Coining It with Lewis Goodall | Ep 4 - Unmissables: Explosive Lies

9:33Lewis Goodall:This is Melbourne finance journalist John Stensholt, whose job it is to get the scoops on Australia's richest people. He's got a rapier sharp eye for the money scene there. And so when, a few years ago, this new Bitcoin platform, Coinspot seemed to have emerged from nowhere, his curiosity was piqued. So he started digging.

9:53James Parker:And all of a sudden, this brand called Coinspot comes along. And I was probably amongst a lot of other people wondering, who are these people? And it was extraordinary what I saw. Russell Wilson, the majority owner of the company, shared in something like five or six hundred million Australian dollars worth of dividends. The company was making just about that much again in profits. You know, suddenly this Wilson, who hardly anyone would have heard of ever, emerged as one of Australia's highest paid owners of companies. And clearly he was very, very, very wealthy. But hardly anything was known about him.

10:42Lewis Goodall:It is an astonishing firm, an early success of the Bitcoin era, moneyed now beyond belief, but with none of the real zeal or trappings of the more well-known big tech firms. No modern-day robber baron, wading into politics, courting notoriety. In fact, quite the opposite.

11:02James Parker:The corporate headquarters is this small building that's pretty close to town, but it shares the building with businesses as well. There's a remedial massage therapist in the building too, and a Pilates studio. He remains extremely elusive. And it's hard to tell exactly how many people work there because hardly anything shows up on LinkedIn. There's no one bragging about working at Coinspot.

11:29Lewis Goodall:Its reclusive boss, Russell Wilson, had phoned Parker directly. He'd lost millions at Parker's hands, and he wanted it back. But perhaps as befits such an enigmatic company, he was ready to make a deal, a low-key one, a combination of carrot and stick, as James Parker himself would later relay.

11:54James Parker:This guy's called from Australia. he said I've appropriated these Bitcoin and he wants X amount back and he said I'll have to settle and he went right so then he managed to get his phone number and then he started talking to him and that Russell called me a criminal Who said you had to settle? Russell. OK. He said, well, you'll have to settle. OK. Yeah. So it was a negotiation from start to finish once he phoned me. And he called me a criminal on the phone. And I said to him, I'm not speaking to you no more. I said, I'm not a criminal. I've done nothing wrong. If you want to do anything to do with this, you need to do negotiations with Steve and only Steve, because I'm not swigging to you anymore.

12:54James Parker:And I've never spoke to the guy ever since. OK.

12:58Lewis Goodall:Russell Wilson emailed Parker at the very start of their Dubai holiday. He laid out that Parker's glitch had siphoned off nearly 40 million Australian dollars worth of cryptocurrency from his site. and that Coinspot were ready to pursue criminal and civil charges. But what would be vastly preferable would be an arrangement. Coinspot could see the extraordinary amount of Bitcoin he and the others had glitzed from them, more than 2 ,000. And if Parker would just return most of them, he could keep some. Not bad going at all in a deal to make the whole affair just quietly disappear. No prosecution.

13:42Lewis Goodall:It just goes away. Parker's aide, Stephen Boyes, took over negotiating with Coinspot directly. And eventually, they came to terms.

13:56It's absolutely legally binding, done by a law firm in Australia,

14:03James Parker:just from what Steve told me. He said he's got a team of lawyers working on it, blah, blah, blah. it's bulletproof blah blah blah sign it pay it done okay green and clean you called it price okay i didn't know that so by returning the 436 bitcoin you saw that that was it we settled protect you settle you don't you settle don't you and that's it you just settle for whatever they won. And the settlement figure came out at 436 and that was it. Settled. Done. OK. So you return 436 signing this contract and you think that protects you from criminal prosecution? Yeah. Look, I think a lot of it with that is probably saving the reputation of the company.

14:54Lewis Goodall:John Stensholt again, who's seen many fraught situations like these in business.

15:00James Parker:If it gets out that they've been hacked and it's like a pretty easy hack, then, you know, I'm not sure what the online or crypto equivalent of a run on a bank is, but it probably, you know, could end up with that sort of situation. I think clearly, you know, security and reputation would have been foremost in his mind at the time.

15:20Lewis Goodall:So while meeting Russians about villas, snapping gold bars on beds and getting a million in cash in Dubai, Stephen Boyes had also been playing hardball with Coinspot, telling them that James couldn't repay$1 ,700. No, it'd be more like $436, given how many had apparently already been spent. A figure that Coinspot actually agreed to.

