All language subtitles for Serial.Swindlers.S01E01.1080p.WEBRip.x265-RARBG

- [Colleen] I don't think he
really knew how not to lie.

I think it's in his makeup.

He was born like it.

- [Lyons] He does not seem
to stick within reality.

He seems to want
to live a bigger,

more exciting, fantastic life.

- [Leah] He's the
most interesting,

and possibly the most bizarre
person I've come across.

He's frighteningly convincing.

- [Voiceover] Born
David Robin Douglas,

this Australian con-man has
at least 24 different aliases,

and fake I.D.s to match.

He began offending
in the early 90s,

and has served time in four
of Australia's six states.

He excels in elaborate hoaxes,

from claiming to find
gold bars on a shipwreck,

to faking his own death.

People who have met him believe
he's driven not by money,

but a simple enjoyment
of fooling people.

In October 2010, this
tall, charming Australian

was living in Surfer's Paradise
in the east of the country

under the name Doctor Ocean.

He was working as
a Botox surgeon,

offering people injections
in their own homes.

Leah Finneran is
a court reporter

at the Gold Coast Bulletin.

- Gold Coast is one
of Australia's biggest

plastic surgeon hotspots,

so he'd come here to
blend in, to find people.

- [Voiceover] He operated
by befriending people

in cafes and bars,
slipping in the fact

he was a Botox doctor
at every opportunity.

In the body beautiful
coastal town,

his services were
soon in demand.

- I think he researches things,

he knows the
correct terminology,

he knows the correct equipment.

- Cheers.

- [Voiceover] On one occasion,

he targeted a party
planning company,

to see if the women there
would take the bait.

- [Man] Hi, girls.

- Oh, hello.

- David Ocean.

- Nice to meet you.

- And what can I
do for you today?

- [Leah] Doctor Ocean, as
he was known, had said,

"I can give you and all your
friends Botox treatments

in your house, in the
comfort of your own unit.

I can come to you,
it's $500 each.

Bring your friends, sort
of like a Tupperware party.

And we can do this treatment."

He claimed he was from L.A.,

so I think they trusted
his credentials.

- [Voiceover] Despite having
no known medical qualifications

he had enough medical
knowledge to assure his clients

he was the real deal.

For $500 each, the party-goers
were injected in the face,

stomach, breasts, and legs.

But next, he offered a
more invasive procedure.

- [Leah] It progressed to
a bit of a darker place,

where he offered to give
them alternative treatments,

in their genitals.

He had offered them a
'designer vagina' treatment,

where he would inject
them with so-called Botox

and other fillers in
their nether regions.

He called it a
treatment that could

"make you like a virgin again."

As it progressed, he touched
them inappropriately.

- [Voiceover] According
to Gold Coast police,

one of the group
had her suspicions
earlier in the evening,

but had kept quiet.

- He pretended at one stage
to contact a receptionist

about a particular
product being available,

and why it wasn't in his kit.

The girl, one of the victims,
has stated that afterwards,

she didn't feel
there was anyone else

on the other end of the phone.

It was dubious then,
but because of the

other amount of people that
were in and around the place,

she felt pressured to continue.

- [Voiceover] Georgia Smith is
a Detective Senior Constable

in Surfer's Paradise.

She was on the night shift

when the organizer of
the Botox party rang

to report her fears about
this charming doctor.

- [Georgia] On the
eleventh of December 2011,

we got a call at the station

to say that there'd
been an assault,

and we attended an address
in Surfer's Paradise.

There were a number of people

who had been injected
with a substance,

and we identified eight
separate complainants,

seven females and one male.

We worked out pretty quickly
that there was a person

by the name of Ocean.

He had actually produced his
driver's license to them,

to prove his apparent
identity to them,

and they remembered
the last three digits

of the driver's license.

- [Voiceover] The eight
people he had assaulted

were deeply distressed.

- [Leah] They trusted him,
they let him into their unit.

The one who organized the
party invited her friends,

and she felt so ashamed

that she had led her
friends into this scam.

They were ashamed and
wished they had never

come into contact with him.

