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An insight into the character, personality and passion of the leading figures in the Investigation and Intelligence industry who have shaped the way we gather, analyse and utilise information and intelligence.
You know, like, I went from interviewing a woman whose, you know, urine's leaking,
you know, into a kitchen where she cooks, to
interviewing billionaires. Tell us briefly, how do you get
from toilets with urine leaking down to
the kitchen to Bermuda? This idiot judge,
he's an idiot, a disgrace
to the legal profession because this was
a fraud that preyed on the elderly. He issued it in his
judgment, default judgment by an end of the appearances. This
is so obviously not a fraud. I need to send
a message so that privileged wealth can take my
message to their clients and reassure them.
And I'm thinking, jesus Christ, man, you've got to be a
fucking idiot. It made me angry, right? I
bet it did.
Hello
and welcome to the Intelligence Advantage podcast, where we talk to the
movers and shapers in the investigation and intelligence space.
My name is Gary Miller. I've been an investigative lawyer for nearly
half a century, and I'm also the chairman of the IFG, a
network of international investigative and asset recovery
lawyers. I am absolutely delighted to be joined
today by David Marchant, someone who I've known for
many, many years and has been in the investigative
journalist game for well over
30 years. David, I looked at
your list of magazines and newspapers
and it dates back to a long time ago,
let's put it like that. We won't give away your age immediately,
but David is the found editor,
CEO, chief, bottle washer and everything else
at Offshore Alert, which anyone and everyone that's in the
investigative and asset chasing space will
know of and will attend at least
once or twice a year his conferences, which are
renown in our space. So welcome, David, and thank
you very much for taking time to join us. Thank you for having me
Gary. I was thinking about what makes
an investigator, an investigative journalist buzz, what
really makes them get up in the morning. And one of the
things I came up with is that all of us love
taking risk. Is that something that you particularly
enjoy? Do you like pushing the boundaries?
I don't like assuming risk for
risk's sake. I like to challenge myself.
So that's in the same ballpark.
But, you know, I think for an investigative
journalist, you need to have a chip on at least one of your
shoulders because
it's quite a stressful
job. Journalism, unlike
the industry or in law, doesn't pay particularly
well. You know, you've got some investigative
journalists earning a pittance who work
really, really hard, get up in the morning
with determined to, you know, expose
someone or something. So you need to
be driven. I've got a chip on each
of my shoulders. So being motivated
isn't a problem. All right, so it begs the question,
where do those chips come from? David, Come on, reveal it all.
Well, it's difficult to say because I'm not a psychologist,
but I was educated
at state school for most of my education.
I had a couple of years at private school in
South Wales. And the most important
thing that I learned at private school had nothing to do with
academics. It was just observing my
fellow pupils who were
substantially different to
the Monmouth Comprehensive School students. It was
almost like another species. And that's what
I learned. Just observing them and thinking about, you know,
well, you know, why are you different? You know, why are you sort of tall,
taller, more athletic, seemingly
better educated, and, you know, why
are you sort of pompous in some cases? You know,
that's where my education came. Not from the classroom.
How did you, sorry, let me interrupt you and ask you.
It sounds like quite. And you've said it is quite a
juxtaposition to go from Monmouth,
whatever it was, to a private school. What on earth gave
way or gave rise to that? Was it your decision? No,
no, no. So I. I was at Monmouth Comprehensive School
up until my own atlas, and it was also a private school called
Monmouth School. It's quite highly regarded
and the only three subjects that
realistically I could have taken at A level, given my grades were
maths, physics and English. Now, you
know, I couldn't do those
at Monmouth Comprehensive School A level because the lessons clash.
It's an unusual combination and
so That in itself is very interesting. I never
would have had you as a science man and maths. I hated
science and I struggled with maths and physics. Don't
even talk about it. I think I got 6%. So, out of your O
levels, am I allowed to ask how many O levels you came away with?
I think I got seven from memory. Okay. And that's pretty decent.
And your top grades were maths, physics and. Yes,
yes, but, you know, something like maths, you know. You
know, my brain works in a certain way. You know, I don't have a
degree. Never wanted to study a degree, you know, for, you know. Well, I think
it was Rowan Atkinson used to do. He used to have
a line in his stand up where he said he was educated from the university
of life, the school of hard knocks and the kindergarten
of having the shit kicked out of him. You know, I didn't have the shit
kicked out of me any stage of my education. But I always liked that line,
you know, because it sort of Denoted a more unconventional
approach to education. And for me, an education is
just walking around with your eyes and ears open. But I can tell you now,
you know, so. So my father paid for me to go to private school.
