In short
Podcast Episode Summary: Coining It with Lewis Goodall | Ep 5 - Unmissables: Explosive Lies
Episode Overview
In the penultimate episode of the series "Coining It," the narrative unfolds around the intersection of greed, deception, and the chaotic world of cryptocurrencies. The episode delves into the unraveling relationships and the consequences of financial mismanagement, leading to a tense police investigation.
Key Characters
- Detective Zane Ulhak: The determined officer investigating the Bitcoin-related thefts and fraud.
- James Parker: A key figure whose dubious claims of Bitcoin wealth and reckless spending create chaos in his life and those around him.
- Kelly Caton: Parker's acquaintance who, after a falling out, reports her daughter for theft, further complicating the investigation.
- Kimberly Caton: Kelly’s daughter, who claims her mother wrongfully took back Bitcoin she had previously gifted her.
- Stephen Boyes: Parker's financial advisor, who appears to manipulate Parker's wealth for his gain.
Episode Highlights
Introduction to Detective Zane Ulhak
- Detective's Frustrations: Zane struggles with a case involving James Parker, who makes outlandish claims about his wealth, including having 500 Bitcoin.
- Lack of Evidence: Despite feeling that something is off, Zane lacks tangible evidence of wrongdoing.
Kelly Caton's Phone Theft Incident
- The Unintended Call: Kelly Caton calls the police to report that her daughter, Kimberly, has stolen Bitcoin from her, leading to further complications.
- Conflicting Stories: While Kelly claims theft, Kimberly asserts she reclaimed what her mother had previously gifted her.
Detective Zane's Investigation
- Connecting the Dots: Zane learns that both Kelly and James Parker are involved in dubious Bitcoin transactions, suggesting a larger scheme.
- Failure of Trust: Zane’s investigation reflects a broader theme of misplaced trust between individuals involved in the Bitcoin dealings.
The Unraveling of Relationships
- Tensions Rise: As James Parker's relationships deteriorate due to his reckless behavior and the emergence of greed, he loses touch with significant people in his life.
- Descent into Isolation: James’s wealth attracts opportunistic individuals, leading to his eventual isolation and paranoia.
Operation Eucalyptus
- Exploring Financial Crime: Zane and his team, as part of Operation Eucalyptus, expand their investigation into cryptocurrency fraud, leading to significant discoveries.
- Seizure of Bitcoin: During a raid on Kelly’s home, police find 88 Bitcoin on her laptop, valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds.
James Parker's Reaction
- Confrontation with Police: Police raids lead to encounters with Parker, who displays anger and arrogance despite the evidence against him.
- Parker’s Delusion: He believes his wealth is legitimate and struggles to comprehend the consequences of his actions.
Reflection on the Investigation
- Personal Toll: Zane Ulhak reflects on the toll the case takes on his personal life, as it consumes his time and energy.
- Arrogance of Criminals: The episode highlights the bumbling nature of Parker and Boyes, who fail to adequately cover their tracks despite the severity of their crimes.
Themes and Takeaways
- Greed vs. Ethics: The episode raises questions about the moral implications of wealth acquired through dubious means.
- Complexity of Human Relationships: The personal stories reflect how greed can dismantle friendships and families.
- Illusion of Control: Parker’s belief in his control over his wealth and relationships ultimately leads to his downfall.
Conclusion The episode sets the stage for the series finale, teasing unresolved issues and the potential for further revelations about the Bitcoin saga. It emphasizes the complex interplay of personal choices, legal consequences, and the unpredictable nature of financial crime.
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Listen to the full episode on [Global Player](https://www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/42L5Lt/) or wherever you get your podcasts.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02James:This is a Global Player original podcast.
0:05Lewis Goodall:A quick note, this episode contains some strong language. You know when you have a problem and it's just ricocheting around your brain. You're turning it over and over, but it's eating at you and you just can't get rid of it no matter what you do. Especially when you know that there's an answer. It's just that you can't quite grasp it. This is exactly where Detective Zane Ulhuk found himself at the start of 2018. With the unlikely pair of James Parker and Stephen Boyes.