- [Voiceover] But when police
tried to track him down,

Ocean had disappeared.

- [Georgia] We looked at all
of his current addresses,

we went and looked and
knocked on the doors

of all of his known associates,

but obviously he had concerns

that we may very
well be locating him

in a short period of
time, and I'd say he fled.

- [Voiceover] Detective
Smith began to look into

the doctor's background,

and saw that Ocean's criminal
record went back decades.

She made contact with
another police officer,

who had come to know
Ocean only too well.

Senior Constable Murray Lyons

had first caught wind
of Ocean in 2004,

after a complaint from
a pair of businessmen.

They said they'd bought
a state fishing license

through a company
called Ocean's 11,

but it never materialized.

- [Lyons] The fishing
license involved

a $25,00 state license
to fish in state waters,

that Ocean sold to two investors

and was telling
them great stories

about how much
product he caught,

and it was being sold in Japan

for hundreds of
thousands of dollars.

(auctioning in Japanese)

- [Lyons] They were convinced
it was a lucrative deal,

and that they should
get involved in the
fishing industry.

They handed over $25,000

and had the transfer
documents given to them.

Unfortunately the owner
of the fishing license

was still operating
that fishing license

about 400 kilometers away.

- [Voiceover] Ocean
hadn't covered his tracks.

When the police were
called to investigate,

his address was
on all the papers.

They went to his
house, arrested him,

and charged him that day.

- [Lyons] We found
documents that showed

he just happened to spend
ten thousand dollars

the day the sale went through
on buying a new vehicle

and other things, so
it all came together

as it looked like he had
benefited from that transaction.

- [Voiceover] But what left
an impression with Murray

was how Ocean had
lured in his victim.

- [Lyons] This is a man
who is quite willing

to spend the time to
develop a relationship,

showing little bits
of "I'm a success

and I'm making
money out of this."

And telling these stories
without asking for anything,

and waiting for someone to say

"Well, how would
I get into that?"

It became their idea, almost.

- [Voiceover] In December 2004,

while the fishing license fraud

was being prepared for trial,

a memo from another
police department

landed on Senior
Constable Lyons' desk.

It described a yacht called
Aphrodite that had gone missing.

- Aphrodite started in
December 2004 with a flier

from Cairnes Waterplace
in far north Queensland,

and they were looking
for this yacht

that had disappeared with
the delivery skipper.

When we looked into
that flier and found out

that the person who
owned that yacht

was actually a
local businessman,

and he had bought the
yacht through Ocean,

that got our interest
straight away.

The businessman was able to
buy the yacht for $22,500,

and Ocean then organized to
have the delivery skipper

take it from Harvey Bay
through to Port Douglas.

We checked on the
delivery skipper,

a gentleman by the
name of Adam Clarkson,

he was from the UK.

- [Adam] So they went
through the visa records,

I was the only Adam J.
Clarkson in the past ten years,

so they got my details off
the visa, then contacted me.

- [Voiceover] The
Australian police explained

that a man they
recently arrested

had accused Adam of
stealing the yacht.

- [Adam] But he actually
claimed that it wasn't him

who was doing it, it was
myself who was the mastermind.

I was flabbergasted.

It was pretty obvious
that it wasn't me.

I've been in the UK since 2002.

- [Voiceover] But what made
Adam uneasy, was the fact

that he did know the man
that we're talking about.

- [Adam] I met David Ocean,
or Ocean as he called himself,

about June or July 2001.

I was traveling over the
east coast of Australia

and a friend of mine met
him in the local harbor,

and he said he was taking
a boat up to Cairnes,

and he was after three
backpackers just to join him,

to accompany and to
pay for the food.

So I was one of them.

I've got some photos here,

a few photos of when
we were on the boat.

As you can see it
was quite small.

- [Voiceover] Ocean made a
string of claims about himself.

- [Adam] Ocean initially
said that he was the only

four star chef in the
southern hemisphere,

which was a bit of a
tall story, really,

we just laughed to
ourselves behind his back.

He also claimed that he'd been

in the Australian
S.A.S. in the Army.