It was in the town where I lived, so I didn't have to board or
anything like that. But, you know, so like, how are the students
different? You know, I can remember I was assigned to
townhouse, right. A non boarding house. And I can remember there was
one kid in there who used to wear this like
cravats, you know, I mean, listen,
nobody at Monmouth Comprehensive School wore a cravat, but
interesting, interestingly, the reason he wore a cravat was
he tried to kill himself. Oh, wow. Hang himself. Right.
And you know, this was hiding the scars, I think there was actually
in one of the Clint Eastwood movies, you know, he did a similar, similar thing.
Hang him high, I think it was. And you know, and I can remember, you
know, to this day thinking, Jesus, like I'd never come across
anyone, you know, who'd
attempted to kill himself. You or certainly that I knew
of. But so people knew it wasn't as if he was wearing it.
And people thought, I thought you immediately were going to say, what a pompous
git walking around with a. You. You people. And
the students knew that it was to hide a scar because of course, sports and
everything, right? Yeah, I mean, I was, I was, you know, this is what I
was told. But I can remember this was just a novel concept. I
don't think I'd ever
even thought of the subject, you know,
so, you know, I'm a curious person, which is, you know, a
prerequisite for an investigative journalist. You've got to be
curious, you know. And so it was just
things like that that, you know, made me think in a sort
of different way and. And I sucked
at that school, honestly. I. I'd done a complete. I'd done a materially
different curriculum leading up to the A levels.
Right. This is. Yeah. So do you imagine going
to a school, you'll be doing the
same curriculum leading up to the A levels and you're
stupid enough or arrogant enough to think you can just go
in there and do whatever. So what did you
study there? What subjects did you study? English.
At the private school. At the private school. This is how bad
I was. At some stage I just gave up.
I can remember the physics practical exam.
Yeah. Couldn't even set up the apparatus
properly, much less conduct the experiment and plot
the results. And I can always remember the
moderator said okay, you know, five minutes left. I
hadn't even set up the apparatus, so I got the graph
paper, I just drew a random line. I mean, it
was insane, you know, and walked out of there. And again, another thing I learned
about myself is I didn't beat myself up. I walked out of there
sort of, you know, laughing at myself, you
know, how stupid I was, you know. But did you attend any
of the, any of the lectures or whatever was it? Basically, I
attended it, but there are other things, like, you know, my home life wasn't particularly
stress free. Let's just say
put it at that, you know, so just different things going on
again, which is all learning, you know, that's an educated, you know, stuff going on
in your house. That's a learning experience. Right. You know, it's
not down. And just. Oh, another thing I can remember
is I can remember
in English. I decided, you know what, I'm going to make an extra effort.
This one particular time we had to write an essay on
Chaucer or something, right? I'm actually going to make an effort. I'm
going to cite, you know, books, I'm going
to read some books that are relevant to the
essay as opposed to just, you know, reeling off the top of my head as
I've done it hitherto. So
the teacher clearly noted
that this essay that
I'd done was unlike any other I'd done. And he gave
me two grades. He said,
you wrote A plus, assuming you
didn't plagiarize. F
minus if you did. And I
can remember thinking, you know, fuck you. You know, honestly,
like, seriously, Gary, not even joking. Wow, okay. In terms of the
physics thing, laughing at myself. This. No, no, no.
I have just done what all of these other idiots in the class
have done, right? Read the books that you want them to read,
you know, borrowed from them, whatever, right. And
I, you know, I. They were, the essays were piled on top of each other,
you know, I, when we put them in, I looked at this one, looked at
that one, you know, after I'd written it. And they built what
I've done, everyone else got an appropriate grade for
some reason. Me, you know, it's either an A plus or an
F minus, depending on whether you're a cheat,
you know, questioning my character, if you like. So that's another thing I learned, you
know, how unjust the system was, you know,
and. And now looking back on it, let's do a little bit of self
reflection. This was the only time in your,
because you said or you mentioned you'd given up that school,
but you never. I left the school. You left the school. I complete, I completed
the school, did my. Oh, I see. Okay, but you'd made well in the A
levels, you know, I'd given up in the sense I realized, okay, this ain't
going very well, you know, I need to come to terms with it. Okay, but
this was, and, you know, trying to condense all of this into one
sentence or one snippet of this conversation, but this was
pretty much the only time you put your head down and decided to do what
you knew you needed to do to get a decent grade. Or were there other
examples? No, listen, I, you know,
listen, at sort of Monmouth Comprehensive School, the subjects
I excelled in were like, English, because I like
talking, right? I used to, in English, you know, when
it came to asking questions, I was always the
one with my hand up in the air to the point where the teacher used
to say, you know, when it came to question time, I immediately put my hand.