0:44James:I enter the hotel lobby, look around, look at the bar. There's Mr Parker. I knew what he was saying was absolute nonsense.
0:53Lewis Goodall:He'd padded around. He'd managed to meet them. Heard James's baffling claims of having 500 Bitcoin. Parker had said his Bitcoin was legit. Zane knew he was lying. But more than that, nothing. And as the months went on, it was still rolling around his head.
1:16James:It was such an intriguing case, and I was so frustrated not getting to the bottom of it.
1:27James:I was still trying to unpick exactly what happened.
1:38Lewis Goodall:And, you know, I can sympathise here, because being a copper is a little bit like being a journalist, a lot like it, actually. You can hang around asking questions, you can stick your nose as far as you can into where people don't want it, and at the end of the day, you can still find nothing. But if I have learned anything, it is that often, the funny thing is, the real action is always happening somewhere that you're just not looking.
2:07Lewis Goodall:Coinspot has found Parker for sure, which, as we've seen, had yielded chaos for him and for his erstwhile friends. But around Blackpool, Detective Zane was oblivious to any of that. with nothing to go on except the certain knowledge that something wasn't right. He had no investigation, no one to prosecute, not even a crime that he could see, much less arrest anyone for. Just a strange rich man and a strange financial advisor. But just when it seems like there's nowhere else to go for Zane, the most bizarre thing in this whole story happens. It sounds simple. Kelly Caton had lost her phone.
2:55James:That particular evening I'd put the phone on charging the living room so when I walked through the living room the first thing I noticed was my phone wasn't there.
3:04Lewis Goodall:But this, remember, is the phone of someone who's been shown a rather special glitch.
3:11James:So I accused Kimberley of taking the phone because there's no earthly way that my phone wouldn't have been there. She denied it and I told her that I knew she'd taken it. Very lengthy row ensued. I'd say three or four days later, I was changing my Google password because I knew she had my phone. She had access to my emails. The email popped up, but the Bitcoin had been taken from my account but was on my phone.
3:41Lewis Goodall:Kelly Caton hadn't lost her phone. Her daughter, Kimberly, had taken it. And more than that, she'd helped herself to 15 Bitcoin from her mom's online wallet. And this is where the sort of thing you can't quite credit really happens. Kelly Caton herself called the police to say that 15 of her Bitcoin had been stolen. Why on earth would you do that, knowing full well where it came from? But to be honest, I have no idea. But once again, a curious call about a Bitcoin theft crossed the desk of Detective Zane Allhack, who, of course, put his coat on.
4:30James:Kelly's house was a council flat in quite the rundown area of Blackpool. When I went in the house, it was in quite a state. The house was awful.
4:45Lewis Goodall:I couldn't sit down. Just as with his Parker encounter, Zane was about to meet someone else strangely familiar with Bitcoin. Kelly's home was not the typical place that someone with a few Bitcoin or any Bitcoin or any serious asset might live. And Kelly's explanations of how she came by them in the first place sounded every bit as improbable as that which Parker had said about his some months back. She'd had 15 stolen, then worth 70-odd grand. Nonetheless, Zane heard her out. However she'd obtained them, they were now with her daughter, Kimmy. Zane's brain was again doing somersaults. Two stories about this weird thing, Bitcoin, in the same town, months apart, and each as dubious as the other.
5:39Oh, and there was another problem.
5:41Lewis Goodall:Kimberley was nowhere to be found. Where is Kimberley?
5:46James:I've no idea.
5:50Lewis Goodall:I'm Louis Grenot, and this is Coining It. Episode 5, Crash.
6:03Lewis Goodall:September 2018. Once again, holed up in her cold, mildewed bedroom. Kelly Caton hadn't seen James Parker in months. The days in the Grand Hotel of North Euston were now but memory. The friendship that had been born in its bars and ballrooms had, by now, completely disintegrated. James had bought a big house he wanted her to live in, but when she'd become scared and walked away from it, he was every bit as through with her as she was with him. As part of the deal to make Coinspot overlook their theft, she'd given back 150 bitcoins for Parker and Boyce to return. But that wasn't all of the bitcoin that the glitch had given her.
