The OC Savior: Ep. 6, He Said. She Said.
32:46 Share

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.

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.

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. 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 in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I babysat her kids with my kids. What does that make you feel like now? What runs through your head? 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.

The scams of CPA Lizzie Mulder cost forensic accountant Jen Rodriguez's boss millions. And I literally almost vomited, like vomited.

Then suddenly, Jen gets drafted in Detective Jordan Merakian's increasingly expanding criminal case against Lizzie Mulder. And God knows he needs all the help he can get. I didn't get very much support from my department. Why? They run a business and their business is the entire community, not just this one victim, right? And I kept trying to explain to my command staff that this is bigger than Laguna.

The problem is, only one victim complains to Laguna Beach PD about Lizzie Mulder. The other victims complain in nearby cities like San Clemente, Irvine, and Newport Beach, which involve entirely different police jurisdictions. And the higher-ups at Laguna Beach PD really couldn't care less, because it's not their problem.

But then, all of a sudden, in the middle of everything, a huge break in Detective Merakian's case comes out of nowhere. 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 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 Elizabeth and she's an accountant.

I came home because I thought she was cheating on me. Started going through the mail, and I found all these bills for all these different people and all these credit cards, and I think she's scamming people out of millions of dollars. I said, well, what's your wife's name? And he goes, Elizabeth Mulder, but she goes by Lizzie. I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, The O.C. Savior, Episode 6, He Said, She Said.

We live in Orange, so I would go down to the Circle. Have you ever been there? The Circle? No, what's that? You've got to go to the Orange Circle. Orange Circle. It's beautiful. There's a fountain in the middle. There's a roundabout and a bunch of old antique shops and a bunch of nice restaurants in there. Anyway, I saw Jesse one day down there jogging with some of the firefighters. He saw me. I saw him. We made eye contact, and that was that. And he acknowledged you? No. No. No, he's not going to acknowledge me. He knows how I feel about him.

Jesse Mulder walks into the Laguna Beach Police Department in May of 2016. He tells Detective Merakian that Lizzie is cheating on him. And there's talk that her paramour is an Orange County cowboy named Joe Love. More on that later. But Jesse also says Lizzie is cheating her clients too, out of millions of dollars.

So Lizzie's husband starts helping Detective Merakian gather evidence against his wife. Jesse shows me kind of a haphazard stack of mail. And he agrees not to let his con artist wife know police are investigating her. Jesse swears he has nothing to do with it. And Detective Merakian believes him.

But as the days pass, the detective starts to see things a little differently. I can't prove it, but I think Jesse played me. I think the day Jesse came in to report his wife... That was the plan. I think that was all part of an orchestrated plan...

to get the detective on my side. And that way, if they do go after Lizzie, I've got my quote-unquote informant, Jesse Mulder, who's a firefighter. We're cop-firefighter. We trust each other. And so early on in the case, I was feeding Jesse information, and I was doing it because I didn't want his kids to get dragged into a search warrant. And he burned me.

And he burned me by wiping her phone. He wiped her phone? When we executed the search warrant at the house. Because he knew it was coming? Yes. That is a direct contradiction to his action in the first place, going in to report his wife. Yes. Why would the same man go in to report his wife stealing all this money from people, then wipe her phone to hide the evidence? I think she charmed him. You don't think he was, like, in on the scam and wanted to benefit from it? I don't want to say that he was in on the scam, but what I do want to say is I think at some point...

He's looking at the woman he married that he loves, the mother of his kids, and she's telling him, Jesse, if you cooperate with Laguna Beach PD, I'm going to go to jail forever and the kids aren't going to have their mother. We're going to lose this house and our whole lives are going to be over. And I think as time went on, he started to really look at a scenario where he was going to be a single dad. And it scared him. I mean, he was calling me for advice on...

You know, I divorced. I'm married now, but I divorced prior. And he was talking to me like, you know, were you able to find someone at 34 years old that would want you? And I was just like, dude, that's not what this is. Like, I'm a detective. Right. We're not BFFs.

Shortly after Jesse first walks into Laguna Beach PD to report his wife, Detective Merakian executes a search warrant at the Mulder's Laguna Beach home and confiscates computers, documents, and cell phones. Then, days later, in a truly bizarre turn of events, Lizzie Mulder inexplicably shows up out of nowhere and ambushes the detective.