And she said, anyone other than David? You know,
and, and then maths, which was
just problem solving, the way my brain works, you know, I, I, it,
it came effortlessly to me, really, which is, you know,
solving problems, equations, you know, it's just, I
didn't even, it's just something that clicked in my
brain that I could just do, like, instinctively almost.
Of course, when you, when you, you know, when it comes to A levels, it's
a bit more complicated than that. And, and doing a
curriculum that I didn't even know the basics in and try to do it at
an advanced level. But what I learned there was
about myself, wasn't academic. I learned about myself
how I cope with stress, for example, how I cope with
the adversity of a bad physics,
practical exam, stuff like that. So what
was behind your, your dad? Cause I
don't know about you, but my dad was my driving kind of
mentor in relation to education. It was the
era of, not that my mom wasn't enlightened, she was.
But it was my dad that would be more concerned about education.
And what was it about? Taking you out of the comprehensive
and not allowing you, I'm assuming you could have kept,
you could have stayed at the comprehensive school and studied those
three subjects. No, no, they clashed at the comprehensive school, so I couldn't do
them at the comprehensive school, so my dad paid for me to go to
the. What could you have done if you. If you,
I don't know, you know, but I can tell, you know,
at that stage, I just wanted to get the hell out of the education system,
you know. Okay, well, you know, I mean, this, you know,
I, I didn't want to sit in a classroom learning, you know.
And what was, what was your, what was your parents and if you had
any siblings kind of
reaction and, or view of how you were doing, what you were doing? Were your
parents supportive of you in terms of. Okay, you can't do that. I don't really
recall my parents taking any interest in. Now, I did
educationally, even though my father was paying for the private
school, you know, it was very much a
world of my own, you know, just having to think things
through on my own. Okay, what about
brothers and sisters? Any of those? I, I could sort of tell you something
that might sort of go some way to explain it, but I, I'm just trying
to think if I'm being disrespectful to.
Two things are going through my mind now. One, whether I'm being disrespectful to
any members of my family, even though my mother's the only one
left alive, and
to whether by saying it, I'm going to give potential
ammunition to, you know, I've got a lot of enemies
because of what I do. Yeah, understood.
I don't like to give them anything. No, I got it. So let's
move on and talk about siblings. Do you have any brothers? Just on that point,
I've, you know, I've had people visiting my, you know, people who I've exposed. Yeah,
we'll come on to these scary bits. I had so many to visit my
mother, you know. Yeah, we'll come on to those things in a minute. But what
about siblings? Any brothers and sisters that went off? A brother, he's dead.
I mean, he wasn't like me at all. He was quite quiet, you know,
whereas I can't shut the fuck up, to be honest.
He was in the army and then he became a postman
and then he was in private security. Actually
died in Iraq. Wow. But he actually
died of a heart attack, you know,
so. Yeah. Was that many moons ago or not?
Let's say
it's like seven, eight years ago, something like that.
Okay. He's like, relatively young, like 50.
Sounds like it. Early 50s. Sounds like it.
And what was it a profound impact that it had on
you, or were you not really close to your brother or how did it impact
you? You know, I hold an annual conference
in London, which we may get to, but the reason I mention that is
I was at one of our London conferences. It
was the first morning I took a call
and the woman
on the line said, oh, is that David? I said, yes. And
she said, I've got some bad news. Andrew is dead.
Now for that conference, our closing
speaker was a British journalist who was
actually now dead called Andrew Jennings. I thought
it was somebody telling me that your closing speaker tomorrow,
your closing speaker is dead. I'm just giving you the heads up. So
it took like a couple of minutes before she realized I didn't know who she
was talking about. And she finally said, you know, brother Andrew,
you know, so was, you know, so I can
remember. That's some, you know, that was the first morning my
conference. I went outside of the hotel. Yeah.
