The dating app conman who stole millions and the victim pushing for change
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What chilling profile did Tracy Hall encounter on a dating app?
So in July last year, I was alerted to a profile that was live on Bumble and it was using the image of Hamish McLaren, who was presenting as Steve 53. When Tracy Hall was sent that profile, the man pictured, Hamish McLaren, was locked up in prison. So it was pretty shocking to see that because 10 years earlier he had presented himself as somebody that I met on a dating app. However, that time his name was Max Tevita and he was 41.
He'd been jailed for scamming 15 Australians out of $7.6 million, including Tracy, his girlfriend and final victim, whose life savings he stole after meeting her under a fake identity.
I still don't know whether that was him operating that profile or not, but I think that's actually beside the point either way. Incredibly dangerous for women, really.
Now, as McLaren prepares for release on parole this week, Tracey says the systems that allowed him into her life still haven't been fixed. I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to 7am. Today, romance scam advocate and survivor Tracey Hall on the con man who stole her life savings, the growing romance scam industry costing Australians tens of millions of dollars a year, and whether dating apps are doing enough to protect the people using them. It's Tuesday, July 7. Tracey, a decade ago, Hamish McLaren stole your life savings, more than $300,000. Tell me about what happened.
So we met on a dating app 10 years ago and we started a relationship that went on for nearly 18 months.
How did Hamish McLaren deceive Tracy Hall and others?
And he basically continued on for that time, presenting himself as Max Tavita. He was a chief financial officer for a family office, so high-level finance executive. We took family holidays. We had very much an in-real-life relationship, planning our future together. And it wasn't until about 16 months later that I woke up to a Crimestoppers video of him being arrested outside of his apartment. Of course, I didn't know what was going on. I knew him as this man that I was in a relationship with and building a future with. And very soon after dealing with detectives and law enforcement, I was told that his name was actually Hamish McLaren. and he had been arrested for swindling 15 Australian victims out of $7.6 million.
The vengeance of his victims today came thumping down on serial conman Hamish McLaren, jailed for at least 12 years in prison.
What he had done was convinced and groomed me to set up a self-managed super fund that I believed was in my name, but there was a bunch of false documentation and, you know, a web of lies. and actually discovered that it wasn't in my name. So I lost 22 years of career superannuation. He stole $317,000 from me in the process, which at the time was my life savings. And he was sentenced to 12 years in jail with a nine-year non-parole period.
And so what was the long-term impact of that on you? Were you able to get any of that money back?
No, no one received any money back as part of that case. So yeah, the impact was obviously a financial hit, a very big, big financial hit. So at 42, as a single mother, I had to start again financially. And then on top of that, for me, there was sort of an emotional and psychological betrayal and devastation that went with that. So Having to recover from that is probably been just as hard as recovering from the financial deceit and the financial loss. But yeah, it's completely impacted my life. You know, how could it not?
And so once you were made aware of this profile on Bumble, talk me through what you did.
Yeah, so I tried to find some people on LinkedIn that were in trust and safety or law enforcement at Bumble. So I reached out to quite a few of them. But in the end, essentially, they said that they couldn't talk to me, that I needed to fill in a generic web form. And I actually just wanted to speak to a human being. As you can imagine, my levels of trust are quite low. And putting all of this information into a generic web form when I was very, very concerned about the safety of women on the app at the time just seemed like a very poor response.
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