The OC Savior: Ep. 3, Grapes of Wrath
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Protect your reputation with exterior products by James Hardy. Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind.

Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy.

So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast. I'm your host, Teresa.

We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just the arrogance of Lizzie Mulder.

It made it easier for me to go after her because I just didn't like her. In May 2016, authorities are piecing together the spectacular cons of Laguna Beach CPA Lizzie Mulder. When all was said and done, how much money did she get from you? $291,000.

But years before Lizzie scams that Newport Beach salon, she starts doing the books for Jack Wines in Napa Valley. She was a big part of helping me get organized when I started the wine business. And when Jay Avery checks himself into rehab for a prescription pain pill addiction, Lizzie Mulder takes the reins of his wine company.

And what she does next almost drives Jay to the brink. I got to a place to where I wasn't sure if I really wanted to continue moving forward with life. I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, The O.C. Savior, Episode 3, Grapes of Wrath. Me and my partner, a close friend named Alex, we would blend the wine and then we'd go out and sell it just door-to-door, basically. ♪

Jay Avery starts Jack Wines in Napa Valley back in 2009, and he's doing really well. And it started to get bigger, then we had Direct-to-Consumer, which was online, and that's when I decided to hire Lizzie to help manage the Direct-to-Consumer.

And the relationship started as she was just kind of helping me do the accounts payable and receivable and managing the books. So paying for the foil, the cork, the bottles, shipping, as well as storage. So I delegated a lot of that to her. And when you started the wine business and you hired Lizzie and she starts helping you do stuff, you know, run the finances, what stage of your addiction are you at? I'm not even full tilt yet.

I'm highly functioning, but I met her in '09.

And it didn't get really bad until middle of 2011, until I went and sought treatment. So at this point, you're running a business and Lizzie appears to be not only helping you with your wine business, but helping you recover, like helping you with your addiction. Yeah. So when I was getting sober, her brother passed away from a heroin overdose. He was also an opiate addict. And she told me, you know, to get sober and not to die on her too. Those were her exact words.

Lizzie Mulder becomes like a sister to Jay. They spend Christmases and Thanksgivings together. So when Jay checks himself into rehab, Lizzie's got his back. And at that point, I needed to pay a bunch of bills and do a bunch of stuff for the business and detox in Utah. And they wouldn't allow me adequate time on the computer to get done when I needed to get done. They asked me if I had somebody that could help me in this process.

And they took me down to Wells Fargo and I made her a signer on the account and I gave her signing authority. So while Jay is in rehab, Lizzie takes full control of Jack Wines and seems to be doing a fantastic job bottling wine, doing the books, paying vendors, and paying the company's taxes. Production actually ticks up 25% under Lizzie's leadership.

Jay Avery and his wife Marla are relieved. And when I got out, I really wanted to stay healthy and stay active in my recovery and not have to focus on some of that stuff. So I just let her run with it until I got healthy. And then it seemed like she was doing a good job, so I didn't change anything in the short term.

She was also like giving him a lot of hope with investors and these grandiose ideas of where the winery would go. So not only is Lizzie doing a great job running Jack Wines, but she's also courting new investors out of China who have millions of dollars they potentially want to invest in Jay's company. She said she had sent an email to a company that helps young wineries grow and go global.

Right. And depending if the product's any good and if we have marketing behind us, but they would give us marketing dollars. They would help us find distribution, but they needed more varietals. Right. So we did a cab and a Chardonnay.

It was a high-end wine, but we were going to make a couple lower end products so we could do volume, but keep the high end as well. So I had to make samples, I had to get bottles, I had to come up with labels. I mean, it was a process. And at the time I had the money to do it. So I said, you know what, if this could potentially

help this brand grow exponentially, this sounds like a good opportunity. So I said, okay, let's go forward. Let's make samples. Let's get bottles. Let's maybe do new labels. You know, the foil, the cork, I wanted to do a certain kind of cork. I mean, there was all sorts of stuff that we wanted to do, adding little bells and whistles that created, you know, a better buzz around the name and better marketing. So the process was, she told me about it. I talked to Brent Harrison. Hey, how you doing?

Brent Harrison gave me a list of action items I needed to do for them to be satisfied in investing into our company. Brent Harrison is the liaison for a huge Chinese wine conglomerate, the Wine Trust. They're excited to invest millions of dollars in Jack Wines. They just need some more proof-of-concept stuff from Jay.

