Dubbed Australia’s ‘worst conman’, Hamish McLaren stole $70m from vulnerable victims

A cunning “narcissistic psychopath” who stole millions from unsuspecting victims has been described as Australia’s worst conman.

Hamish McLaren was charming, handsome and a cunning “narcissistic psychopath” who ripped off millions from unsuspecting victims across the globe.

The 48-year-old seduced women — and charmed men — by pretending to be a successful businessman, a trader, a Harvard graduate or a hedge fund manager, and used a multitude of aliases to cover his tracks, manipulating his victims into trusting him before breaking hearts and stealing millions.

Described as Australia’s worst conman, McLaren, who grew up on Sydney’s northern beaches, is languishing in a prison cell awaiting sentence on 18 fraud charges while psychologists assess his mental health and test him for “suspected autism”.

Hamish McLaren has been described as Australia’s worst conman.

He robbed almost $8 million from his victims in Australia — in September last year he pleaded guilty to defrauding 15 victims out of $7.66 million.

Claims aired yesterday in Channel 7’s Sunday Night suggest this could be the tip of the iceberg, and McLaren actually fooled hundreds of people across the world, including in London, Canada, the United States and Hong Kong, netting a massive $70 million.

Using multiple identities, McLaren — who was the subject of an eight-part podcast series by The Australian earlier this year called Who the hell is Hamish? — stole from the vulnerable and naive, tearing lives apart.

EX-WIFE

Bec Rosen

Rebecca Rosen says Hamish McLaren was ‘charming’. Picture: Adam Yip

In 2008, Bec Rosen was living in Blueys Beach where she had moved with her three sons after the breakdown of her marriage. It was in that calm, idyllic spot she met the charming and affable Hamish McLaren.

“We’d see him out surfing or walking his dogs,” Bec told Sunday Night’s Melissa Doyle. “Rumours were he was a futures trader who ran into trouble in the early 2000s, but everyone was pretty fascinated by him.”

McLaren offered to take her sons surfing — the boys begged to go. Not only was he romancing their mother, he was befriending her sons and being the father figure they felt they didn’t have.

“He was a really nice person when I met him we’d go on runs and go boxing,” Bec’s son Jack said.

Why did he pick Bec as his target?

“I think with me he thought I was going to get a good divorce settlement,” she told Doyle.

“He had those eyes, he was all about you.”

‘He has those eyes’. Bec Rosen and Hamish McLaren. Picture: Channel 7

But, McLaren had a chequered past. One which he urged Bec to research herself.

“He said, ‘Google me, you’ll find a whole lot of stuff’. He said, ‘That wasn’t me (now), that was in 2000. I don’t want to be that person.’

“He would say, ‘I found you and the boys, I found love, you weren’t going to judge me on past history’.”

In October 2010, Bec and McLaren were married in a simple backyard wedding. But the lure of the glitzy life of a trader still enticed McLaren, and soon he moved back to Sydney, renting an apartment in Woolloomooloo Bay.

Bec and her sons would visit on weekends, and she thought to herself: How did I score this amazing life?

“We lived the high life … he had an apartment on the Finger Wharf. We’d go out and do cool things,” said Jack.

But it was not all as it seemed.

By then McLaren was off working on his next con. He offered to take Bec to New York, and they attended a business meeting in the heart of Manhattan.

He was given a name tag with the name “Hamish McLachlan”, Bec said. “We were saying that’s so funny,” she added.

STEPSON

Jack Rosen

McLaren spent time surfing with Jack Rosen and his brothers. Picture: Julian Andrews

Over time Bec found out McLaren, then aged 45, had many different names. Instinct kicked in when he started acting strangely around Jack’s 16-year-old girlfriend Jane* and she suspected they were having an affair.

“I said why is Jack’s girl sitting having coffee with my husband?” she told Sunday Night.

“He’d flick her on the bum with a tea towel. It was flirty.”

When Bec approached him about it, he said she was being ridiculous and the teenager was like his daughter.

“Every time I said anything, I was a lunatic,” Bec said.

She said he’d come to the house in his “midlife crisis car” and pick up Jane, and they’d roar off together down the street. Bec didn't know at the time, but she was paying for the flash vehicle McLaren had purchased under her name from a Porsche dealership in Willoughby.

