World Of Secrets - The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam: 8. The fall guy

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Did geologist Michael de Guzman really jump to his death from a helicopter? New information on his last day alive comes to light. And Suzanne tracks down details of his autopsy. Were there other forces at work? Was de Guzman’s death collateral in a larger cover up? Since this episode was recorded, John McBeth has sadly passed away. We are very grateful for his contribution to this story.Please note, this episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to suicide, death and descriptions of serious injury, including some graphic content.The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam was first published in May 2024.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. episode seasons of World of Secrets. So if you haven't followed or subscribed to the podcast, now's the time to do so, so you'll get all seasons and all episodes automatically. From the BBC's investigations podcast, World of Secrets, here's the eighth episode of our guest season, the $6 billion gold scan from the BBC World Service and CBC. Over to Suzanne Wilton. First, a warning. The following episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to suicide, death, and descriptions of serious injury.

All right, I'm walking down the cobblestones here and let's see them surrounded by mausoleums. Which one? There it is. Deguzman family. There it is. Michael Deguzman's final resting place. Inside is the tomb of Michael Degzman. It's a square building with white adornments at the top. Looks a little run down. So this is really where the mystery lies. The version of events we know about de Guzman's final hours have been told and retold many times. However, almost all of the details have come from the account and interpretation of just

one person, Rudy Vega. Apart from the helicopter pilot and mechanic, Vega was the last person to see Deguzman alive. He watched his helicopter take off. Hours after Deguzman's fall, Rudy Vega was brought in for questioning by the Indonesian police and told them that the night before his flight, Deguzman had downed a bottle of cough syrup in the bath as an attempt at suicide. The narrative that Deguzman had taken his own life, jumping from the helicopter, started to take hold.

However, I've discovered that there are questions surrounding Vega's story. I tried to contact Rudy Vega through the Society of Metallurgy Engineers in the Philippines and discovered he died a few years ago. He died a few years ago. John Felderhof, de Guzman's boss, told Suzanne Felderhof, a distant cousin, the fact de Guzman had drunk cough syrup in the bath

was not evidence that he was suicidal. He had an addiction, this is what John said, to coughing, sirep, and he sometimes drank a lot of that. Interestingly, Felderhoff also told Suzanne Felderhoff that Rudy Vega was meant to be on de Guzman's flight. That morning he was supposed to fly with Rudy Vega. They were supposed to fly together on the helicopter, but then for some unknown reason Rudy Vega, they were supposed to fly together on the helicopter, but then for some unknown reason, Rudy Vega didn't join him. Did de Guzman really try to take his own life in the bath that night? And was his fall from

the helicopter suicide or something else? And could the body that was found in the jungle shed some light on all of this? I'm Suzanne Wilton from the BBC World Service and CBC. This is the $6 billion gold scam. A story about the lengths people will go to in pursuit of getting rich. This is episode eight, The Fall Guy.

The decomposing body found on the jungle floor four days after de Guzman reportedly jumped was taken to the hospital in Balikpapan for an autopsy. However, the pathologist who carried it out was not asked to make a positive identification, only to look at the cause of death. Identifying the body was going to be difficult. Wild pigs were thought to have eaten parts of the body. The face was gone.

One of Deguzman's Indonesian wives, Lilis, was shown autopsy photos by the Indonesian police and although the face was not recognizable, there was a distinctive lump on the shoulder that led her to confirm it was de Guzman. After the first autopsy in Indonesia, the body was sealed in a coffin and flown to Manila. The Philippines National Bureau of Investigations was unimpressed with Indonesia's one-page autopsy report, and so they carried out a more extensive examination. The National Bureau of Investigations report on cadaver number N-97-591 concluded that it was the body of a man of about 40 years of age which was severely damaged.

