Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: Tales of swindlers, conmen and larrikins
DEATH threats are all in a day’s work for Sydney private investigator Ken Gamble. The tale of how he exposed a Philippines fraud gang is part of Matthew Benns’ new book Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
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DEATH threats are all in a day’s work for Sydney private investigator Ken Gamble. The tale of how he exposed a Philippines fraud gang is part of Matthew Benns’ new book Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
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PRIVATE eye Ken Gamble was in Manila, about to let himself into his hotel room, when his mobile phone buzzed in his pocket. ‘You are treading on people’s toes. Leave the country or you’re on a death wish,’ the text message read.
What worried him even more than the threat itself was the fact that it had been sent to his Australian mobile number, and not the one he had been using under a pseudonym while in the Philippines.
His cover was blown. Gamble knew immediately that the Filipino hooker in the pink leopard-print dress had talked.
A quick call to the hotel reception revealed two men had been looking for him. A letter had also been sent to his office, telling him that the fix was in: if he didn’t comply, he would be charged with raping a sixteen-year-old girl.
‘Gamble. Consider this your final warning,’ the letter said.
Being arrested by crooked cops and put into jail for such a crime in the Philippines was the equivalent of a death sentence, especially as a westerner.
“I was pretty freaked out and immediately located to another hotel,’’ said Gamble.
And he is not a man who rattles easily. This is the man who found missing conman Peter Foster, who was later caught on tape talking about ways to make Gamble disappear. Gamble knew this time these boys meant business.
It all began with an email from a prospective client. The wealthy architect from Mosman, on Sydney’s affluent north shore, had been referred to Gamble by detectives in North Sydney.
They could not help him, but felt Gamble could.
The architect, who does not want to be named, had been cold-called by a well-spoken British man called David Turner. He told the architect about a financial advisory firm in Chicago called Smith and Olsson.
The company offered bespoke sharemarket advice to a range of high-profile clients. But there was no need to rush in, said Turner, and he encouraged the architect to take a look at the literature he would send him.
What the architect did not know was that his details had been bought from a stolen investors list that had been sold on the black market.
The architect had millions tucked away in superannuation, and was keen to make it work for him. But he was no fool — when the glossy brochures arrived, he read them thoroughly and then did some checks himself online. Smith and Olsson came up with a gleaming report card.
He decided to dabble his toes in the water, opening an account with Smith and Olsson’s office in Canary Wharf in London and buying $10,000 in El Dorado gold shares. They tripled in value.
He was referred to a pompous man named Benjamin Dickson, Smith and Olsson’s London-based vice president of institutional trading, who convinced him to invest more. By now, the architect was in to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars, but things were starting to trouble him. How had they got his contact details in the first place? Why did the company’s London big-shot keep dealing with him in Australia with all the difficulties of time zones and markets that this entailed? Why was there no Australian office?
There were also glitches in the paperwork, amateur mistakes a company of this size should not be making. Not one big thing but a lot of tiny niggles started to nag away at him.
He communicated his concerns to Dickson, who found him a referee to talk to — a client from Melbourne called Robert Green, who had just arrived in Bali on holiday. Green happily spoke to him from his hotel and told him that he had been investing with Smith and Olsson for years. ‘‘Look,’’ he confided, ‘‘I don’t think much of Turner, but Dickson has offered me nothing but first class advice for years.’’
Heartened by this glowing review, the architect handed over more money — bringing his stake to $1.8 million — and watched as his investments grew.
A few months later, the architect received his tax bill and decided to cash in some of his money with Smith and Olsson to clear the debt.
But when he requested his money — an amount that was a fraction of what they were holding for him — the financiers gave him excuse after excuse as to why they could not send him his money. The architect decided to fly to their head office in Chicago and talk to them face-to-face. “I look forward to meeting you,’’ emailed Dickson, who promised he would be there from London at the time and was happy to meet him halfway.
Over Christmas 2011, contact with Dickson became increasingly erratic. He purported to be away on sick leave, and eventually he stopped responding altogether.
In January 2012, the architect got on the plane to Chicago. Things looked bad straight away — despite being told otherwise, there was no one at the airport to greet him.
The next day, the architect headed straight out to Smith and Olsson’s office on North Wacker Drive.
‘‘The building and suite existed, but the tenants were not Smith and Olsson,’’ he later told police in America.
The architect got in touch with the building’s director of security, who told him that he had recently been interviewed by an FBI agent who was investigating a fraud by a company called Alexander Capital Management. Those jokers had the same office address as Smith and Olsson. A quick Google search also showed the two companies had extremely similar websites. It was the confirmation the architect had dreaded. The director of security told the architect that he believed both frauds had been done by the same people.
