It reads like a script from a movie. A small-town boy from coastal NSW who grew up to rub shoulders with the rich and the powerful and, if the stories are true, con them out of a whole lot of money.
Timothy John Alford is accused of being a serial swindler, cheating dozens of people in Australia and in the United States out of an estimated $50 million.
In the latest edition of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age’s Morning Edition podcast, investigative journalists Kate McClymont and Harriet Alexander take listeners behind the scenes of how they followed the trail of an alleged con artist.
To listen, click the player below, or read on for an extract of their conversation with host Samantha Selinger-Morris.
Samantha Selinger-Morris: Kate, I want to turn now to how you go about stacking up a story like this. So first, when did you first hear about Tim Alford?
Kate McClymont: Look, strangely enough, I first heard about him in another case that I was involved in, and this was the 2009 murder of a Sydney businessman, Michael McGurk. And as it turned out, behind the murder was a very rich property developer named Ron Medich.
And guess who was involved with Ron Medich? Mr Alford.
So Ron Medich had a consigliere called “Lucky Gattellari”. He was chasing up people like Tim Alford (for the money they allegedly owed to Ron Medich).
Then Harriet and I did another story about Tim Alford. Harriet, what year was it?
Harriet Alexander: 2020 ... And this was a story about Sean Lander, which might not be a name that you would immediately recognise, but Sean Lander is the original love rat.
Lander was the man at the centre of Stephanie Woods’ memoir Fake, which has since been turned into a miniseries.
Back in 2020, Lander was chasing Tim Alford over an alleged debt.
So we wrote this story, and then we started to get emails from people in America saying this Tim Alford guy, that’s not all he’s alleged to have been involved in, you should really start looking at him.
Selinger-Morris: So how do you go from there?
McClymont: Well, you reply to the messages and the first thing you say to people is, you know, tell me what happened? And then, what documents do you have? Because it’s important you can stack up what people are saying. You know, do you have a court document? Do you have any emails, or text messages? And also, every person you speak to, you always say, can you give me other leads to follow? So you speak to one person, and they give you five other people.
Selinger-Morris: Tell me, though, how do you actually get people who are involved in this to trust you with this information?
Alexander: I mean to be honest with you, there [are] some stories that I’ve done where it’s really hard to get people’s trust. But this was not one of them.