An employee at an Australian tech start-up has revealed she was concerned the whole business was a scam and wanted to “get out” as fast as possible.

And just a few years after she cut ties with the company, the whole thing imploded and shut down, after the founder died and $49 million of investors’ money vanished.

Gold Coast “techpreneur” Alan Metcalfe launched Safe Worlds in the early 2000s, a technology platform that he pitched would one day be “bigger than Google” because he had made a breakthrough in artificial intelligence.

But Brisbane software developer Tahlee-Joy Grace didn’t believe what she was being told and described the tech as a “crapified” version of Google, Amazon and eBay.

She worked at Safe Worlds from June 2013 to February 2014 and snuck into the algorithm’s code base and claimed she found nothing there.

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

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.

I’ve already unmasked Alan Metcalfe’s life of fraud, dating back to when he was in his early 20s - and I’ve discovered much more about what Alan Metcalfe was up to with investors’ money.

The first three 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.

Available on Apple Podcasts here.

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

Metcalfe claimed to have discovered the secret code to artificial intelligence, which he called it Universal Logic or the Law of Thought.

This algorithm could mirror the human mind, according to him, and was therefore going to revolutionise the tech world, as it would know exactly how is users thought and therefore could be more targeted and the best search tool.

But the ex worker, Ms Grace, had serious doubts.

“Alan felt that the big selling point of it was this universal logic. But no one could quite explain what universal logic was. It was just some mystical, magical concept,” she recalled.

“I snuck down into the code base and it was just a glorified, crapified version of Google – a search index that barely worked. It was nothing fancy.

“That made me start questioning that this is a bit dodgy. Within a few months, I realised it was all just a big scam and I wanted to get out.”

Others have also cast doubt on the AI aspect of the scheme. Jason* is a high-flying Australian businessman who asked to keep his name out of it because he’s embarrassed to have been involved with the Safe Worlds project.

“Let’s see if this guy’s got what he claims he’s got, this could change the world,” he said.

With extensive contacts in the business world, Jason was asked to help reel in some big investors and he agreed. But soon things weren’t making sense.

“It didn’t stack up at all, to be frank,” he said.

He introduced Metcalfe to people “with deep pockets” but found the conversations taking some bizarre turns.

“All he would say is (this AI code has) come out of the Bible, that’s it. People in the room were trying not to laugh. It was unbelievable, but that must’ve been his modus operandi and it had worked for him in the past,” Jason said.

In these meetings, Metcalfe wasn’t able to tell them anything concrete like where the money was going.

“Does it sit in trust?” Jason had asked. “Is it in escrow? What’s the money going to be spent on? Don’t just say on AI. Specifically what? Further development? There was no milestone. There was no plan. There was nothing.”

Time and time again, the people he introduced to Metcalfe walked away, and he eventually also turned his back on the project.

University of NSW senior lecturer Dr Sara Shirowzhan, who specialises in artificial intelligence, analysed Alan’s idea on Universal logic and said she didn’t understand it.

“The idea, the methods, Alan proposed, they are all based on reliable resources,” Dr Shirowzhan said.

“My conclusion is that the idea had merit, but it was very, very ambitious for that time.”

But, she added: “I didn’t understand what he meant by universal logic.”

Nor was she sure he actually knew what artificial intelligence was.

“He talks about AI in different ways, and it’s not exactly clear which AI algorithm he’s referring to,” Dr Shirowzhan continued.

“Does he know what is AI, actually?”

When I asked her about Metcalfe’s claim that he made this breakthrough while he was reading the Bible in 1999, Dr Shirowzhan’s reaction was immediate.

“It is quite frankly not academic,” she said.

The first three 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.

Available on Apple Podcasts here.

alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au