off you go and you're back in it again.
Speaker 2:And we also know that, in terms of critical thinking skills, um, that they are absolutely suspended in the face of a charismatic individual, um, so we know this, and I mean, you only have to look at what's going on in America and you know it's a complete, absolute nightmare what's happening with Trump, and we, of course, think he's a dunk-off right Like, wow, what were you guys thinking? And we know there's low education level, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But for many people he is charismatic and there's a lot of motivated reasoning going on and it's sort of like the same thing you want to believe, you want to be loved, so there you have it, you have the perfect storm. And I think they do know, because of course, the whole science around lying is you know, the notion that you can pick a liar is just not right.
Speaker 2:Um, but I think they do say that the one thing they know about people that are lying is they give you too much information. So it sounds like everything was he'd really ordered the information in his brain. Yeah, so it made perfect sense to you yeah, or the lie you know.
Speaker 1:The other thing they say is you make the lie so big that you can't question it yep and this starts from everything from hi, my name's annie mccubbin. Through to this is what I've done in my career. This is where I've lived around the world. Here's what I think about things. You know, at that very first meeting, you say to me my name's annie mccubbin. I don't question that, no. And then that just rolls on right, because if you did question at that very first meeting, you say to me my name's Annie McCubbin.
Speaker 1:I didn't question that, no that's right and then that just rolls on right, Because if you did question it, that would just be a horrible existence. And it started with him saying my name is Max Tevita, I am a chief investment officer for a family office. I didn't question that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because why would you when you don't suspect somebody is of that ilk and most people aren't?
Speaker 2:Let's face it 100%, 100% right. You just got really super unlucky. You got the 1% right, but he was a corker of a 1%.
Speaker 1:He was and I was unlucky enough to meet him, but he is operating at the top 1% of psychopathic offenders. He has honed his craft for 30 years. He was incredible at it and he had all the tricks to get people to do exactly what he wanted at any given point in time. And, of course, I'm one of 15 victims in this case, but there are countless victims globally. He stole 7.6 million dollars from people in australia. As part of this case, there was more money, but um 7.6 million from people in Australia. As part of this case, there was more money, but $7.6 million, but what we know through the podcast that is likely to be $80 to $100 million. Globally, I lost $317,000.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of money.
Speaker 1:Tracy it is so much money I was flattened and had to start again at 42.
Speaker 2:That is so much money. It's heartbreaking it's devastating.
Speaker 1:But the money is one thing, the emotional betrayal is a whole other beast.
Speaker 2:And how. I follow your career now with interest and I'm so thrilled for you and so proud of you that out of that absolute, the ashes of what that fire, that incendiary event that you had to go through out of the ashes of that you've actually managed to rise up, which is extraordinary, and then talk about it and maybe to some degree I mean, you're spreading the word, are you not?
Speaker 1:yeah, I, I. This is what I do full time now, so so good, Tracy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm so determined and passionate not to let this happen to anybody else Because I never thought it would be me. You know, I come from a great family. I've had an incredible education. My friend group is solid and rich and authentic. I have traveled the world. I've had an amazing career. I never thought this would happen to me and that's what everybody thinks, because we like to think we are smarter than we are yes, and we are smart and I think, I think that's the whole thing you are the quintessential smart woman but it can have nothing to do with being smart.
Speaker 1:It is not.
Speaker 2:It's got nothing to do with being smart. It is not. This is nothing to do with your IQ.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And David and I do lots of training around the place in corporates and we often talk about Elizabeth Holmes. Yeah, because it's the same thing, elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. She fooled possibly some of the smartest people in America. Right, because it's not.
Speaker 2:This flaw in our thinking is not to do with the intellect, the emotional part of the brain. It's very, very easy to fool it. And so the notion and we talk a lot about it on the podcast the notion that you can always trust your intuitive response is absolutely wrong, because you know the, the quick, intuitive response can absolutely lead you astray. Just because it feels right doesn't mean it is right. You, your little brain, would have gone through its data bank and found instances where he reminded you of somebody else in your life that was nice and decent, a good human being, and then you're off. And it takes an awful lot of consciousness and critical thinking training to be able to circumvent that process. And also to your point that you said a couple of minutes ago you don't want to live like that. You don't want to be living in this sort of awful suspicious cynical, cynical way, do we?