We were going to come up with, you know, three or four more different rattles of wine. And then we were going to ship it out to them and have them sample. And then we were supposed to meet in Boston one of the times, and they canceled. And then I spoke to Brent Harrison for another six months over the phone. Meanwhile, I think we're getting samples. I think we got the foil, the cork. Lizzie would send me pictures of all this stuff, what she was ordering. I said, it looks great. We were getting ready for this meeting in Seattle.

And then the last minute, they text me probably around 10 a.m. on a Friday and I was supposed to leave at around 4 p.m. to go to Seattle and they said they wanted another life scan. And a life scan is what you have to do to be able to get liquor licenses in the rest of the country. It's just basically a background check. I had one done before my DUI, but I wouldn't have been able to pass another one, but they last 10 years, so I should have been fine.

And Lizzie said, well, they want an updated one. I said, well, we just had this one two and a half, three years ago. I should be fine. And she's like, I'll go. You hang back. I don't want this to be unprofessional. I said, that doesn't make any sense. I'm going and I'm meeting these people. I kind of had an idea that this wasn't really adding up. So I called the Edgewater in Seattle. Thank you for calling the Edgewater for assistance with an existing reservation. I said, hey, is there a room for Elizabeth Mulder and another room for Jay Avery? And they said, no.

And I said, okay. So I text Lizzie, I said, give me the confirmation number for the hotel. So 10 minutes later, I got confirmation. So then I called the hotel and I spoke to the same lady and she said someone just called and booked that room. Then all of a sudden, Jay gets an email from Brent Harrison canceling their Seattle meeting altogether. I just, I knew right then and there, this whole thing was a bunch of, it was just BS.

I knew it and I cried, I'll be honest, man. I cannot believe that all this is not what it is. I was so hurt. So I didn't even go to anger. I didn't go. I just, I laid in bed for a little bit and gathered myself and said, "Okay, what do we do?"

After your entire world is flipped upside down,

From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil,

They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ...schools and girls, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things Afterlife.

I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you, and you felt like something else was looking at you too. Some unnerving. The more I looked at it, I realized that the thumb looked more like a claw, like a demon.

Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120, 120.

She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Marla texts Lizzie and said, you know, we know that this isn't adding up. And that's when Marla asked me for all my bank statements, all my emails for the company, everything. And every day for anywhere from one to four hours a day, she sat in the office and printed out everything.

No one knew it at the time, but Jay's wife, Marla, would turn out to be crucial to the case. There was another component to this, though. He was going through a very stressful, difficult divorce. And she was supposed to be doing all the paperwork, all the taxes and all the financials for it.

That's where my red flag went up was because his child support was through the roof because he couldn't get these financials in. And it didn't make sense to me. It was like, yeah. Child support was over $7,000 a month, yeah. Like between the lawyer and her, I kept trying to get all this financial information for court so that this could be wrapped up.

Lizzie actually knows Jay's ex-wife and has her hands in all of Jay's divorce paperwork, grossly inflating Jay's finances, making his ex-wife entitled to more alimony. So when Jay and Marla finally sit down with Detective Jordan Merakian at the Laguna Beach Police Department after months of being turned away, Jay is convinced Lizzie Mulder and his ex-wife

are conspiring against him. - The short version of his story was, while I was in rehab, my accountant colluded with my ex-wife, who I'm in a custody battle with and a child support battle with, and together they emptied my account. - That's what he thought initially. - Yeah, sounds like a mess. - Yeah. - Right? And their theory was that Lizzie Mulder, my suspect, had elevated the books

to make it appear that Jay was making more money. So when Jay and his ex-wife went to court, she would get more alimony in child support. So that was their theory. They didn't think Lizzie was a con artist. They thought his ex-wife was putting her up to it so she could get more alimony. Correct. Interesting. And that turned out not to be true at all.

We couldn't prove or disprove it. Were they in cahoots? I couldn't say, but what I can say is with fraud, right, I know how much money I make, right? If I had just pulled up here in a brand new Maserati, anyone would say, wow. Where'd he get the money to buy that? Where's he getting the money? Yeah. He's either really good at Bitcoin or he's a crook because Seal Beach isn't paying him enough to, you know. Yeah.

So I don't think the ex-wife was necessarily involved, but I think presented with the information that Lizzie was giving her, probably, I mean, I would think that that's exciting. You know, I'm going to get more information.

child support. I'm going to get more support for my kids. So why would you ask any questions? Right. It's like when you get your taxes done, if you get a big return, you're not going to ask your accountant, how'd you pull that off? Right. You're just going to say, okay, as long as I don't get audited, we're good. I'll take it. Right. Interesting. So Jacek's wife is not in on the scam. Lizzie Mulder is feeding her lies too to ramp up the drama and distract everyone from what's really going on.

