Pushkin.

Hey listeners, I'm Jake Halburn, host of the deep Cover podcast.

I'm dropping by to share an episode of deep Cover Presents Snowball.

It's the tale of a family who lost everything due to one ruthless scammer.

Snowball follows journalist Ali Ward's as he unravels the wild story of how his own family was taken in and taken down by a charming conwoman from California, and he tries to find out where she is.

Now.

We're talking financial ruin, shattered trust, and a mystery that stretches across continents and decades.

It's got all the twists and turns you'd expect from a high stakes crime thriller, only it's all true.

Here's a preview.

I hope you enjoyed the story, which was meticulously investigated by Ali Wards and the Unravel podcast team in Australia.

And if you can't wait to find out what happens, binge episodes of deep Cover Presents Snowball early and ad free with a Pushkin Plus subscription.

Fine Pushkin Plus on the deep Cover Show page in Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot fm, slash Plus.

This series contains occasional course language.

I was the MC at my brother's wedding.

I did all the usual stuff, housekeeping, toasts, I tried to crack a few jokes, But inside I had a nagging sense of unease about my brother's charismatic Californian bride.

It was a feeling that some things just didn't add up.

I didn't tell anyone how I felt.

Probably couldn't have explained it anyway.

Brother was happy.

That's what matters, right, But maybe I should have paid more attention to that feeling, because within a few months she had taken off to the US.

It wasn't just my brother's marriage that fell apart.

My whole family went down with it, and none of us ever saw her again.

This woman's a bit kind of like, you know, not what she claims to be.

She had this dark, vivacious, a surface skin look to her.

I guess when you marry someone, you feel like you really know them.

And that was her allure.

You just followed her.

She's a manipulative con artist.

Stand by we call her the Black Widow.

This snowball is about the day.

When my mum and dad found out that they had lost everything.

It was during the Sunday lunchtime rush in a Country, New Zealand cafe.

They had ended up running that cafe, and that day Dad was serving behind the counter.

Taking orders, passing them back to the sheefs at the back next to order editor.

Then he noticed the guy joined the back of the line.

It wasn't a random customer.

Dad recognized him.

And when this guy got to the front of the queue, he ordered.

And he said to me, I'll have a so and so and so and so, and I've come today to tell you that we are going to liquidate you.

I almost fainted.

I went blank.

I could feel the draining of blood from my face.

I must have been as white as a sheet.

My Mum realized something was up.

I'm busy bringing in dishes and doing whatever.

And then I looked at Dad.

He'd stepped to one side and he came to me, and he looked absolutely dreadful, utterly drained, and I just carried on.

We didn't have time to reflect on things till later in the day.

And what they all meant, what.

It all meant was Mum and Dad had lost their life savings more than a million dollars, and a few days later they found out they were homeless.

A court bailiff presented us with a paper saying our house was to be forfeited to the bank, and I said to the guy, I'm not going to sign that, and he said, it's going to happen.

You don't need to sign anything.

You need to throw it on the desk and walked out.

My parents, in their sixty went from living in a leafy Auckland suburb to squatting in the basement at my auntie's house.

As my family tried to understand what had happened, they realized they might have been the victims of an elaborate con job.

I was living overseas through most of this.

Recently I started learning about what happened, and I kind of felt guilty.

I wasn't there when the walls fell down around everyone, so now I want to help figure things out.

I normally work behind the scenes at an Australian radio station, Triple J, helping other people tell stories, but I knew I needed to investigate the story of my own.

It was like the plot of a movie, one you'd never expect to feature a pretty average Kiwi family.

Things got weird and some of it's kind of funny.

There's also a lot of randomness there with the story smuggled out of Armenia.

What whoa, it's fine?

Oh my fucking god, are you serious?

I mean, can I talk about drugs?

This is weird.

This was not how normal friendship works.

We were like her little duckling's following behind her.

Lots of little intrigues.

Thirty thousand dollars.

I don't know where this money went.

They kind of knew that there was some some fuckery.

We joked that they were hired at.

Its personality bubbly.

She was rather lovely.

He was rock.

She took every fucking thing get out.

The stranger things get, the more questions I have about what happened, like why did this American woman conn my family?

How did she just get away?