6:45Lewis Goodall:She used plenty already on store cards and had more to spend. Which brings us back to that phone call to the police. Her daughter, Kimmy, she said, had stolen some from her. But stealing? Well, that's not what Kimmy says happened.
7:06James:I didn't steal. Mum had previously gifted some Bitcoin to me and then taken them back after an argument that we had had. So when she asked me to leave the family home and, you know, for all intents and purposes, made me homeless, I reclaimed those. You can't gift something to someone and then take it back. If I gave you a car and then next week said, oh, actually, I want it back, I don't have any legal recourse to do that. so that's really what happened and she reported that to the police as a theft
7:41Lewis Goodall:with no one else to turn to Kimmy called in to the first solicitors she saw and set out the predicament that she was in she says the gentleman was patient and listened carefully to her odd story but of course he was curious about the obvious question how did her mom even come by is Bitcoin in the first place.
8:01James:And when I explained that to my solicitor, he said, you know, Kimmy, that's stealing. That's black and white fraud. And I was really taken aback.
8:12Lewis Goodall:You didn't think, it hadn't occurred to you that that might be the case?
8:15James:No, no. I really parroted my mum's explanation for it, which I truly and honestly believed, which was...
8:22Lewis Goodall:And just to be clear, what did she always say it was?
8:25James:It was just a glitch. It's not illegal to exploit a glitch.
8:30Lewis Goodall:It's their problem.
8:30James:Yeah, basically that. If the developers didn't want it to be there, it wouldn't be there. I almost argued back with him and he laid it out for me at that point. He said, no, no, this is theft. You need to tell the police about this, particularly if they are wanting to talk to you about this other issue. So when I found that out, it was like my world collapsed around me.
8:55Lewis Goodall:It took him two whole months, but Detective Zane eventually tracked her down to a Blackpool flat where he arrested her on suspicion of theft and fraud. And then you're sat at a police station contemplating...
9:12James:Yep. ..what could be the most terrible event. Yeah, I was terrified. I was panicking. I mean, they struggled to get my fingerprints because I was shaking so hard from anxiety.
9:28Lewis Goodall:Did you think this is it, I'm going to jail here? Yeah.
9:31James:Yeah, pretty much.
9:36James:I was... I was petrified. I felt like a child in that moment. Really scared. I didn't have my parents to turn to. I didn't have anybody around me to turn to. Just completely alone.
9:50Lewis Goodall:In the interview room, Zane at last had his chance. He asked Kimmy where on earth all her mother's Bitcoin had come from. The answer? Parker.
10:02James:Obviously, I'd already put two and two together. And this is exactly what I'd be waiting for. I kind of had to contain my excitement learning this.
10:17Lewis Goodall:Kimmy was released and it's important to say at this stage she has never been charged with any crime it was however the straw that broke the camel's back with her mom Kelly to whom she hasn't now spoken in the six years since all of this took place I would wake up having panic attacks
10:37James:and part of it was being involved with the police and just the fear that comes from that when you've never been in that position before. But the other side of it was really losing my family. And it's really difficult to mourn somebody who's still alive.
10:58Lewis Goodall:Now, think of all the best police dramas on TV. The Wire, maybe, or Line of Duty, that sort of thing. One determined noble officer in a long tan coat who just can't let something go. His methods might be unconventional, but by God, he gets results. And this hard-drinking, hard-boiled maverick will throw in his badge as a top brass, try and stop him. Well, Zane Ul Haq is absolutely nothing like that. Instead, he acted in a way which was, if anything, more heroic. Certainly more dogged, at the least.
11:32James:Whenever I had a spare moment, I would then pick up and then continue my inquiries here. And there's no other case that I've come across where it has just offended my nature. Everything about justice, everything about right and wrong, I wanted to get to the bottom of it. And quite out the blue, one of our colleagues from the cybercrime unit came to see me about this unusual job. At first, I didn't believe it. I thought this must be a mistake.
