Border alerts failed to trigger action on convicted conman Ric Blum

A convicted conman who had an affair with a Queensland teacher just before she vanished was previously on a border watch list as authorities considered charging him with citizenship fraud.

Marion Barter went missing in 1997 at the age of 51.

A convicted conman who had an affair with a Queensland teacher just before she vanished was previously on a border watch list as authorities considered charging him with citizenship fraud.

Immigration officials issued alerts at least twice in the 1980s that Ric Blum had entered Australia but then failed to swoop, with one of the movement alerts going to the wrong office, his immigration file shows.

Allowed to stay in the country for decades on taxpayer-funded disability benefits, he used Australia as a base for a ­series of alleged scams, some against women he befriended via lonely hearts ads.

Authorities were on watch for Mr Blum at the time because he appeared to have obtained his Australian citizenship “by deceit”.

Mr Blum, 83, is now a central figure in the 1997 disappearance of Gold Coast mother of two Marion Barter, confirming at an ongoing inquest that they had a secret relationship before she vanished. He denies knowledge of her fate, but if authorities had acted on their concerns about his criminal past years earlier, it’s probable their paths would never have crossed.

His known criminal activity goes back to April 3, 1969, when a Belgian newspaper reported Mr Blum, using the name Willy Wouters, was jailed for six months for issuing bad cheques.

The following month, applying for permanent residency in Sydney, he declared he had never been convicted of a criminal offence. The application was approved.

From 1971 to 1974, he served a four-year jail sentence in France for a series of fraud-related offences. And in 1976, after returning to Australia, he was granted Australian citizenship, apparently fabricating a story about being des­perate to visit his dying father, who died more than 30 years earlier.

Immigration records show Mr Blum failed to declare his time out of the country when he applied for citizenship, and that authorities concluded it “would have been obtained by fraudulent means”.

Volunteer researcher Joni Condos, working with Barter’s daughter Sally Leydon, obtained Mr Blum’s immigration file along with passenger cards showing he was illegally using his brother Fred David’s identity to travel.

Ric Blum with his fourth and current wife Dianne De Hedervary.

Alarm bells only rang for Australian authorities in November 1979, when the AFP began making inquiries about Mr Blum on behalf of Interpol and found his long and growing criminal record abroad.

On August 5, 1981, citizenship official A.J. Milanczuk stated in a letter to the AFP’s chief superintendent in Brisbane that prosecuting Mr Blum “has been under consideration”. His whereabouts had been unknown, but he had recently registered the birth of his daughter at the Australian embassy in Brussels, listing an address in Luxembourg, the letter added.

On August 19, 1981, a citizenship official wrote in a “movement control” note that it “would like to monitor his return to Australia”.

The instructions were to let him go, obtain his “definite intended residential address” and inform the officer in charge of citizenship in Canberra on his arrival. “Appears obtained A/A citizenship by deceit – prosecution proposed. Do not disclose contents of this narrative to subject,” a note stated.

More than four years later, on January 2, 1986, Mr Blum triggered the alert with his arrival at Sydney Airport. He had a NSW driver’s licence, issued the previous year under the name Chaim Frederic David De Hedervary.

On October 6, 1986, he again set off an alert with his arrival in Australia from Germany.

A post-it note attached to the alert states it turned up at one ­office, but was believed to have been meant for another.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles declined to comment on whether Mr Blum’s citizenship was being reviewed.