And who really is Leslie Minouchian?

In this season of unravel, I'm going to find some answers, and to do it, I'm going to have to travel across the world to track Leslie down.

I'm Molly Ward's and this is Snowball.

So this is recording?

Is it?

Is there an option to edit it afterwards?

It's not a test.

Surely there's no better subject than yourself.

So it's one or two sentences to describe who I am.

Yeah, okay, I'm a key we mail, late thirties, probably quite typical, trying to pay the mortgage and all the bills and look after as everyone as best I can in the process.

I guess my brother Greg is typical in lots of ways.

He'd be happy with a ten dollar haircut, short back in sides, but he definitely has his quirks, Like he'll read a street map of a foreign city before bed like it's a novel.

The other thing to know about Greg that partly got us into all of this is that he loves everything to do with America.

There's a term for people interested in Europe, which is eurofile.

I think I was an American a file.

So like one night recently, I was brushing my teeth and I got a surprise show and tell.

Greg, you've just come out and shown something.

What do you got here?

It's a two dollars US note and I'm told that they're quite rare and they're lucky for either the I think it's the North Koreans anyway.

That's me.

Now this whole thing starts when Greg went off on his OI back in two thousand and six in New Zealand, you'r OE or overseas experience.

It's kind of like a gap year after school or UNI.

It's where kiwis live abroad, drink foreign beer and have people laugh at us for the different words we have for stuff like chilibin.

That's an eski if you're in Australia, or a cool box pretty much anywhere else chilibin.

Anyway, as a kiwi, it was easier for Greg to work in the UK than in the US, so he put his American dreams on hold and set himself up in London.

One night, he was at a house party wearing his favorite American football style jacket that makes him look like a high school jock.

So he's wandering through the party.

He steps outside to a courtyard and his ears prick up.

North American accents used to catch my attention.

In the corner of the courtyard, there's a woman with long, dark hair smoking a cigarette.

She's leading a conversation with the confidence just oozing out of her.

Well, let's throw in there, Kim Kardashian look alike, sophisticated female operative ready to woo.

Me as well.

That sophistication might have been to do with her being a fair bit older than Greg.

Leslie was late thirties, Greg was mid twenties.

Greg's not a smoker, but he thought he had smoke too.

He wanted to talk, and so he met Leslie.

As they chatted in the dimly lit courtyard.

Greg started to see the world in her.

Literally.

It was more liked the concept of America, as you know, it's the biggest economy in the world.

What they do actually matters to most people on the planet.

I've never heard of another guy describing being attracted to a girl because of the size of her economy.

But that's my brother.

You know, if you're interested in politics, they are a superpower.

Bit of a leap to a girl you meet at a house party, though, isn't it.

Well.

I guess that's how naive I was.

Greg was also taken in by Leslie's wild story about why she was in London.

So it originally was to escape from Hawaii because some bad people in Hawaii were trying to attack Earth, you know, because that frauded her and we're on to do bad stuff to her and her mum and dad sent her to Europe to escape them.

Leslie would tell everyone some version of the story.

I actually heard it myself.

It went like this.

Before she was in London, Leslie owned the coolest bar, restaurant and nightclub on the island of Maui and Hawaii.

The bar was called The Breakwater.

Things were going well until one day Leslie caught the head security guard dealing drugs out of the back entrance.

When she confronted him, he told her he planned to keep selling drugs.

She shouldn't try to stop them.

From there, things deteriorated with the locals, like the electricity got cut off at the restaurant than at the power company.

Leslie said it all culminated one night when she was at home.

Hearing people breaking in.

She head under the bed.

From there she saw the head of security with some other guys come in carrying sugarcane knives.

While they looked for her, they were talking about burying her in the fields.

She was lucky though they didn't look under the bed.

As soon as they left, Leslie went to the airport.

Her dad charted a plane and she escaped to Europe.

So, according to Leslie, that's how she ended up laying low in London.

And all of this was fascinating to Greg.

He started introducing Leslie to his mates.

Their relationship seemed a normal, enormal relationship, aside from the fact that it got very intense very quickly.

But you would expect out of Greg.

He's not a game player and he wears his heart on his sleeves.

If he's into you, you'd find out pretty quickly.

