The OC Savior: Ep. 5, Devil in the Den
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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. Hey, y'all.

Dr. Joy here. I invite you to join me every Wednesday on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly chat about mental health and personal development, where my expert guests and I discuss the unique challenges and triumphs faced by Black women through the lens of self-care, pop culture, and building the best version of you. So if you're looking for more ways to incorporate wellness into your life, listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. 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. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

How much money did she get from you?

$291,000. She got me for like $285,000 altogether. $285,000? Yeah. Tricking her clients into writing high-dollar checks made out to income tax payments. They all think those checks are going to the IRS. But really, they're getting deposited into a secret bank account that Lizzie Mulder creates called income tax payments. That's blasphemy.

bullshit, man. I mean, that's lack of moral accountability. And while Lizzie's victims lose hundreds of thousands to her clever scam, Jen Rodriguez's boss is about to blow them all out of the water. Because how much money did your boss end up losing? Millions. I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, The O.C. Savior, Episode 5, Devil in the Den. Explain to me,

How did Lizzie steal money from your boss? Blindly. Robbed her blind.

Forensic accountant Jen Rodriguez intensely regrets being friends with Lizzie Mulder for a handful of years while working at the same company selling luxury experiences to high-end clientele. And I babysat her kids with my kids. What does that make you feel like now? What runs through your head? You know, in a moment, sometimes I feel like a bad mom because I opened my family up and, you know, I kind of invited the devil into the den.

That makes me uneasy because I do have a sense of responsibility to protect my family. And, you know, I've made them a little bit more vulnerable than they needed to be. And that's uneasy for sure. That's a regret. I feel the exact same way. Like you invited this vampire into your world, into your family. Yeah. Introduced them to people. Right. Vouched for them. Vouched for them. Unwittingly helped them scam people. Right? Exactly. I know how you feel. Mare did that to me too. And Mare used...

our relationship to establish herself as this trustworthy person who knows, you know, my husband and I were good people. So like she uses our reputation to scam other people. Yeah. And Lizzie Mulder did the same to you. Yeah. When you realize that your vision of seeing the good in people is what caused so much pain and hurt to so many people. I feel like you blame yourself.

I mean, there's a level of responsibility, of course. But you shouldn't blame yourself. It's like a thing you have to go through. You feel like responsible. You feel responsible. I felt that way too. And there were so many things that as an accountant, as a controller, having a background, you know, knowing processes and protocol. And I just have to say, my husband always saw through Lizzie's bullshit. He always knew, like he had...

such intuition like there's something not right but at the time you know I would have never assumed somebody would steal like that is like the furthest thing from my mind I I couldn't even like that wasn't a thing I thought maybe you know she's a little arrogant yeah and a little nice yeah but I never would have thought there was more to that story but he called it from the time he met her

The first lie Jen actually catches Lizzie in is that Salesforce database call that we talked about in the last episode. It's like a $5,000 subscription. I had told her, Lizzie, you need to pay this bill. I'm shut down. And she had told me, I'm on the phone right now with a guy. Well, I was on the phone with the guy. And she was texting me blow by blow, but I was on the phone with Salesforce and there was just no response.

So you knew every single text at that point was a lie. A lie. Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah. How did you find out Lizzie was up to no good? With the fraud part or... With everything. It seems like it was a cascading series of events that happened one after the other where you realize she's been scamming your boss. Yes. But how specifically, like what was the first sign? That was the first sign with the sales force call. However...

In that moment, being naive to all of this, there's no way I would have ever put together that somebody created this bank. I had no idea. I know, because it just seems so out of left field evil. Who could do that? It still is. It still is. Six years later, it's still unfathomable to me. However, what happened that really put it all into the tumbling snowball effect was...

One of our friends that Lizzie was good friends with called me and said, have you heard the rumors? There were rumors. There were rumors. And what were those rumors? That Lizzie had done some nefarious things. She had a bank account and one of their other friends' names and credit cards in their names. And Jesse discovered all this stuff when Lizzie was gone on a vacation.

Remember, Jesse is Lizzie's husband. And at that time, she said she's writing these checks and they're to income tax payments. Well, I happen to have all the mail. So she told you all of this? Yeah. Wow. You think she talked to me? That's a big fat no. She won't talk to me. But thankfully, Jen will. Wow.

