Dumb idea Dan

Published Apr 3, 2022, 2:00 PM

In this episode Dan has a bright idea, if the bank and the cops are not coming to get him, maybe he should go to them.

So he uses the media to get their attention and its works…sort of

 

Episode six. That's a dumb idea, Dan. Dan Saunders is up to his neck in debt one point six million in debt to be exact, but nobody is chasing him, no calls from the cops, and the only contact he's had with the bank is the contact he made himself. Of course, he also spoke to that bloke Bernie, who told him.

We won't be giving you any more money. And I'm pretty sure you know why. Sorry, he's not going to cut it. You're going to jail for a long time.

Dan has also stopped spending on the magic ACM card and the party is over. His twitchy eye has stopped, and so have the late night calls from hangers on who want to know where's the party.

Dan.

He's had his name in the paper, a few interviews, but still no cops busting down the door like that dream he had. So I guess the only reasonable thing to do is to go on a current affair and tell them the whole story. Good thinking, Dan, What could possibly go wrong?

Well, I never did an interview with the current Affair. I just told him the story, and they released a story without my name, without my photo, without anything. They just said a guy who used to work in a bar got some money off the NAB, right, But I thought that would have been enough to jog some form of communication. I would have been like, I was sure. I was like, oh, there's only a current affair on primetime TV. Now someone's going to get to the you know, get to the bottom of it. But they just kept saying, please investigation, now that's it. So yeah, So I did an interview with Adam Shant and he was very he was very thorough, very good told the story. But they still took those photos, so it looked like I was, you know, I was the one.

Well I've seen those photos. It's one of my questions, like, did you was that an actual photo or was that just a setup? For No, it's just a setup. The photos Dan's talking about are the sorts you think you would use in a salacious story on TV about a young lithario who spends money on girls, drugs, drinks and everything else. That's fun. Pictures of Dan on private jets, sipping champagne in limos with a bunch of blondes. Really, the photos make him look like a Kardashian. Dan Kardashian, It's got a ring to it. It's important to note that the article from the paper which led to the first Current Affairs story was posted on the ninth of August twenty fourteen. Dan's first transaction with the Glitch was in February two thousand and eleven. That's a long time between expensive drinks.

Absolutely, absolutely, like it was a yeah, it was a long process. And I guess, you know, because I you know, because I started working. I worked a bit and then sort of thought about it again and went, you know, like, I'm not really I'm not really comfortable with this because it's you know, if you if you let something go for so long, they'll walk in at the worst time in your life. Like I was picturing like I'm going to meet someone, I'm going to have a son or daughter and they're going to be one years old and the cops are going to knock on the door and go, yeah, you know that thing twenty eleven, You're gone.

Now it's a heavy load.

Well, it's it's just it's more a fact that you want to just you want to just get it done, to deal with it, you know, Like it's I think it's worse to just you know, sit by and you know, like just you're sort of almost putting yourself up to like, you know, you're putting your out self out there for more. I mean if you just bring it on and say, hey, I'm ready to take it, let's go for it. I mean it was, Yeah, that to me was the most important thing to do, you know. And yeah, people might not agree with that, and I understand that. You know, people are like, what would you do that for? And I can't even tell you that was the right thing for me. I felt that that was the right thing to do.

So that's why the police must arrest you.

Now, Yeah, do they know nothing?

Nothing? Was there an investigation at that time into you.

He couldn't establish that they wouldn't tell him that, but he definitely could establish that there wasn't many people who knew about it or talking about it.

It wasn't a warrant for your arrest or anything like that that you would expect. And your bank's still in debt. Well, the bank wrote it off, wrote it off, so you don't have an NAB card anymore. We actually don't know if the bank wrote off the debt. We do know is how much Dan has to pay back. And we'll get to that. A little bit later after the article in the paper, someone suggested that Dan finally go on camera with the current affair and tell his story. He'd already told his story once, but that was a short piece on TV which didn't have his face and was really just a bit of a fluff piece. So Dan's big idea go on primetime TV and face the music and tell his story. Stupid, maybe desperate for an end. Absolutely all I'm.