My initial thoughts was that she was really open and friendly, maybe a bit too friendly.

But what do you mean by that?

She just gave a lot like she just.

Was pretty quick to chat and want to hang out and make plans.

And I remember thinking it was quite full on that she was so open so quickly.

Maybe that's it.

In London, Leslie managed a couple of bars.

She was very vivacious, bubbly, kind of f avescent personality, bubbly California, and it's like manner, you know, she was kind of quite engaging, very chatty.

You know, she knew how to sort of work people.

Phil owned one of the bars Leslie worked in.

He saw my brother coming in all the time.

I can remember Greg.

I remember Leslie bring him into the bar and introducing me to him.

Hell of a life guy.

Typical sort of keeping in London, working hard, and then he'd come into the bar during the in the evenings to wind down a bit, and he had a you know what.

I'd probably described a certain laivity about him at the time, and I remember sort of thinking, you know, you had Leslie who was this sort of very confident, kind of you know thing, and there was Greg who was quieter and kind of you know, so you could see the dynamic there.

Leslie would hook Greg and his mates up with drinks.

We suddenly were invited to a part and his plenty buckets of beer being brought to our VIP table in the corner in the city of London with business people around, and it.

Was like, I I'm a beckpecker and I'm in one of.

The words, financial capitals, getting beer rained on me.

So you felt like a bit of a rock star or something.

Yeah.

To be yes, Greg's friend Andy did wonder where it was all coming from, and.

She said, oh, it's all going on the tabs of different local law firms, so you know that'll come to settle up and there'd be a few extra platters and bottles of wine.

It's just one of her crafty ways of showing all her friends a good time.

I suppaith.

Things were getting pretty serious between Greg and Leslie, and as the saying goes, first comes love, then comes me, wanting to meet your new bay.

I flew to London to meet my brother's American dream girl.

My first impression was that Leslie knew stuff.

She had been everywhere and done everything.

I started saying, all the time, Leslie knows and she loved that.

We joked about getting t shirts made.

I was only partly being sarcastic.

Leslie told me about how she was from Orange County, California.

She said that she was a trust fund type kid, and so were her friends, and she said that her dad was rich from selling tanks to the US Army.

So it was all pretty impressive, but I have to admit I was nervous that I'd end up together.

Somehow, Leslie seemed to have a power over Greg, like he wasn't himself.

I wondered if it was because she was so much older than him, but I didn't really dwell on that stuff though, because I remember seeing how much Greg loved her.

His arm was constantly around Leslie, so I was happy for him.

After only a few months they moved in together.

Things were going quickly, but they were about to go into hyperdrive.

The winter after they first met, Greg proposed to Leslie.

It was snowing on Christmas Day and they were at Disneyland in Paris.

She honestly was buying everything like Donald Duck, Key Ring's, Sherberts Elf.

Bloody hats.

We had a really nice dinner at I think that movie Johnny Depp was in parts of the Caribbean, so they've got a really cool restaurant, beautiful food.

So you had a ring burning a hole in your pocket.

Honestly, I don't even remember if I had a ring or I didn't.

I don't think I did, But you remember the Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean restaurant.

Look, Ollie, the whole thing is the entire time I was in Europe.

I was on a bit of a cloud nine anyway, and it had been a great year.

It was romantic, it was snowing, everything was cool, and I thought.

This is the right thing to do.

How did she react?

I think a little bit surprised, but also I said yes pretty quick as well.

So yeah, we were in love.

Just after he proposed, Greg followed his Beyonce back home to the superpower he had always wanted to visit.

Yeah first time in the United States.

He expected New York to be paved in gold.

Instead, it was dirty.

That was my first Impressionationly was this.

This is rough as cuts.

Then it was to the West Coast to stay in Leslie's childhood home in Orange County, California.

Leslie always said that she was from a rich background, so you might imagine her house to be like a mansion off Laguna Beach.

Nah, it's as.

Middle income America as you could possibly find.

Leslie was warm and social, but it turned out that her mum and dad were the kind of parents that will make you feel like you have to be on best behavior.

Her mum, Betty with almost permanently pursed lips, and her dad Andrew, had a squint through glasses that was somehow at the same time suspicious and disinterested.