One of my greatest mentors, John Tomczyk, he always says, this is how you touch people is through stories. That's why I'm here with you is because, yeah, through this podcast, my story is going to touch a bookkeeper or a friend, a parent, a child, whatever, whoever. They're going to hear the story and hear your story and say, oh my gosh, this is a thing. Right. I can spot it and prevent it. Yes. Jen Rodriguez, a more benevolent creature you will never find.

Anyway, after Jen hears the rumors that Lizzie is scamming people, she does what any good friend would do. I called Lizzie and said, there's some things going on and rumors going around. Are you okay? And the panic and the fear in her voice...

I mean, unless she is really a phenomenal actor, it felt... To me, her panic and fear in her voice is what made it really real for me. Yeah. Was because I realized, oh my God, she really did do this. Like, this is real. After that phone call, Jen gets very suspicious that things aren't adding up. She suddenly worries Lizzie is involved in something criminal.

So Jen decides to take matters into her own hands in an attempt to figure out what Lizzie's up to. I used to carry the mail from my boss and give it to Lizzie. I used to transfer it back and forth. Like, you know, I'd get her mail and I'd give it to her. I never would open her mail because it just wasn't part of my duty or my responsibilities. I just was a courier for the mail. Right. And I happened to have a stack of her mail. Right.

And I ripped open a bank statement right then and there and saw right there on the bank statement that there was a check for $8,000 to income tax payments. And I literally almost vomited. Oh my God. Like vomited. Because you knew at that point that that's going into Lizzie's account. Well, I didn't even go to that place yet because that was even like, wait, you have an account with income tax payments? Like what?

It was so unfathomable. It's like dreaming up the Game of Thrones. Like, how could you dream that up? Like, there were so many layers. Because I don't think most people would think they could open an account at a bank called Income Tax Payments. I wouldn't think she did. People think the bank would flag it, but... You would think. They won't. They won't.

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 unnerving.

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. 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.

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. Yeah.

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. Lizzie Mulder takes income tax payment checks from Jen's boss for five years.

She would sit down with her and prepare her quarterly numbers based off her business sales and revenue. And she would say, okay, this is what you need to pay for your estimated taxes. And she would prepare a payment. She would sign the check. She would take the check. She would leave her house and go and deposit the check directly into her bank account. Income tax payments.

But her bank account was really Mulder Financial and Consulting. And then she had a DBA underneath that account as income tax payment, which was really clever. Yeah. Because technically, in bank jargon, the income tax payment, the DBA, is technically a third party. DBA, which means doing business as...

So they're technically not clients of the bank, which is this gray banking law. It's a loophole. It's a loophole that she either was a complete genius or she got really lucky. Because she's letting now the bank off the hook.

Yes. Because income tax payments technically didn't open the account. Right. Mulder Financial did. So she created a layer. And this is very common in con, you know, like when you have money wiring, you do a lot of layering because it helps to hide it. Lizzie Mulder is a crafty one for sure.

To create layers, as Jen says, not only does Lizzie use a DBA called income tax payments to open a new bank account, Detective Merakian uncovers Lizzie actually has Jesse, her husband, open that bank account for her. So she's not directly connected to it at all. Every month in Lizzie's Bank of America account that we found actually completely by accident. Ooh. Yeah. How so? So...

When you execute a search warrant to the bank, you have to be very specific. Right. I need all the accounts under this name, this social security number. So Bank of America returned the search warrant, and I had Mulder Financial, right? Which is Lizzie's accounting business.

And when I got that search warrant back, I'm looking at it and I'm not really seeing anything suspicious. Had a balance of like eight grand, you know, 10,000 in deposits, 12,000 in withdrawals, you know, just normal everyday transactions. And I called Bank of America and I said, something's wrong here because this woman is cashing these checks. And the Bank of America investigator, they're very limited on what they can tell us. They have to stay within the search warrant.

And so the investigator, which is usually a retired cop, right, says, well, there's another account here, but it's not under Lizzie Mulder. She's an authorized signer on the account. So, like, if your husband has a bank account and he adds you as a signer, you can essentially go into the bank and cash a check, right? Right. But it's his account. But it's his account. And if Detective Merakian issues a search warrant on you...