Speaker 1:no, who wants to live like that? And I, you know, I often say if you go into every situation or opportunity or relationship just looking for the red flags, yeah then love and kindness and compassion and all the great things about life cannot exist in that world. So I choose not to. But you know we have to be skeptical and that's a.
Speaker 2:That's a brilliant point. I think the difference between cynicism and skepticism is often overlooked. Um, I am the least cynical person. I love humanity, I love people. Um, I'm a warm, friendly person. But man, am I skeptical? And my skepticism is around the process of my own thinking and looking for flaws in my own thinking, and around if I do meet somebody now and they say something that just I go wow, I think now where's the evidence? And I think skepticism is where's the evidence? You know, so he works for a big investment bank. Is there some evidence? You know? Yeah, and of course, but then you have to override the motivated reasoning which is but I want to believe him because he was nice, right or he did have evidence in some cases Did he.
Speaker 1:So, for example, he planted official letters in his letterbox that were addressed to Max DeVita. Stop it, knowing that I would pick them up on my way up to his apartment. So I pick up his mail. It says Max DeVita, and I don't even think about it right, because that's his name, and I don't even think about it, right, because that's his name. He provided documents of the investments that he was doing for me, on what looked like official letterhead pages and pages of documents with lines and lines and lines of trades.
Speaker 1:Now the police uncovered all of this, of course, when when they raided his house, his apartment, when he was arrested. So all of this exists. It wasn't just a figment of my imagination and he was very adept at falsifying documents. To provide evidence, there were photos that he would send me of, you know, one of the cars that he had that was parked in his garage. I recognized the garage. Now he I don't know how did he do that, I don't, I don't know. So much trouble, so much work and so much time investment. But let's not forget this is a man that didn't have a job. This was his job. This is how he made money.
Speaker 2:So he had, so he had no employment no, no so he had no employment and he was making up that. That mail thing is breathtaking.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So he knew that on your way up to his front door you would open the mailbox. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'd get the mail.
Speaker 2:And then that's confirmation bias, 100%, and that's all unconscious, right? It's just. Yeah, of course, this fits the pattern. We're pattern-seeking machines, this fits the pattern. And so I think when we were talking about this, probably sometime last year, you were telling me that you nearly invested a whole lot more with him, but something saved you. Is that what happened? Were you nearly going to give another charge of money, or not?
Speaker 1:No, that was all of the money that I had. It was my 22-year career of superannuation, which I transferred to a self-managed super. He guided and groomed me through that whole process. It was all set up legitimately, but when it came time to putting that money into a trading account which I thought was in my name it actually ended up going into a trading account of his. I sold all of my tech shares that I had been granted through my employment in tech for the last 10 years. Oh my gosh, and the total was yeah, the total was $317,000.
Speaker 1:And did you get any of that back? No, there's no money anyway. Where's the money? Well, that is the $7.6 million question. Where?
Speaker 2:is it?
Speaker 1:There are some different theories. So the police and part of the case and the DPP have all said that there is no money anywhere in any bank account of his in Australia.
Speaker 2:Is it offshore somewhere?
Speaker 1:I suspect it could be. The other theory is that he has defrauded so many people that he was constantly chasing his tail, so any piece of money that came in he'd use that to pay off multiple.
Speaker 2:Like a Ponzi.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know I'll give you 40 grand here, 100 grand here, 30. So never paying people off in full. But when he got that money it was to sort of keep them on the hook, like melissa cadditch 100 like, exactly like melissa cadditch. You know that's the playbook for for these type of people. But look, I don't know. I think the only one person that knows the answer to that question is hamish and he chose not to speak during the court case. Where is he now in jail? He's still in jail. For how long? He will be up for parole? In July next year, july 2026. So it's nine years and then he has a three-year parole period after that.