15:47James Parker:Talk about the art of the deal. He agreed to settle with him and I agreed to help him. And I agreed to help Russell Wilson, who was more than thankful in emails and telephone calls to me for all the help in negotiating the settlement on his behalf. He said we wouldn't have been able to do it without you.

16:11Lewis Goodall:Of course, we've tried to get in touch with Coinspot and Mr Wilson, but unfortunately, they haven't responded. What's important, though, is that all of this allowed James Parker and Stephen Boyes to return from Dubai. And just imagine their relief. Parker's glitch had been rumbled, but thanks to Stephen Boyes, he'd been able to keep several hundred Bitcoin. Not to mention cash, gold, and a clutch of villas to boot, and who knows what else. And just like Dalboy, he would always look after Rodney.

16:47James Parker:He did look after me financially. After the Coinbot settlement, he gave me close on a million pound. He said, you know, I wouldn't have had it if you hadn't settled with him. And I said, well, I'll accept it, but I'll use that money to build a property portfolio for you when we get back to the UK.

17:12Lewis Goodall:You know, you say you had not heard about the glitch. This has all come totally as news to you. you've got James there admitting wrongdoing effectively admitting that to you dishonest well dishonesty wrongdoing whatever it is you've got the CEO of a you know big company on the phone alleging fraud you're in Dubai you're surrounded by this gold these watches you must have had at least a suspicion that this was wrong potentially illegal why didn't you just walk away at that

17:41James Parker:point i i knew as soon as he told me about the glitch that it was it was wrong then illegal do you thought it was illegal i thought it was dishonest of what he'd done he should have owned up and told um russell wilson coin spot about the glitch as soon as he realized that it falsely credited him and that could have been the end of it but he didn't he decided to tell other people about it and he decided to continue to exploit the glitch on an industrial scale.

18:12Lewis Goodall:Do you understand why some people listening will think you didn't walk away because you wanted part of the proceeds?

18:19James Parker:I was helping my client settle a civil agreement and I was helping Russell Wilson as well.

18:25Lewis Goodall:But not everyone was in the same position. Stephen Boy's deal had meant a frantic scramble to get everyone else's Bitcoin back.

18:36James Parker:Mum had mentioned something about the website getting in touch. Their IP addresses were blocked from the website. That was the first thing that happened. I remember my mum being very stressed and panicked at that moment, not because she had lost access to them, but because James, under Stephen's word, was being very unfair with the distribution of how much each person should pay. And she was obviously stressed out about that because she was planning for our future. She was actually in contact with solicitors about how to cash out these bitcoins in a legal way. She wanted to pay tax on them. She wanted it to be a legitimate venture so that she could then buy a house and get us out of the situation that we were in.

19:24So that was incredibly stressful.

19:30Lewis Goodall:It must have sent panic around everybody.

19:33James Parker:Yeah, everybody was really panicked.

19:37Lewis Goodall:But doesn't this show, in a way, Dave, what an unusual kind of fraudster he was? It may have felt to him at least, and it may feel like to some people listening, that it was a victimless crime. Lancashire police detective David Wainwright. That is other people's money he's spending.

19:55James Parker:CoinSpot have to honour other people's trades. People investing in crypto, like they do stocks and shares, people have legitimately made a lot of money investing in Bitcoin. Well, that's other people's money he's taking.

20:10Lewis Goodall:And talking of other people's money.

20:13James Parker:The vast proportion of all of my Bitcoins went straight back to James when the CoinSpot thing came on top. Because I said to him, I said, you can have everything back. He said, no, I don't want all of it. I said, well, I want you to have it. I was scared at that point. I was very scared because I finally realised what I had dipped my toe into, so to speak. It's more than a dip. It's a bit of a plunge.

20:45Lewis Goodall:Panic, though, affects us all in different ways. Whether James Parker was truly panicked or not is hard to say. The glitch was now gone and a fragile deal was holding with CoinSpot to keep it all quiet. But while James' friends were drowning in their own fears about what could happen next and having to hastily find Bitcoin to give back, James kept the money flowing. The reason? Because deal or no deal, plenty of his dodgy Bitcoin had already been converted to cash through their man Jamal in Dubai.