It was a long lonely flight back to Australia, and after the architect landed he began the frustrating struggle to try to get the authorities involved in a case that was outside their jurisdiction. That was when he was put in touch with Ken Gamble.
‘‘The first thing I told him was to re-establish contact with the criminals,’’ said Gamble.
The architect emailed Dickson an apology, explaining his American trip had been cancelled at short notice because of a family medical emergency.
The Smith and Olsson conmen took the bait. Gamble followed their emails via an encrypted tracker he embedded into the architect’s emails. It produced an IP address in Makati, the financial district of Manila in the Philippines.
That was good news — Gamble had excellent contacts in the Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group. Gamble alerted police in the Philippines and got on a plane to Manila.
Gamble had received leads that a gang of boiler-room Brits were operating in Makati. Once he arrived in the city, he put some old- fashioned shoe leather on the ground, and began asking around. He talked to cops, hookers, bartenders, barbers, anyone and everyone who might have had contact with them.
The group of British men were notorious in Makati for making dodgy stockmarket deals. They drove Lamborghinis and drank in the red-light district, often at a bar appropriately named Rogues.
Gamble’s cop contacts warned him that the men had criminal records back in their home country and were very, very dangerous. They were also well connected to the local police.
Gamble was unperturbed.
‘‘I went to Rogues, sat at the bar and started talking to the hookers,’’ he said. ‘‘I asked them if they ever had any groups of British guys coming in.’’
One girl, young, pretty and in a pink leopard-print dress, told him that she had dated a British guy who worked in the financial markets, but she’d broken things off with him when she had leased an apartment for him and he had never repaid her money.
‘‘I told her I could help her get her money back,’’ said Gamble.
The prospect of recovering her lost dollars opened the door. She took him back to the apartment and produced an old photo of the shifty Brit, plus the rental application he had given her to apply for the lease. Gold.
Alexander ‘Scotty’ McInnis had put the lot on there — date of birth, phone number, email address and previous residential address: the Oxford Suites Hotel.
Sure enough, McInnis had returned to the hotel when his girlfriend had kicked him out.
From that moment on, McInnis did not make a move without Gamble’s Filipino undercover team following him — mostly in and out of bars.
‘‘He was an alcoholic, drunk every night of the week,’’ said Gamble. He did not seem to be the head of the operation, but Gamble hoped he would lead him to bigger fish.
One night, Gamble followed McInnis into a local nightclub, propped himself up at the bar next to him and struck up a conversation.
‘‘I’ve just split from my wife,’’ confided Gamble.
‘‘We sold the house and I was pretty happy with that, I’ve got $800,000 in my pocket and some time here now to sort my life out.’’
And then he delivered the kicker.
‘‘I’m looking for some good investments.’’
McInnis could not believe his luck.
They drank for hours, moved on to another club, played pool. By the end of the night, McInnis was confident enough to begin the sting.
‘‘Look, I really want you to meet my father, Scot McInnis Senior,’’ he said.
‘‘He lives in Florida, but has interests in gold mines in Colombia.’’
The next day they met in a cafe, slightly hung over and keen to talk more. McInnis pulled out his laptop and introduced Gamble — who was using a fake name — to his father over Skype. ‘‘He was an older, smoother version of McInnis,’’ said Gamble.
‘‘He told me about a gold mine that was for sale. It had already found gold and McInnis Senior was putting together a group of investors to buy it. They were just $500,000 short. It was a great story.’’
They emailed Gamble the documents and, as McInnis left, Gamble’s undercover team picked up his tail. They followed him straight into the lift of the high-security Pacific Star building, 500m from the Oxford Suites Hotel, and up to the 14th floor.
They watched as he walked into an office with no name on the door.
‘‘I was so excited that I had found the syndicate,’’ said Gamble. He briefed the Anti-Cybercrime Group and, by a stroke of luck, one of those officers knew the head of security at the building.
Breaking all the rules, the head of security produced the passes for every person working in the anonymous office.
Now Gamble had the photos, fingerprints, phone numbers, eye colours and next of kin of 18 members of the British boiler room. He also recognised the boss of the syndicate from police intelligence.
“It was the biggest syndicate in Manila,’’ said Gamble, who put the information straight into the hands of the FBI.
- This is an edited extract from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels by Matthew Benns, published by HarperCollins Australia, RRP $32.99,
- This extract was first published by The Daily Telegraph in June 2017.