Bec was paying for a lot more beside cars — also dinners, bills, first-class flights. The final indignity came when she found a purple G-string in the drier. Finally Jane* admitted the affair.

“Mum, she was right,” said Jack. “Everyone was saying she was crazy, and she was spot on.”

“None of it was real, it was all an act, “ Bec added.

WEALTHY FRIEND

Karen Lowe

Karen Lowe said Hamish McLaren was ‘like a kid in a sweet shop’ when he first saw her home. Picture: Adam Yip

Soon after the pair broke up, Hamish found his next victim — newly divorced single mother Karen Lowe who was cash poor but asset rich with a multimillion-dollar home.

“I’ll never forget his face for the first time (when he walked into my kitchen). He was like a kid in a sweet shop. He was literally, he was like, ‘Oh, wow!’,” she told Sunday Nigh t.

“The story I got about his childhood (was) his father was not his real father, his mother had an affair. He was the result of that affair. That’s why he’s not Hamish Watson, he’s McLaren.”

Karen’s harbourside mansion was worth around $11 million. But after her recent divorce, she had little money and needed to fix the leaking roof so she could sell the property.

He said, “You don’t have to worry. I’m here to take care of you.”

She showed McLaren the whole house, and he was almost rubbing his hands together, Karen told Sunday Night. He said, “I can help you … I’ll get you a million dollars” in the form of a loan. I said, “I don’t need a million dollars. I just need to borrow $200,000 to fix the house so I can go to the market.”

Conman Hamish McLaren fleeced millions out of former friend Karen Lowe.

Karen admitted she didn’t look at the paperwork properly but said at the time she trusted McLaren and thought he was acting on behalf of the ANZ bank so had no reason to question him.

“He made me think that things were OK. I didn’t look at the documents properly,” she said.

One of McLaren’s elaborate ruses was taking Karen to visit James Packer’s $23 million property that he suggested he was interested in buying. But it was all “smoke and mirrors”.

“That was all to impress. He talked the talk, he was all about cars and Tom Ford suits,” Karen said.

One day, she introduced McLaren to her friend Henry Hannon, a well-off property broker from the UK. When he met them, Karen said McLaren came “roaring down the Esplanade” at Balmoral Beach in an Aston Martin — and “you don’t do that,” she added.

The trio decided to visit England and even went to the races at Ascot.

“It's a totally new audience for him,” Henry said. “People with money, and he thought that was ‘rich pickings’ for him.

BRITISH CONNECTION

Henry Hannon

Henry Hannon, Karen Lowe’s British friend, was also taken in by McLaren’s lies.

“I would say Royal Ascot probably petrified him. ’Cause there’s a lot of people there that have known people for years and years and (have) proper money, and when I say proper money, I mean qualified money, not made-up things like that,” Henry said.

Together, the three of them then went to New York. Always one to impress, McLaren bought first-class tickets — except it was Karen who footed the bill.

McLaren claimed he was in New York with Goldman Sachs, and he booked Karen and Henry into a swanky hotel in Soho.

The pair soon discovered McLaren had booked in under a fake name.

“He called himself ‘Mr James’ and it was the James Hotel. I mean, really? I deserve to be laughed at for that,” Henry said.

Henry then contacted some of his friends who worked at Goldman Sachs. They looked for McLaren on the register — no such person was listed. It turned out McLaren didn't even have a job.

“He was going to a cafe on Broadway with his computer every day,” said Karen.

Hamish McLaren was ‘not like your common burglar’.

When she returned to Sydney, Karen started getting calls from the bank asking for repayments on her loan. It was then she discovered the money wasn’t there. She had been duped by a manipulative monster, and her world literally began to close in around her.

“I can feel it sometimes. Pit of the stomach sick feeling that, yeah, I can remember, and I don't think I’ll ever forget that,” Karen said. “It’s very humiliating. I feel very humiliated, very silly now it’s all over. How I could have fallen for it all.”

In total, McLaren took $1.150 million from Karen.

“That’s the worst thing about Hamish, is that he’s not like your common burglar that comes into your house, ruffles everything about and then runs out anonymously,” Henry said.