Read the full transcript
12:06Lewis Goodall:Zane cracked open his spreadsheet and personally contacted almost every cryptocurrency exchange then active in the entire world to see if they'd been stung out of money. Day after day, rejection after rejection, he logged their answers.
12:23James:Until one of them put their hand up and said, yeah, we've lost 40 million Australian dollars. Can you help us, please? 40 million. I mean, your jaws must have hit the floor. You think, no, that's not right. You've put a decimal point in the wrong place. The name of the exchange?
12:45Lewis Goodall:Coinspot. The last one on Zane's list, because it was in Australia, on the other side of the planet.
12:53James:So I start ringing a few banks, and the numbers were just astronomical. People who were unemployed, who had millions of pounds in the bank, and all of a sudden over the period of a couple of days we think, ooh, we've touched upon something here.
13:12Lewis Goodall:An operation had now begun. Operation Eucalyptus. Whether it was something to do with koalas or Australia or one of those vile herbal teas is lost to history. But what's important is that David Wainwright was about to go at it with every bit as much determination as his colleague Zane.
13:43Lewis Goodall:Where the story goes next is back to a familiar little town. You get there a few miles up the road from Blackpool, passing an unmissable factory on your way. Unmissable because of the old school logo on its side. Fisherman's friend. Those sinus-busting sweets for people with leathery skin and a hardy disposition. This is the place they're all made. And to be fair, they do have eucalyptus in them, now I think about it.
14:11James:Fleetwood is a peninsula where nobody leaves, nobody comes out. Everybody stays there. It was a town that survived only on the port.
14:27James:that's what the whole town was literally built around the port that's what it was built for
14:31Lewis Goodall:that's ryan gleason again my local guide to this stretch of the coast but it's more insular than other places along the coast absolutely nobody tends to leave fleetwood there is
14:44James:one end of fleetwood is uh well it's the sea because it's like i say the peninsula and at the other end of fleetwood the one way out of fleetwood is one single roundabout make it sound like Alcatraz. It pretty much is. It's Alcatraz, but with a nice beach.
15:03Lewis Goodall:I was last here when we dropped into the North Euston Hotel, but James Parker was long gone from its corner bar by now. On the outskirts of the town, though, sits a large detached house with a balcony above the door, pleasant bow windows on each side, and like many a house by the sea, it even has its own name. Four winds. The view? Gorgeous, really. Only the green of a golf course separates it from the sea. It was the house James had bought for Kelly. The one she didn't want. Where, after Dubai, James Parker himself moved in. But following after him, like seagulls after the trawler, were hangers-on.
15:44Lewis Goodall:Whether they were from his madcap sessions at the casinos, the bars, James's liberty in spending was attracting attention. He was being watched. Something that would be the end of his friendship with the one person he was genuinely closest to.
16:02James:That's why I got screamed at and told him never to come round again. Because I tried talking to him about everyone taking advantage of him and he just wouldn't hear it, would he? Yeah.
16:09Lewis Goodall:So, what happened?
16:11James:He went to Dubai and when he got back I went round to see him and he was I just started screaming and shouting at me. Everyone was screaming at me and James was just dead silent. So I left because it wasn't worth upsetting James. And I just said to him, you know where I am if you need me. And I just didn't speak to him again. It was too much while I had my daughter and I was trying to look after James. But money changed him. Money definitely changed him. She needed to be pushed out because she was too close to James. If it was just her and James, James would listen to her. Once Loretta was out of the way, they could do what they wanted with him.
16:55Lewis Goodall:You, Loretta, must have felt very hurt by that, given how close you'd been before.
16:58James:I cried for days. But I just couldn't... I was still obviously keeping tabs on him while I wasn't speaking to him. I still knew what was going on. Yeah. I couldn't put myself through that. My mental health wasn't right. And neither was James's, and it would have just caused more damage if I'd have stood there arguing. It wouldn't have been worth arguing for.
17:19Lewis Goodall:What did he say to you? He didn't say anything. It was Jordan. You couldn't even get to him?