I was put in a room next to her parents, and she was put in her old room.

That she grew up in.

Bed in this place with the same TV VHS cassettes underneath the TV.

Remember, Leslie was nearly forty years old at this point, but it was a separate bedroom situation.

At this house, there was a camera above the front door, like a CCTV camera, and I thought, ah, Okay, asked about you know why you guys got security and iron, but the answer was the Hawaiians.

Something about that didn't add up for Greg, but he was on his best behavior and let it go.

He had bigger things on his mind.

He was about to get married.

To make immigration and paperwork stuff easier, as well as to avoid any discomfort with Leslie's conservative parents, they arranged to get hitched quickly at a courthouse in Santa Anna.

Betty and Andrew seemed happy for them.

Betty put on a nice dress, Andrew put on a jacket, and he drove them to the courthouse in his Cadillac.

The ceremony was brief.

The registry office was no frills, just a vase of flowers and the corner.

Greg was happy, but he was feeling far away from home, and also Greg thought making things official would change the sleeping arrangements, but it didn't.

Get separbare situation.

I was quite keen to not have that situation, but I respected it.

But you were married, now, Well that's what was.

Sort of you know, I thought Hey, what else do I need to do here?

A man, I've done the deed, but I want to do the deed.

Her parents were very, very conservative.

It didn't matter too much though, because they weren't planning on staying.

As much as Greg was intrigued by America, he thought it'd be easier to settle at home and then zed where they were going to have a proper wedding.

But when it came time to leave California, it seemed like Betty and Andrew didn't really want their daughter to go.

They took us out to the airport to lax, and they cried shitloads when.

We left, But it was all moving to New Zealand for a new life.

What was their thoughts on that?

Oh?

Look, mate, I don't remember ever any optimism of Leslie moving to New Zealand.

I honestly distinctly remember them being really sad her leaving America again.

Yeah.

Now, whether that's because you know it's a loved one leaving to another land or another reason.

Who fucking knows?

Like, what do you mean by that?

What would another reason be?

Like knowing that she's going to get in trouble again somewhere else?

They can't keep an eye on her.

I don't know.

It's late at night.

As Greg and I talk on the couch.

We've never talked about all this stuff.

I've kind of just wanted to help him forget.

But now that we're talking, the more we get into what happened with Leslie, the more tangled up we get.

I remember that the story was her dad worked in the armaments industry, and you know, we've heard that she's a trust fund baby, and there's all this money in her family, and you know she's from the sort of rich background and everything.

So none of that's true.

Say that again, Well, none of that's true, less the part that and her dad told me that he built water tanks for the US Army, not armaments.

It was water tanks.

I think she told me he built tanks for the US Army, which is which, to be fair, is kind of true.

But when somebody says that they're building tanks for the army, you don't think water tanks.

Look, he was my guy.

He was an engineer, so he was Iranian.

He was born in sorry he was actually he was born in Tehran, but he was Armenian.

Leslie's bad.

Yeah, sorry, No, adopted father.

I never no one's as far as I.

Know, were least of all us has meant the biological parents.

She was adopted, all right, Okay, I don't know that, But man, that brings in the other piece.

That actually is where the trust fund supposedly came from, was from her biological parents and what she got left behind and then she was adopted out.

So somebody adopted a baby with a trust fund.

Well, this is where, like you know, there's so many facets to someone's personality or stories all or otherwise.

Eventually you actually just kind of give up asking and accept some of it and and live in the.

Moment and move on.

It's just it's just seems like bullshit, you know.

Well most of it is.

I knew this story had lots of strange tentacles, but as I'm asking Greg this stuff, every answer seems to sprout more bizarre limbs for me to understand, even just basic, really basic questions like how old is Leslie?

Yeah, she's obviously a bit older than me.

How much older?

Well, she had two birthdates, so I never know, you what do you mean she had two birthdays?

I feel like I ask, what do you mean?

A lot yeah, that's one in this situation, you should it was either eight or ten years.

I think, what do you mean she had two birthdays?

She had two different passports as well.

What well, we'll explained.

So there was a US passport, but that there was other documentation with different birthdays.

You didn't think that was strange?