His account is not going to show up. So what Lizzie had done is she created income tax payments, DBA, doing business as, under Jesse Mulder, her husband, and then added herself as a signer. And that is completely intentional. 100%. To distance herself. Yes. She must have known it wouldn't come up in a search warrant. Like, that's pretty fucking meticulous. Either that or she didn't care if Jesse got caught.

Most con artists are psychopaths, incapable of feeling empathy for other human beings. So maybe she really doesn't care if her husband Jesse gets caught.

The other thing about psychopaths is they're compulsive and convincing liars. And most victims don't discover the lie until it's way too late. Part of what she did too is she diminished my knowledge to my boss because my boss would never listen if I would say, hey, this doesn't quite make sense. You would get batted down. I would get batted down. Okay, so she was programming your boss against you and you against your boss. She probably was.

I swear, divide and conquer. It's every con artist's first move. Don't you think Lizzie was talking shit about Jen to Jen's boss, and that's one of the reasons maybe Jen's boss was so dismissive when Jen would point out things? Oh, yeah. Detective Merakian is now keenly aware of the entirety of Lizzie Mulder's M.O.,

One of the things Lizzie was famous for is, in a roundabout way, making people feel stupid, right? Like, you know what? You run a podcast. I'm an accountant. Let me handle it. Right. You just focus on your podcast. Yeah. That's kind of how she would talk to people. And every single victim I talked to said the same thing. They said, yeah, every time I would start asking questions, she would just get dismissive or...

She would throw a temper tantrum. Wow. And just get angry. Like insulted. How dare you? How dare you? I'm Pepperdine, right? And so Jen's a very like namaste kind of person. And Lizzie kind of browbeats people into, hey, you stay in your lane.

And that's how Lizzie operates. And Lizzie's lane is her income tax payment bank account scam. But that isn't the only method she employs to con money out of Jen's boss. Lizzie was supposed to get a quote for business insurance and it was supposed to be for $500. And Lizzie wrote the check for $5,000 and my boss caught it.

And she was able to get the money back, which was kind of interesting. But she made it out to this mystery person that was supposedly this insurance agent. And that wasn't even real.

When I went on vacation is when she had a heyday because she took the checks that I wrote to vendors and cashed them into her personal check. Did she write checks to Lizzie Mulder or her company or income tax payments? It wasn't even to anything. It was to other vendors, but the bank never caught it. Oh, so she just deposited those checks in her account. Boy, banks are sloppy.

They sure are. Aren't they? You think when you write the name on the check that only that person can cash it, but... It's not the case. And the reason why, and for all of us consumers and people that want to get their money fast, is because check deposits are automated. And so they go through. So unless something is flagged,

then it's not caught often. There were so many checks that didn't have signatures that she didn't even, they weren't even signed, but they never got caught. And the bank cashed them. And the bank cashed them without even catching it. So many. Lizzie steals more than $800,000 from Jen's boss, which is a fortune.

But the financial fallout Lizzie's scams create in IRS penalties and legal fees is way more than that. How much money did your boss end up losing? Millions. Millions of dollars because of Lizzie Mulder? Mm-hmm. Gosh, that would devastate anyone. And in the same way that my con artist, the Irish heiress, changes the trajectory of my life forever, con artist Lizzie Mulder changes the trajectory of Jen's life too.

At the time, you were not a forensic accountant. No. So this whole experience with Lizzie Mulder inspired you to become out of almost necessity. Yes. First of all, I'd had 16 or 18 years of accounting experience, day-to-day operations, being a controller, reconciliation, like all the things that you do to run a business.

But at the time when I was younger, a forensic accountant was when, you know, you sue a partner and you need to go through their books or you're getting divorced and you need to go through your ex-husband's books. Forensic accounting wasn't, hey, let's look at fraud. This is fairly new. It's now more a thing than ever. I mean, it's really not new, but we're experiencing it more. Yeah.

So at the same time, Jen is going through all her boss's financial records to ferret out exactly how Lizzie Mulder scammed her. She's studying for an entirely new career. I threw myself into school and I got a master's in forensic accounting, digital forensics with a concentration in data analytics also, because that's what it really boils down to. Yeah. It's looking at a lot of data. You are amazing.

