INTRODUCING: The Missing 49 Million

Published Aug 8, 2024, 2:12 AM

Listen to episode 1 of our new series, The Missing 49 Million.

It was supposed to be 'bigger than Google' so how did it all go so wrong? Meet Alan Metcalfe, the Aussie man who claimed to have found the secret to AI in the Bible and convinced hundreds of investors to part with their money. 49 million dollars has vanished into thin air, join Alex Turner-Cohen as she tries to solve the mystery of the missing millions. 

The Missing 49 Million is an eight-part investigative series by news.com.au, hosted by award-winning Finance Reporter Alex Turner-Cohen.


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Hi, I Catchkillers fans. I'm Alex Turner Cohen, our finance and investigative reporter for news dot com. Today you and I'm dropping in to share the first episode of my podcast, The Missing forty nine Million. It's the story of one Ossie Man, a secret code he claims to have found hidden in the Bible, and hundreds of mum and dad investors who want to know where their money has gone. If you enjoy this episode, search for a Missing forty nine million wherever you get your podcasts and come join me on this treasure hunt for the truth.

We are gathered today to give thanks to God for the life of Alan Myles Metcalf and to a third the Christian conviction. But while death is the end of human life, at marks a new beginning in our relationship with God. Please let us stand together as we see amazing grace.

I'm starting this story at the end, the end of Alan Metcalf's life. This is his funeral. It's a Wednesday, the first day of March in twenty seventeen. I'm looking back at this scene immortalized on a YouTube video. It's a video that I've now watched multiple times, and each time I notice other small details. I count forty or so people sitting in the pews of the church. The thirty two degree day is hot, sweltering, and a few of the men have actually taken off their suit jackets. Sad faces stare up as the reverend begins his service. It's just past one pm in a Uniting church in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Alan's widow, Mary Metcalf, takes to the stand to deliver her eulogy. She cuts a striking figure with her larger than life makeup and heavy jewelry, as well as a long black lace veil draped dramatically over her face. Her son, Clayton, towers next to her, Alan's only child. Mary describes her husband as a gift from God.

I prayed to God when I was fifteen to send me a husband who would be a kindred spirit, a visionary who would not be afraid. God answered my prayers in abundance to send me Alan metcats.

Alan was seventy years old and was extremely overweight. In the end, he died of a heart attack. He was a seemingly successful businessman on the Gold Coast, a beachside city built around shining skyscrapers and watching the funeral, it seems like Alan was pretty popular. More than ten people speak and others send video messages from all around the world.

My mother told me years ago, Peter, you'll count your genuine friends on one hand in your life time Alan, You're on my hand. We're not going to mourn him.

We're going to celebrate his life, what he did in the world, what they're still going to do in the world because of Alan metca.

I truly believe he was a genius, and I trust the history of books will prove out.

To be the case.

Only that's not quite the story I find when I pick up those history books seven years later and learn about Alan Metcalf for myself. The words I'm hearing now to describe him are very very different.

Deceitful, a commenter, he was a scammer and a lunatic in a way.

He struck me as being the kind of guy he could sell ice to the Eskimos, but you just wondered what was the ice made of?

Depending on who you asked, Alan was a visionary or a thief, a genius or a fool who believed his own fantasies. Now six hundred people are wondering which it was after putting their money, in some cases, their life savings into a scheme that Allan was running. Alan claimed he'd found the secret to artificial intelligence in the Bible. He told the world his company would be bigger than Google. He was a messiah to his devout followers, able to lead them to a promised land, free from ever having to work again, and guaranteed them with almost religious conviction, truly biblical returns.

Welcome to Safe World's TV. Just like Magic, I'm going to show you the easiest way to make money online. So what is Safe World's TV. It's more than just a website and more than just a software application. It's the world's first Internet television and eBusiness platform.