After Jay's current wife, Marla, judiciously examines all of the financial records for Jack Wines, she starts putting the puzzle together. So I was going through the emails and I found the invoices and I called these companies and I would say, like, do you have an invoice from Jack Wines for this amount with this invoice number? And they're like, no, that doesn't exist.

Remember, though, at first, Detective Merakian isn't convinced an actual crime has occurred. He's just meeting with Jay and Marla to assuage them, to make them feel heard, to be polite. I'm like, okay, this is a domestic court, family court, civil court, but not criminal court. I'm out. What got you back in? Marla.

Yeah. So Marla had very meticulous records and emails. It gets very convoluted within that. You have a fake email address with a fake name and,

The bottom line is Marla was able to present documentation to show that there are fake people who are accepting invoices on behalf of Lizzie Mulder and Jack Wines. And money is not going from Jack Wines to these people. It's going right back into Lizzie Mulder's account. And she could prove that immediately? 100%. So that swayed you? It swayed me enough to at least pull a case number and listen.

Given that it was the end of the day, I gave Jay about 45 minutes and Marla, and then I said, well, you know, we got to cut this short. I need you to go back and get some bank records. I gave him some homework. Right. In my head, I was like, they probably won't come back. Oh, but Jay and Marla do come back with tons of evidence. And Detective Merakian begins piecing together the full extent of Lizzie Mulder's scams. And then she creates a fake invoice. Oh, my God.

From the wine company, right? Shows Jay, hey, here's the invoice for $8,000. I paid it out of my own pocket. So you just reimburse me.

reimburse my company, Mulder Financial, or later on income tax payments, which is a totally different scheme. Right. That Jay fell victim to as well. Yes. She was making these tax payments, allegedly, but really they were going to her own Bank of America account labeled income tax payments. Yeah, and income tax payments, this kind of goes into the naivety of business owners. Right.

Jay, you owe the IRS $30,000. I'm going to negotiate it down to $20,000. I just need you to cut a check for your debt to the IRS. Jay says, okay. And then what Lizzie would do is she would call him back and say, good news. I negotiated it down to $20,000. Okay.

So when you see a check go out to income tax payments for $20,000, that's your payment to the IRS. Right. Not knowing that you write a check to the Internal Revenue Service. Right. Or the U.S. Treasury. Or the U.S. Treasury. You don't write it to income tax payments. Right.

It's crazy to me that Bank of America ever allowed a DBA called income tax payments in the first place, but... It is crazy. But by far, the craziest and most complex scam Lizzie pulls on Jack Wines over the course of a year is one for the record books.

The Wine Trust, that Chinese company that wants to pour millions of dollars into Jay's winery? Their guy, Brent Harrison, talks to Jay on the phone dozens of times, but always ends up canceling in-person meetings at the last minute. As you might have already guessed, there is no Wine Trust. And Brent Harrison is, surprise, surprise, Lizzie Mulder.

She created a website. She created a 1-800 number. She created two personalities, Zhang something, a guy named Brent Harrison. So she created this whole company basically saying they're going to invest into Jack Wines. We need to do X, Y, and Z to make that happen. So I put even more money to get bottles and juice and samples and all this stuff. And that was like a good amount of money too. And that company ended up not even being available.

And it sounded like a man.

It was wild. The 1-800 number, the website, there was reviews, there was a whole bunch of stuff that she did that we looked into. So for me, when this all came out, I felt like a crazy person because I'm like, is this really a thing or is this, did she really do this?

It just dawned on me, the reason she invented this investor, and correct me if I'm wrong, was to get you to believe that something big is going to happen for the company, so you would put more money in so she could take more money out. Yes, 100%. At this point, Detective Merakian starts building a strong case against Lizzie Mulder. You had a fake Brent Harrison. Yeah.

Who I found, you have to establish that there's a real person. So if you invent a person, it's not a crime. Correct. You've got to be fucking kidding me. If it's a real person that could be held criminally or civilly liable, it's identity theft. But if it's a whole invented person, there's no crime. And I found a Brent Harrison that was on a board of directors for some wine business. Oh, that was plausible, yeah. And it was like... That's who she's impersonating. And I talked to him.

He's like, I've been out of the wine business for 10 years. I live in Washington with my wife. I said, well, you're the victim of identity theft now. Congratulations. So we were able to add that. Yeah, that was a brilliant move. God, God bless you. I got creative. Yeah. Yeah. Without, I mean, obviously without wine or making anything up. If there is a real Brent Harrison and wherever he was living, he was involved in the wine business. He did attend a meeting that Jay Avery was at. Ooh.