Speaker 2:So nine years. So, and just if you don't mind, so let's go back to the moment when you see this face, that they've got the face actually blurred out, but you knew it was him. What did you do?
Speaker 1:I thought there was a mistake. I thought the police had arrested the wrong person, because of course I knew him as my loving boyfriend, max Tevita, and the headlines were saying Bondi 47, superannuation fraud. And of course all my brain kept telling me was they've got it wrong, because Max is only 42. You know, because he'd obviously given me a wrong age as well. Right, oh my God. And crazy what your brain does in the moment. And then I received a text message from his brother-in-law that said Tracy, call me back on this number urgently, chris. And in brackets he wrote Hamish's brother-in-law, and that is the first time I saw his real name. And I called him and I said Chris, who the fuck is Hamish? Who is Max Tevita? Tell me what is going on. And of course he was very tight-lipped, got off the phone very quickly and then I had to contact the detectives working on the case and they told me everything how did they uncover it?
Speaker 2:do we know? Yes, there was a.
Speaker 1:There was a complaint made from one victim and it landed on the detective's desk and he looked at I think it was a couple of hundred thousand dollars. And he said, oh my God, he was a really young detective, it was like 25, 26. And he looked at it and he went holy shit, that is so much money this person's lost. And he went to his boss and said I'd like to investigate this. And his boss was kind of like fraud's tough mate, like are you sure? And he said, yeah, so much money.
Speaker 1:Because fraud is very difficult to prosecute because on paper we have freely given another human our money. Yes, it's under deception, yes, it is used for criminal purposes, all of those things, but on paper we have freely given them the money. So there is no, it's really hard to prosecute fraud. They have to get so much evidence and that's why quite often these cases are not taken on by the money. So there is no, it's really hard to prosecute fraud. They have to get so much evidence and that's why quite often these cases are not taken on by the police. And then he looked into it. He found two other victims to support the case and he worked on that for six months and he watched and he got the evidence and he built a case that was strong enough to know that Hamish would be bail refused when he was arrested.
Speaker 2:Because that's what he needed right.
Speaker 1:He needed that and he knew that he was also a flight risk. So he worked for six months on that, and during that six months is when most of my money went to Hamish. But, of course, they weren't watching me. They were trying to build a case to have him arrested, and that happened in July 2017. So that was the detective that I spoke to very soon after I found out that Hamish had been arrested, right, okay?
Speaker 2:so what was the emotional cost on you must have been huge oh, I mean, where do I start?
Speaker 1:like I was absolutely flattened and devastated. Everything I thought I knew to be true about the world actually just wasn't and I had to come to terms with the fact that I would likely never see my money again. So I was 42, I had a monthly income and it's not lost on me. I had a great job and I'm so grateful for that job. That employer at the time they were very supportive and so I had my monthly income to keep me afloat.
Speaker 1:But I'd lost everything else and sort of looking down the barrel of the second half of my life, having to start wealth creation again after working so bloody hard for such a long time. But I think it was like the emotional betrayal, like this is a man that would lie in bed with me and hold my hand at two in the morning and talk to me about anything I wanted to talk about. He was very much emotionally invested in my life. We were talking about our future together. We had looked at houses to buy together. We were very much um, did you say he loved you of course.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was nearly a year and a half. And you, when you're in your 40s and you find somebody who you think you know is aligned with you and has your values you know, you know he's very good at mirroring he just basically became who I wanted him to become, of course. Um so emotionally it was hard, like I cried every day for three months before my gp.
Speaker 1:My um psychologist said to me you need some medical help with this you know, and I suggest you go talk to your gp about some medication, because this isn't normal to be crying for this long. Yes, you've gone through a lot I get it, I'd be crying I wouldn't I'd be under that doona, I reckon, for an entire year well, I would have liked to have been, but I, of course, I had a six year old.
Speaker 2:You couldn't, you couldn't get up every day I had.
Speaker 1:I couldn't lose my job. I had to get her to school.
