He looks like an ordinary person and if you walked past him on the street you wouldn’t think twice.

But Gold Coast man Alan Metcalfe was one of Australia’s “greatest conmen”.

He ripped off 600 hopeful mum and dad investors to the tune of $49 million with his lofty promises of starting a company that was going to overtake Google — which is more than twice the amount infamous Sydney fraudster Melissa Caddick took from her victims — before he died and took the secret of the missing money to the grave.

Successful fraudsters possess three attributes known as the “dark triad of personality traits” which makes them perfect criminals, according to Professor Clinton Free, a white collar crime expert from the University of Sydney.

“There’s research which shows that scammers tend to have a much more elevated sense of the dark triad personality traits,” Prof Free said.

“Those things are narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.”

And a deep dive into Alan Metcalfe’s past shows that the Gold Coast ‘techpreneur’ meets this criteria with flying colours.

News.com.au has launched The Missing $49 Million, our first ever multi-part investigative podcast series.

Alan Metcalfe convinced hundreds of investors to part with their money – in some cases their life savings – because he had discovered the secret code to artificial intelligence in the Bible.

But when he died in 2017, investors were left asking what happened to their money. All $49 million of it.

Lots of money has gone missing, no one seems to know where it is and I’m setting out to find it.

A new episode is coming out every week. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to more of Alan Metcalfe’s past in episode two of The Missing $49 Million, Genesis which came out on Monday.

Available on Spotify here.

Available on Apple Podcasts here.

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

Prof Free went on to explain that the perfect mix of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy can come together to create a “potent” scammer – but in other cases it also makes one a very successful chief executive officer.

“Narcissism refers to grandiosity, selfishness, importance of their self image,” the professor said.

“Machiavellianism is that capacity to manipulate and convince others, gain other people’s confidence for your own benefits.

“And psychopathy is just a lack of empathy. So not being alert or attendant to other people’s plights and, and being very self-oriented in the way that one thinks.

“And I think, where we see those sort of personality traits come together, we see a very effective con artist.”

Earlier this week, news.com.au exposed Metcalfe’s outrageous past, unveiling his spree as a conman in far north Queensland.

He committed insurance fraud in his early 20s by selling life insurance to dead people, then entered into a mining racket, opened newspapers which went bust and never paid their debts, had a failed political career and also rorted a tax break introduced in the 1980s.

And analysing Alan’s behaviour through the lens of the dark triad personality, it becomes evident that he has all three traits.

Alan was obsessed with his self image. He has repeatedly lied about his past to make him seem successful rather than like a shyster.

During his time at Mt Isa, a remote Queensland mining town, Alan became involved in the emerging AFL scene.

On a website he set up years later, he claimed he was the founder and secretary of the Mount Isa Australian Football League.

That’s simply not true, according to Murray Bird, an expert on the history of AFL.

“He was a strong self promoter,” Mr Bird said, recalling the time he met Alan while writing a book about the sport.

“He definitely wasn’t the founder of the Mount Isa footy league. I think he’s stretching it a bit to say he’s the founder.”

Alan wasn’t finished with stretching the truth there, though. The Queenslander ran for the seat of Townsville in 1980 as part of the Nationals and claims he was “narrowly beaten” in this election.

But the results of the campaign show that Alan received 3481 votes while the winning candidate received 6667.

“He wasn’t anywhere close to winning,” said Jessica Wang, a political reporter at NCA Newswire.

Peter Will, who worked with Alan in the 1980s in Townsville, saw the conman’s grandiosity come out first-hand.

Mr Will spotted Alan driving around in a gold-plated 1976 Ford landau, which he was surprised about because he knew Alan was a family man.

“It’s the sort of car that a playboy would be driving around in. Because it’s a muscle car, it’s a two-door,” Mr Will recalled.

Brody*, who did not want to share his full name but knew Alan in the late 80s and 90s, also observed the accused fraudster had a penchant for grandiosity.

“He would spend time travelling between Brisbane and the United States, so he did travel a lot,” Brody said.

Alan and his family were also living in a penthouse overlooking the Brisbane river, in the prestigious inner city suburb South Bank.

They bought the four-bedroom penthouse in 1987 for $850,000. They sold it six years later for $1.15 million.

Alan also had an incredible ability to manipulate his victims. In my investigation, he has been described as having “the gift of the gab”, “a silver tongue”, and the ability “to sell ice to eskimos”.

And as for psychopathy, Alan’s victims have certainly described him as not caring out their plight.

Brody lent Alan $25,000 in the 1990s for a tech venture called the Harp Exchange, an ecommerce brokerage that helped business owners sell their companies.

Those who used the Harp Exchange had to pay a hefty membership – as much as $20,000.

Brody had to sue Alan, twice, as he was never paid back.

He said he was lucky though – he got Alan to sign a loan document. Members of the Harp exchange weren’t so lucky, so they lost out on all their money when the venture went under.

“You’re getting a certificate that says you’re a member of this exchange, but it’s not debt and it’s not equity,” Brody said. “So, that’s how Alan was able to circumvent operation law, for lack of a better word. That’s how he was able to operate in the grey area. Because if someone said, Alan owes me money, then the question is, where’s the loan? Where’s the loan document? Well, there was no loan document.”

Alan was a loophole man. He found the grey area and slithered into the cracks. When it came to insurance rules, tax schemes – or even gaps in the law which allowed him to take people’s money and never deliver on his promises.

“We’re talking about someone who’s got a track record of deception and manipulation,” Prof Free said of Alan Metcalfe.

“I think if you put all of those things together, I think it’s hard to escape the view that this is a very skilled perpetrator of crime.”

Episode 1 and 2 of The Missing $49 Million are available to listen to now wherever you get your podcasts. An episode is coming out every week for the next eight weeks, from July 8.

Available on Spotify here.

Available on Apple Podcasts here.

alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au