Because Jay Avery, when he was initially bottling the wine, he would go into local wineries and they'd do a tasting. Yeah. Right? Sell my wine. And from my understanding was that Brent Harrison was the manager of one of these small wine businesses. And he was also on the board of directors for a conglomerate. But he was out of the business. Now, the reason why he becomes a victim, he could, for all intents and purposes, be sued. Somebody could say, well...

Yeah, he can't prove it. I was defrauded by Brent Harrison. Yeah, he could have been involved. Yeah. He wasn't. Right. But... Wow. Yeah, it becomes very tricky. And professional con artists actually prefer their scams to be very tricky because the more complicated they make their scams, the harder it is for victims to explain what happened to them. And the harder it is for police to believe the scams and investigate them.

Jay Avery has an uphill battle getting police to take his case seriously, and he's lost a lot. So she got me for like $285,000 altogether. $285,000? Yeah, but then the IRS sent me a letter for, it was like a quarter million. Probably lost a couple million over the divorce, Lizzie, IRS, over like a seven-year period. Yeah, but yeah. Yeah.

And that's a couple million you would not have lost if Lissy Mulder didn't inject herself into your life. Yeah. Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind.

Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down from unbelievable romantic betrayals. The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family. When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal.

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy.

And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ...ghoules and girls, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things afterlife. I'm your host, Tereza.

We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you and you felt like something else was looking at you too. Some unnerving. The more I looked at it, I realized that the thumb looked more like a claw, like a demon.

Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110.

120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the most interesting things about the Lizzie Mulder case is how her victims don't believe they're victims at first.

A few months after Jay Avery goes to police, Jesse Mulder, Lizzie's husband, walks into the Laguna Beach Police Department and tells Detective Merakian his wife is stealing from her clients. Jesse walks in and he gives me the names of about six different businesses. And so I start making phone calls to all those businesses the following Monday. And...

Every single one of them, first, they didn't believe I was a detective. Second, they didn't believe that Lizzie Mulder had done anything wrong. Isn't that amazing? And third, they weren't entirely convinced that they were victims of fraud. Because, as Mark Twain famously said, it's easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they've been fooled.

It's also a testament to how believable Lizzie really is. Well, the account documentation that Lizzie was sending them, which was doctored, showed a balance. Right. Everything made sense on paper. Yeah. So they were defending her to you. Yeah. I mean, they were basically saying, I think you got the wrong girl. Lizzie's a sweetheart. I've been at her house. I've met her kids and her beautiful family and everything.

You know, she's amazing. She's amazing, all right, at being a sophisticated scammer. When Jay's wife Marla starts calling all those companies listed on the fake invoices Lizzie used to scam Jack Wines, she gets some interesting reactions. A lot of people were so nice and so cooperative, and, like, some people were really upset.

And I think it's somebody that she scammed to in Laguna Beach. It was like a Kinko's or something. He was really upset. Which I'm sure maybe it was an emotional reaction. I'm sure somebody called Jay in the midst of their friendship. I don't know what happened there, but...

she took money out there all the time from his account. We thought he was a part of it at one point. Because he was so upset, which I totally understand. Like, I fully caught him off guard, I'm sure. I tracked down the guy who Marla fully caught off guard that day. His name is Mike Cochran. I've been an entrepreneur since I've been about 28 years old.

Dad, father of four kids, run a series of businesses, but for a solid 22 years, I ran a print shop, and that was when I got exposed to Lizzie Mulder. At seven feet tall, Mike cuts an imposing figure. He's a no-funny-business kind of guy, and printing is in his blood. My dad was a printer. My grandfather was a printer, so technically I'm third generation. Wow.

California Print to Copy is the name of Mike's shop, and in 2011, he's looking for a new CPA. We had a series of tax issues. My tax guy used for 15 plus years. Retired? Retired. Yeah. He said he had some health issues. So we hired another guy through referral, a friend local to us.

And after six months, he gave us our taxes for two years and he made all sorts of errors. And my wife and I were like, ah, this ain't our guy. So we paid him. We then talked to a few of our clients because when you own a print shop, you're dealing with all these small businesses. That's what a lot of the people are, our clients. You know, they're other business owners. I was talking to a gal. She was a dog trainer.

We used to print business cards for her and put up graphics on her cars and stuff like that to promote her business. She knew a girl, young lady, Elizabeth Mulder, and referred us, said she's a tax preparer. And what did she tell you about Lizzie Mulder at that point? That she's good? That she extolled her virtues? Yeah, you know, it's one of the attributes you reflect on when you find out you've been ripped off is why and how.