“He gets into your social fabric, your emotions. Absolutely everything in your life, nicks it off you and then runs away, so it’s much, much worse than, you know, a common thief.”

FORMER GIRLFRIEND

Tracy Hall

Some time later in 2016, single mum Tracy Hall, from Sydney’s northern beaches, came across McLaren’s profile on a dating app — but this time it was under the identity Max Tavita, aged 41. The pair began to talk.

Tracy said he was witty and charming but also had a vulnerable side, as he claimed he was orphaned aged six when both his parents died in a plane crash.

This was just one of Hamish’s many big fat lies. Both his parents are still alive and living in a northern beaches retirement home.

One of his more perverse claims was that he was in the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001 when the first terrorist plane crashed into the building during the infamous attacks that killed 2996 people.

Tracy Hall was contemplating a future with Hamish McLaren before her world came crumbling down.

“We started chatting and I guess it was the conversation that drew me in,” Tracy said.

She was soon spending a lot of time at his apartment in Bondi, and Tracy had no reason to suspect a thing. Everything seemed normal — even his mail was addressed to Max Tavita.

“You know, I didn’t even think about it at the time because I’m like, ‘That’s his name’,” she said.

“He would get dressed in the morning in his, you know, his full suit and, um, you know, very finance, I guess you could say.

“We’d drive into the city, and we’d drive to his street. He would let me off, and I think he just drove home and put his boardshorts back on. I mean, he didn’t have an office. He didn’t have this job. He fabricated the whole thing.

“I think in my case, he listened very carefully and constructed his identity (so) that I would fall in love with him.

“We went and looked at a house in Byron Bay that we both really liked. We were talking about a future in 10 years time. You know, the conversations were, you know, pretty deep at that point.

“We’d been together for nearly a year-and-a-half and, um, yeah, that’s what we were discussing as we were walking along the beach.”

Then one day Tavita went AWOL and stopped answering his phone.

Tracy saw an online news report of her boyfriend Max Tavita (aka Hamish McLaren) being arrested.

“I was just calling constantly, like, texting him, WhatsApp-ing him, emailing him, calling him. So, it’s just very unusual.” Tracy said.

Then she saw an online news report — her boyfriend of 16 months was being arrested outside his apartment.

“And his face was blurred out but he’s very distinctive looking, so, obviously, I knew it was him,” Tracy said.

Then she received a bizarre text message, “Hi, Tracy. Please call me back on this number urgently. Chris (Hamish’s brother-in-law)”.

“And that’s when I called him straight away, and I said, ‘Who the f**k is Hamish?’ Because that’s the first time I’d (heard that name), and I’m seeing it on a text message, and I’m like, ‘What?’,” Tracy said.

“And he said, ‘Hamish Watson, Hamish McLaren’.

“I said, “Well, who’s Max Tavita?” He said, ‘What do you even mean?’ And that’s when … the world came crumbling down around me. It was very surreal.”

As the gravity of McLaren’s betrayal began to dawn on her, Tracy realised she had also given him $320,000 from her superannuation — her entire life savings.

It’s estimated McLaren stole $70 million from victims across the globe.

His sentencing has been adjourned while his mental health is assessed.

McLaren was arrested and taken to Silverwater Jail. It is estimated he stole $8 million from Australians, including millions from fashion designer Lisa Ho. All in all, it has been estimated he pilfered away a whopping $70 million from victims across the globe.

From prison, McLaren called Tracy and sent her love letters.

“You faked your identity for 16 months, you pretended to love me,” she told Sunday Night. “You took all of my life savings and now you’re sending me a letter telling me how much you love me. You must think I’m so stupid.

“My mental health took a real battering during that period. It was probably the lowest I’ve ever been.”

Earlier this year, McLaren was the subject of an eight-part podcast series by The Australian called Who the hell is Hamish?

He has pleaded guilty to 17 counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception, which carry a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment, and one count of knowingly dealing with proceeds of crime.

His sentencing has been adjourned while his mental health is assessed.

* Name has been changed

Continue the conversation with Rebecca Franks on Twitter.

Sunday Night dissects the life of conman Hamish McLaren.