How the hell did that happen? That happened when I met up with Jesse at Bluebird Park and Lizzie showed up, quote unquote, just showed up, happened to be in the neighborhood.

Lizzie wants to talk to Detective Merakian about the case right there in the park. But the detective explains that's not how things work. If she wants to talk to him in her capacity as a suspect and his capacity as an officer of the law, it's got to be official. And it's got to happen at the police station. Detective Merakian assures her she will not be arrested if she comes with him to the station to talk.

So Lizzie agreed to come down to the station and talk to me. I'm surprised she said yes. And why did she say yes? Because she's an egomaniac. She thinks she's smarter than you. They always think I'm going to charm this guy or gal and make them think. I mean, it happens on traffic stops a thousand times a day to us. Do you know why I stopped you? No, I don't. Yeah, you do. Yeah. You were going 100. Yeah, you do. You know,

You know, I'm sorry, you know, I just found out my uncle has COVID and he's coughing and I need to go to his house. It's like, no, you're not. Can I call your uncle? And the lie crumbles. We're professional bullshit detectors. Like, we get lied to all the time. And it's about to happen again.

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. ...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. 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. Normally, police have to call a suspect and sometimes even beg a suspect to come down to the station for an interview. And normally, their attorney says, hell no. But Lizzie throws Detective Merakian a curveball by just showing up out of the blue.

He's not prepared to interview his suspect yet, but at the same time... As a detective, that's a golden opportunity. You want to talk to them. You want to bring them out, bring them into the Oakland. As quickly as you can and get something. Yeah. The truth is, the day I sat down with Lizzie Mulder for her interview, I didn't know anything. I just, I pretended like I knew everything.

I wasn't prepared. I wasn't even in uniform or even in my suit and tie. I just had a shirt and slacks on. So I ran into the office. I saw the records clerk. I said, give me four or five boxes. And she goes, what for? I said, just give me some boxes. And I wrote Mulder.

on the outside of the boxes, and I stacked them up in the interview room and grabbed a bunch of miscellaneous files from our records clerk and threw them in the boxes. And I would just, as I'm talking to her, I could see her looking over my shoulder at these boxes. And I wanted her to think that I already knew everything. That was brilliant. You know, it's an old trick. And I just wanted her to think...

that we were already a couple steps ahead of her. He's actually not a couple steps ahead of her. Not yet, anyway. But that's all about to change. And thank God, Detective Merakian records his entire conversation with Lizzie Mulder on May 25th, 2016, at 6.50 p.m. A little chilly in here.

Say what you will about Lizzie Mulder. So I was doing everything. She does not go gentle into that good night. I was using the money as cash flow, waiting for the next payment so then I could make a payment on her behalf. Right out of the gate, she tries to explain away her elaborate series of cons as innocent misrepresentations. I mean, we're moving. You know, that's how this whole thing started. I thought if I could put more money through my bank account, I could show...

It certainly does. Meaning the $2.5 million Laguna Beach home overlooking the Pacific Ocean that Lizzie brags to everyone she owns and belittles friends like Jen Rodriguez for being, quote, renters. Oh, Jen, I'm so sorry you rent homes.

Oh, she said that to you? Oh, yeah. She would say that often. Well, Lizzie is actually renting too. And this revelation rubs print shop owner Mike Cochran the wrong way. It's all bullshit. And adds more weight to the theory that Lizzie's husband, Jesse, might not be as innocent as he appears to be. Her husband says he was not a collaborator. That's a freaking joke. Yeah. Okay, we went on a tour of their house. We went and ate dinner at them, and they told us about the new house that they bought in Laguna Beach.

and how they were renovating it and all this stuff. And they were exciting. We walked around and patted them on the back. While pretending to be a Laguna Beach homeowner is not a crime in and of itself, Lizzie definitely uses the facade of owning that home to trick her victims into believing she's a successful CPA. Remember what salon owner Geneva Mendoza said back in episode one? Lauren set up an appointment with her at her home office in Laguna.

