When hundreds of Australians learned that the company they had invested in was going to be bought for billions of dollars, most didn’t believe it.

Many had poured in their life savings, or superannuation, or both, totalling $49 million, into an artificial intelligence business called Safe Worlds that was supposed to be “bigger than Google”.

For years, the company’s charismatic founder, Queensland ‘techpreneur’ Alan Metcalfe, had dangled his 600 investors with the promise that the company would soon list on the US stock exchange but it never eventuated and some were starting to fear he was a fraudster.

But then Alan had died suddenly of a heart attack in 2017 and his wife Mary Metcalfe inherited the company.

Within months, Mary said an Irish businessman was going to purchase the Safe Worlds technology for US$2.25 billion and they were all going to be very, very, very rich.

The Irishman said he was ex-CIA, among some of his surprising claims, but there was no apparent sign of his wealth and he is actually living in a nursing home, in the latest addition to this already baffling true story now being exposed in a news.com.au investigative podcast, The Missing $49 Million.

Mary Metcalfe pledged to carry on her husband’s tech business just five day after his death in February 2017 and later that year, she sent a triumphant email to investors informing them that a mysterious businessman called John Duff was going to buy Safe Worlds for US$2.25 billion.

With inflation, that’s worth about US$2.88 billion today, which is $A4.46 billion – a staggering amount of money, really.

Duff, now 90 years old, and based in a tiny Irish county called Westmeath, said his business, Copthorn Trust Corporation Limited, wanted to buy the Safe Worlds system, which hadn’t been operational for some years, as all staff had quit, and the offices had been vacated.

A few months later, things got weirder.

Duff said he would fund the Safe Worlds purchase personally, and not through his company. That meant he would have to be a billionaire himself – and yet he didn’t seem to have anything near the money needed at all.

Five 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

Declan*, who did not wish to share his real name, was a co-director of Copthorn Trust, the same business that John Duff claimed had access to billions of dollars of funds.

He said he believed that Duff received €124 from the Irish government every week as a living allowance.

Duff, who is 90 years old, also isn’t that technologically savvy, according to his former colleague, with no computer, requiring him to visit his local Office Works to print out his emails.

Even though nothing about the Irish deal was adding up, Mary Metcalfe was intent on pursuing it – despite pleas from Declan.

“I rang Mary up numerous times and said, ‘if you have someone else to take this project, take them, because we have no money,’” Declan said.

He said she and Duff were “on the phone day and night” to each other.

“She was besotted with him, accepting everything he said,” he added.

“Mary grabbed at a straw and that straw was John Duff. John absolutely had her hook, line and sinker.”

Mary Metcalfe claimed to investors that Declan was spreading this negative information because he’d been sacked from the company after stealing documents.

However, Irish company records suggest he resigned from the company by choice.

Frustrated by the allegations that he was a thief, Declan sent Mary one final text message.

It read “Hello, Mary. Just a quick note to let you know that I never stole anything from anyone in my life. Look after yourself and your shareholders, who have committed themselves to you and your husband’s ideals. Keep them close as they are the only real thing in this whole sorry affair.”

The billions of dollars in funds was supposed to come from another associate of Duff’s, a Danish woman called Jytte Marstrand.

Marstrand claimed she had known Duff for decades and that he had been a CIA operative sent to the Middle East where he had been shot in the face.

“Those were the wild days,” she said.

More recently, Duff had approached Marstrand for help with the Safe Worlds purchase and she was pretty sure she could get Duff the billions of dollars he needed.

Bizarrely, Marstrand claimed she could help Duff get access to billions through the historical King Solomon funds.

There’s a biblical tale of King Solomon hiding 500 tonnes of pure gold worth more than $3.76 trillion Aussie dollars somewhere in a desert in the Middle East.

But two years ago, some historians claimed to have completely debunked this tale as a myth.

With or without this mythical pile of biblical gold, Marstrand says she also could have got Duff the required $2.25 billion – in just a few days.

“We do create money like that. If someone invests $44 million, the banks can make money with that by trading it. In 10 days, you’ll have a billion,” Marstrand said.

Again – not exactly true. There’s no guarantee for something like that.

Marstrand added as a final parting comment about her friend John Duff: “I’m sure he had the best intentions helping Mary when her husband died.”

But, despite these assurances, this wasn’t the first time John Duff had been in this kind of situation. He had been named in a legal case over the in the USA, more than a decade earlier.

In 2006, Duff approached American entrepreneur Mary Grace, the founder of a business called e-Smart Technologies, which produced wallet sized smart cards.

Duff said he wanted to buy Mary Grace’s tech for more than $1 billion, in a very similar situation.

But in 2012 Mary Grace’s company landed in legal trouble over claims it was misleading investors – and while there were no allegations of any wrongdoing against John Duff, he was mentioned in those claims.

A court document from the US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, stated that Mary Grace “repeatedly lied to potential and current investors and to the eSmart board of directors about major funding commitments and lucrative contracts she claimed to have obtained for eSmart.

“As an example, from 2006 through 2009, Grace told numerous investors, employees, and the board that an organisation led by an individual named John Duff was going to inject hundreds of millions of dollars into eSmart. Those claims were false, as Grace either knew or should have known.”

Mary Grace, based in Colorado, defended these allegations against her company, and the case was eventually dismissed.

She said a background check on John Duff revealed his wife was working as a European lawyer who had won a very large judgment against a Swiss bank on behalf of German Holocaust survivors.

Where is John Duff now?

I tracked the mysterious John Duff down a nursing home in Westmeath, in Mullingar, Ireland. He did not respond to requests for comment,

His company Copthorn Trust was struck off the register and shut earlier this year, in January 2024. So the company no longer exists.

As for Mary Metcalfe, she says there was nothing untoward about the deal and that it fell apart.

“We had a contract, subject to finance, with John Duff for US$2. 25 billion to buy the world licence.

“Unfortunately, the contract fell through.

“I, and before me, my late husband, were both satisfied that he was genuine.”

Five 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