It noted that the cause of death was from multiple traumatic injuries. But the pathologist had trouble identifying the corpse because the body was too decomposed to match fingerprints. Deguzman's brother, Lawrence Deguzman, was brought in to visually identify the body. And like Lilas, he confirmed it was Deguzman. He said he recognized his brother's feet. After identification, the autopsy recorded his death as allegedly from a fall. But these findings have been challenged. I think we know from sort of the tearing and the evulsions on the skin that it was not just from the fall. Journalist Jennifer Wells managed to obtain a copy of the autopsy report

and in it she discovered some deeply bizarre and shocking details. When I looked at the autopsy photographs and the body was so neatly sutured, of course I would imagine that the wild boars, etc. would have gone for organ meat. That makes sense to me. But what is often referenced is the fact that there was no genitalia at all, and that it was also neatly excavated. Did that body really arrive in such an excavated state when it landed on a slab? The question for me, though, always was,

it's surprising that the pigs could be so neat in their work, that it was so surgical. I've tried to contact the pathologist who conducted the second autopsy and the National Bureau of Investigations in Manila to discuss the findings, but have received no reply. The condition of de Guzman's body left difficult questions to answer. On the face of it, when suicide notes were discovered

in the helicopter, it reinforced the narrative that de Guzman had taken his own life. However, businessman Warren Irwin, who we heard from in previous episodes, has never been sold on the suicide story. I don't believe the suicide letter for two seconds. There's no way he was suicidal. Trust me on this one.

And it turns out that the closer you look at these notes, the more puzzling they become. Suzanne Felderhoff again. There were all these suicide notes that were found, and one of them said, like, I cannot live with these pains anymore, stomach pain, back pain. And so John was just, he wrote, he read these messages later,

and he was completely flabbergasted because he said it doesn't make any sense. He said, in all these 10 years that I've known Mike, there was never any reference to stomach pains or back pains. He was an avid basketball player. Jennifer Wells, who reported on Breaks for McLean's Magazine, agrees. This is a man who drank up a storm

at the prospectors and developers' shindig in March of 1997 when he was hanging out at the strip club for your eyes only and, you know, asking yet another stripper to marry him because why not? One of the notes de Guzman left was addressed to Bernard Lioed, a Briex finance manager who strangely de Guzman didn't actually know. In case he is in ability or disability or dead, I authorize to you to pay his bills and blah blah blah. Bernard Liyoud reads from the suicide note. Don't bury me, create me in Manila.

And then at the bottom he said, voluntarily authorize Mike de Guzman. According to Suzanne Felderhoff, John Felderhoff questioned whether his geologist de Guzman had even written the suicide notes. The police had told him that the note was written in the helicopter and John thought that would have been quite difficult because there's helicopter flight vibrations that would have interfered, banning his note. And also that Mike's reading glasses were found in a black briefcase

with his carry-on luggage and he could never have written any notes without these glasses. He never for a second thought that de Guzman committed suicide. So we have notes that police believe de Guzman wrote when in flight, but seem to have been written with a steady hand. We have Dagoosman saying he is going to take his own life due to stomach and back pains, but these ailments didn't seem to get in the way

of him enjoying life. Then there is a note written to a man Dagoosman hardly knew. And finally, we have Deguzman misspelling the name of one of his wives. I obtained a copy of the suicide note addressed to Bernard Leo, which reads, Please accompany my body to Manila. Documents for my wife, Teresa. Please hand carry with my passport. But in the note, there is an H after the T. And that's not how de Guzman's wife actually spelled her name.

The more you look at the suicide notes, the stranger they become. And there are other questions, too. Jeannie Deguzman had been in a relationship with Deguzman for eight years and married two years before having a son and a daughter. Mike was afraid to drive a car. He can't drive. I was the one who drove. Mike was a timid guy. So how could he jump out of a helicopter? Freeport lawyer Dan Bowman has also struggled to square the accepted story. Deguzman was one of a kind. He was a brilliant person. He struck me as someone who was very, very smart

and very, very cunning. And he came up with a very creative idea. In fact, the only person who originally described Deguzman as suicidal is the man who we were told was meant to take the final helicopter flight with him but didn't, Rudy Vega. An odd choice if he believed de Guzman had already tried to take his own life the evening before the flight. If de Guzman didn't take his own life, could it have been an accident? No, I don't think so.