And she had this really great front office with ocean views. It was beautiful. That was Lizzie using her home as bait. And now she's trying to explain it away to Detective Merakian with verbal gymnastics. I'm a liar. But I'm a liar because I don't want to come to grips with what's really happening. I just want to keep everything okay. But you're not lying to me right now. No, I'm not lying to you right now. Well, you know, like I told you at the park, you're not under arrest. I'm not going to arrest you today. Okay.

I'm not here to arrest you, okay? I'm here to find out the truth. I want to know why. You know, I know what happened for the most part, but you kept saying it's not what you think. And I've heard that before. Remember when Lizzie's husband Jesse gives her a heads up about an impending search warrant, which is supposed to be a surprise, and then he deletes the contents of her cell phone before police arrive?

Well, that's all just a misunderstanding, according to Lizzie. Jesse is actually trying to cut back on expenses and is getting rid of Lizzie's cell phone to save money. Makes perfect sense, right?

I swear, Lizzie Mulder has answers for everything, even when they make zero sense.

The first scam Detective Merakian eviscerates early on in the conversation throws everything Lizzie's ever told anyone about herself into question. Yeah.

And I never signed a return as a CCA. I just won one. You know that? How'd you end up as Pepperdine? I think it's Pepperdine. Yeah, I know. I went to Cuesta College.

This is huge. The very foundation Lizzie Mulder lays to gain entry into all her victims' businesses, by Lizzie's own admission, is a lie. She's not a CPA, even though she tricks everyone into believing she is. And she never went to Pepperdine, so that degree she has hanging in her office indicating she did is a fake.

Just like Detective Merakian strategically placed evidence boxes. Those boxes, that's the same con you did on her, her Pepperdine University degree. Right. Those are your boxes. That's the same thing. You're like, it's a prop to make people believe A when B is true. Right.

So you out-conned the con. Yeah, at that point. Yeah, because she probably thought, fuck, they have six, seven boxes about me? Like, they have a case. And they conned me at first. They did. Lizzie and Jesse, they played me. Yeah. And when I found out that I got played, the gloves are off, this is my priority now.

Detective Merakian is already well aware Lizzie's stolen nearly $300,000 from Jay Avery's company, Jack Wines, using her bogus income tax payment bank account scam and fabricating an investor named Brent Harrison, who tricks Jay into believing he's going to pump millions of dollars into Jack Wines, motivating Jay to spend a fortune getting his company ready for that investment.

I wrote a search warrant for your account. So as I peeled away the layers and started figuring out who Brett Harrison was and who he was and the investors in China and all the things that went into Jack Lyons, it all pointed back to you. We have checks to income tax payments dating back to 2013.

I wasn't an income tax payment. I was paying it myself because I was doing everything. And there were investors in China and I met them at the Ritz-Carlton and I flew to Seattle to try to, I mean... Okay. This is where this comes in. There's no grand marathon. Jay was such a liability that I created that. And I've been doing that for a long time because I don't know how to just tell people you're a liability. I have a problem that way.

And maybe that's because I've never been on medication. Maybe it's because my upbringing. I don't know what it's from. But I had no... Every time he called, I would cringe because I couldn't manage him. Jay? Yeah. Was this when he was addicted to pills and heroin? Yeah. I mean, he's been on and off forever. And that's the thing. We... Jay couldn't fund it anymore. I couldn't make it money. I left him all the wine. I didn't take any of it. I mean, he has all the assets of it.

- I don't know. I never created invoices. I've created emails. - Okay. - Okay? - So you created the Brent Harrison email? - Yes.

And why did you do that? I started that right after he lost the Indians. And who are these Indians that you're talking about? We were pretty close to making this deal go through. And the deal was for? To sell all our wine direct to all the Indian casinos because it was a really cool label. Okay. And Jay flew out to, I think it was Kentucky or Tennessee, and asked the whole thing up. And how did he do that? He was drunk and high and...

Okay.

We had a nice label. We had some really good wines. While I was trying really hard to get it sold, there was a guy named Johnny that I thought I was going to be it. And he was going to import to China. I did all the paperwork for the import and export. It just fell apart this last October. I thought he was clean. And I was going to let him come to Seattle. I was going to bring him to Chateau Van Bichelle. Chateau Van Bichelle. That's just the name of the winery.

I told him, here's the goal, here's what we're looking for, really cheap, $1.25, $1.75 export to China. I can't bring J and 5 people, business people. He's such a liability. So he's a financier, but he's not the voice, he's not the person you want at the face of the company. Yeah.