Trying to do is provoke some form of communication. If the bank hader came to me at any point and said, hey, we want to talk to you, I would have been like, great, let's sit down, let's have a conversation, let's sort this out. If they had come to me and said if they had have sent me a letter and said that stuff in twenty eleven, that's all done. Just walk away. You think I wouldn't have walked away, No worries, I'll walk away that. The problem was no one would say anything to me because no one wants to put their name to anything. You know, no one wants to go I was the guy that said no, that's okay, you can walk on that or you know, because they're scared to say things because it'll come back and buy them on the ass. I don't know what it is, but a lot of people in that space are scared for some reason, you know, whether they're comfortable and they don't want to push the envelope too much, I'm not sure. But no one wanted to talk to me about anything. So yeah, I went on a current affair and you know, I didn't ask for any money. I went on there and just decided to you know, I just wanted to have a chat and lay it all out on the table. And yeah, they just ran with the narrative. You know, Australia's ATM cheap and they said, you know it's an exclusive, like you know, like I hadn't talked to them, like, you know, a year before that, and just basically light you know, like the last thing that they said on a character was Dan's missing. Now you know there's a warrant for his arrest. If you've seen Dan, call crime stoppers and I just watched that and I was like, pack a lie.

We did, however, speak with him by phone and encourage him to hand himself in. At this stage, he's chosen not to contact police, who now want to arrest him if you know he's whereabouts, contact crime Stoppers on one eight hundred, triple three, triple zero. And the National Australia Bank has issued a statement in relation to those transactions. You can read it on our website.

That last few moments on the Current Affair really upset Dan. He believes there was no arrest warrant against him.

So then I find out that the only like, it's never been a police investigation. So all the publications that printed that prior have lied as well, because it's never been reported to the police until a Current Affair contacted the police and got them involved.

He said he'd contacted the bank. Remember Bernie Bernie told Dan that it was a police matter, but from Dan's reports, it wasn't.

It's never actually been a police investigation. So that blew my mind first.

Which just means that the bank never contacted police either. No, no one ever rang with Bernie lied. Ye Bernie Bernie lied.

Yeah, but you can't expect bankers to tell the truth.

Here has some interesting facts. That interview on a Current Affair went to air on Monday, the third of November in twenty fourteen, the day before the Melbourne Cup.

The last email they sent to me, said Dan, we really hope you like the story.

Dan was right. He got an email from a Current Affair at five point thirty four pm on the Monday night the story ran. It wasn't an email to say hand yourself in to police. It was a bit of a different email. He's an extract two Dan Saunders. Subject re thank you. Thanks very much for your email. Dan, You're a very funny bloke and have a way with words. I trust Adam has been in touch to let you know. The story is still running tonight. I hope you like the final products. You're more than welcome to collect the documents and photos whenever you like. I'm out of the office for the next couple of days, but we'll be back here on Thursday. Alternatively, I can have them stood out to you, whichever is easier. Just let me know kind regards, Alex.

I learn off the Current Affair that there's been a warrant issued for my arrest then and only then, because the other correspondents from them is you know, Dan, best of luck for the future.

So you arrive at a Current Affair headquarters, what's going on outside? Yeah?

So I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen. I didn't take my phone or my wallet or anything like that, but yeah, all the cameras come out from behind, you know, the walls, and you know it's this big sting. You know, there the detectives there. You know, Daniels Saunders, you're under arrest, you know. Yeah, you know you have the right to marion in silent all that kind of stuff.

Response, Ye, you have me be practice, you understand these.

Yeah, I think it was quite relieved, but also it was quite bizarre because it was like, what are you what are you guys doing? So you know, then I you know, went to the police station and the police didn't even interview me. The police officer that he was more across the restaurant thing than anything else. Okay, he didn't understand.

So you've never been charged for the restaurant thing up to that point, not as yet, I don't know.