You know, looking at the type of helicopter, I believe it was called an Alouette. I've been in one of those before and it's hard to get out. So you really have to work at jumping out of the helicopter. You don't just sort of fall out of the helicopter. He didn't look suicidal to me. You know, he looked like he was, you know, cunning, like I said. That's the best word I could use to describe him. So what does that leave? Shortly before his death, Deguzman confided that he thought he was being watched. Mike told me, Ma, I was being followed all the way to Canada. He said, you better not go with me.

I feel like I keep seeing this person. When I was on the plane, I saw this person again. It was for almost two months that we were being followed. For John Felderhof, his thoughts on what had happened to de Guzman were very clear. Suzanne Felderhof. He thought that Mike de Guzman were very clear. Suzanne Felderhoff. He thought that Mike the Guzman was murdered. He said if he wanted to commit suicide, which he didn't believe, he said Filipinos don't

do that. And he will, the Guzman was also Catholic, they don't do that. And then he turned Muslim, and Muslims are not supposed to kill themselves, so religion was against it. I think he spent the rest of his life brooding about this. And here's Freeport lawyer Dan Bowman again. The Brix deal caused a lot of losses, including Indonesian interests who had invested money and also political capital in making the transaction happen. So there would have been a lot of people who were very angry about what had happened. And it was clearly intentional. I mean, they mixed the gold in and that was proved.

So there would have been some motive for someone to murder him? I think if anybody was involved in De Guzman's death, it would have been somebody who had a direct financial detriment because of his actions. Obviously, you can't accuse anybody of murder, but I think that he certainly would have been brought to justice had he not fallen out of the helicopter because he had violated many, many laws in Indonesia, and it was a fraud on the shareholders and the other stakeholders for sure. If Degusman had made it to his meeting with Dave Potter and Freeport, then perhaps he would have told them about the scam, that there was no gold at Busan. If he'd done that, then it would have put a stop to everything. And Briech's shares would have become worthless. Bernard Liot, Briech's finance officer, remembers that near the end,

de Guzman did try to cash in on his remaining shares, but Felderhof refused. He didn't get approval because at the time he still had about 200,000 shares on exercise. In his salary package, Deghuisman had been allocated 200,000 Brix shares, but was only allowed to sell them with the agreement from Felderhof. When he tried to catch that, that before he jumped. How much before?

Just before he jumped. Boarding the helicopter, Daguzman must have known his fate on arrival in Buzang. He knew Dave Potter was very close to discovering the scam, and soon the world would know. Moments before takeoff, Deguzman got on the radio and instructed geologist Manny Puzpos to hand over a piece of rock for Freeport to test for gold. Manny Puspos was Cesar Puspos' brother and the only geologist left in the Boussang site following the prospector's conference in Canada.

Deguzman said, give them what they want. It doesn't matter anymore. Were these the last words from a man who knew he was defeated? A man who was about to come clean? Or a man who was about to end it all? What we do know is that de Guzman's death actually bought more time for those who had Brieck's shares. Although the stock price did dip when the news of his apparent suicide was released, they soon rallied. In fact, it was six weeks later when the Strathcona report commissioned by Brix to check Freeport's own drill results and findings, that it was officially confirmed there was no gould and

Brix shares became worthless. If de Guzman hadn't died, the truth would have come out on that day. But instead, it took six weeks to get verified results. Six weeks where a lot of people kept cashing in. But if he was murdered, why was his body so horrifically mutilated beyond recognition, yet so easily found in a vast, dense jungle? I have serious doubts that de Guzman made the jump. It just doesn't sound right to me. And the pilot, an Air Force pilot, he was new to the job. In fact, as Deguzman was walking across the tarmac at Summerind Airport, he happened to mention to his wife, Jeannie,

that the pilot was new, and so was the crew chief. And then the phone went dead, and he climbed on the helicopter and disappeared. The fact the helicopter pilot was not the usual guy meant suspicion initially fell on him. To the best of our knowledge, the pilot has rarely spoken about what happened after giving his initial statement. He has always strongly denied any involvement and maintains he didn't see what happened.