And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Jen was friends with Lizzie Mulder, and Jen started discovering this fraud. Before I even called her. Detective Jordan Merakian quickly figures out that soon-to-be forensic accountant Jen Rodriguez is about to become a powerful ally. Jen's boss. She's operating this business, and she's got Jen Rodriguez, who is doing a lot of the

accounting and bookkeeping. And she's also got Lizzie, who's the accountant. Right. And so when Jen, who is very meticulous, is sending these records to Lizzie, and Lizzie's refusing to send things back, Jen starts getting suspicious and going to her boss, who's a friend. But in Jen's boss's ear is this Pepperdine-educated accountant who's very manipulative. And you have to understand the personality of Jen Rodriguez's boss.

You know, if she were to take her car to get it washed and they were to say, would you like us to wax it? She'd say, I don't know. You guys do the car wash. You do whatever you think you need to do and just tell me how much. Right? Yeah. She's not a numbers person, you know, and that's why Lizzie was able to get so many checks out of her.

Jen discovered very early on, like before things got really bad, Jen discovered a check that was out of place. Like, hey, this doesn't make sense. This check was cashed twice or whatever. And Jen contacted Lizzie. Lizzie blew up and Jen brought it to her boss's attention. And within minutes, Lizzie had cleared it up.

Lizzie had an email from a fake person saying, our mistake. We didn't mean to cash that check. We've refunded you the money. Here you go. And Lizzie immediately deposits the money back into his account. Jen, who can't see the account, just sees this email and is like, well, I'm going to keep my eye on her. But it looks like it was a mistake. But it wasn't a mistake. It was part of the check fraud scheme.

Jen and Detective Merakian hit it off almost immediately. How did Detective Merakian enter your life? Okay, so we met first only on the phone. He called you? Yes. I think he had reached out to my boss, and then my boss gave him approval to talk to me. Okay. And he called me, and I remember I was in the car with my husband and my son, and I remember thinking, like, this is not going to work.

this is really a thing, like a police officer's calling me, you know, and I got to talk to him. And shortly after that phone call, Jen Rodriguez becomes instrumental in the Lizzie Mulder investigation. Jen Rodriguez is really kind of the person that helped keep me organized and also helped explain that scheme. Because that's tricky to follow. Yeah, it's very tricky.

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. 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.

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. Jen Rodriguez is really good with numbers, so she starts assisting Detective Merakian with untangling the complicated financial web of scams that Lizzie Mulder pulls on her boss.

So you had an accounting background. Yes. And you started helping Detective Merakian with all these numbers, trying to trace the money and figure out... Put the pieces together. Right. And so then I start telling him where the money had gone. I had already tracked that it was going to this one. Found the ABA. I was able to find just some little pieces that I knew, not knowing that I was really doing detective work, but just trying to follow the money, right? Money's gone. You got to follow the money. Common sense.

So we talked and we put it together. You know, it developed so organically because he had skills and tools and things that I didn't have. Like, so I would say, can you subpoena this? And like, if we get the bank records, we can find this. So you would point out things that he didn't necessarily know he needed. Or he would say, like, we could do this. And I'd be like, oh, if we could do this, we could get that.

Like H&R Block was one. I think he had a subpoena because I was like, well, if we could see she used H&R Block to file all these taxes, we can see where the money went. So that was like one thing he was able to do that.

So at first, I felt like sometimes we were throwing pasta against the wall to see what would stick. I probably wasted a lot of energy and time because I was just trying to find everything. Now I know that you need to have a little bit more focus and tension when you're working, but I was just consuming everything I could because I wanted to understand. You wanted justice. And I wanted to hopefully find the money. I thought, oh, if I could just get the money, it'll all be okay. Right, you could help your boss. Yeah, it'll be all okay. Okay.

Jen Rodriguez is truly a godsend for Detective Merakian because the Lizzie Mulder case is quickly getting insanely complicated and expansive as Detective Merakian starts finding more and more victims and tries to convince each and every one of them to press charges.

The deputy district attorney who prosecuted my case, my con artist, told me at the onset, because it would be like 20-something court appearances over like more than a year. It took so much of my time and off work and everything. He said, most people in your position just stop coming to court and we have to drop the charges. We have to drop the case. I'm like, that's not happening. Right. But I understand it can wear you down and people don't want to participate. And if you don't participate, there's no case. They dismiss it.

And I stayed on these victims. They all have my personal cell. Which is amazing. I was calling them, checking in with them, just keeping them from giving up. And it wasn't because I'm this great detective. It was because I had put so much of my time into it that I didn't want to lose it based on someone deciding last minute they wanted to back out.