Alan's investors were ordinary people, entire families, friend groups, pensioners, people from all over the world. They believed in Alan. They believed they were going to get their money to pay for their retirements, or their kids' educations, or the holiday of lifetime. Until suddenly Alan died. Those investors were left asking what happened to their money, all forty nine million dollars of it. I'll never meet him. He died before I was even a working journalist, but he's consumed my every spare thought for the past year. The money has gone missing. No one seems to know where it is, and I'm setting out to find it. I'm Alex Turner Cohen, a finance and investigative reporter from news dot Commeddy you, and you're listening to the Missing forty nine million. This is episode one Judgment Day.

Hello, I'm Alan Metcalf. In nineteen ninety nine, I was fortunate enough to make the breakthrough discovery of the law of thought that in the IT world is called universal logic. Much to the surprise and disbelief of many people, I found the law of thought in the Bible. We have used the law of thought to develop what we believe is the world's first artificially intelligent, mass distributable Internet robot for television and electronic business.

The voice you're hearing there is Alan Metcalf. He might be dead, but Alan lives on in numerous YouTube clips, a ghost in the machine. Let's go back to the email which started me on the search for Allan's missing money.

Hi, my name is Charlie Waynekin. I'm a resident of the Netherlands and I'm writing about a financial investment that I made in Australia back in December twenty thirteen. I was informed that you're a journalist that writes sharp articles concerning financial issues, including fraud. Therefore, I hope that you're the right person that I can refer to for this matter.

This is Charlie reading from his email. He explained that he'd invested tens of thousands of dollars into a scheme called Safe Worlds, as had many other Australians, and that the founder of the scheme was now dead.

Please let me know if this is something that you would be willing to work on, and if you can, I will be very happy to send you my correspondence that I have for this project. Thank you in advance for your consideration, looking forward hearing from you.

When did this come in April? Didn't it?

It's been almost a year to the day. Actually, I never would have imagined from that one email. This is me talking to my boss, Sarah Sharples, the finance editor at News dot Com TODAU. She's the one that actually first received that email from Charlie. Tell us about what was happening that day. When the email came in What did you think?

You know?

It was a tip off? You receive a lot of tip offs. Was there anything about this one that stood out? What do you remember now given how much ended up coming out of this one email.

Yeah, we do get a lot of tip offs, which is where some of the best stories come from. I remember receiving this email and he said he'd invested in this company back in twenty thirteen, and he'd invested fifty two thousand, which is a lot of money. And it got really intriguing as well because the email talked about what he'd been sold to invest in was a company that was going to surpass Google and YouTube, so obviously they're big players now. And then ten years later, he still hadn't seen any of his money or any return on it. He'd been chasing it for ten years. The founder had died, but the wife had taken over it, which was a bit weird because, like he said, they had no idea what her experience was.

And then, what what did you do next?

I have to admit I read it and I filed it away as something we needed to follow up, and then we get so busy I forgot about it, and he actually emailed me again and asked me if I was interested and if not, should he take it elsewhere? And I think that was a good tactic from him, because I was like, oh, no, we're interested. And at the time I was going on some extended leave, so I passed it on to you. You were like, oh, yeah, this could be interesting. I'll pick it up. You were very casual about it.

I reached out to Charlie to find out more. Charlie's been coming to Australia for work trips since the nineteen eighties. He's made strong friendships on these visits, and it was on one of these trips in twenty thirteen when his Ozzie friend David Gorman told him about Safe Worlds and Alan Metcalf.

David and his friends already had bod Shares and they talked me into buying some as well. So I had a look at it and it looked really interesting. It looked like something futuristic, so I thought it was a good investment, and so, you know, we put a whole big part of our savings into it.

Charlie wasn't so wealthy that this was spare money he just had floating around.

No, that was life savings. We had just finalized everything concerning the mortgage of our house, and this was our life saving that we were going to keep for a direction retirement.

Still, it seemed like an offer too good to pass up.

They seemed like a really good investment, especially knowing that they were intending to take it to the stock exchange. So I thought it was a chance of a life.

David Gorman, the man who encouraged Charlie to invest, put in twenty thousand dollars himself. I meet him at his home in Sydney's North where he lives with his wife, kids and two pugs.