I think he came
up with that story

because he discovered
that I had just

left the Army six
months earlier.

He claimed that
he was in Baghdad

in 1991 during Desert Storm.

He's always got a bigger story
to tell, whatever you say.

We just though he was a bit
of a Walter Mitty character.

- [Voiceover] But Adam
later realized that some

of Ocean's bluffing was not
as harmless as he'd thought.

- [Adam] He was very vague
on things like emergency.

He said to us,
"Here's the radio.

If you need to contact
somebody, it's this code."

And then that was it.

Once I got off the boat, and
spoke to the yacht people,

they said "No, that's
a load of rubbish,

you should have used
the radio every time

you went into
port, out of port."

And he gave us a completely
wrong code as well.

So if we did get in trouble,

we wouldn't have been
able to contact anybody.

- [Voiceover] Luckily,
he and his friends

got off the boat safely
after a three week journey.

Adam didn't give another thought

to the strange boat skipper
for the next eight years.

Having established
that Adam Clarkson

had not been involved
in the theft,

Senior Constable Lyons sensed
there was something more

to the Aphrodite
boat disappearance.

- [Lyons] When we conducted
initial inquiries on it,

and found that no one
had ever actually seen

this yacht called Aphrodite,

and it was supposed to be a
30-foot Oceanis Beneteau yacht

worth in the
vicinity of $140,000.

I had seen pictures of it.

When we looked at the picture,

we found that exact same
picture on the Beneteau website,

advertising the yacht,
so it didn't exist.

We checked all the marinas,
and Aphrodite hadn't been

in any of the marinas
in the Sandy Straits.

There was no yacht.

- [Vocieover] When Murray
realized the facts of the case,

he was determined to find Ocean.

He now wanted the con-man
for the fake fishing license,

and the Aphrodite scam.

- [Lyons] Once we started on it,

I had a fair bit of
time invested in it,

and it just kept growing.

Before I knew it,
we were talking

over $300,000 worth of assets.

Well, it got under
my skin, basically.

- [Voiceover] But by this time,

the seafaring swindler
was nowhere to be found.

(Cat meows)

- Do you want your milk?

- [Voiceover] Ocean befriended
Colleen Golden in 2005,

when he was going by
the name David Taylor.

He told her he was a
wealthy cattle owner

from the northern
territories of Australia,

and he was using
the rainy season

to do some sailing in the south.

- He just said he was
from the territory,

and that he owned
like a station,

and because it was
the wet season,

you can't do much
in the wet season,

so that's why he was
down in Adelaide.

And he went on
about his big bulls,

bulls and stuff like that.

- [Voiceover] He started renting
a room in Colleen's house.

- He was very charming, and
he was quite nice looking,

and he had charisma.

He used to make me laugh.

- [Voiceover] But
then, tragedy struck.

- [Colleen] I came home
from work, and he said

"I just got a really
bad phonecall."

He was crying.

He'd been diagnosed
with this cancer.

And then he shaved all his
hair off, and his body hair.

He said "I'm gonna
lose it anyways."

- [Voiceover] Colleen took
pity on her lodger with cancer.

She told him he could
stay as long as he needed.

Ocean told Colleen he'd
grown up in Craigieburn,

a town outside Melbourne,
and claimed his father

was a millionaire and
a High Court judge.

In fact, his lawyer says he
was the son of a truck driver.

- He's 49 years of age.

He was born in Victoria.

He's held a number of different
occupations throughout

his life, primarily in the
boat and car industries,

and worked in those
throughout his life.

- [Voiceover] But he
preferred to make people think

he was something more exciting.

- People have been told
that he was a bodyguard

for the Spice Girls,
a protected witness

working for the National
Crime Authority,

an enforcer for the
local motorcycle gangs,

all sorts of stories.

- [Voiceover] In the course
of his investigations,

Senior Constable Lyons
learned that Ocean's scamming

went back as far as the mid-80s.

In 1998, Ocean
claimed to have found

a World War II shipwreck
off the Sunshine Coast

and went to the local paper,

saying he'd recovered
gold bars worth more

than 300 million dollars.