And I mean, for me, it was simply that I'm a very trusting person and I feel I can size people up. You know, I feel like I know when there's a threat and when there isn't. I didn't feel any of that. Yeah.

And at that time in my business, we got to know her in late 2011. And my dad was in the last four months of his life. So I was super distracted. You know, I would go into work, work three, four hours. And then I'd get in my truck, drive down to Carlsbad where my dad was, spend three, four hours with him, bring him stuff, hang out with him.

go see my mom and then come home at eight o'clock at night and repeat it so you know that's one of the things that you find about these scam artist type people is lizzy profiled certain people yeah anybody she could run across but they had to fit a certain criteria they had to a have funds behind them of some variety or nature and uh approachable you know and uh busy

Yeah. I think that that was her biggest thing that she got on us is we were busy. Yeah. Well, I mean, every small business owner is busy. Yeah. Because, you know, I come from a family of small business owners. When you run a small business, you wear many hats. You've got to be this this day. You've got to be that that day. You've got to do everything. You can't hire bodies for all the work. You've got to do it. Yeah. So, of course, you're busy. Yeah. She targeted small businesses for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

And then Lizzie Mulder starts grooming her new mark and gets really close. Lizzie was around for a couple of years, two, two and a half years. We were friends. And she talked about when she was a young girl that she started riding horses and she went through a stable where she met the dog trainer.

They rode horses. Then they started to competitively ride them long distance, cross-country horse racing, I think is what they call it. Something like that. Sounds expensive is what you call it. Sounds expensive, man. That sounds like Orange County, doesn't it? And she came in and she said all the right things. She had the right look, wearing her Nordstrom's clothes, good jewelry. Her nails are done.

She looked glamorous. Yeah, and we kind of had a mini interview, my wife and I. My wife was doing the books at the time. We were really busy with our lives. Lizzie comes in, gives us her resume. Here's all my work experience. Here's what I know. I graduated from college.

Wasn't it Pepperdine? Pepperdine University. I apologize. Oh, yeah. Sema Kumlata, the boot. You know, that's the best part is when you start evaluating when you get ripped off, you find out what the fuck was wrong with me, man. I mean, how many people do I know that really did graduate Sema Kumlata? You know, it's amazing how people's minds can spin this stuff.

and make it convincing. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, society functions by trust. You know, when there's a knock at the door and it's the UPS guy, if you don't trust that it is, you'll never open your door. Yeah. You'll never leave your house. Society would grind to a halt without trust. So that's what Lizzie Mulder and other con artists use. Oh, yeah. They know when they say they went to Pepperdine, you're just going to trust that that's true. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

The more I hear about Lizzie Mulder from Mike Cochran, the more curious I get about the dog trainer. The dog trainer recommends her. The dog trainer recommended her, yes. Was like her second mom, she claimed and all that. So I run the dog trainer through my three background check databases, and I find a phone number, and I call her up, and I get her voicemail.

Now, I don't want her to know I'm calling about Lizzie Mulder, because then she might never call me back. But I don't want to lie either. So I keep things vague, but truthful. Hey, my name is Jonathan Walton. I'm working on a podcast for iHeartRadio, and I really want to interview you. Give me a call back as soon as you can. So the next day, the dog trainer calls me back and blows my mind.

According to her, Lizzie Mulder is being set up

Next time on Queen of the Con, the OC savior. You know, the embarrassing part about us is we're one of the lower ripoffs, okay? She took $18,000 out of my business. She took a little over $20,000 out of my parents. And it looks like this con artist might not be working alone. The dog trainer tells me Lizzie Mulder is innocent. Lizzie Mulder is not a con artist. My mind is blown right now. I'm speechless. I can't even think.

An expert weighs in on just how good a con artist Lizzie Mulder really is. So what's your take on the dog trainer? That Lizzie did a hell of a job on her. I think that it's kind of one of those things where they all stick together, kind of like cops stick together, you know? Queen of the Con, the OC's savior, is a production of AYR Media and iHeart Media, hosted by me, Jonathan Walton.

Executive Producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions and Aliza Rosen for AYR Media Written by Jonathan Walton Consulting Producer Evan Goldstein Senior Associate Producer Eric Newman Sound Design by Baked ZD Media Mixed and Mastered by Cameron Tagge

Sound editing, audio and studio engineering by Matt Jacobson. Legal counsel for AYR Media, Gianni Douglas. Executive producer for iHeart Media, Maya Howard.

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