Journalist John Macbeth. There's a lot of things about this that just don't match up, do they? You'd think if the family wanted answers, they would push for those. Yeah. They'll never get the Air Force guy to talk. Actually, I think somebody did talk to him, but he just stuck to the story, which was suddenly the door opened, it slid open, and de Guzman was gone. And up to then, he'd been sitting there writing letters or something.

And it was all very strange to me. The whole way he described how the events unfolded was almost as if they were totally unaware that he was getting ready to jump. And you'd think, you know, you've got to open the door. Two separate sources have confirmed Rudy Vega died several years ago and the pilot and mechanic are not talking, at least not to us. If it's not possible to get any more information from those who were there, perhaps the evidence can tell us something. Which brings us back to Deguzman's body and the autopsy reports.

If you look at those again with an open mind about the cause of death, what could you find? Hi, I'm Su Lin Wong. I'm a journalist at The Economist, and for the past year I've been investigating how the CEO of a bank in rural Kansas was duped out of $47 million. This wasn't your classic scam. He'd been ensnared by a new global criminal industry, one that's coming for you and me. My new series is called Scam, Inc. To listen and subscribe, just search Economist Podcasts Plus.

Plus. I saw the photo of the corpse. A few days after it was found, Freeport lawyer Dan Bowman was shown close-up photos of the body, and they were gruesome. The face had been eaten and the intestines were out. But I only saw the photos for a minute or two. It looked like a mush. There have been so many myths and rumors and difficult to tell fact from fiction.

Steve Hughes is the guy who worked, he worked for Breaks. He says, that's de Guzman. Because I saw the tattoo, he, he worked for Breaks. He says, that's Deguzman, because I saw the tattoo, he said he had a butterfly tattoo or something on his left arm. I did not see that in the pictures. Shortly after the autopsy reports came out, the Deguzman family pushed

to have Deguzman's death investigated. Highly embarrassed by the whole scam, the Indonesian authorities refused. So the family took matters into their own hands. Doc Ben. This is where Doc Ben is. Doc Ben? Doc Ben.

Doc Ben. Just a moment. I traveled to Manila to meet Dr. Benito Molino, otherwise known as Doc Ben. Doc Ben was one of three members of an investigative team hired by the Deguzman family to look at all the evidence. Ben. Hi, Suzanne.

Hello. He's Manjay. How do you do? How do you do? I am Benito Molino, a doctor of medicine, practicing forensic. The investigative team was led by the late, highly respected forensic anthropologist, Professor Jerome Balen.

It also included his protege, Dr. Richard Tedurin, a forensic anthropologist. Well, Professor Jerome Balen is the expert in the Philippines regarding identification of people using their skeletal remains, the possible causes of their death. He's known as a bit of the Sherlock Holmes of the Philippines, yes? Yeah, that's what we call him, the Sherlock Holmes of the Philippines.

Doc Ben described the condition of Degosman's body. To warn you, it is graphic, but it could be relevant to the cause of death. He was found four days later with all his internal scan, the bodies of the scrotum gun, broken bones. And what were the family suspicions at the time? that they will only eat the internals and the scrotum and the penis. So for us, that's something impossible. — The investigating team also saw bruises onto Guzman's neck. — If I can remember right, there's still some skin reactions around the neck. With that, we dismiss the suicide story.

He must have been killed. When he was dead, he was thrown out of the chapel in the jungle, making it appear that he committed suicide. So the conclusion was that he was murdered? That's what we believe. That is our conclusion, that most probably he was killed by strangulation. Why? Because of the marks. Why do you think he was killed? In crimes, in big crimes, usually there were always big, full guys. So we don't believe that the real mastermind will be identified. There was not enough bruising to suggest he'd been tortured. And the mutilation of the genitalia, Dokben's team weren't convinced that this was due to wild pigs

eating de Guzman's body parts and instead came to the conclusion that his body may have been desecrated after death, a possible punishment for the scam. In the report presented to the de Guuzman family, they also analyzed the suicide notes and why they might have seemed to contain so many contradictions. If you are a brilliant guy and they will ask you to write a suicide note, you will not do it the right way because you will be doing it in protest. So the best way to do it in protest is, you know, do not do it right.