17:24James:No, I walked in his front room and he had loads of boxes on the table that he'd brought me from Dubai. And he started telling me I was only there for the money and everything. I was like, no, I'm not. Like, I'm really not.
17:35Lewis Goodall:What was in the boxes?
17:36James:He bought me some jewellery, but I left it all there and left because everyone was screaming at me saying that I was taking advantage. So I just left everything.
17:52it was like a battle everybody wanted him and james's dream was oh yeah with my money i'm
17:57James:i want to buy a street we can all live together in this little communion do you know what i mean but it wasn't it everybody was like i want him i want him and it wasn't like that
18:08Lewis Goodall:someone told us that he just wanted a family and that other people took advantage of him What would you say to that?
18:18James:No, he picked people up and he put them down. I can't think of anyone in our timeline who he stayed friends with throughout. At some point, everyone is picked up and put down. Everyone.
18:37Lewis Goodall:And that would, of course, come to include the man in charge of his money, Stephen Boyes. He and James had set up a company together to invest James's money. A company with a grand, yet inconspicuous name, Total Financial Planning Services Limited. But it was Stephen Boyes that controlled their little company. And James now saw the implications. So I said, I want it in my name, don't want it in the company's name,
19:08James:because he had 51 % of the company, could have evicted me, kicked me out onto the street. And he was renting the other properties out. So I would have had nowhere to go. So it was more for my security. And when he comes to signing for that property, he was very crafty.
19:28Lewis Goodall:Yeah.
19:31Lewis Goodall:In the end, he came to distrust you. Is that true?
19:34James:No. He didn't distrust you? No, he didn't distrust me at all. No. But you did fall out? We did fall out, yeah. and there's reasons for that, which I'd rather not go into. But it had nothing to do with the trust issue.
19:54James:James Parker's getting worried. Look at this text he's sent. I've been waiting over a month for my house to be in my name for my peace of mind and security, as I have nowhere else I can fucking go. If I lose this, I have nowhere. I thought this would have been your main priority, not swanning off to concerts and having days out. And here's boys texting Jamal in Dubai who he's still all pals with. I feel our relationship is fast drawing to its end Jamal. I cannot sit by and watch him destroy everything I've worked so hard to achieve for him today. He does not really appreciate me or my advice or efforts on his behalf.
20:31James:So I feel I'm wasting my time and efforts on trying to secure his incomes and keep him safe.
20:43James:He just stopped listening to me then. I was trying to build him a property portfolio at that stage to get him a residual income. The way I phrased it was, you know, don't eat the chickens. Eat the eggs from the chickens. But he stopped listening to me then, and that's when I decided that we'd go our separate ways and we'd part a company.
21:11Lewis Goodall:I mean, while we're on, boys, I mean, something that's clear in his communications, boys, that is, is that he genuinely seems to see himself as kind of a decent guy, right? Who is doing his best for his client against the banks and that they don't really understand crypto. And he's got a client who's spending recklessly and they don't understand that. Might that be true? Is there any credibility to that?
21:36James:No. He knew where his client's wealth came from. There was text messages where he was talking about paying off corrupt officials in Dubai to keep bank accounts open. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was greedy. He took control of the criminal operation. He put himself right in the centre of it to the point where he was running Parker's life for him. He was controlling where his money went, controlling the flow of money around the world and getting paid very handsomely on the back of it.
22:11James:So what was he in possession of? One and a half million pounds that we set up the company with. Is this sterling now? Yes, yeah. And what bank account was that in? I don't know. Was it in a UK or a Dubai account? I don't know.
22:30Lewis Goodall:Do you think he was controlling Parker? Definitely. So you've got a situation where you're saying Parker was controlling others, kind of beneath him in a way through the wealth that he had but then boys is sort of above him
22:44James:controlling him what boys had done is he'd drawn up agreements between him and parker whereby he had a 51 stake in this bogus company they set up in the uk supposedly a property rental company well the wealth all comes from mr parker it's his money boys is the supposedly the employee helping him set up and run the company, but Boyes has given himself a controlling stake in that company. Totally took over control.