Well yeah, sure, but there was you know, plausible reasons which were what uh I think for memory?

It was smuggled out of Armenia.

The passport was smuggled out of who she was?

Wow, so we've got that piece plus.

All the Hawaiians attacking her mate shoes.

She's an enigma.

Oh hey bro, Yeah, I want you to meet my older brother, Simon.

My names Simon.

I'm your brother.

I'm the youngest of us brothers.

Greg is in the middle.

Simon's the oldest.

Simon can be intimidating, but he's also charismatic, like he'd gate crash your party and then be the life of it.

He's got a shaved head, thick black beard.

Can you get get in a few sentences, just describe yourself for people listening, Like, you know, how would you in a couple of sentences sum yourself up?

I don't know.

I'm an artist, a lover.

Not no, I'm a brother.

You're like, what are you men for?

Kiwi's at home, like Simon.

When Leslie Minukian turned up, she was pretty full on.

She was a real different character to have around.

It was it was just it was it was a bit weird.

And to tell you the truth, the only interaction I've ever had with an American I think, like a proper American, Like she's like the quintessential kind of Kelly chick with that strong accent.

I'd just seen that on TV.

Just interactions with her.

I remember it feeling a bit like TV, just because you know what.

I mean, sort of like an intensity.

Yeah, man, wicked intensity.

It didn't seem like this huge love affair.

But Gregg's quite in dress anyway.

He's quite a druding guy, so something that may seem strange in another situation, I'm like, oh, this is just Greg.

This is my brother.

Gregg's kee.

We mates also found Leslie quite buzzy.

You were very quick to get wrapped up in Leslie because she was like the life of the party.

She'd roll up with you know, her Jaegermeister, and to be honest, back then I was I was ten years ago.

I was twenty four.

So here's this check.

Who was like just paying for everything like she was always I mean, can I talk about drugs?

She was always supplying weed and jaeger myster.

It's a quick way to a twenty four year old's heart.

Weed and yager mystad.

Oh, one hundred percent right.

Most people were like sweet ass, but for some others it was a bit much like for.

Instance, if she said come over, we'll have a drink of wine.

We'd go over.

There and have a really expensive bottle of red.

Or something, and I'd mention, ay, that's a really nice bottle.

She'd turn up the next.

Day with like a whole case of the stuff and be like, this is for you.

Every time we caught up, she was always showering us and gifts, like giving us literally gifts, paying for everything, free alcohol.

This is amazing.

But when it was every catch up, I started to be like, this is weird.

This is not how a normal friendship works.

Don't put it near me.

What needs to come near you to record?

You're just looking at me?

What that's my mum?

Julie describing my microphone.

Mom's a tall lady.

She used to be self conscious as a teenager.

One time she danced with her friend in the girl's bathroom because she didn't think any of the boys would want to dance with a taller girl.

But now she owns it.

She's pretty sassy and sarcastic.

Could you just put it sort of over there in there?

Can you start by just why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Hello?

I'm the mother of three boys who I thought I would not survive their upbringing.

I love the three of them to bits.

The one we're going to speak of is our lovely Greg, who is a kind, fast seeing, intelligent, good looking young man, and that people used to even say he looked like Tom Cruise, so that must be a measure.

But in that it seems there's been a bit of vulnerability.

My brother is kind, but I got to say, he doesn't look like Tom Cruise.

I reckon.

Mom thought Leslie looked like a movie star too.

She was rather lovely.

She had this dark, vivacious, a surface skin and look to her personality bubbly very yah yah American.

You know how Americans have the accent where they going.

Yeah yeah, yah, yeah, yeah, yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, I.

Know, I just know.

So I said, oh, yes, it's just American and we got on with it.

Mum ended up hanging out with Leslie like every day.

Each day.

She would get up and make me take her somewhere, like let's go.

And I was happy to do it.

For goodness sake.

What was the kind of plan though, I mean, what were they going.

To be doing.

It's going to buy a business in New Zealand of a hospitality nature.

One day, she'd been trawling through things up in a bedroom and she came down and she said.

I've found it.

I've got it.

She said, this is a sign I have to buy this place.

And what was the sign.

The sign was that she had a big dragonfly tattooed across her back.

And so the cafe is called the Dragonfly.