Had a short cry,
pulled myself together and sort of got on with the
show, you know. And the odd thing is
that a few years prior to that, I was at our
London conference, it had just ended and
I got news that my father was in hospital. I got
in a car, drove
from central London to
Wales and just got to see him before he died.
Well, I only go to England twice a year, so both my brother and my
father have died during or shortly after
our conference. And when my brother passed away, you know,
it was in Iraq, so it took a couple of weeks before the. Body.
Was flown back to the uk. You know, there's all sorts of red tape
and it had been embalmed and I
had to identify the body after he'd been dead for
over two weeks. And I wasn't sure,
you know, what state it would be. And I draw, you know, I didn't want
one of his children to identify it or my mother, you
know. Yeah. Because, you know, I wondered what, you know, what the
smell would be, what the visuals would be. And I can always remember
going to the funeral home and
the body was in a room, I was in a corridor
and I jammed my right foot again,
you know, at the base of this wall. I jammed my left foot
at the base of this wall and they opened the door
because I didn't know what I was going to be faced with, you know, it
could have been so shocking that I could have just like just
fainted or something. Right. So, I was seeing myself, you know,
and. But it wasn't as bad as
the worst case scenario I'd built up in my head. It wasn't, it
wasn't as bad as that. But, yeah, both of those things happen.
And your brother has left nephews and nieces of yours
or Three daughters. Wow.
Tough, tough. They must have been in
their. I don't know, under teens or something? At that stage.
They were relatively young. Tough. And
does that still. Does that have an impact on
you today, the fact that your brother. Does it make you
live life even more to the max than you used to or not really.
Listen, I think as you grow older, you know,
if you're a healthy person,
you evolve, right? Your mindset changes.
So, yeah, you know, so every experience, particularly
extreme experiences, shapes your
views. And, yeah, I'm
very conscious of the fact that we're here for a nanosecond,
you know, so this is what, you know, this goes into my work. If people
threaten me, you know, my attitude is, you know, you. You know, so what?
I could, you know, couldn't give a shit. You want to threaten me? Okay,
threaten me. You know, it doesn't unduly bother me.
It used to bother me. It doesn't anymore because, you know, I'm very,
very conscious of. We're just here. Yeah, we all
build ourselves up, you know, every problem we have. Right. And.
And, oh, we're all so important and the world revolves around us. And,
you know, I learned a long time ago, you know, it's just nonsense, you know,
like, put things into perspective.
It's the road to sanity, right? Keeping
sane, putting everything into perspective.
So, yeah, things like my brother dying, my father
dying, a lot of different experiences. It takes a
lot to genuinely shape me. It used to be in
my salad days that Shakespeare would say, if I got
sued, I'd get a knot in my stomach
tighten every day, tighten.
And it wouldn't go away until the lawsuit went away. You know, getting sued
for defamation, which is just occupational hazard. Now,
honestly, somebody serves me with a defamation
action, I'm not kidding. I'm. I toss it to one side and I'll just
read it at my leisure. You know, I'm not immediately going
through like this, you know, put it to one side, continue
what I'm doing. Maybe two or three days later, you know, I'll say, oh,
Price, I better read this thing. You know. But don't you, I would
imagine, knowing David and you and I have never sat down for
more than 10, 15 minutes, but I thought you were about to
say, when someone serves you with a writ for defamation, you were going to say,
come on, baby, bring it on. You just do your worth.
No, that's not your. I don't want to give a process over our time
because they're just doing their job. You know, I can remember
actually, I was. I got served once on stage our London
conference, right. Ended and there's a very attractive
girl started walking towards me, you know,
I can't remember thinking, oh, this looks promising. And she said, are you
David Marshall? I'm like, you're damn. Well,
she said, hey, take this, you've been served.
That's creating, which I don't know whether you're allowed. You can. Which
law firm made that creative decision to send a, a bit of a
honey trap? Well, or it could have just been
coincidence that the prono server they used just was, was
hot. True, true. But that particular
case, gosh, it could have been one or two. You know,
I've been sued so many times, it all becomes a bit of a blur. It
would have been either on behalf of Timothy
Schools or
on behalf of, of privileged
wealth. I expose both of those. Timothy
is currently serving a 14 year prison sentence.