He hired me as his bookkeeper and then, look, I just took over. Just like I do with everybody. I know that I'm smart and I can do stuff and I end up doing every single thing. And it's so stupid of me. But all those checks I wrote out to Lizzie Mulder, he said, you need to pay yourself. Or all those checks like Mulder Financial Consulting, the MSC. That stuff that we talked about, and you know, of course he's not going to tell Marla. This was going on long before Marla's been involved. And this is what he said, she said.

So Lizzie, in a very matter-of-fact kind of way, is trying to explain all the money she steals from Jack Wines as a he-said, she-said. Jay is just a crazy drug addict, so she's forced to invent the Brent Harrison character to keep Jay calm while she tries to sell his company. It's for his own good. She just wants to help him.

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. ...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. 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. I reach out to Jay to get his reaction to Lizzie's explanation. What she said in that interview, some of what she said was that she created Brent Harrison to help you. To help me, yeah. That's funny.

She said that you were so crazy because of your drug addiction and carrying on that she was trying to pacify you so she could use Brent Harrison to keep giving you comfort in some way while she could hopefully sell your company for a couple of million dollars and get you that money to help you. Yeah, man, that kind of blows my mind that she would say that because there wasn't much that she did besides...

And me and Alex, who was my partner, we were handling everything. I was doing a lot of the sales. He was making the wine. He had some sales. But the drug addiction wasn't affecting my business to the point where I was a highly functioning drug addict. Highly functioning. I mean, honestly, if she wasn't in my life...

There's a very strong chance that Jacqueline would still be up and doing well, potentially thriving. She was more detrimental than anything else. So her whole thing is just full of shit. Detective Merakian isn't buying what Lizzie's saying either. But your goal by creating the Brent Harrison email was to sell the winery for a couple, like basically to keep the business afloat. And make James not a liability. Not a liability. Pages of text messages.

pages of emails between you and Jay. And he would say something like, Jeff, got off the phone with Frank Harrison and they're ready to move on the next shipment, but they need $20,000 in the Wells Fargo. Jeff, help me, Johnny.

Of course she did. And you know, all that money Detective Merakian finds in Lizzie's bank accounts from Jack Wines is just her salary that Jay told her to take. Yeah.

But how does Lizzie really expect a seasoned detective like Jordan Merakian, let alone anyone else, to believe all this stuff?

She had a lot of success tricking people, right? And so if I tricked all these people, they trusted me, they opened their bank accounts, I ripped them off, I can fool this detective too. Former FBI criminal profiler and host of the podcast Killer Psyche, Candace DeLong, says Lizzie showing up unexpectedly to talk to Detective Merakian is a calculated stunt.

that a lot of criminals use. I can tell you, if somebody walks into an FBI office to talk to an agent or walks into a police department to talk to a detective and explain, they haven't even been charged. You know, I did this and that, but they told me to pay myself and they're stupid and I didn't do anything wrong. I have an expression, Jonathan, and it is, I'll take that as a confession. Ooh. Ooh.

That was a confession. It was stupid for her to do that, but she had every reason to believe she could fool the detective just like she fooled everybody.

everybody else. And that, you know, that sends chills down my spine as you say that because it jibes with a feeling that I've had for many years. The harder someone tries to hide something, the more they end up revealing it, right? So she walks in there to try to avert disaster, try to get ahead of this investigation, try to get the cop to shut it down when really, like you said, you take it as a confession. Yep. Yes, I do. Of course, that's my favorite expression and I use it a lot.

I will borrow it and attribute it to you. I love it. Yeah, her trying to explain it away is a confession because nobody's charged her at that point. You're right. Yeah. Right away. I mean, she was trying to charm me.

Detective Merakian immediately picks up what Lizzie Mulder is putting down. Gone is the confident and glamorous Lizzie, with makeup and hair done, wearing high-end designer clothes. Here now sits a crestfallen mother of two, just trying to make ends meet, in an untucked oversized button-down shirt and jeans, hair unkempt, playing the victim.

