JUST FINISHED LISTENING: WHO THE HELL IS HAMISH?
JUST FINISHED LISTENING: WHO THE HELL IS HAMISH?
He was born Hamish Watson, a surfie dude from Sydney – but he could morph into whatever you needed him to be.
Hamish is due to be sentenced to jail in early 2019 for swindling a handful of victims out of more than $7m. But these crimes are just the final pages in a resume too thick to staple; for decades he’s duped victims in the US, Canada, Britain, Hong Kong and Australia.
How did he do it? How did he evade authorities around the world for so long and what’s he done with all those tens of millions of dollars he stole?
MY VERDICT: I enjoyed listening to this podcast, I would especially recommend it to anyone who loves true crime but is reeling from the many death related podcasts available. That’s not to say that the crimes of conman Hamish are any less devastating. Imagine for a minute someone convincing you to give over all your money, all your savings and your superannuation (a word repeated in this podcast that was never explained – it’s a type of pension arranged by the government in Australia). I was shocked by Hamish’s ways, he seemed to get by on little more than his charm, he’d convince people of unbelievable returns on investments – he’d live a life of luxury on their money and on favours and then when he eventually got found out he’d leave. It wasn’t the most genius of schemes but when they worked out totals he’d stolen around 8 million Australian dollars from people he even knew as friends and lovers. The most astounding thing – and something that comes up in a lot of true crime cases (certainly Dirty John, if you’ve heard that one) - were the amount of lies Hamish told, lies that in the most case weren’t important to his con, he even invented people and killed them. The lies were almost funny to some people and Hamish was easily found out in a lot of cases. This podcast, unlike so many others, has an ending and I would encourage you to listen and delight in the conclusion to this interestingly different crime podcast from The Australian.