So you know. For fraud. Yeah, for fraud and money
laundering, you. Know, in the UK or the US. I told him what would happen.
I told his attorney what would happen to him if he sued me. Right.
His stupid dumb attorney attorney
who used to be the president of the
Law Society of England and Wales. Oh my
God. And I'm not kidding you,
I literally. If you want to go ahead and sue me,
okay, all right. See what happens to your client. You know,
and I was at one of our London conferences. A lot of
these is revolving around our London conference. The Serious Fraud Office came to see
me during our London conference, said, would you come
to our office once the conference is over
and just chat to us about the case. So I ended up chatting
to them. I later gave them a formal witness statement,
you know, with all my exhibits.
You know, and yada, yada,
yada, you know, he got 14 years in prison. We ran out.
That began in true like Sam news, Baker style.
Gotcha. That was, you know, and the reason, you know,
gotcha there, you know, how he was sentenced and the reason I put that
headline was to send a message out of it to anyone else who wants to
sue me. So on average, how often are you
sued and has it got less as the years go on? It's
absolutely got less. So the first time I was sued was by
a Panama based American CPA called Mark
Harris. So Offshore Alert
was launched in 1997. People didn't know Megabus.
Yeah, it came along like a whirlwind and
I, I, my mentality was I'm going to expose anything that
moves. I didn't think I was like
an amoeba, you know, I didn't think beyond the
now. Right. And I didn't think,
oh, I might get sued, and how am I going to pay my bills? And
can I really afford to have three more suits on the go? Which
actually happened at one stage. And I had some years where
the. My. My own legal
fees were greater than the entire
revenue of the company. So if I care about paying any other bills, I
couldn't even afford my legal fees, you know. Wow.
But Mark Harris sued me. We had a libel
trial at federal court. You know, I was a defendant, and
my company was a defendant. And I can always remember on the first morning of
the trial, I was being sued for defamation by three
corporations, like two in Nevis and one in the British Virgin
Islands. And the judge, on the first morning, this
lasted six days, he turned
to their attorney and said, oh, does Mr. Harris
intend to testify at this trial? And
there are two. Oh, no, you, Honor. This involves sort of
offshore matters. You know what he's like. It's like he's
concerned about coming, traveling to the United States from Panama.
And the judge said, well, what are we doing here then?
I mean, if he thinks he's going to be arrested if he sets foot
in the United States, what are we doing here? Oh, you,
Honor, it's a bit more complicated than that. And, you know, it's like, Jesus. So
we had six days of nonsense, and the judge
issued a 17 page. It was a bench
trial judgment, all in my favor. This was a
seal of approval to all the people out there who
were not sure what to make. So how
long after you'd started business did this case occur, David?
Oh, So I launched March
1997. The trial was 1998. I can't remember
the month. So pretty early on. Yeah, it was like 15 months. And that
was a seal of approval. His group collapsed. He went on the run,
fled to Nicaragua, the US with whom I
cooperated in the investigation. For anyone out there who's thinking about suing
me, he bring it on, baby. See what happens. I
cooperate with the irs, Criminal
Division. Anyway, love the United States. Certainly at that time,
they arranged for Mark Harris to be arrested by local police at
traffic lights. His car was trundling along, came to a red
light. They just blocked the car. Put him on a
plane. No extradition. Just deported. Put him on a plane.
U.S. marshals went on the plane, and it would just happen to be going to
the United States. He was arrested. I don't know technically whether they had
to wait for us is. But he used to arrest it, however it works.
And he was He. They offered him a deal
of five years. He wouldn't take it because he's
an idiot. And he pleaded not guilty.
There was a trial, which I covered, and I had,
you know, I was going to say the pleasure. It really didn't give
me any pleasure, but I saw him shuffling into court
in manacles and shackles,
you know, because in the earlier proceedings, you know,
they're dealing with preliminary matters with
all sorts of crops, you know, murderers, rapists.
He's shuffling in the Courtney's orange jumpsuit. I covered the trial.
He got convicted. Fraud, money laundering. Sentence 17 years.
And he was virtually exactly the same
age as me. Our birthdays were about six days
apart or something. Wow. So he's done his time
now. Yeah, he got out
some time ago. Yeah, He's. Any attempt by him to wreak
vengeance on you or not at all?
No, not. None that, you know?
No, nobody has wreaked vengeance.