So I bought some shares at five cents, at ten cents, and some at a dollar, and he was talking about selling them at would have been about one hundred and fifty dollars a share, So that would have been yeah, quite a few.

Men for myself.

He still remembers meeting Alan Metcalf, who seemed to have an almost larger than life presence and a silver tongue.

I first met him at the Manly Pacific Hotel it was called then down at Manly. He always dressed pretty well, actually, he always wore a suit and tie. He was medium height. I think big ish man, quite large. I think he's probably had a few health issues. He was always out of breath, but very approachable, like very gift of the gap. I think the way he was describing what safe worlds can do and this universal logic that he found in the Bible, if it came off, it came off. But it sounded I mean it sounded, you know, intriguing.

David worked in the health industry and he's actually never invested in anything before. He's not the kind of person to rush into big financial decisions, but there was something different about this opportunity.

Never was a risk taker. I'm not a risk taker, same as my father. Very conservative. But my friend Michael Blake, you know, the ex footballer. You probably know him or heard of him, got me into this about two thousand and eight.

Oh beautiful part by my Caye sending this two percent play sweaming.

Over to twenty two.

He's bit right to think where Beggerson comes at him, he's part.

And found each other. That's Blake back the back, Michael Blake. Oh's God at his younger brother had done so.

Well up on my cave path.

That is champlaining football.

I speak to Michael Blake at his apartment in the Northern Beaches of Sydney. A Holy Bible sits on the table between us. Michael played professional football throughout the seventies and eighties along with his brother Phil. He's not the most technologically savvy guy. I might also just get you to chuck your phone on you would you be able to put on aeroplane mode or too much? Just because apparently when Michael was there at the funeral, he was actually one of the eight people that carried Alan's coffin to the grave.

I was a little bit disappointed in the funeral because the people that talked were basically all talking about Safe World and that business that he worked on. But he was more than that. You know, that was only a part of his life at that time. But as I said, he was a bit of Alaric and he was a good Blake. He loved the sport, He's foot and what have you, and that.

In fact, it was sport that drew Alan and Michael together.

I was heavily involved in rugby league. I cracked first grade the first time. I meant Allan was down at Darling Harbor because one time that I invested he was over in Irvine, California at the time, and he even I think he phoned me up and he wanted to know it was Michael from Michael and Phil Blake from Manly and said, yes it was.

After that first meeting, they stayed in touch.

Over many years. I became friends with Allan.

Yeah, So would you consider him a close friend or what kind of level of friendship would you say there was there?

Well, we've probably ended up as class friends. So I spent a lot of time with him over the years, and he had a good sense of humor. You know, he could be a little bit cheeky, and you know, he was pretty good company.

Michael had made decent money in his sporting career, and outside of putting some into his family business, he hadn't really invested before.

I didn't really know what he was talking about, but I knew I wanted to get in. He said it was going to be bigger than Google, and that was pretty big, so I thought I wouldn't mind a bit of action with this. So my national investment was only around five thousand dollars, but over the years, is many years, over a decade, we reinvested, reinvested, got the opportunity to reinvest it, and because the programs seemed to be building, gathering momentum, nearly ready to take off, we kept on putting more money in me and my family because we wanted to help everyone that we knew, all our kids, all our aunties and everyone like that.

And we just thought, you know, how is this and how much was it in total? Because I think you said five thousand at the beginning? What was the total final number? Like currently as it stands.

Well, as we gradually build up. Even at one stage there me and my two brothers we got our super and made it a self managed fund and put that in. So all up, over many years we probably put around three hundred thousand in. That's the family. With dad and my brothers, I actually probably raised over a million dollars. The way people would get involved through me is if I'm going to a football reunion or catching up with people's school unions. You know, that's a blakie what are you up to? And I speak to him about what I'm up to, and I'd mention safe World, how I supposed to be bigger than Google. It could be worth having a look at and leave it at that, and then they'd get back in contact with me, and I said, well, don't speak to me, I know nothing about it. Speak to Alan. And they'd speak to Alan, get in contact with him, and they'd invest, you know, they'd invests like five or ten grand or twenty grand. One guy put in one hundred grand. But I suppose they put it their money in because they trusted me. But I always got them to speak to Alan.