It would have been incredibly frustrating, and it would have been a disservice to everybody else. Yeah. I was taking calls at all hours of the night. Yeah, to keep victims in, in the fight. Right. My wife, who never complains about anything, started complaining. She started saying, you're always on your phone. It's this case that's sucking up so much of your time. It was consuming. You'd think Laguna Beach PD would be circling the wagons right about now and assisting their ace detective with this incredibly complicated and far-reaching case.

But you'd be dead wrong. I didn't get very much support from my department. Why? They run a business, essentially. Laguna Beach PD runs a business, and their business is the entire community, not just this one victim, right? Which I understand. But I think police departments as a whole, not the one I work for now, but I think police departments as a whole stop looking at people as people.

Your case number 18-00171, you know? And I kept trying to explain to my command staff that this is bigger than Laguna. I had a number of detectives blow me off from other departments. I had some that were very helpful. Newport Beach PD was very helpful. But there were a couple other jurisdictions that...

Yeah, dude, whatever you want to do with this case, that's yours. I don't want any part of it. Cool. Right? So when I say they weren't cooperative or weren't helpful, what I mean by that is I was trying to get them to shoulder some of this investigation. Right, to put some hours in so you're not taking calls with your wife in bed at night. Right, or I'm not driving all the way out to San Clemente to interview the victim. Right, when they could send their local people. So you didn't get much support. Right. You kind of inadvertently recruited Jen...

Because nobody was helping you. And here you have Jen, who's savvy with numbers and accounting and knows all this stuff. She kind of became your investigator. She, like, helped you with this case. Right. And that's why I'm always very quick to give her credit. You know, Jen would get spreadsheets done for me on Excel that would normally take me an entire day.

I'm just a beat cop, right? I'm just a guy who goes out knuckle-dragging beat cop who has a grease board and he's writing a bunch of numbers on a grease board that could be erased by the cleaning crew. Yeah. And I've got do not erase on it. It's not scientific. Whereas I've got Jen Rodriguez sending me Excel spreadsheets and like I would lose a check. Like I can't find this one check and she'd be like, oh, I got it. Check your email. I mean, just very organized. Yeah.

Jordan and I were like obsessed. Yeah. Like, I mean, I literally slept like one hour a night for like three years. Yeah. You know, we had to get to it. We had to get to all the answers. And those answers are coming from a multitude of directions.

While victims like Jay and Marla Avery from Jack Wines show up and report Lizzie Mulder directly to police... But when we did talk to Jordan Meraki, he was like the first person not to make me feel crazy. Other victims first surface as random names on some of Lizzie's forged documents. Victims like Mike Cochran. Lizzie Mulder entered our life when I was the owner and operator of a print shop down in Irvine.

But by far the most bizarre twist in this con case is the day Jesse Mulder, Lizzie's husband, shows up at Laguna Beach PD seemingly out of the blue and drops a dime on his wife. I'm walking out of the station and in walks Jesse Mulder. I need to talk to a detective. I mean, literally, like, just like that. I look at him. I'm a detective. How can I help you?

And he says, I'm a firefighter, and I think my wife is scamming her clients out of money, and I'm afraid that she's got me involved in it. All right, let's talk. So Jesse's with a friend of his who is an attorney. Not necessarily his attorney, but an attorney. Right.

So we sit down in the conference room and Jesse proceeds to tell me this story. And I don't know that he's married to Lizzie Mulder. So Jesse sits down with me, tells me how he's a brand new firefighter in the city of Orange. He's married to a woman named Lizzie, or he called her Elizabeth. And she's an accountant. And I came home because I thought she was cheating on me. I started going through the mail.

And I found all these bills for all these different people and all these credit cards that are in her name and in the name of her business. And I think she's scamming people out of millions of dollars. And I didn't put two and two together yet. And I said, well, what's your wife's name? And he goes, Elizabeth Mulder, but she goes by Lizzie. And I went, okay, yeah, we need to talk. Next time on Queen of the Con, The O.C.'s Savior.

Lizzie Mulder ambushes Detective Merakian. How the hell did that happen? Lizzie showed up. Quote-unquote, just showed up. Happened to be in the neighborhood. But in the end, it comes back to bite her. Hard. So you out-conned the con at that point. Yeah, at that point. And they conned me at first. They did. Jesse played you. They played me.

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 Elisa 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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