I'm not an evil person. I don't look at people and go, how can I get money from you? It's not like you would count, you know, like I think of a thief and I think of a bad person. And I think of me, I'm a mom. It's really hard to live in Laguna and have kids. The Maserati next door. I see it every day at work. You see how old our house is. I love that. We're happy.

Yes, that really was hard on me because I was a kid whose dad was severely mentally ill and I had to walk on eggshells and I started lying at a young age. I know you did. I will. I know what I've heard. With Alice, with your mother, is she involved in any of this? No. Okay. Nobody is involved in any of this but me.

And with a straight face, Lizzie Mulder bats away accusations that she stole nearly $300,000 from Jack Wines. But what about the $291,000 she's accused of scamming from that Newport Beach salon? So, skipping ahead to Tommy and God, what happened there? How did you get introduced to them? High school friends? Lauren? Yeah. Geneva? And I first, they met with me and I said...

They didn't have money to pay anybody, really. And I said, maybe you should look around. So they got a reference from some guy. It wasn't legit. And they begged me. And that just took me down. And I should have never said I would work for free. I ended up having to pay somebody to work for me. It was a 9-to-5 job. There were so many problems. It's like hairdressers running a big business.

Right.

They're not trying to handle anything like this.

That's what's happening with Tony and Guy. They're taking out to pay their employees and they're hoping to stay afloat long enough to stay in business. Right now what's happening, there are employees that haven't gotten their income tax returns because the income tax is more paid. And that's not mine. That was never me not paying their income tax. ADP did all that. So anything that you see on there, me taking...

Well, the bank account Lizzie creates and names income tax payments begs to differ.

Watching this recorded interview of Lizzie Mulder selling all these explanations to Detective Merakian, at times she looks kind of like a grade school teacher trying to explain something complicated to a child using exaggerated hand gestures and over-pronounced facial expressions.

Other times, though, she really looks like a woman who's being falsely accused, a sympathetic figure. And she's clearly trying to influence Detective Merakian with this poor little me performance. She smiled and batted her eyes at me. And, you know, she's naturally flirtatious, and she tries to use her charm. And I got a glimpse of how these people got swindled.

I think she was hoping that I would look at her as a mother and the wife of a firefighter and someone who, you know, was paying herself because she was trying to put food on the table and these people were ripping her off. So what you're telling me in a nutshell is that you were doing business as MFC, Mulder Financial Consulting, income tax payments, and you as a

unlicensed, you're not CPA as a bookkeeper, went to these businesses and started essentially being the CFO for these businesses. - Essentially. - And then during the course of your duties as CFO or bookkeeper, you would pay yourself. - Yeah. - And at some point, you got in over your and actually took more money than what you deserved to keep up with the pages on the house. - Yeah.

Seems like a logical, even forthcoming explanation, right? But Lizzie Mulder's interview is actually pretty damning. She's basically lying about everything. And Detective Merakian can prove it, which means the criminal case he's got against her is stronger than ever.

But some unseen powerful force appears to be conspiring to help Lizzie get away with everything. You know, I was getting pressure to basically close the case. They wanted you to get rid of it and not do anything. Just close it. The district attorney told me, I don't think this is a winnable case. It doesn't really have any jury appeal. And quite honestly, it's too convoluted. And I don't think you have enough to win in court.

Yep. For those of you keeping score, that's one for con artist Lizzie Mulder and zero for all her victims. Okay. Any other questions? No. Okay.

Next time on Queen of the Con, The O.C. Savior, a new victim suddenly appears. Who is Joe Love? What a name, right? Yeah, he sounds like a porn star. Yeah, Joe Love. Joe Love. And while Lizzie might be caught, that's not slowing her down one bit. When you're in a psychiatric hospital, police can't come in and get you. I know. You're safe. ♪

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.

Does money stress you out? Let Facet flip your financial chaos into clarity. Finding Facet immediately put us at ease. Facet's innovative approach to financial planning ensures your money works as hard as you do, enabling members to experience the joys of having your finances in order. That makes us facet for life now, I guess. Visit facet.com.

FACET.com to learn more. This ad is sponsored by Facet. Facet Wealth is an SEC-registered investment advisor. This is not an offer to buy or sell securities, nor is it investment, legal, or tax advice. These testimonials are from current Facet members who are not compensated. All opinions are their own and not a guarantee of a similar outcome.

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.

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.

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.