Years later, a lot of his friends are not so happy about this.

When they find out how much that I've lost in it, it makes them feel better.

Listening to Michael, I start to realize how much of this comes down to belief. Michael believed in Alan, and he believed in Alan's vision, and in turn, his friends believed him.

I've kind of a bit taken aback because a lot of people invested in even that was five or ten or twenty grand or whatever. People invested because they trusted me. And I feel as it was a little bit yearsed.

Probably while Michael Blake trusted Alan blindly, not everyone did. I seen one, two three?

How much is that doggie in the window? One with a waggedy tail?

Nice?

My name is David Richardson. I'm a senior producer with Under Investigation with Lis Hayes and I operate from Channel nine's Sydney office in North Sydney.

David Richardson is an investigative journalist who's been in the industry for more than thirty years. He's also Michael Blake's best mate, and when his friends started to talk about safe Worlds, alarm bells rang.

For David, My spider senses were tingling something bad. Alan had impressed him with this concept of safe worlds, and Michael and another one of our friends were interested in having a deeper look at what Alan was trying to sell, and they set up a meeting in town, and Michael asked if I would come in and just act as a third eye, just cast an ear over what was being proposed and whether there was any danger involved, obviously with my experience chasing down scammers and bad guys. So there was a meeting in town and we all sort of went in and met with Alan, who had rented an office in the city. And my first impression of him was that he was a hand grenade waiting to go off, and he just didn't look hell. He was massively overweight, he was ruddy, complexion. You know, he just didn't look terribly healthy, but he could talk. He could really, really talk. He was amazing. So he sat down and he started to explain this safe World's concept, which to me initially seemed to be this combination of almost an alternate internet marketing bizarre similar to Amazon or ali Baba or eBay, but at the same time it had an e commerce perspective. But then the big selling point that he was trying to get across to us outside of that was the creation of universal logic, And he said he had discovered universal logic and the key to being able to allow all computers to talk together. So for people who don't understand, I'll try to put it as simply as I can, because I had to go and get people to explain it to me. Is it individual companies have their own proprietary rights. So you've got Apple or Derl or hp orm and all of their programmers right for them. So that's why Microsoft often doesn't sync with Apple, and Apple programs won't sync with Microsoft programs. The whole concept of universal logic was that regardless of who the programmer was or who the manufacturer was, the computers worldwide would be able to talk to each other seamlessly, and that was going to be the language of safe Woods effectively.

David was skeptical, especially when he learned that this key revelation that underpinned the whole scheme Allan was selling had been made while reading the Bible.

And being an ancient history nut, I said to me instantly, or was that the ra may Hebrew, Greek, Latin or English? And he's at English? And I just laughed. I said, you've got to be Joe. You know, if he had said it was in the Aramaic, I might have sort of believed part of it on the grounds that people, and you know, theologians and historians have been finding code in the original Bible for years or what they deemed to be code. But what he was talking about was just tosh. You know, there were some scholars who believe now that parts of the English Bible had code that had been implanted by Elizabeth the first spy master, Francis Bacon. So, you know, for him to suggest that, after so many rewrites and translations, that somehow, miraculously this language or code or something had somehow materialized in the Bible, and only E had been able to find it after the Bible has been poured over by you know, thousands and thousands of scholars and theologians. It was just too much for me and I just couldn't. I couldn't swallow it. And I remember walking out of the meeting and the three of us went up to the Tatosles Club to have a beer before we went home, and they said what do you think? And I said, yeah, don't go near it now. I just don't buy it. To me, it just, you know, I thought it was just rubbish, complete rubbish.

And there were other things that David found unbelievable too.

I went down to look at an office space that they were talking about buying, and it was the Manly Rugby Union building, you know, Manly over the road from the Manly Oval. I thought, my god, I mean, this is this historic building. It costs an absolute bomb. How are you going to pay for all of this? You know, they were wandering around as if you know, oh yeah, we'll put this here and this there and that there, and I thought, my god, how are you going to pay for.

