The Con Man Who "Married" His Daughter - The Albert Walker Story
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Who is Albert Walker and what was his financial scheme?
So this weirdo gets caught pretending that his daughter is his wife? What? So the guy's name is Albert and Albert's around 42 when this story starts and he's living in Ontario, Canada. And Albert is very much a shady guy. Like he owns a financial services company where he helps people invest their money. But here's the problem with that, though. It's all a scam. Albert is actually just a con man running a Ponzi scheme. But whatever, he's making good money from this scam. And of course, he's using all this money to flex his lifestyle like he's going on expensive vacations and buying nice cars and all that. But one day in 1987, all that changes. Because suddenly, kaboom, the stock market crashes. And Albert's investors start freaking out and they hit him up wanting to withdraw their investments.
And pretty quickly, he runs out of money to pay everyone back because, you know, it's a big Ponzi scheme. And all his clients get impatient and pissed off. And Albert realizes it's only a matter of time before the whole scheme collapses. And if that isn't bad enough, he's also going through a really ugly divorce. So Albert's life sucks right now, and he's caught between pissed off investors and an awful personal life. So what does he decide to do? He decides to just flee the country, and he's going to take at least one of his kids with him, even if it means he'll have to abduct them. So in 1990, he takes what's left of the investor's money and he gets his 15 year old daughter, this girl, Sheena, and he flees the country.
And the two of them travel from Canada all the way over to London, England. So through this Ponzi scheme, he had defrauded his clients out of $3.2 million. So there's no telling how much of that he fled with. But anyway, eventually Albert's ex-wife realizes that he's fled the country with one of their daughters and she alerts the police. So now police are looking for him and they ultimately put Albert on Interpol's most wanted list. Meanwhile, Albert and Sheena get to London and they don't stay there too long. They move to Paris and then to Geneva because they're trying to leave a false trail for the police. And after bouncing around for a while, in 1991, Albert finally settles in Harrogate in England.
Which is like a quiet, low-key town. The kind of place where someone could easily slip under the radar. And so there, he and Sheena chill, and they try and blend in. By this point, Albert, he's changed his name, and they're pretending that his 15-year-old daughter, Sheena, is actually his wife. Because he thinks it would look suspicious traveling around with a 15-year-old girl. So he tells everyone that this is his wife and Sheena goes along with it. But I guess it works. People think Albert is a normal guy and, you know, he gets a job and he and Sheena even start going to church every Sunday and no one around them suspects a thing. Here's the thing though, although everything is going fine so far, Albert knows that he can't just rely on a fake name forever because all it takes is one background check and he'll be exposed as a fugitive.
So he decides that he needs a real identity, one for himself and one for his daughter Sheena.
But how do you pull that off when you're a wanted man? Well, that is when he comes up with an insane idea. What if he finds a local couple, convinces them to leave the country, and then takes their identities for himself and his daughter?
Sounds like a perfect plan. But here's where the story gets really wild. One day in 1992, Albert walks into a fine art auctioneer shop looking for some paintings. And there he meets this woman, Elaine. And so he starts chatting with Elaine and he finds out that she just happens to be dating a guy a bit older than her. This guy, Ronald. And so she's 31 while Ronald is 49. And also Albert learns that Elaine and Ronald have been dreaming about moving away to Canada one day, but unfortunately times are tough and they don't have the money to make that happen. So Albert hears this and he starts thinking, I'm about to con these people and take their identity.
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