A 40-year con, yet citizen swindler Ric Blum is still here

Ric Blum, a central figure in the mystery of a missing teacher, became a citizen and claimed welfare for decades despite a serious criminal history abroad.

Australian authorities suspected more than four decades ago that Belgium-born Ric Blum ­became an Australian citizen fraudulently. Picture: Tessa Flemming

A serial swindler who is a central figure in the mystery of a missing Queensland teacher was able to become an Australian citizen then stay and claim welfare for decades despite a serious criminal history abroad and being red flagged by immigration officials and police.

Australian authorities suspected more than four decades ago that Belgium-born Ric Blum ­became an Australian citizen fraudulently, after racking up a criminal record that included him being jailed for four years in France for fraud, his immigration file shows.

He was subsequently able to stay, obtaining at least nine Australian passports in seven different names, and to live on a disability pension since the 1980s courtesy of Australian taxpayers.

If action had been taken against Mr Blum when the alarm was first raised about his character in the 1970s, he may never have met Marion Barter, a mother of two from the Gold Coast who vanished in 1997 after they had an affair that was kept secret from everyone in her loving circle of family and friends.

Mother of two Marion Barter vanished in 1997

A push is now on to have Mr Blum, 83, charged with fraudulently obtaining his citizenship, and to have it stripped from him.

NSW State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan is leading an inquest into the presumed death of Barter, former wife of Australian football legend Johnny Warren.

Mr Blum denies knowing what happened to her, and has also rejected allegations he deceived, exploited and stole from a series of women in Australia and abroad in romance scams.

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In 1969, under the name Willy Wouters, Mr Blum was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in Belgium after he was caught ­issuing bad cheques.

Immigration file documents released by the National Archives of Australia show that later the same year, he was granted permanent residency in Sydney after indicating on his application he had no criminal history.

In 1971, he was in serious strife again, receiving a four-year prison sentence in Rouen, France, for fraud, forgery, confidence tricks and giving a false identity.

He was discharged from the sentence in May 1974 and returned to Australia in June.

In February 1976, he applied for citizenship under a new name he had legally adopted through deed poll, Frederick De Hedervary. Within weeks he was attending a Sydney citizenship ceremony, after asking for and receiving urgent approval because his father was dying in Belgium.

In reality, his father had died more than 30 years earlier.

ASIO and federal police provided clearances for Mr Blum by phone, according to one document in the file.

The newly minted Australian citizen then travelled overseas, where he was again repeatedly in trouble with the law while using a dizzying array of identities.

In June 1976, he had a one-year sentence in Paris for false impersonation. In 1978, it was a three-year prison sentence in Belgium for offences including forgery, counterfeiting and impor­tation of Lebanese hashish.

Those offences included fraudulently writing cheques under the name Roger Lauzoney, selling a Citroen car using the name Bernard Dupont, and fraudulently obtaining items including stamp collections, books, a bicycle, furniture, a barometer, statuettes and chandeliers.

The immigration file shows that in November 1979, the AFP began inquiring about Mr Blum with the Immigration Department in Brisbane on behalf of ­Interpol. On April 2, 1980, the department’s assistant regional director, T.R. Sullivan, wrote to the secretary of the department seeking advice about it being a case for submission to the minister for withdrawal of citizenship.

Mr Sullivan in his letter said an entry permit issued to Mr Blum appeared to be invalid because it didn’t have the correct endorsement “and therefore his citizenship would have been obtained by fraudulent means”.

It’s understood the section he was referring to relates to a person’s good character.

On August 13, 1980, the International Criminal Police Organisation provided the AFP’s officer in charge in Brisbane a translated copy of Mr Blum’s criminal record in Belgium and France.

At the time, it appeared to authorities that Mr Blum was still in prison but in fact he was running a furniture business in Luxembourg, where his then-business partner has said he was constantly in trouble with local police.

Mr Blum’s fourth and current wife Diane, whom he married in 1976, has been on a carer’s pension since the 1980s to take care of him.

The immigration file was obtained by Joni Condos, a volunteer researcher who has been assisting Barter’s daughter Sally Leydon for almost four years after learning of the case in The Lady Vanishes podcast.

Ms Condos reported Mr Blum’s suspected citizenship fraud to Border Watch in January and to Immigration Minister Andrew Giles this month. She noted in her letter to the minister that Barter’s son Owen took his life in 2002 partly because he believed his mother purposefully left him.

“Can you clarify how this individual has retained his Australian citizenship to this day despite the documented declarations of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs that he had obtained his citizenship by ‘fraudulent means’,” the letter states.

“Considering Mr Blum was incarcerated in France for four years between 1971 and 1974 and has a significant criminal history … would this not have made him ineligible for Australian citizenship in 1976?”

Mr Blum has been granted passports under the names Frederick David De Hedervary, Richard Lloyd West, Richard Westbury, Rich Richard, Frederick De Hedervary (no middle name), Willy David-Copenolle and, finally, Ric Blum.