Conman Ric Blum ‘got me at a low point’ with intimate images

A woman says serial fraudster Ric Blum got her at her lowest before threatening to send intimate images of her to her family, friends and church.

Marion Barter with her children Sally and Owen.

A woman says serial fraudster Ric Blum got her at a low point in her life before threatening to send intimate images of her to her family, friends and church.

The divorced mother-of-two was the first of five women in two countries to go to police about Blum after the 1997 disappearance of Queensland teacher Marion Barter. She gave evidence at the ongoing NSW inquest into Barter’s presumed death, but has never before spoken to the media about the intensely private events that rocked her life more than two decades ago.

Just a year after Barter vanished, Blum convinced the woman, 53, to invest in a business then tried to get his hands on more of her money, she said. Intimate images were used as a weapon of control and coercion, though he did not send them.

“I was very, very low. That’s the only way really that he got me,” she said. “But even though I was low, I wasn’t stupid enough to sell my house and give him cash to go to Paris to buy me a unit.”

Blum, now 83, emphatically denies being involved in the disappearance of Barter, who went missing after they had an affair.

He has also denied any wrongdoing against the women who complained to police about him.

Ric Blum, pictured in 2008, has been accused of swindling a string of women after Queensland schoolteacher Marion Barter vanished in 1997.

Asked by The Weekend Australian if she came close to giving in to the Belgian-born Blum’s suggestion that she sell her Sydney home and hand over the cash, the woman, who asked not to be named, replied instantly: “No way. My daughters were born here. The house doesn’t belong to me, it ­belongs to them.”

Blum started “threatening me, frightening me” when she wouldn’t do what he wanted. “I thought, oh, this is bad,” she said.

After contacting Belgian consular officials, who told her there was nothing they could do, she called NSW police and took out a restraining order.

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When she first met Blum, she had been going through a tough time with her former husband. She is now scathing of the conman, who has numerous fraud convictions, but she says he knew what buttons to push.

“He’s ugly, he’s got not much education. No looks, no personality, insipid,” she said. “But the business, the business held me.

“He looks for what a person is looking for. For me it wasn’t difficult because I was quite open, I’m looking for a business. He used that. I had no reason not to believe him because I had no experience about all these kinds of things.”

Blum was careful and secretive, never giving his phone number, but she once introduced him to a friend. Her twin daughters, then aged 11, also knew him. Barter, on the other hand, went missing after keeping her relationship with Blum secret.

“I had a French girlfriend who came to visit me at home and she met him,” the woman said.

“So for me, if I had family (present), I would have introduced him to them.

“Marion wasn’t alone like me. She had relatives. How on earth did he get to her so deeply? Why didn’t she introduce him to her family?

“I don’t know why she didn’t. He must have told her.”