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Chapter 1: What led Olivia and Juliet to investigate Julie Meyer?
This is The Guardian.
Today, Think Like a Billionaire, part two. Before we get started, this is the second episode in a two-part series, so make sure you've listened to part one first.
This is it, I think. Yeah, because we've seen this on Google Maps, this entrance.
Apparently it's got her name on it, so we're just checking. Oh, here we go. Julie Maria Meyer.
Guardian reporters Olivia Lee and Juliet Garside are in Zurich. It's cold. It's January. They're outside the apartment of Julie Meyer. Top floor, looks like.
I mean, if you go by the buzzers, it looks like it's on the top floor.
Yeah, this is a very nice place to live.
They're having to whisper because they don't want Julie to hear them.
My gosh, she could appear any moment.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Stefan face while working with Julie Meyer?
Stefan never sees the €25,000 investment. It just disappears. And how much did this whole experience impact your business?
I would say very badly in the sense that up till today, I'm still looking for investment. People with money don't think about you. They only think about their money. And they can say yes today and they can say no tomorrow. It depends how they wake up.
And how do you feel about Julie now?
Honestly, I hate her. I'm sorry to say this, but I really feel robbed. Can you imagine somebody robs your house and you come back and you open the door? What you feel at that moment, that's what I feel. I feel robbed in plain daylight. How can you hurt people in that way? How can you be so cold?
Julie's MBE, her reputation, her charm, All of it made people believe a simple story. That Julie Meyer could turn your business into the next billion dollar company. If you looked on her LinkedIn, you wouldn't know about the court cases she'd lost. The bad press. You'd see her travelling Europe. Rooms full of investors. Exciting businesses. So many people like Stefan got sucked into that image.
Julie Meyer, MBE. The entrepreneur's friend. So I've just woken up to an email from an individual. But the money at play was about to get even bigger. And someone was about to get on her tail. Wow, that's a lot of money.
It's 2025 and Julie is living in Zurich in Switzerland. She's running an investment firm called Viva Investment Partners. But a lot of her time is still spent organising events that she's hosting around three to four times a year.
And I said this to people at the time. I said, that is one of the best conferences. It was excellent.
One of the attendees was Simon Davies. He is the CEO of Scarab Tech, a company that turns waste plastic into diesel. You might remember from episode one that Simon first encountered Julie when she was running First Tuesday. And in January last year, he was invited to be a speaker for her.
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Chapter 3: How did Julie Meyer convince investors to trust her?
I think Simon at that point is very unclear over what's happened. So he contacts Julie and he asks for the investor's money to be returned.
So this was the $200,000 that he had independently managed to raise? Exactly. Exactly.
I was disappointed on the run, but at least that's not the worst case scenario of what happened to the money and that seems to be OK.
Simon waits for the investors to get their money returned. But then Julie sends him an invoice for around $200,000 in success fees, corporate infrastructure fees and management fees. The thing is, Simon says he never agreed to pay for any of these services. He thinks the money should have been returned to his investors. It was their money. But, he says, Julie had walked off with it.
The money was gone.
My heart sank. I was like, oh, you've got to be kidding me. I still had some outside hope that maybe she'd made an error. But no, there was no error. And the worst thing that could possibly happen is actually the thing that happens.
And what happens with the money then? It essentially goes missing. Simon gets no money. The investors don't get their money back. So they don't know where it went.
This is the last time she wrote to me. Simon, against my doctor's orders, as I'm in the hospital right now, I'm writing to you as I want you to understand my firm's position on the actions you have been taking, which are very disappointing. You will be held accountable for the damage that you do. We will act swiftly and unequivocally to protect our position.
I hope you choose your actions very carefully. I regret very much that I tried to help you and your firm. This has been a huge disappointment to me and my team. That was the last message from Julie. When she's involved with your company, she's involved with your company. That wasn't fake. It was true. That's why I find it so hard to reconcile. It just seems entirely so unnecessary.
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Chapter 4: What red flags did Stefan discover about Julie Meyer?
And it's unmistakably her. It was definitely her. She was wearing a leopard print jacket and a fur hat. She looks very glamorous. She's got these black sparkly trousers and she's wheeling along a shopping trolley. We're slightly kind of contrasted with the rest of the look. Yeah, didn't quite all fit together. I think it was just a few minutes, but it felt like hours. It really did.
Time moved very slowly. She's coming out, dude. She's coming out. And then we approach her.
Excuse me, are you Julie Meyer? Hello, we're from The Guardian. This is being recorded, you can see the microphone. We just wanted to ask you about your MBE. It's been revoked. Why is that?
I'm not who you think I am. I'm doing some shopping here. Could you please get out of my way? Thank you. We've heard the allegations.
A lot of people have a lot of questions. Unpaid wages. Unpaid staff. Young people. Hopes and dreams. A lot of investor money's gone missing. Money that should have gone to start-up companies. Where is the money, Julie? Are you going to pay it back?
Could you please let me know? I'm not Julie Myron. I will take you to the police station. Julie, I've spoken to so many people.
I've spoken to a lot of people. They say they've lost money through you. Julie, look. Can we just get a sit-down interview? We want to hear your side of the story. Simon Davies, do you know him? He said he raised 200,000. He was going to use those machines to provide energy to South African villages. Do you know Simon Davies?
All that money's disappeared.
200,000, Julie. His investors would like to know where it is. He said you took 200,000 of investors' funds. Is that true? You're not going to answer that? You're going to stay silent? Come on, you must have something to say. Mark Lightfoot, do you remember him?
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Chapter 5: How did Julie Meyer handle the investment round with Simon Davies?
Insolvent companies, unpaid wages, lingering debts, millions in lost investments. We asked her to explain it all, but she didn't respond. She's still out there presenting herself as the answer to entrepreneurs prayers. She's on LinkedIn right now advertising her latest events.
If you go along, ask her about everything you've heard in this podcast and think very carefully before giving her any of your money. And that's all for this mini-series. I really hope that you enjoyed it. To read Olivia and Juliet's magazine piece, go to theguardian.com. Julia Meyer has previously rejected any suggestion that her activities are not above board.
My thanks to Olivia and Juliet, and also to Rachel Aldroyd, The Guardian's Deputy Investigations Editor. Think Like a Billionaire was produced by George McDonagh and presented by me, Helen Pitt. Sound design was by Tom Glasser, and the executive producer was Hummer Khalili. We'll be back as normal with Today in Focus on Monday.
This is The Guardian.