21:24James Parker:And when he came back in March, he had a kilo bar of gold. So he got worried and got scared that he was going to get robbed for all this money. So he went to Jade Jewelers, sold the gold bar. As I say, I think he got 24 ,000, 25 ,000 for that. And then he had countless coins to the value of, again, about 20 ,000, 23 ,000.

21:48Lewis Goodall:And by the time they were home, James was, once again, out on the town, throwing his money around, again, but even more widely now, harder and faster than he'd ever done before.

22:03James Parker:I refused to go to the casino. I didn't want to go there anymore. I was like, why, what's all this, you know what I mean, trying to fill the day up?

22:10Lewis Goodall:His friend, Amy Burgess.

22:12James Parker:I just sort of rocked the boat a lot because I just, I couldn't understand wasting all this money, this stupidity of everything. I mean, at one point I saw him withdraw£30 ,000 in... Oh, what was that now? So, what's the name of the casino now, Pleasure Beach? £30 ,000 when I saw him withdraw one night. He'd done that at every casino in Blackpool.

22:42James Parker:He'd sort of gone off the rails when we got back from Dubai. He then started gambling, drinking more heavily, being extravagant with gifts and cars and jewellery.

22:59Lewis Goodall:Were you concerned that he was just sort of drawing attention to himself, to what had happened?

23:04James Parker:I was, and he did do that, certainly in the casinos. He'd sort of bet big and win big. One particular occasion I saw him give the coupé a£1 ,000 tip. Throw his hands up in the air, drinks for everybody, you know, that sort of thing. And I think that's when he did draw attention to himself.

23:31Lewis Goodall:But not everything was entirely frivolous. Just as he'd moved Kelly Caton into the hotel to give her some respite from the cold and the damp of her Blackpool home, he now wanted to go one further. He'd spotted a big house up near Fleetwood and he wanted to make sure that Kelly could live in it permanently. OK, so it wasn't a villa in Dubai, but it was nice. Again, James, in his own words.

24:00James Parker:I make a bunch of people. I'm kind of generous guy I want to help them out then I'm given the tools to help them out and the purchase of that house was not for me it was for a family that lived in Blackpool in a damp ridden house, absolutely filthy disgusting house and I wanted to help them so Steve bought that house in the company's name which we then was going to buy buy the house back from the company with Bitcoin, and they turned it down. They said, no, don't want it. There you go. Is this Kelly Caton? Is it Kelly Caton? That's what I asked you. Good bring. That is her. Why did she turn it down?

24:48James Parker:Don't know. She's a weird one.

24:50Lewis Goodall:By now, though, Kelly Caton was becoming wary, scared about what it all might mean.

24:57James Parker:They wanted us to get this house, no matter how many times I told them that we could not live in Fleetwood. It was totally logistically impossible for us to live there. I mean, when it first came up about getting us a house, we thought it was to be rented, which, you know, was probably a bit more doable. But then they insisted, no, no, we're getting it for you, it's going to be in your name. And I'm like, no, that's ridiculous. I was getting phone calls as well. No, you said you wanted the house, we're going to get you the house. I'm in the estate agent now. You're going to have to pay for this house.

25:32James Parker:I don't want the house. And they just kept phoning and phoning and phoning. And that's when I cut off contact from them completely. I couldn't make any decisions for myself. Just put my foot down. No. So it's around about this time that you've cut ties with them all?

25:52Lewis Goodall:Absolutely, yeah.

25:58Lewis Goodall:Stephen Boyes, meanwhile, was in a rage.

26:28Lewis Goodall:deserve James's concern about them as they have just no respect or gratitude for what James was trying to do for them. I've washed my hands of them. I want nothing to do with them. How do you feel about that? I mean, calling you and your mum scum?

26:41James Parker:I think that's a testament to Stephen's character. The idea of categorising a vulnerable woman, single mother, as scum feels very classist. Stephen was absolutely the catalyst to James and my mum falling out he was very controlling and my mum didn't let him she just didn't let him do that she wanted to be friends with James that was the long and short of it so although it's difficult to hear that it's also quite laughable because what I think is scummy is holding yourself higher than somebody else because of the financial situation they have found themselves in.

27:29Lewis Goodall:You've mentioned the Catons. There is a text message where you sound very annoyed with them for refusing the house that was offered. It looks like in that message that you call them scum, ungrateful, selfish. Is that what you still think? Is that what they are?