She's got a dragonfly tattoo.

It's a sign meant to be.

The Dragonfly Cafe was in a small town called Medicana and hours drive north of Auckland.

Around Medicana, lush native bush and farms sit next to sandy white beaches.

There's a farmer's market vibe.

Sometimes ducks wad around town from the river, which is lit up by fairy lights at night.

The Dragonfly was on the main road leading into Maticana.

At the front a gift shop sold scented candles and beach house knickknacks.

On the back patio.

The cafe looked down a slope towards a natural waterfall, all surrounded by native bush.

If you looked back up towards the cafe, you'd see a house with a log cabin feel to it, with exposed wooden beams.

This is where Greg and Leslie would live.

It was lovely, superstaff and do.

You remember how much it was going to be worth.

Over a million.

Because it had the house with it in the beautiful land and the business.

Okay, you ready to rock and roll?

And finally from our fam, this is my dad, David.

I am a Kiwi fellow who has had lots of jobs, met lots of people.

I feel fairly comfortable in myself.

I have developed a fairly strong Christian faith and I think that's served me very well.

My whole life.

Dad has looked the same.

He's got a round, warm face, incapable of showing anger, square glasses, silver gray hair, just only on the sides.

Maybe it's because I've been away from home for so long, but sometimes I hear Dad, like Murray the manager from Flight of the Concords.

Oh, you're like a cool looking pair of it.

It it's Dad was there to help Leslie get set up when she came to New Zealand.

So she needed a lawyer in order to look at properties and do some conveyancing.

And I thought, poor girl, she doesn't know anybody.

She can have our lawyer, So I introduced her to our lawyer.

This Auckland based lawyer had been acting for mom and dad for twenty five years.

When my parents bought their house in nineteen eighty two, he was there.

Dad bought a business that hired out party equipment.

He worked on that.

It made sense to get him on the job for Leslie too, now that she was part of the family.

With that sorted, Leslie went to New Zealand's state owned bank, creatively titled Kiwi Bank, and she asked for a loan.

The conditions included Leslie proving to Kiwi Bank that she had a trust fund.

She was able to show the bank that she had five million US dollars in her trust fund and five thousand coming to her each month.

For life, but Leslie had only just come to New Zealand and she was still on a tourist visa.

Another condition of the loan was having a Keiwi garranteur.

Dad had just sold his party higher company and retired, so it seemed natural for them to get involved.

There were a lot of people that were sort of saying things, you're cautioning us, Are you sure that's a huge thing to do?

And I was thinking, Leslie seems to be on top of all this.

She has all this fantastic references from running restaurants over in America and in Hawaii.

She talks to talk.

She convinced our lawyer that it was a good thing to do.

I tried to talk to this lawyer, but he didn't want to be interviewed, And in case that happened later, he said he never told mom and Dad that it was a great venture.

He said he doesn't give that kind of advice to his clients.

But Dad remembers things differently.

He said to me, you don't have to do anything, David, because I would say, she's a human dynamo.

It his words, she is a human dynamo.

We're thinking every now and again, you've got to stick your neck out.

You stick your neck out and it'll pay off.

So we guaranteed alone one hundred percent loan to purchase one and a half million dollars worth of property and business.

A lawful lot on trust here on my part and our part, huge amount.

We did stick our Niecks out.

Greg and Leslie moved into the house at the Dragonfly over the last few months of two thousand and seven.

Greg wouldn't have much to do with the cafe.

He had his own job.

Lesley was in charge.

But soon my brother Simon got roped in on the food side of the business.

So I may embellished the story, but I remember it being just a few days before the cafe opened, shared a blue with the chef and so and then so I was just like the chef, isn't he quit?

French go?

And he quit.

When the cafe reopened, there was a lot of buzz around it.

Things were going well.

Leslie was making an impact on the chilled out Matticana community.

Here was this California power business lady shaking things up.

The local magazine did a write up Now under.

Its new owner, Leslie Minuchian, who was previously owned Restrants and Lake Tahoe and the US and in Hawaii.

Dragonfly is getting better by the day.

Meanwhile, preparations were underway for a massive wedding, but it soon became clear that none of Leslie's trust fund friends from America were going to make it.