So that people will not really believe that you committed suicide. Doc Ben had a second theory that the note could have been forged. We noticed grammatically not good English. Grammatical errors. Yeah, grammatically flawed English. So we don't think that that is Deguzman.

He'd been there for years talking to English people. He should be good in English. And Doc Ben also questioned the motive given in the notes that Deguzman was struggling with underlying health conditions. You know, hepatitis is a deadly disease. So why commit suicide? Because of the hepatitis. So where he died, who killed him?

I think some people could provide the answer. Where is Rod Vega? Where is he now? Rudy Vega? Rod Vega. Yeah, where is he now? Maybe he knows more. Maybe he could be of help.

Why do you remember Rudy Vega? What do you remember about him? Why is he special? He was his partner in the Bray Ex, mining exploration. So maybe he knows more. The RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, came to the Philippines to investigate at some point. Did they interview?

No, no. They did not come to us. What was the reaction of the family when you presented the report? The reaction of the family when we presented the report? If their brother was murdered, though, why didn't they push for further investigation? They are in the Philippines. Maybe for them, this is Philippines. Also, usually just leave it, just ask the Lord that justice will happen. In 2007, Jojo Deguzman, Michael Deguzman's brother, agreed to speak with me for a newspaper report I was writing about

Breaks. The family accepted Doc Ben's report. To them, it didn't really matter how he died. They just wanted to remember de Guzman as a father and a son. This made journalist Jennifer Wells suspicious. See, the skeptical journalist in me finds that very interesting. Why? To say we just want you to accept that Michael is dead because we accept that he's dead. The manner of his death doesn't matter to us. I think that goes against human nature.

Because you'd want to know how your loved one died. Absolutely. So does that give you pause to think, maybe they just want it to go away so people stop asking questions? If I were an investigative journalist, I would use that as a reason to keep digging. We tried to contact Dagozman's sister in the U.S., Diana, and her brother Jojo in the Philippines several times for comment, but they never replied. But we did manage to speak with his other brother, Lawrence.

However, after consulting with Diana, Jojo, and his other siblings, he decided not to speak with me. It's in the Holy Cross cemetery and we have to pass the lawn of tranquility, one, and the lawn of serenity, two. The tomb is in the estate of Peace Three. Does that help? I traveled back to Deguzman's tomb in Quezon City, Manila. The cemetery is the size of a small village with roads, criss-crossing well-manicured lawns. On one side of the cemetery are graves, but on the other side are what look like small

boxy houses where the wealthy have been able to build family tombs with ornate gates and steps leading up to glass frontages. This time I was with Dr. Tadurin, who worked alongside Doc Ben. He thinks the autopsies may have been missing something. Something's not adding up based on previous descriptions of the body because if someone is dead for like four days, it shouldn't be in an advanced state of decomposition. But based on the description of the Indonesian doctor, it was in an advanced state of decomposition. How do we even know the body is male if the genitals were removed, let alone if it was

Michael Deguzman? Deguzman's wife, Lilis, had identified him, but given the condition of the body, it would have been hard to do so from photos. Maybe she was mistaken. Deguzman's brother, Lawrence Deguzman, also gave a positive identification. He said he recognized the feet. I decided to contact the family one last time while in Manila to see if they'd meet with me. Lawrence told me his family didn't want to speak because, as he put it, they'd like to let sleeping dogs lie. So we're walking along a stone path here and beside us are these buildings like small houses,

some of them. So this is it. Oh, okay. We have here a stone structure. It looks like... Michael and Ponyo. Tito and the Smith. So there's only one individual. There's only, yeah.

