Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He's Cheating on His Wife With a Teen // The Hamish McLaren Scandal

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Hamish McLaren (born Hamish Watson) is a notorious Australian serial fraudster and con artist often dubbed the "Bondi Swindler" or "Australia's King Con". Over a deceptive career spanning three decades and four continents, he is estimated to have scammed between $60 million and $70 million globally from victims in Australia, the US, Canada, Britain, and Hong Kong.

What kind of guy marries a single mom and then starts sleeping with her son's girlfriend? That's just messy. Now, the guy's name is Hamish, and Hamish is about 38 during this time, and he's living in Bluey's Beach in Australia. And Hamish, he loves money. He also loves nice cars and things like that. But he does not love working for either one. In fact, he's a career con man.

Since the 90s, he's been running the exact same play. Find someone with money, tell them you're a big shot finance guy, get them to hand over their life savings for him to invest, and then instead of investing, he'll just take their money and spend it on himself. And he's been doing this for decades, traveling from country to country, conning person after person. Like he'll pretend to be a lawyer or a NASA advisor or a secret agent, or a billionaire whose best friends with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, or whatever he needs to be, to make the con work. And once the victim catches on, he'll just ghost the person and move somewhere else and change his name.

And he's like so into himself. Like he always dresses like James Bond and he drives an Aston Martin around like he's some kind of spy. Anyway, one day in 2008, he meets this woman, Beck. And Beck is a single mom and she's kind of lonely and she thinks Hamish is kind of a tosser, but also kind of fine.

Well, Hamish thinks she is the perfect person to Khan. So they hit it off and they start dating. And Hamish, he lays it on thick. Like he courts the whole family. He's often putting wine on her doorstep. He does the grocery shopping. He takes her teen boys surfing. He even does the traditional thing where he calls her dad

and asks for her hand in marriage. So of course, the whole family thinks this guy is great. And about two years later, they get married. They move to a nice apartment in Sydney. Now, during all this, Hamish goes and he forges Beck's name on some paperwork and he takes out two huge commercial loans

in her name without her knowing. So with money in her name, he's paying all their bills, he's paying for expensive lunches, he's paying for his business class flights, he buys himself two range rovers and a Porsche. Then things

start to get a bit gross. See, Beck has a teenage son, and this teenage son has a girlfriend. And we don't know the girlfriend's name, so we'll just call her Jane. Jane is 16. And so Hamish meets Jane, and he is way into her. And he starts creeping. And he's in his 40s at this point, but he starts telling Jane that he's got connections and that he's going to help her get into Princeton University and get her a prestigious internship. And pretty soon, they start a romantic relationship behind his wife's back. And this affair goes on in secret for years. And sometimes Beck will notice him creeping on Jane. Sometimes when they're at the beach, she'll notice him just like watching Jane. And she's repulsed by this, so she'll say something to him. And Hamish like plays it off. He tells her,

You're such a lunatic. And he just straight up gaslights her. But then one day in 2014, Beck is doing the laundry, like normal, and she pulls a purple thong out of the dryer. And this thong is definitely not hers. So she knows something's up. So she figures out that the underwear belongs to Jane,

and she goes and she confronts her, and Jane confesses everything. So Beck files for divorce. Good for her. And from here, Hamish just moves on, like nothing happened. And he looks for a new target, because of course he does. So fast forward to 2016. And Hamish is now living over in Bondi,

where he uses a different name so that no one knows that he's a con artist. And here, he decides to try something a little different. He makes a profile on a dating app, because he's going to find his target that way. And pretty quickly, he matches with a woman. Her name's Tracy. And so they start chatting through the app and they agree to meet up in person and eventually they start dating. And Hamish is a con man, so he's telling Tracy all kinds of made up stuff about himself. He tells her that he was orphaned in a plane crash when he was six and that he survived 9-11

and that he had once been stabbed on a New York subway during a robbery, all kinds of garbage. He also tells her that he's successful and that he's the chief investment officer for a company that manages the wealth of multiple super rich clients. Of course, Tracy believes him. I mean, he's a very convincing guy. But then, after about five months, Hamish comes to her, and he pitches her this supposed excellent investment opportunity. And he tells her that she can make so much money from it and that he's going to help her out.

And she trusts him, so she writes him a check for $10,000 Australian dollars. And then some time passes. And one day, Hamish comes to her, and he tells her this big lie that she already doubled her $10,000 Australian dollars, and he suggests to her that she invest even more money with him. And he, like, shows her forged documents to make it all look legit. So she fills out a bunch of fake paperwork that he gives her, and she gives him more money. And then more money. And then more money.

And soon, she's given him all her savings to invest. about $317,000 Australian dollars. And of course, Hamish isn't investing all this money. There's no investment account or investment fund. He's just putting it right into his own pocket, spending it on himself, buying himself a bunch of bullshit. Now, here's the other thing about Hamish. Tracy isn't the only person he's scamming.

He's a busy guy. He's pulling similar scams on other people, not only in Australia, but also in England. Like I said, he's been doing this to people for decades across several different countries. But see, back in 2011, he had conned this Australian fashion designer out of $850,000 Australian dollars. And she ended up suing him. And civil cases can take a really long time. But by 2016, she finally won a judgment against him.

And he's supposed to pay her, but he doesn't have $850,000 to pay. So the court declares him officially bankrupt, which means that they're about to seize his assets. Now, being the con man that he is, he doesn't tell his girlfriend, Tracy, anything about this. She has absolutely no idea what's going on. She's just happy to be dating him. They even start planning to buy a house together. But as part of his bankruptcy, a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee has to take inventory of his assets, so that they can sell them off

and pay off some of the debt that he owes. And through that investigation, they discover that he owes money to a bunch of creditors and some banks, and he even owes $235,000 Australian dollars in unpaid taxes to the government. And this is what gets the attention of the police who start looking into his business dealings

and contacting people who all tell them that they've been scammed by this guy. And so police go and get a warrant, and they search his house and they seize all kinds of documents and paperwork, which gives them all the evidence they need. And so, bam, he's arrested. And I couldn't find a mug shot, but here is a picture of him. And ultimately, Hamish takes a plea deal,

and he gets sentenced to 16 years in prison for conning $7.6 million Australian dollars out of 15 victims. But that's just what he was convicted for. It's actually estimated that over his indefinitely, entire 30-year criminal career, he swindled anywhere from 60 million Australian dollars to over 120 million Australian dollars, from potentially hundreds of victims. And here's an even crazier part. He actually just got out of prison this year, 26, a few months ago. And over $5 million of the money he stole has never been accounted for. So he's probably out there right now

with that money, like living his best life.