She said none of them could hack the thirteen hour flight to Auckland.

So Kee, we girls that Leslie had known for only a matter of months started getting the call up to the bridal party, like Carla, who was back in London.

I remember sitting at my desk in Hoxton and at my office and I remember thinking, fuck, this is so weird, and sort of saying to a few of the girls in the showroom, like, so, I've just asked to be a bridesmaid to this.

Girl I barely know.

In New Zealand in January.

One of the other bridesmaids, Alisha, hadn't known Leslie for long either.

I was asked to be a bridemage, which was quite surprising.

I think she said something about her cousin couldn't come, so I think I was kind of filling in.

Didn't really have any family here, And yeah, I mean I guess I was happy to.

Do it because we were, you know, we were close at the time.

After everything that went down, my mum stopped referring to it as the wedding.

She renamed it, and our family it's now known as the Event.

The event happened on a blue sky summer day, just after Christmas in a small colonial era church with painted white arches and stiff wooden pews.

And it just was really surreal.

It was like I was kind of acting.

I was acting in a sitcom or something like that was my role to arrive and then then I was going to go walk, you know, down Ireland.

It was.

It was so weird.

The ceremony was pretty standard a priest, those Bible readings from every church wedding ever, love is patient, love is kind.

After that, the party started straight away in a hall next door.

I was living in London by this point and I had flown home especially for the wedding.

I was happy to be the MC.

I remember making a joke like Geez, I go away for a couple of months and I come back and Greg's got a cafe, a house and a waterfall.

I can't find any recordings of that night.

Pretty much everyone we know in New Zealand was there.

More than one hundred and fifty people came.

There were even wedding crashes watching from the deck.

But here's the weird thing.

Almost all the guests were from Greg's side.

The only guests that weren't already friends or family of Greg's were Leslie's parents, Betty and Andrew.

There was two people, yeah, no friends, no family.

I think the weirdest thing, and I think the weirdest thing for everyone just about the event was the parent thing, her parents and just how I think there was a lot of this.

They would just stand offish, they were just like, I don't know, it was just fucking weird.

I don't remember really being able to talk to them at all, Like there was no really interaction.

They were very quiet and you couldn't raise a lip of a smile.

You couldn't get a word out of them.

They looked.

Very she looked very pale and.

Colorless.

The best man, Nat made a special effort with Leslie's parents.

They were very, very hard to try and make them feel welcome.

So I just remember at one point just walking away thinking, oh well, I.

Remember joking with Mad about the fact that potentially, you know, Leslie's parents, even her real parents, or did she just ring in a couple active.

They seemed a little bit standing, like, because they were sort of a bit there but not there.

We joked that they were hired actors because yeah, why, I don't know.

They just because they definitely didn't fit the profile of like who you think her parents would be, and they were kind of weird and quiet, and there wasn't like a lot of love and like vibe relationship between the two like you would expect from a parent and child Like.

I didn't like.

I honestly, like to this day, I have no idea if that's appearance, no idea.

I wouldn't be surprised if that as not.

I don't remember seeing any kind of love going on.

I remember Betty and Andrew they brought me a pair of Levi jeans as a gift.

That was cool, but they didn't really talk to me either.

I still don't know what they knew about what was going on or what their role was in all of this.

I think they kind of knew that there was some some fuckery involved, you know what I mean.

It wasn't long after the wedding that people started to notice some of that fuckery.

I was up in room or sharps and I bumped into Leslie and she had just come out of the public library and she was showing me this document that she had sent over from the US because she was trying to get her driver's license in New Zealand, but she had to submit like a driving record from the US.

And we were a laugh because she had all these duy and some like suspended licenses or something like a She had like a few things, and she was in the public library, no joke, she was twinking out these from her record that obviously she had asked for and been sent over from the US, twinking these out and then rephotocopying them and then touching them up and rephotocopping them until it looked legit.

By the way, twink is one of those words that people laugh at us Kiwi's about it's wide out liquid eraser twink.

And I just remember standing on the road with her, like so vividly, just her showing me the document in her and not having a laugh about it, and I was thinking, wow, like that's I think was the first time I was like, she's like, she's got some secrets, you know, like you're hiding some stuff.