All of this?

And that was the problem. How were they going to pay for.

Any of it?

Alan did not successfully buy the building. The sale went to a tender process in twenty ten, and a well known property developer called John Nicholas snapped it up for presumably millions. He wouldn't say. David also tells me there was something else that made him doubt the whole thing. Why was Alan so interested in his friends?

They were not looking for big companies? And I thought, what's going on? You know, they were looking for the low hanging fruit. What it means is that you've come to the table looking at small mum and dad investors without having convinced someone with real nause to put their money on the table to start with. So he didn't have a big computer company behind him, He didn't have big computer programmers behind him. He had rented a lab slash office complex in Silicon Valley that he talked about, But I mean, I think the thing for me was that there was no big investors. I was just really worried that, you know, I was going to have friends who were going to lose their dough but not us, that that they were being asked to go out and use their contacts to try to get more investors. And I thought, you know, I really feared that that would then leave them exposed potentially if the whole thing backfired, because they would be left holding the baby. And part of the deal was that Alan would convince them that I know, you know, you can become a major sales operator here. And then this started to look like a pyramid scheme. I wasn't interested in investing in any way, shape or form. And you know, my advice to all my friends at that particular point of time was that, look, just wait, at the very least wait before you start pouring your money in, because I just didn't see that this was going to go anywhere.

And how did you feel when they kind of disregarded your advice and went ahead and invested anyway?

Oh, I just thought it was silly, you know. I thought it was silly, you know. But that said, I mean, these were my friends.

David's friend Michael Blake didn't just invest in Safe Worlds. As well as spreading the word in his network, he started working for the company himself.

I ended up on an advisory board, but I think that was mainly because Allan liked me and because of my contacts and the contacts that my contacts had. But the thing about the advisory board, we weren't listened to, you know. But if it had it came off and it was big like it was, I would have been ridiculous because I know nothing about it. I've got no interest in it. I don't like using the computer. If everybody don't use the internet, unless I have done that, it would have been weird being involved in something this.

Big, you know.

David watched his friends like Michael, getting more and more involved with Alan and investing more and more of their money. He decided to do something, so he started digging, but couldn't find any real signs of Safe Worlds being anything like the potential global technology superstar was being preached.

Us and the whole time too in the back ground. After about eighteen months was us pushing like, okay, when are we going to see this? When are we going to see it? You know, show me universal logic, show it to me, show me how it would show it to me. You know, is it like cryptocurrency that it's just this dollar signs in fresh air or is it real? I mean, show me how this works and show me the program, show me the Safe World Sight in Australia, show me all this stuff. And it was just so long in coming that I thought, where's all this money going? Because I knew that there were people who were investing, you know, not just tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands. I knew people who were investing their superannuation money. It just gobsmacked me that people were willing to invest. But you know, because of the IT boom and because of the success of companies like Amazon and eBay, everyone was looking for that next big thing and they thought, well, if we can get in on the ground floor, fabulous.

He always used to say, trust me, trust me, and I trusted him, but he didn't trust anyone else.

Michael Blake, the former footy player who became close friends with Alan, started worrying he might have a problem.

We had some pretty big guys that were willing to help, and he wouldn't let go. He wouldn't trust them, basically because he thought it was too big.

One time, Allan even had a meeting with an IT expert who had extensive contacts in the military.

Alan said he was the smartest IT person he's ever met, and he goes, Alan, you might have real artificial intelligence. I'll sign an NDA shame. If you got it, we'll get it going mate, and he refused to do it. He did so I can't trust him. I can't trust him.

Do you think that was because he didn't trust him all because he didn't actually have the product to show.

Well, it didn't make sense to me, but maybe he didn't have anything to shape.