He's more talking to me about the restaurant thing, and he's like, oh, you know, we've got your on camera here, and I'm like, come on, yeah, like the restaurant thing doesn't seem like it's the biggest thing in town right now, you know, And he's like, yeah, I don't know about that, So no one even interviewed me from the police because they had no idea what to even ask because it was never really a police investigation. It was just they just opened one so they could get a warrant, and then it was just going to be open and shut because I staid, what I.

Did, who do you call? You get a phone call? Oh yeah, I got a I got a phone call.

I didn't call anyone because I knew I'd be on bail pretty quick, and so yeah, so I just I just got held in the sales for a bit and fingerprints and DNA and all that sort of stuff, and then just then just left. I was saying, before dinner.

When did they run that story in a current affair that night? Like that? I'm being caught yep, yeah, yeah yeah.

Black News Update news alert, Dance under has been captured.

Thanks for our story to.

A breaking breaking news on a story we brought you on Monday about atm cheat Dance Saunders.

As a result of what happened to me, and only that, I can't trust anything that I read or I hear from the media.

I just can't do it.

I've got to see it myself.

So Dan finally gets what he's been waiting for, some action, some closure, and after a few years waiting, it's all about to come to a head. So what's Dan thinking right at that very moment he's arrested on TV? He's thinking, what the hell am I wearing?

Have my painting shorts on? I was doing a bit of painting earlier. It was it was fine, It was an ending.

It was bizarre ending.

It was very weird because like, how do you act like you've got someone who was quite clearly trying to like get himself in the in the Melbourne Cup that year. So two days prior the day, the night the day after that, they ran the story there was a horse called who shot the Barman? I was like, the barman shot himself.

He shot the barman. Next day it was over.

So I was like, well, that's fine, you know. And I thought it might get five years jail now, you know. So I was just sort of preparing for that.

But do you speak to him? Do you tell mom what's going on now?

Yeah? I sort of showed Mama rerun of the Current Affair interview and just said, look, this is sort of what's going on and what you say yeah. She just said, look, yeah, you've made your bed. Now you've got to sort of lie in it.

Yeah.

She was like, it's good that you finally told the truth that it's good.

Yeah. What about old mate and some of the other friends. Old mate was longer no contact, Like it.

Was funny because old Mate, during the time that you know, I was obviously on bail and stuff, had actually got quite a high government job.

Okay, so it was very interesting. Old mate didn't want to be known as mate.

Old mate was like, out, yeah he was, but you.

Still consider him a mate now, absolutely, Like you can't.

I can't go through something like that with someone and not consider them like a mate.

Like it was.

It was amazing. I mean we might not have anything to talk about now, or you know, he you know, he might be married now with a couple of kids and you know, have a you know, a prestigious job or whatever. Like I don't hold any of that against him, Like I don't have any It was just what it was. You know, we all always you know, we always decided, hey, look this is going to go for as long as it goes, and then ultimately I'm the one who's going to you know, because it's my name on the card. So I'm going to get shit canned. Let's just have fun before that happens.

What about the rest of the crew, the solid crew that we're around.

Yeah, there's only only sort of two guys that really really stuck by during that time. It's funny like when police and courts and stuff get involved. Yeah, people sort of run a mile a little bit.

But like and they thinking that you're possibly gonna implicate them in something. Possibly.

Yeah, I don't know, Like I think I think it's you know, it just comes from watching too many movies probably, you know, like the coffs in Coffs ing out a clue what happened, they weren't interested either. They didn't give a shit.

Yeah. One of those blokes that stuck around was Evano, Dan's good mate for Wangaratta.

Yeah, there was a bit of anxiety on my front. I did at one point think maybe I might get in trouble for this, just because maybe I was associated with Dan.

But yeah, are you nervous about this podcast because of that? Or No?

To be honest enough times past yep. But if you had approached me five years ago, I probably would have said no, I felt a lot of concern for Dan, like I'm one of the people who was always there for him. A lot of his mates jumped ship, and when he went to prison, a lot of his mates didn't want anything to do with him. I don't feel like I was one of those people.

Did you see him on a current affair? Yes? Did you tell you that it was going to be on or No? He didn't. No, he didn't tell me. He just just did it.