23:16Lewis Goodall:But the house was nothing compared to the amount of Parker's Bitcoin money that Stephen Boyes had, air quotes, managed.
23:25James:I trust people. I don't. Class people as being untrustworthy till they become untrustworthy. then I go, bye-bye, Stephen Boyce.
23:41But as one door closes, of course, another opens.
23:47Lewis Goodall:By now, Detective Zane Ulhack and David Wainwright had pieced together as much as they possibly could have about the case. Operation Eucalyptus, after being stuck in quicksand for so long, was about to finally move. And quickly, raids were authorised on the houses of Kelly Caton, Jordan Robinson, Stephen Boyes, and of course, James Parker, in order to retrieve... Well, that was the question. How do you retrieve something like Bitcoin that doesn't actually physically exist?
24:25James:The risks were huge. All it would take was for somebody to get wind that the police are coming for them to either move the funds from one wallet to another or to turn the mobile phones off or turn the computers off. So it would be essentially out of our leech.
24:48James:At the time, we didn't know what we didn't know, so we arrived at Kelly Caton's house and unlocked and open on a laptop was her crypto account. No two-factor authentication, no password protection. So within a minute or two, we took 88 Bitcoin off her and we're thinking, my goodness, that's worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
25:16Lewis Goodall:On Kelly Caton's open laptop, in the penury of her surroundings, sat an astonishing 88 Bitcoin. Worth then£688 ,000.
25:32Lewis Goodall:Then it was James' turn to feel police boots on his door.
25:41Lewis Goodall:And what was his reaction when you battered down the door? He was angry.
25:47James:Bitter angry. He was instructed by a solicitor not to talk to us, although he clearly wanted to. when I served the pocket, the asset recovery paperwork on him, he took it off me and threw it on the floor. And inside? Huge telly, drones, remote control, speedboats and cars. He'd clearly had more money than he knew what to do with. So I recall he had this wine cooler. This thing was massive, I could fit in it twice, and I'm 6 '1", and I won't tell you how heavy I am. He's got this massive wine cooler that costs thousands of pounds filled with bottles of wine that I recognise because it comes from Aldi.
26:32James:So he had extortionate wealth, but he didn't really know how to spend it.
26:37Lewis Goodall:So he had this enormous, enormous wine cooler, but it was full of Aldi wine.
26:43James:Yes, and me and the search team all laughed because we all recognised the wine that Tom Trampaldi. It is such an image, isn't it? We had him in for subsequent interviews as we learnt more about the case and he did talk to us a little bit thereafter. What kind of interviewee was he? Rude, arrogant, angry. Tried to claim he'd done nothing wrong. Tried to blame Stephen Boyes. well, he's the one with letters after his name. I assumed it was all fine. Green and clean, he believed that the money was. Green and clean? Green and clean is the phrase that boys allegedly told Parker about their ill-gotten gains.
27:34James:As far as I was concerned, it was settled. There was no grievance. There was nothing, no harm, no foul, according to what the contract said. and that was it. I thought it was fun when you get a sort of set about it.
27:51Lewis Goodall:They say it's pointless trying to argue with a stupid person. James Parker was not stupid. Far from it. And that was clear. But he was confusing, confounding. From his point of view, yes, this probably made sense. They had made an agreement with CoinSpot and they had returned more than 400 Bitcoin to make it all go away. This was job already done. What Zainal Haack and David Wainwright saw, however, was money laundering. And ironically, given Parker's Philippians attitude to his glitched wealth, the effort it took them to prove it would take a huge toll as days turned into months and months turned into years.
28:39James:It began to take over. So originally, I was told, you've got a month away from your other jobs, crack this and then go back to your normal daily life. But as the job mushroomed, as we learned more, my other jobs were then reallocated to other people. And this is all I worked on for years. The trawling of phones, the examination of digital material, the recovery of crypto from other countries. I would wake up at three in the morning and think, that's what that text message means. and then I'd have to somehow write it on my hand. So when I got to work the next morning, I would know that line of inquiry that related to a text message that up until that point I didn't understand.