He posed for pictures,
and boasted he would give

half the money to charity.

- Finding treasure and then
trying to pass off gold bars,

just seemed like something
out of a B-grade movie plot,

but he used the news to his
advantage to get what he wanted,

proving how smart he was.

- [Voiceover] Ocean's
real motivation was

to convince business associates

that he'd come into a fortune,

so he could try to
buy a nightclub,

and then a yacht by check.

People believed him,
until the checks bounced.

But failure has never
seemed to deter him.

- [Wayne] What we do often
see with these kinds of people

is that not only
do they not desist,

they actually escalate
or become more versatile

in the kinds of crimes
they perpetrate.

- [Voiceover] His scamming
continued throughout the 90s.

- [Lyons] I think I
counted up approximately

24 different names that
he'd used over the years.

David Taylor, David Douglas,
Doc Mewer, Ocean, Doctor Ocean.

Mixtures of names
and dates of birth.

- [Voiceover] Using
these fake names,

he was able to travel
all over Australia

without being caught.

- David Ocean was an
itinerant traveler.

He had an affinity with
the sea, and could easily

live on a boat for weeks
and weeks at a time.

He would put into port and,
often under a false name,

obtain provisions, and
then simply sail off again.

- [Voiceover] David Robin
Douglas then decided

to legally change his name.

He became David Ocean.

A living, breathing
man of the sea.

- [Wayne] He actually adopted,
fully adopted the character

of this very
ocean-oriented person,

even having his name changed.

It goes along as
part of the persona

he was trying to develop.

In the media industry I guess
you'd call him a method actor.

- [Vocieover] The
police were on his case,

and by January 2005, an
arrest warrant was issued,

across all of
Australia's six states.

After months of searching,

he was eventually captured in
the southeast of Australia,

and brought to Queensland
to stand trial.

However, four days
before his court date,

Ocean hatched an audacious plan.

- [Lyons] He went and arranged
with the slipway at Maroubra,

which is about 250
kilometers north of here,

to bring a trawler
from (mumbles) to
the Maroubra slipway,

and he told them the story
that the boat had been damaged,

and he'd be bringing it up
and arriving on a Monday,

which was the Queen's birthday,

a public holiday, and he
asked the slipway operator

to be available to open
up on the public holiday.

- [Voiceover] As Murray
prepared to go to court

the day after the
Queen's birthday,

a call came over the police
radio about a major search

and rescue for a
boat missing at sea.

- [Lyons] We were advised
that Harvey Baywater Place,

which is in Maroubra area
were conducting a search

for a missing
person on a trawler

that hadn't arrived
at the slipway.

So we had volunteers
and helicopter assets

out there searching for a guy.

- [Voiceover] But when the
trawlerman's name was mentioned,

everything became clear.

- His name was "Doc".

Hearing the name, the officer
in charge of our station said,

"Well, that's an alias
that Ocean uses."

So a photo was sent up
to the slipway operator,

and in fact we were
looking for Ocean,

who had basically
formulated this plan

to fake his own disappearance.

- [Voiceover] Ocean had
created an elaborate hoax

to fake his own death.

The search and rescue
turned into a manhunt.

But while police started
scouring the Sunshine Coast,

Ocean was already on
the road, heading south.

It was at this point,
while on the run,

that Ocean had got to know
Colleen Golden in Adelaide.

But it wasn't long before
she began to see through him.

His cancer story
just didn't stack up.

- He told me stories like,
"My eyeballs are bleeding,"

and stuff like that.

And then I knew he
was bullshitting.

I half believed him, and
why would someone lie

about something like that?

No one lies about having
a terminal illness.

- [Voiceover] Colleen
later came to realize

she wasn't the first
person who'd heard

Ocean's cancer story.

She found out from a
mutual acquaintance

that he'd used it
back in his teens.

- [Colleen] He
convinced his mother,

when he was 15,
that he had cancer.

So instead of going to school,

she dropped him off at the
hospital for his treatment.

- [Wayne] He was
actually able to convince

his own mother
that he had cancer.

