When Aussie fraudster Alan Metcalfe died suddenly of a heart attack, some weren’t convinced he was really dead.

So much so that one of his victims actually demanded his body be displayed in an open casket at his funeral — which didn’t end up happening.

As a result, rumours that the Queensland ‘techpreneur’ faked his own death and absconded with his victims’ money has persisted to this day, seven years after he supposedly died.

Gold Coast businessman Alan Metcalfe convinced 600 hopeful mum and dad investors to part with tens of millions of dollars – in many cases their life savings – because he claimed he had launched a business that would one day be bigger than Google.

But 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.

The latest episode, Resurrection, explores whether Metcalfe himself is really dead amid speculation that he is actually alive and well, enjoying his investors’ money on an island somewhere.

Just before Metcalfe died, investors were starting to ask him some hard questions about how he’d been spending their money – and Australian authorities were closing in.

A month before he died in February 2017, Australian Federal Police raided Metcalfe’s homes and offices.

And the corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), had started an official investigation into Metcalfe and his business.

So far in my investigation there’s been no obvious sign of where Metcalfe’s $49 million fortune ended up, except possibly part of it was stashed in notorious tax havens like the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands.

Channel 9 investigative reporter David Richardson briefly looked into Metcalfe’s scheme when some of his friends were thinking about investing in 2010. And the mystery of the missing money got him thinking. “I can only see two possibilities. There’s a hidden partner. There’s somebody else involved in this,” Mr Richardson said.

“The only other alternative is that he’s not dead and that he’s in fact living off the money.”

Seven episodes of The Missing $49 Million are available to listen to now wherever you get your podcasts. An episode is coming out every week for this eight-part series.

Available on Spotify here and Apple Podcasts here.

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

Several other shareholders also think it’s a possibility, however unlikely, that Alan might have engineered his death because he wanted to disappear.

“People said, mate, he’s probably over there enjoying his money over on some island somewhere,” said Western Australian farmer Warren Barndon, who lost $20,000 through the scheme.

Another investor, Sydney former sporting star Michael Blake, lost $300,000 to Metcalfe. He said when news of the funeral hit, some people told him, half-jokingly, “‘Are you sure he’s dead? Should we go and dig up the coffin?’”

So I reach out to a man that knows exactly what to do — Ken Gamble runs his own private investigation firm in Australia called IFW Global and has tracked down fraudsters in the past who have attempted to fake their own death.

“I’ve worked on cases where people have disappeared and are believed to be deceased,” Mr Gamble said.

“In fact, we have a very large one right now, he’s a conman that disappeared in 2007. A lot of people believe that he’s dead, but he’s not dead and we’ve found him in Vietnam recently.

“He’s just living under a different name. He actually assumed the identity of a dead person.

“But he’s a criminal mastermind, speaks six languages. So, I don’t think that the average person can do it.

“You have to be extremely clever and have a lot of discipline to be able to fake your own death because, you know, you’ve got to cut everything out of your life, even family.”

Mr Gamble said people can orchestrate their own fake deaths by buying forged death certificates in countries like India, the Philippines and Thailand.

In these countries, it’s also possible to bribe a government official and get a legitimate certificate stating you are legally dead.

“Countries like the Philippines, you could easily create an accident report, get someone corrupt in the police to attend an accident. You could run a motorbike into a tree,” he explained.

And anything is possible, if you have enough money, according to Mr Gamble.

“It’s all about money. With money you can buy fake identities. You can set yourself up somewhere securely. You can hire security.

“You can do all those things that will keep you occupied and keep you out of the prying eyes of the public, basically so you can live on an island somewhere.”

He said one would need a minimum of $250,000 to fake their own death.

And in the case of Alan Metcalfe, well, there is $49 million unaccounted for.

There have been other strong rumours of certain conmen and women faking their own deaths to escape the fallout and live a quiet, cashed up life until the end of their days.

There’s Melissa Caddick, the Sydney fraudster who disappeared in November 2020 shortly after she was raided by ASIC and the Australian Federal Police.

A few months later, Melissa’s decomposing foot washed up on a south coast beach.

In 2023, a coroner declared Caddick deceased but rumours of her faking her own death continue to this day.

Another case that springs to mind is crypto king Gerry Cotten, the Canadian CEO of a cryptocurrency exchange that turned out to be a massive Ponzi scheme.

Gerry Cotten left 76,000 people a whopping US$250 billion out of pocket when he died suddenly in 2018.

He was holidaying in India at the time, and was only 30 years old. His death was caused apparently from a freak medical episode involving septic shock.

He took the secrets of his multi billion dollar crypto kingdom to the grave with him.

Cotten’s death has prompted a wild slew of conspiracy theories and even a whole podcast looking into him, much like the case of the late Alan Metcalfe.

Seven episodes of The Missing $49 Million are available to listen to now wherever you get your podcasts. An episode is coming out every week for this eight-part series.

Available on Spotify here and Apple Podcasts here.

alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au