And it was pretty crazy just the way he went about it. It's yeah, dandy unique Fela like, I've got so much respect for him, but I wouldn't have turned myself in.

Do you think he would have got away with it if he hadn't have gone to the newspapers and the TV? Definitely?

Yeah, I do. Yeah, But at the same time, I do think he needed some kind of closure, So I think it's been the best for him, the best thing for him long term. But he wouldn't have gone to jail if he didn't turn himself in. That's my honest opinion.

Did the bank question you so you're on bail or remand does the bank question you in that period? No?

No, the bank crickets nothing from the bank. The bank issued a statement and gave evidence to the court, but that was just the statements.

So issued your statements essentially your banking statements, which we've seen, and.

Just said this money was obtained by deception.

That's it. That's all I had to get admitted that that's what you've done.

So nothing about how, nothing about their system, nothing about that. Just just bad Dan. Dan's got to go to jail, that's it. Like even Mike QC I just told him to be quiet. I just said, I just don't even talk, like you don't even know what's going on anyway, you know, just forget it.

How you pay for the QC. Yeah, bank, that's money. Yeah.

I don't have any remorse for the bank. The bank is the bank. They're like, if you could touch the sides, I don't think so. I think they're fine, they'll be okay.

Dan requested court documents, which is given to us. The Crown Prosecutor had three charges against Dan, one for theft and two charges for obtaining financial advantage by deception. Charge one says he stole the amount of eighty thousand, two hundred and twenty dollars from the National Australia Bank, charge two says that he owed payment of debts using a National Australian Bank MasterCard to make each payment for the amount of one hundred and forty six thousand, eight hundred dollars and twenty cents, and the final charge was more payments that Dan had made to providers and merchants to the amount of twenty one thousand, five hundred and seventy four dollars and ninety two cents. Along with these charges, there was a list of transaction details for each amount and the date it was spent. Here's a transcript read by a friend of the sentencing remarks from the court.

Daniel Saunders, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of theft and two charges of obtaining a financial advantage by deception. The maximum penalty for each offense is ten years imprisonment. On the twenty first of February twenty eleven, you discovered that, despite your account having a zero balance, you were able to use your Visa debit card to withdraw money, apparently as a result of an error in the magnetic coding attached to that card. On the day you discovered this, anomally you made five withdrawals and in the period up to the eighth of May of that year, you made a further sixty nine withdrawls. The total amount you gained was eighty eight hundred and twenty dollars. This conduct forms the basis of charge one.

You know, there was points where I had five million dollars in my bank account. They weren't missing that money. So what was the money real or just numbers on a screen. It's all valid questions I think, I mean, how can you miss that much money or not miss that much money?

As regards charge two, on the thirteenth of March twenty eleven, you used your MasterCard to make a withdrawal in excess of the limit, and then in the period up to the twenty eighth of April, you made further payments. In all, there are one hundred and two transactions totaling eighty six thousand, eight hundred dollars and twenty cents. In addition, you transferred a total of sixty thousand dollars to your classic banking account. The totality of this conduct forms the basis of charge two.

I was looking at like, well, if you get five years, that's about three hundred grand a year, so that's better than any job get well, you know luck, not that I want a job like it, but you know what I'm saying, that's a good pay that's worth it.

Charge three relates to a further twenty four payments for goods and services totaling twenty one thousand, five hundred and seventy four dollars and two cents, which occurred between the fifth and tenth of May of twenty eleven. Following your offending, you closed your account, as is confirmed in correspondent stated the tenth of May twenty eleven. I have been told that this was in the context of you seeking to bring your own offending to an end.

Before we go live with every episode, we actually send it to Dan just to make sure we've got all the detail right. When Dan heard this part of the transcript, he sent me a text to let me know a few things that he didn't agree with.

I didn't close my account.

The bank made it look like I.

Closed my account, but I didn't really even touch them.

And he had some things that he wanted to clear up. Like you'll hear our voice actor, he's quite together, she doesn't stumble or miss any words. Dan said, it wasn't like that in court.