As I started to dig, I found more and more people who had invested their money. One person put in one point five million dollars. Entire families staked their fortune on the venture. Michael Blake wasn't even the biggest recruiter for Safe Worlds. Another man raised fifteen million dollars from four hundred and fifty other people. Some of them wouldn't speak to me because they were afraid it would impact their chances of getting their money back. In total, Allen managed to raise forty nine million dollars from his friends, their families, and other small time investors. And perhaps that's the craziest part of this whole thing. That's a lot of money. To put in context. Forty nine million dollars is about one hundred ferraris forty yachts. It's more than twice the amount that infamous Sydney conwoman Melissa Caatics scammed out of people, which was twenty three million. Forty nine million could buy you forty nine houses in Sydney, well maybe more like Melbourne these days. If you looked at Alan's website, you'd never guess that this was the business he'd founded with that much money. Www dot safeworlds dot tv. When I try to access it now, I get an Era four or four not found. But looking back at old videos and screenshots of the website, I can see an amateurish layout, like something straight out of the nineties, not a slick, multimillion dollar outfit. And by the time Alan died, there was no one left working at the place. Michael Blake tells me about how he heard that his friend had died.

I remember because I was at a care of beach for a function for a weekend and that with a few mates, and I was just walking along the beach with a bit of a hangover when I got a phone call from Mary saying I've got some bad news for it. And I kind of knew before it's even told me said Alan's passed away.

We're all in shop.

You know.

Alan's death was a personal tragedy, but Michael realized there was also something else. Unresolved. With his passing, Alan had no heir to take over the business. No one knew what was supposed to happen now that he was dead.

As far as I understand, he had the algorithm in a safety secure box or something in the Cayman Islands and that was the protection of the algorithm, and he gifted it to charity if something happened to him and Mary or whatever. He was very protective of it. He always said, if it got in the wrong hand, it could destroy the world.

So Alan had been thinking about the future. But according to Michael, he had planned so little for his death that his wife and son were unable to front the costs for his funeral.

Just for.

Paying some bills, internet bills, phone bills, the registration of the liquid gold in the Cayman Islands or whatever it was, and just a few things and that, and you know, I popularnum, I don't know, thirty or forty thousand dollars or something like that.

Well, and did they ever pay it back? Were you just kind of never asked for it or how did that work?

Well?

Mary said that she'll pay me back tenfil when the Irish steal comes off.

The Irish deal was supposedly where an irishman was going to buy the whole business for more than a billion dollars. And as for the liquid gold, Michael mentioned it was linked to a digital currency business Alan had opened in the Cayman Islands. I'll explain more in a later episode, I promise. At this point, I'm going to pause for a moment because, dear listener, I have a confession. If you're thinking that Alan might not have been entirely upfront with his investors, well I have to confess that I haven't been entirely upfront with you. I said I'd started this podcast at the end with Alan's funeral, but actually this is just the beginning. Mike Crusade find the missing money has taken me all over the country, to most of the capital cities and also a tiny town in Western Australia which could be the key to it all. The search for the millions has also led me to notorious tax havens like the British Virgin Islands, and had me trying to track down an Irish billionaire. At times, I've been looking over my shoulder for Russian cronies. My investigation will take me from Australia's richest woman, to this nation's most controversial politician, all the way to the Tea Party and ex US President Donald Trump. It might have begun at Allen's funeral, but his story is far from over.

How could you do it?

He was basically version point five of Trump as a question.

Just so, all of this is just crazy. I can't do this.

You claim that he was the savior of the or could be the savior of the world if it all turned out right.

For him, you know, and for us. There's a hidden partner. There's somebody else involved in this is the other persons spider at the center of the web. The only other alternative is that he's not there and that he's in fact living off the money.

Thanks for listening. A new episode is coming out weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Head to news dot com dot Au to read more of my reporting on this story.

Do you know more?

Get in touch through our dedicated tip inbox Missing Millions at news dot com dot Au or contact me directly on Alex dot Turner, dash Cohen at news dot com dodau or look me up on Twitter to get my details. I'm your host Alex Turner Cohen. Nina Young is the executive producer, sound design and editing by Tiffany Dimack. Our editorial director is Dan Box. Grant McAvaney is our legal advisor, and Kerrie Warren is the editor of news dot Com dodau

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