29:22James:It was all consuming. It was all consuming for a long time.
29:26Lewis Goodall:I mean, you say it took over your life and therefore, did it affect your personal life?
29:33James:Yeah, quite embarrassingly. Towards the latter stages of the case, my mum became quite ill and I'd visit her in hospital but I'd take the laptop with me and when she went to sleep I'd just work on a quick disclosure issue for an hour while she had a rest. Something that I dearly regret now but allowed me to keep on top of a very fast evolving case because I'm the only cop involved in the case. When you build up towards court there are multiple defence teams emailing me queries and challenges that only I can answer. So that laptop stayed with me and was sometimes beyond late at night and weekends or hospital with my mum, just so I can keep the case up and running.
30:27James:So to keep that moving whilst doing the school run, visiting my mum, the laptop stayed with me.
30:34Lewis Goodall:What do you think when you look back at that now?
30:37James:It's really sad. there's moments with me mum I should have enjoyed more
30:48Lewis Goodall:look this is the reality of the detailed work it takes to prove any kind of financial crime and just looking through the amount of transactions David and Zane had to analyse it really is it's baffling there were periods where Parker and boys were getting drip feeds of thousands after thousands in planned sequences into their bank accounts emails that show that Stephen Boyd is explaining how he haplessly tried to get a Dubai bank to speed up the opening of new accounts. Quotes, more bribes needed, he complains. It's costing me a fortune. 200 grand into one account. 300 grand just a while later.
31:26Lewis Goodall:It's head spinning. Yet these weren't professional con artists. They were not hackers. These were not sophisticated criminal conspirators in any shape or form.
31:40James:These were bungling idiots. They didn't make any effort to cover the tracks, probably through arrogance and inexperience as criminals, that part of the problem I had was the volume of evidence, not the lack of it.
31:55Lewis Goodall:Not least because, in the middle of James's chaotic spending spree, there had, of course, been time for one last car. A Chrysler Voyager, no less. And bought cash, of course.
32:10James:because they are quite sloppy unprepared criminals they've chanced upon this glitch really we're interviewing them because we have to the evidence was so strong they could have told us anything and we'd have followed up those inquiries but the evidence was there to
32:26Lewis Goodall:convict them anyway but just when the police think they've got chapter and verse James Parker will have one last surprise in the next and final episode of this series.
32:40James:Do you think he knew that, that he knew he was done for? The last time I interviewed James Parker he told me I will die soon. He didn't care about any consequences and it was true. I think he felt hurt by everybody because when he phoned me up he had no internet He had no food. He was living off custard. It was just shocking. All these people that he helped, where were they all? There was nobody for him.
33:13Lewis Goodall:Except, as it turns out, perhaps there was.
33:22Lewis Goodall:So we're driving into yet another Fleetwood Street, full of terrace houses, where I am told another very unlikely person who would come to know James Parker. I think this is it here.
33:43Lewis Goodall:Police and others have suggested that you, yourself, know where the whereabouts of the remaining Bitcoin is. Is that true?
33:52James:Yes, I know exactly where it is.
33:57Lewis Goodall:Coining It is a Global original podcast produced by Global and Free Turn. I'm Lewis Goodall. This series was written and recorded by series producer Kieran Tracy. Additional writing by Barney Roundtree. Production and sound design by Barney Roundtree. The executive producer for Free Turn is Robbie Ashcroft. For Global, the director of podcast is Vicky Etchells. And the head of Factual Podcasts 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.
34:31Lewis Goodall:See you next time.
34:35James:This has been a Global Player original production.
From the publisher
We're back with the penultimate episode of Coining It. Thank you for the brilliant response to the series so far. If you don't want to wait for the last episode on this feed, the entire series is available now on Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts.
In this episode... The party’s over. When one of James’ friends goes to the police, detectives finally connect the dots. James is hauled in for questioning - but doesn't give a monkeys. As greed and paranoia take hold, his last friendships fracture beyond repair.