27:45James Parker:Some of the people that he gave things to, I could see straight through them. They weren't interested in James as a person. They were just interested in what they could get out of it for themselves, really. And some of those I did refer to as not nice people. Scum? I don't think I used the word scum, but if you're saying I did, I did, yeah.

28:12Lewis Goodall:Well, do you think it's appropriate? Ungrateful, selfish, do you think that's what they are? Some of them were, yeah, definitely.

28:18James Parker:He really gave the impression that he just knew more than everybody else around him. Yeah, the air of arrogance was thick around Stephen.

28:28Lewis Goodall:So James Parker was left with a huge house in Fleetwood on his hands and his friendships suddenly all seeming so much less solid, so much less certain, which was making James furious.

28:46James Parker:When the group sort of split and my mum was pushed to the side she definitely saw that she was getting abusive messages and phone calls from him at that time I wasn't living at home so I don't know exactly what was said but there were instances when I saw that if somebody wronged him he was very quick to anger and he held on to it as well.

29:18Lewis Goodall:Held on to it what way?

29:20James Parker:He would rant about it for days afterwards just at the most random moments. He didn't like to be disrespected that was his main thing if he felt like he was being disrespected that's what made him fly off the handle.

29:34Lewis Goodall:Even his would-be business partner Stephen Boyes was by now tearing his hair out at James's reckless spending on the vast amount of the remaining Dubai money. These are some of the texts Boyes was sending to James at the time.

29:49James Parker:We agreed no more cars when we got back from Dubai. You just ignored my advice and continued to buy cars for people.

30:00Lewis Goodall:But James too was in a funk of his own over something else, a luxury watch. It was just another absurdity the boys couldn't believe as he wrote to Jamal.

30:12James Parker:Hi Jamal, I saw James again today, found out that he smashed up the watch you bought him as a gift with a hammer and then thrown the present I bought him from Dubai in the bin just because of the mix-up with the watches. What an ungrateful, spoiled, childish act of temper. It's just designed to upset me and you. It's upset me a lot. I'm not sure how you feel about it but I'm starting to see the real James Parker. It's not good, mate.

30:37Lewis Goodall:Even the friend he treated like a daughter, Loretta Barlow, wasn't immune from James' anger.

30:45James Parker:He rang me once and told me he was going to throw himself out of the car because he couldn't handle having the money anymore because everyone was just on him all the time. And then I spoke to the two people that were looking after him. I told them that he had mental health and he needed watching and that's when James didn't really want to speak to me anymore. He felt like I'd told everyone that he was vulnerable. I was trying to emphasise that he needed to be watched. And him and Steve were arguing. Me and Jordan were arguing. And the spending was a bit silly. And I'd be, like, telling James off.

31:23James Parker:And, like I say, everybody was bowing down to James and I'd be telling him off all the time, which James didn't like that. rubbed James up the wrong way. I just thought it was wasteful and stupid. I was really gutted about it. I was gutted. This money and all this nonsense. Our friendship had gone.

31:51Lewis Goodall:But one did stay loyal. Jordan Robinson, who by now had quit his bar job at the hotel to be James's new personal assistant full-time.

32:02James Parker:I said you need to calm it down. Even with the funds he had, I told him you're not going to live out your days with the way that you spend. If you want to live the rest of your days happily, spend it less frivolously.

32:22Lewis Goodall:But then there was Kelly, cast aside by an unforgiving James. She was back once again in the cold and damp of her troubled home, where something would happen between her and her daughter Kimmy that would change everything for everyone. As far as Stephen Boyes and James Parker were concerned, their deal with Coinspot was holding fast. No one, certainly not the police, knew anything about it. They thought any worry about a rumbled glitch was all behind them.

32:58James Parker:And that was the plan. Until, obviously, what happened with Miss Caton and her daughter.

33:12Lewis Goodall:Coining It is a global original podcast produced by Global and Freetown. I'm Lewis Goodall. This series was written and recorded by series producer Kieran Tracy. Additional writing by Barney Rowntree. Production and sound design by Barney Roe-Hotry. The executive producer for Free Turn is Robbie Ashcroft. For Global, the director of podcast is Vicky Etchells. And the head of Factual Podcast is Al Riddle. Don't forget you can listen to each episode for free on Global Player. Download it from the App Store or head to globalplayer.com. If you like what you hear, don't forget to leave us a review.

33:48Lewis Goodall:See you next time.

33:53James Parker:This has been a Global Player original production.