One tomb. One tomb, yeah. Okay. It looks like it's abandoned. What gives you that sense? Well it's dirty. Nobody has taken care of it for a long time. So four steps up to a set of glass, an entirely glass front,

and on the inside there are other benches. Again, presumably that's where the family would sit when they come to visit. There's a shelf in the back which has some flowers and what appears to be a container of some sort and a drink, a juice box. Otherwise it's really bereft of, of much else inside. Is that an urn? It looks like it could be. Yeah, it looks like an urn.

And a granite tomb. I think there's still a lot of questions about Michael Degusman's death, basically. What are some of those contradictions? Well, given the idea that the de Guzman jumped from a helicopter, one would expect that some of his bones, especially the limbs, would be fractured. But according to the Indonesian doctor, actually he didn't mention anything about limbs. I can remember he mentioned something about the skull that was intact. So that seemed irregular to me because if you jump from a helicopter, then most probably your skull would have a trauma in it or fractured. What are some of the other things that you find suspicious? Another unusual thing is that according to Indonesian police that Michael Degusman

has died for four days but the decomposition description of the doctor seemed like he died seemed like he died around two weeks. Oh, that long? Yeah. Yeah, that seemed unusual to me. And what could that mean? The composition doesn't lie, so I think the body was already dead. The individuals are dead for one to two weeks. And if Michael de Guzman was seen the day before, that means what? The individuals are dead for one to two weeks. And if Michael Deguzman was seen the day before,

that means what? The body could not be Michael Deguzman. If the body in the tomb isn't Michael Deguzman, did Deguzman fake his own death? Was it part of an exit strategy? Is this what the family means by letting sleeping dogs lie? This is really where the mystery lies, right here. We're sitting in front of a tomb.

The mystery could be solved. It's right in there, of a tomb. The mystery could be solved. It's right in there, inside that tomb. Or I would recommend that the body would be exhumed and further analyzed to be sure about it. Would that finally put a rest to this mystery? I think so. And why is that important, do you think? I think it needs to be settled for everybody's closure, for everybody's sanity.

I think it needs to be settled once and for all. Do you think it's possible that he could be living it up somewhere on the millions he made off pre-ex? Yeah, everything is possible because the truth can be stranger than fiction. The funeral of Michael de Guzman at the Holy Cross Cemetery should have been the end of the intrigue, putting a bizarre life to rest. Instead, many people, like the forensic anthropologist, believe Deguzman

is still alive and living off his briach's fortune. They may be right. I've found several people who say they can prove Deguzman escaped, and someone who's been contacted very recently by a person going by the name of Michael de Guzman. In the final episode of the $6 billion gold scam, I meet a former CIA agent assigned to put surveillance on Michael de Guzman. My government work, I've seen coups and evacuations, but I've never seen something as intriguing as this.

And learn about suspicious cargo brought aboard de Guzman's helicopter. What do you think this cargo was? I think it was a body. And things get even wilder as Michael de Guzman's wife makes a startling revelation. We were sitting there at lunch at the Double Wankster Hotel, I remember, and suddenly in the middle of the lunch, she dropped this bombshell on us. bomb shell on us.

The $6 billion gold scam is produced by BBC Scotland Productions for the BBC World Service and CBC. I'm Suzanne Wilton. Our lead producer is Kate Bissell. Producers Anna Miles, Mark Rickards. Story Consultant Jack Kibble-White. Music and sound design by Hannes Brown. Additional sound design and audio mix by Joel Cox. Executive editor Heather Kane Darling. At CBC, Veronica Simmons and Willow Smith are senior producers. Chris Oak is executive producer. Cecil Fernandez is executive producer and Arif Noorani is the director. At the BBC World Service, Anne Dixie is senior podcast producer

and John Manel is the podcast commissioning editor. Thanks for listening. Hi, I'm Su Lin Wong. I'm a journalist at The Economist, and for the past year I've been investigating how the CEO of a bank in rural Kansas was duped out of $47 million. This wasn't your classic scam. He'd been ensnared by a new global criminal industry, one that's coming for you and me. My new series is called Scam Inc. To listen and subscribe just search Economist Podcasts Plus.