Speaker 1:I'm a single mom yeah, it was a lot it was a lot, but there's something really beautiful about the reality of situations like this, where you actually are forced to practically deal with a lot of things very quickly because it makes you spring into action. I had to get the police statement done. That took three weeks with the police. I was dealing with the ATO because I may have had a fraudulent tax return that he helped me with. I was unwinding and dealing again with the government on a non-compliant superannuation fund.
Speaker 1:I had a six-year-old that I had to get to school and activities every day I had to work, I had to figure out what I was going to do with my money, so all these very practical things that were driving me to get out of bed every day, because otherwise I would have just laid in bed and cried. So there's a blessing in that right. But then the emotional toll that that takes and that trauma over a long period of time is what I've had to kind of rebuild and I've had to put myself back together over the last eight years.
Speaker 1:I bet so that's taken a lot longer, I bet, um, and there are still days where I question, you know, I question my ability to make good decisions and trust the world and things like that. But it's much better now. We're eight years on, so things are good now.
Speaker 2:So this is an excerpt from my second book, why Smart Women Buy the Lies an excerpt from my second book, why Smart Women Buy the Lies, and I think that you'll find this part of the book that I wrote is pertinent to Tracy's story. As I write this book, Australians are losing $1 million a day to scams. In 2022, $570,000 worth of scams were reported to Scamwatch and it's estimated this represents only 13% of money lost to scams. What happened to the other 87%? Why are victims not reporting these crimes? It's because we're embarrassed. We're ashamed of our gullibility. We shouldn't be.
Speaker 2:We are the victims of our brain wiring. We need other humans. We are reliant on them to survive and our brains are designed to trust them. When we're being scammed, we are hard up against our own intrinsic nature, and it's not only financial frauds where our brains betray us From the slew of untruths we happily tell ourselves every day to the lies told to us by those who profess to love us.
Speaker 2:Our capacity to deceive and be deceived is alarming. As humans, we have used our huge brains to understand the world better. We have told each other stories over millennia and through these stories, we have learned how the world works and how we can make it better. We've gone from campfire grunting and cave drawings to high-speed internet, so now our brains are attempting to process millions of stories a day. They're coming at us at breakneck speed from all directions. How are we meant to know which stories are real and which are designed to mislead us? Humanity's aptitude for deception is as old as time itself, but the connectivity enabled by broadcast media and more recently, by the internet gives clever, cunning, media-savvy people myriad new ways to distract, delude and defraud en masse. Shady characters whose business it is to sell you lies in exchange for your money or your vote abound From unrefined Nigerian email fraudsters to TikTok influencers peddling unregulated wellness products to the Russians who infiltrated the 2016 US presidential election.
Speaker 2:This book is less about why people lie, scam and obfuscate and more about why we are vulnerable. It's about what happens in the mind of the buyer, not the liar. My focus is on the bit. You have most control over the way you receive and interpret information. So this is part one of my two-part interview with Tracey Hall, who was victimised by one of Australia's most notorious scammers.
Speaker 2:Thanks for tuning in to why Smart Women with me, Annie McCubbin. I hope today's episode has ignited your curiosity and left you feeling inspired by my anti-motivational style. Join me next time as we continue to unravel the fascinating layers of our brains and develop ways to sort out the fact from the fiction and the over 6,000 thoughts we have in the course of every day. Remember, intelligence isn't enough. You can be as smart as paint, but it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. And in all this talk of whether or not you can trust your gut if you ever feel unsafe, whether it's in the street, at work, in a car park, in a bar or in your own home, please, please, respect that gut feeling.
Speaker 2:Staying safe needs to be our primary objective. We can build better lives, but we have to stay safe to do that. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies. Together, we're hopefully reshaping the narrative around women and making better decisions. So until next time, stay sharp, stay savvy and keep your critical thinking hat shiny. This is Annie McCubbin signing off from why Smart Women. See you later. This episode was produced by Harrison Hess. It was executive produced and written by me, Annie McCubbin.
