Former US President Donald Trump might be the key to solving the mystery of an Aussie fraudster who took the secret of his stolen $49 million fortune to the grave with him.

Queensland “techpreneur” Alan Metcalfe convinced 600 hopeful mum and dads he had found the secret to artificial intelligence hidden in the Bible, and was going to launch a company that would be “bigger than Google”.

When Metcalfe died in 2017, those investors were left asking what happened to all their money in a baffling case now being exposed in a news.com.au investigative podcast, The Missing $49 Million.

Metcalfe was a big fan of Mr Trump but his obsession with him seemed like one more eccentric trait to be added to a long list – including Metcalfe’s wild claims about the Bible, his adventures in Russia right after the Soviet Union collapsed, opening businesses in the British Virgin Islands and his early plans to launch his own cryptocurrency.

But the swindler’s far-right leanings is pointing towards something much more sinister – that he may have helped pave the way for Mr Trump’s rise to political power.

Metcalfe was constantly travelling between Australia and the US for what he claimed were business meetings for his AI platform called Safe Worlds.

He spent most of 2012 – which happened to be a presidential election year – in the US, jetting to Washington DC, California, Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

But what he was actually doing was aligning himself with far right groups – including the notorious American Tea Party – a hand grenade thrown into US politics pedalling views against abortion and homosexuality and spreading baseless conspiracy theories that then-President Barack Obama was actually a secret foreign-born Muslim.

The American Tea Party laid the foundations for the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement which was adopted by Mr Trump.

Metcalfe wrote in an email to investors he wanted his Safe Worlds technology “to provide assistance to the American Tea Party network across America”.

He was also in talks in Washington DC with a right wing American think tank called the Atlas Network, which has since been exposed as receiving funding from the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers were one of the biggest drivers behind the Tea Party movement.

There’s a photo of Metcalfe in Dallas, next to John Tweedell – a Texas Tea Party leader, while Metcalfe also claimed to have met Ron Paul on his travels. Mr Paul is a hardcore right wing politician from Texas, who tried to run as president three times for the Republicans and is so conservative he refuses to travel alone with a woman, unless it’s his wife.

Mr Paul did not respond to questions about Alan Metcalfe and whether they had ever met or worked together.

The Missing $49 Million is available to listen to now wherever you get your podcasts. 

Available on Spotify here and Apple Podcasts here.

Do you know more? Get in touch | alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au

Metcalfe also had plans in place to approach Mr Trump directly about his tech platform.

“We are talking with Phonoscope in Houston, Texas, about a joint approach to the Trump administration on privacy and security,” he wrote in an email to shareholders in January 2017.

Phonoscope is a major telco company in the Republican state of Texas and Metcalfe’s relationship with the business dated back five years, with Metcalfe writing in 2012 that “Phonoscope is working with us to establish the Tea Party Network in America … The big plus with our vision is that we are now dealing with the owner. He now shares our vision.”.

But just a month after sending that 2017 email, Metcalfe was dead.

Phonoscope has made a few minor political donations to Texas Republican candidates over the years while its chief executive and owner Lee Cook has personally donated more than $85,000 to Republican causes. Neither responded to requests for comment.

Australian Investors could do nothing but watch on helplessly as they saw their investment – in many cases their life savings – going into causes that were the opposite of their own political ideologies.

Chris Litsch, a retiree from Western Australia, put $20,000 into Metcalfe’s Safe World scheme.

“I just thought, this is going down some kind of an evangelical, ultra far right wing sort of slot and I didn’t want anything to do with it,” Mr Litsch told news.com.au.

“That really made me question what the hell have I gotten into here.”

He said he is progressive in his political views and “would have run a mile from it” if he’d known his money would go into a right-wing project.

Although foreigners are not allowed to directly contribute to American politics, it’s still very possible.

There’s a shady phenomenon in the US known as dark money, which is where money can be funnelled into political action groups without a trace.

The most common methods are to put money into an American non-profit group – where they can legally keep their donors anonymous.

The other method is to put money into what is known as a Super PAC (Political Action Committee) where there is no limit on how much can be donated.

Is it possible Metcalfe did exactly that, hoping for a Trump victory?

Ron Paul had his own super PAC called Endorse Liberty, which pulled in US$1.6 million in a single day in 2012 – at the time a record in US history.

A picture online from 2012 shows Metcalfe at a convention hosted by another super PAC, called Freedom Works, which was itself linked to the Tea Party.

Metcalfe was photographed seated at a long table along with several other attendees.

Freedom Works managed to raise $23 million the year Metcalfe attended the event ahead of the 2012 US election. With all that money, it was hailed as a major factor in turning Tea Party protesters into a national political force.

Freedom Works shut down in May this year and its leaders did not respond to requests for comment.

Russ Choma, an investigative reporter from Washington DC-based publication Mother Jones, said many people lost money to “scam PACs”.

“A very, very common thing in American politics, is they find someone who is rather naive, who has a lot of money, who believes that if they donate money, they’ll get something,” Mr Choma told news.com.au.

“And then the money just gets pocketed.

“We call these things scam packs and the hallmark of a scam pack is it says they are going to advocate for the rights of elderly veterans. And they’ll raise $1 million,” he said.

“And at the end of the day, they’ll spend $3,000 in supporting a political candidate and it’s just basically a way to make money disappear.

“The people who run these packs raise money and then just buy themselves a fancy car or house or something like that,” Mr Choma said.

“There is a distinct possibility that he (Metcalfe) was being scammed by people who were not being honest themselves.”

Is the final resting place of the missing $49 million as simple and yet as crazy as that – that one Australian conman helped pave the way for Trump’s rise to power? Or at the very least, tried to?

The Missing $49 Million is available to listen to now wherever you get your podcasts. 

Available on Spotify here and Apple Podcasts here.

Do you know more? Get in touch | alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au