The courtroom was something out of Monty Python. It was like everyone, my lawyer included, just didn't know what happened. So there was lots of like pauses and trailing off, and it was I just wanted to stand up and go no, no, no, that's not what happened, but you know, they would have just told me to sit down, so I just let it all happen in front of me.

Really, you had made no attempts to cover your offending or what you were doing with the proceeds. It was brazen conduct over one hundred and ninety five separate transactions by a man who was clearly out of control.

There's stacks in this court document which sort of backs up what Dan's been telling us through the last six episodes. Here's a little more from the magistrate.

During the period of your offending, there was contact from the bank in relation to particular transactions to ensure it was you, but never any action to cancel the car despite what must have been seen as gross misuse. Following the closure of your account, the bank apparently determined to take no action despite being aware of the extent of your overdraw. They apparently refused to discuss the matter, with you saying it was a police matter. But it seems that the matter was neither reported by them nor investigated at the time.

And so what did the magistrate think of Dan's clever plan to instead of going to police, going to the media for.

Reasons which are far from clear. In February of twenty thirteen, you participated in a newspaper interview in which you disclosed your offending, and on about the ninth of August the following year, a more detailed piece was published. These articles are Exhibit A and B. Following that, you participated in a current affair interview A about your offending and the lifestyle it enabled. The recording is Exhibit D. But as discussed with counsel upon your plea, I have had regard to that only as it relates to the fact that you made admissions in relation to both taking the money and as to how it was spent. Your counsel has quite rightly not pressed remorse from an early stage given the contents of this interview, the opinions and storylines are of course not relevant. Again, it is unclear why you would have taken this course of action. I accept that the delay in charging you was in the main not attributable to you, but resulted from clear apathy on the part of the victim bank. This does not in any way excuse your offending, and I think it is difficult to say, however, that there was a burden hanging over your head, given the contents of the twenty fourteen interview. You are entitled to have taken into account your plea of guilty, which you entered at an early stage. You spared the witnesses from giving evidence and save the community the time and expense.

Of a trial.

You are entitled to have that taken into account in your favor, and I.

Have done so.

I do accept that your plea is also demonstrative of some contrition. I accept that your plea should be used as some evidence of remorse. Would you stand please on charge too obtain financial advantage by deception. You are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for twelve months commencing this day. On the remaining charges, you are placed on a community corrections order. The order commences at the end of the sentence of imprisonment. You are to report to the Werribee Community Correction Center within two clear working days of release. The period of the year order is eighteen.

Months, so yeah. I remember in her closing remarks she said things like she called the bank the victim, and a couple of people laughed. I remember at that point, and she just basically said, you know you're you were calculating and what you did. You knew what you were doing was wrong, but you actually know you're going to get put away because the security come and stand at the door. So before year, before she's even sort of finished, you know, the security get told you're going to be in custody. So yeah, you know, if you've got general awareness, you know pretty much how it's going to go.

I direct it be noted in the records of the Court that, were it not for your plea of guilty, I would have sentenced due to a total effective sentence of three years with a minimum of two. I further order that you pay compensation the sum of two one hundred and forty eight thousand, five hundred and ninety five dollars and twelve cents to the National Australia Bank.

I remember the last thing she said was take missus Saunders downstairs, thank.

You very much. Could you take mister Saunders downstairs please?

And I was in jail too.

Are you breaking it at that stage?

Not bricking it, but like Bracy just going Okay, it's time, it's happening.

We're in. Yeah, let's go next time on the glitch.

But it's weird. It's weird going to jail when you when you sort of pour it upon yourself. Really, it's pretty hate deep place. Max maxic Curio is pretty and he grabbed this little guy and he just held him against the wall.

He's like, did you have any fucking bacon. He's like, no, no, I didn't swear, I sweat.

Two guys held another guy down while a third guy put a duney brush up his ears. Okay, that's what we're in. We're in a fucking We're in a madhouse.

That's what it is.

So you just gotta sort of have your wits about it, because people automatically thought I was like a wife flasher, or I was like drink driving or something. There's something called called browning up, and what they do is they they ship like an inmate or shit on their hand and then wipe it all over the cell.

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