End up at the Dragonfly Cafa.

Things were starting to go wrong.

We ran out of water, so we didn't have access in the kitchen to water, and so Gregan likewise were kind of running back and forward to the house trying to get like bottles of water, trying to get stuff.

To wash dishes.

And there were just so many days like that where something was going wrong and there was just no fixing it.

I don't think Leslie was around for much of that.

I remember coming in really strong at the beginning and then kind of not being around and all that stuff were like what's happening.

There was one moment where it was a bit of a watershed moment for me, and that's when the milk supplier for the cafe arrived and then I said today, how are you?

And he basically said that he had never been paid for milk.

It wasn't his first attempt at getting money.

I could tell that it was a bit worked up about it, and you know, I thought, this is this is, this is not right.

And I recall talking to Leslie about it and she sort of and she did with lots of things.

I'll take care of it.

Don't get involved.

Leave it to me.

The Dragonfly was becoming a total cluster.

A bunch of people were saying they weren't getting paid.

I became very frustrated that I couldn't access in information.

I couldn't I couldn't ever get to the bottom of anything.

Leslie almost got angry at me for attempting to try and help and get more involved.

The more it happened, the more angry she got at me, the more frustrated I got, and that became a real strain.

I started to feel very uneasy, and we needed to find out what was going on.

We weren't able to find out a heck of a lot from the bank.

We weren't actually owners of the business.

We weren't signatories to anything.

Even Greg wasn't able to find out a lot of stuff.

But you were the guarantees, and you know you guys would put money on the line, but you would signed up to be the guarantees, but not signed up to be able to see anything.

Isn't that weird?

You could say it like that, But I did follow my lawyer's advice that she knows what she's doing.

She's a human dynamo.

Leslie would spend most of the day locked in the house, which had become a sanctuary from the outside world and the questions people were starting to ask.

A date was set for a meeting where an accountant was going to start combing through the books, but Leslie didn't show up.

Greg knew he needed to do something, so he came up with a plan.

If she was here, she would block us learning about what the reality was.

I told her to go and see he appearance and go over a holiday, get out of the country.

And you actually thought that would be an opportunity to look around.

Probably it was the only way, yep.

And what was you.

Know, if you don't mind me asking, what was the kind of relationship like at that.

Point, Frosty, I'm just completely untrusting on both sides.

At pretty short notice, Leslie booked a flight to America to visit her family, so my mum and dad would have to step up and look after the cafe.

As Greg drove her to Auckland Airport, things were tense.

There was a lot.

Unsaid, but Greg wanted to work this whole mess out and get back to life with Leslie when she got back from the States.

So we're parked, checked and formalodies are done.

It's me and Leslie now walking upstairs to the actual departure gate, where there's not a lot of love going on.

There was probably a nervous but cold hug.

I hope to see you again.

Let's try and work this out, and she, right at the last moment, put it right out there that Greg, the snowball is about to hit you.

Next episode, the Snowball hits.

We cried.

We just were destroyed.

That was a fundamental wow moment for me when you presented that to a bank and they.

Accepted Adrenaline is my best friend.

That's quite calculated.

That's fucking out there.

Somebody has been wronged using my name and rightfully believe that the person who wronged them is meat.

I found it, he said, George Janitors should have found it.

How often would you go in there and look?

At least once a week?

It's so weird.

That is weird.

It is weird.

Snowball is hosted and produced by me, Polly Ward's big ups to my brave brother Greg and my entire family for letting me tell this story.

Unravels totally stoic and awesome.

Supervising producer is Tim Rothsborough.

Our super diligent audio producer is Emma Lancaster.

Assisting with audio production is Shane Anderson, who is also our whip smart fact checker.

Sound designed by the very creative left and Right panning John Jacobs and Tim Jenkins.

A big thanks to my prolific and legendary mates from Flight Facilities for the funky ass Unravel theme song.

Additional music by the talented tunsmith Bryce Holliday.

You can check out some behind the scenes stuff over at my Instagram at Olly Ward's O l l a e WRDS.

Unravel is a product of ABC Audio Studios, led by the abuliant, thoughtful and patient Kelly Reardon, and Unravels expert and excitable Executive producer is Ian Walker.