How Herald Sun reporters uncovered twist in Geoff Bainbridge video

All it took for the story of the Melbourne businessman and the fake extortion attempt to come crashing down was two pictures — and a source eager to share.

When the call came from a deep and trusted source, little did any of us know we would be heading into Woodward and Bernstein territory.

But the story of the Melbourne businessman, the fake extortion attempt and the ice pipe is a growing legend fit for the screen.

While it ain’t Watergate, the beginnings of, er, Icegate came from a secret source.

We get countless tips through the Page 13 email. Some go so far as to send manila folders of documents by Uber, to stay anonymous.

But when our impeccable source makes contact, and we can’t say how and definitely can’t say who, the flashing lights and sirens go off.

Ears pricked, we spoke to the source. Two pictures later appeared on our screen. One was of the inside of a house. The other was THAT picture of ice-pipe smoking businessman Geoff Bainbridge, the one linked to burger chain Grill’d and the boss who until last week ran Lark Distilling.

Years of reading thrillers about hard-boiled detective Sam Spade by great noir crime writer Dashiell Hammett and Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch came to life. They invariably say: “It’s always in the detail.”

Geoff bainbridge in the infamous video.

Bainbridge claimed he was in an apartment in Singapore after a wild night out in 2015, but the background of this now infamous video suggested otherwise.

Some well-honed skills from years of stalking through the ’Gram proved the picture of the house in our source’s email was in fact in Middle Park.

It soon became apparent the fixtures and features, such as the unique light fitting, period shutters and split air conditioner, were identical.

After finding more images of the Middle Park property on the realestate.com website, it became obvious we’d seen through Bainbridge’s charade he peddled to the unsuspecting Age.

Like Woodward and Bernstein, and with a looming deadline, it was time to call in the Herald Sun’s resident terrier, Stephen Drill, the go-to for deep searches. Half an hour later, a text from Drill beeped: “Bingo.” Drill found 8 McGregor St, Middle Park, had been owned by none other than Geoffrey Leonard Bainbridge since 2020.

Earlier in the week, The Australian broke the story about the businessman’s pipedream only for the other paper to counter with a so-called exclusive. Let’s call it a fairytale from Bainbridge in which he claimed to have been a victim of a crime by a woman he met in a bar six years ago. Middle Park is a long way from Asia.

The idea for the bogus tell-all had come from a high-profile crisis management consultant, but attempts to manage a scandal by telling porky pies make everything so much worse.

Make that a thousand times worse when Page 13 went live on the Herald Sun website on Friday afternoon.