And what a lot of these
fraudsters try to do,

or tend to do, is they
exploit the inherent desire

in people to believe
what they're told.

We don't like to believe
that people would lie to us.

And that is actually
magnified when we talk

about family members.

- [Voiceover] When Colleen
challenged him about his cancer,

Ocean moved out of her house

and started working
in a shipyard,

living on a client's yacht.

- [Lyons] A fella owned
a yacht called Minuet,

about a $70,000 yacht.

And he allowed
Ocean to live on it

while he did repairs on
the yacht, did work on it,

maintained it, which was

a good relationship
for both of them.

Free maintenance and
free accommodation.

- [Voiceover] The
Adelaide businessman

took Ocean at face value,
just as Colleen had.

- [Lyons] The owner's
mother passed away,

and he had arranged
to go to the funeral.

Whilst he was at his
mother's funeral,

Ocean told the marina that
he was taking the boat out

to go up the gulf
to the slipway.

The marina manager saw the
yacht go out and turn south,

which, Antarctica's
next after that.

- [Voiceover] Ocean
rang the one person

he had a genuine bond with.

- [Colleen] I got a
phonecall, and he said

he'd stolen a boat.

He said he was on
an island somewhere,

and he wanted me to come to
Westminister Island with him.

And I told him, look,
there's no way I can do that.

And then I run to his
dispatch for the police,

and told them where he was
and where he was going.

- [Voiceover] Thanks to
Colleen's information,

the South Australian Police
were hot on his tail.

While in pursuit, they
rang Senior Constable Lyons

for more information.

- [Lyons] They had a
report of a stolen yacht,

and that a fella called
Ocean had stolen it,

and was heading out to sea,
into the southern ocean.

And they wanted a threat
assessment on him.

- [Voiceover] From a helicopter,
they tracked down the boat,

but Ocean wouldn't stop.

As a last resort, they
made the yacht capsize.

- [Lyons] South Australian
Police did a fantastic job,

they located and
brought him back.

He was subsequently
charged in South Australia

with the theft of
a $70,000 yacht,

and he did two years
in jail down there.

- [Voiceover] The law
finally caught up with him.

This time, he did
arrive in court.

- [Andrew] I've come across
quite a few fraudsters

and con artists in my
time as a police officer.

He seemed to fit that mold.

He appeared not to
show any emotion,

and not to take any
responsibility for
the harm he caused,

or the distress he
left in his wake.

- [Voiceover] Following
two more stints in jail,

Ocean was free
again by mid 2009.

That's when he moved
to Surfer's Paradise,

and started the Botox scam.

Investigations revealed
the so-called doctor

had fooled many more victims.

The police hunt became
all the more urgent.

After a national police
search for four months,

Ocean was found.

He was on the other side of
Australia, in Freemantle.

- [Georgia] It was in
April that we determined

he was actually located on
a beach, sleeping rough.

A couple of guys had
come and spoken to him

because he was
sleeping on the beach,

and he had given
them a false name.

- [Voiceover] He was extradited
to Queensland once again.

And when the case came to court,

Ocean faced 14 charges
over the Botox fraud.

- [Evan] He pled
guilty to all of them.

There were eight sex assaults,

four assaults that
caused bodily harm,

and two rape offenses.

- [Voiceover] His so-called
"designer vagina" procedure

was seen as a form of rape
in the eyes of the law.

- [Lyons] Going all over the
country to bring him back,

I certainly don't regret it.

It took a lot of
time and effort,

but it was worth it in the end,

because he got
brought before court,

and in the end he
pleaded guilty.

- [Voiceover] He was sentenced
to two and a half years

in Queensland, and was
released in November 2013.

- [Colleen] He's
a compulsive liar.

I feel if he wanted to be
successful, he could have been.

He's got a very high IQ, but
he just used it for fraud,

because it was a
challenge to him,

what he could get away with.

The bigger the
challenge, the better.

- [Voiceover] After nearly
30 years of offending,

this fraudster is once
again out of prison.

It's not clear if he will
ever change his criminal ways.