This guy had a T shirt made that said in Spanish, david
Bartrand is only alive because killing him would be a crime. And I know this
because a journalist in Panama went to interview at his office
while I was exposing him and saw it hanging up in his office.
And, you know, she said, well, what's this? You know, and he said, oh, it's
just a joke. But
this also begs so many questions. But the first one is
when you. All of your initial
upbringing is in the west of England, in Wales,
in Monmouth. It's another country. It's not the
west of England. It's his own country. Gary. That's true.
My wife would certainly give me a hard time if I said that England was
part of Wales and vice versa. But anyway, putting that geograph
slip apart, you were, you were living in
Wales. What on earth takes you to the US? So I wanted to
get the hell out of, you know, of Britain
at some stage, you know, because it's a pretty depressing country. The weather's
depressing. Other people are depressing. I mean, listen,
I'm just. I'm just giving you. I, you know, I don't want to
lose any subscribers over this or any attending or mixed
fonses. You know, I'm just trying to be honest here, because what's the, if you're
not, what's the point? You know, I'm not going to sit here like some
stiff just giving you stock answers. I just, you know, I.
It's, you know, listen, I've been perfectly honest. It was just too
miserable for me. When did you leave? Which year? Because maybe I can relate.
You got to put this in a prism. It's not like I was born with
a silver spoon in my mouth money to, to go to
Glastonbury and, and, and eat, you know, a
Michelin starred restaurant or anything. Right. I, you know, I,
you know, my first job was in Abu Vale where
the unemployment rate was about
25%. Think about that.
One in every, you know, four people
told him I was good at math. Right, yeah, very good, very quick,
very quick. So let tell me this, what year was it? Hold on, what year
was it that you Left? The year 1984. 84.
Two and a half years. And one of those years was during the miners strike
when it was a battle of will between Arthur
Scargle of the National Union of Mine Workers and
Margaret Thatcher. Yes. Every other time
there had been a dispute between the British government and the
NUM, the National Union of Mineworkers, the union had
won and it had basically brought down the government. Correct.
First one, you know, the Iron lady, the first one to,
to prevail. And Abbevail, which is where
I lived, was a coal mining and steel working town,
you know, by training I used to,
I did a nine month journalism course at Cardiff that preceded me
working for the Gwent Gazette in Abbevale, which was part of Celtic
Press, that was based in Merthyr Tydville where I used
to go for a night out on weekends because Abbevale was so
rough that even Merthyr Tydville was like paradise,
you know, by comparison. And I used to
cover Trudega Magistrates Court on a
Tuesday, Aboveale Magistrates Court on a Wednesday and
Abertillery Magistrates Court on a Thursday. And
these cases were grim. I would say,
you know, we're talking about some of them were bestiality
because there's a lot of sheep in Wales, as everyone
knows, misreants.
And a lot of the cases were fights.
And I mean, I'm not kidding you, every story that I
wrote was pretty much the same when it came to fighting. Every fight happened
in the queue for the Chinese takeaway from like
11pm to 11:30pm because you were kicked out
of the pubs. I think it was 11pm. I got
my times wrong. It's been a while and you know, and you know,
so you could either go and wait, stand in line at the
Chinese restaurant or the free Indian restaurant and of course you got a long
line and somebody sees their ex girlfriend with a new, you know,
her new boyfriend or something, a bit of fisty cuffs, you
know, and you know,
so I used to cover a lot of court cases. And the other,
the other two types of things that I used to report on.
One were golden wedding anniversaries. And for those out
there who don't know a golden wedding anniversary
is. Is not when you're married for 50 minutes or 50 days,
which seems to be the sort of norm, it's 50 frigging years,
you know, and we used to do them all the time. Think about this.
All the time. Golden wedding anniversaries.
So, yeah, you know, I would do the. The puff
piece and a photographer would take the photograph and. And the other
types of cases were abervale's one big
council estate. You know, if you're watching this from the States, the
projects, and
things would go wrong in people's homes. They would call a local council blinder
gwent, whatever it was called,
local council, whatever and, or abervail
this, you know, whatever. And they would
say, oh, look, you know, the toilet's not working or there's a leak here or,
you know, something else isn't working. And the casual would say, oh, whatever, we'll
get around to it at some stage. And they'd get tired of waiting, so they
call the press, you know, this is the big David Martin song,
you know, go out to the council estate interview,
you know, the old lady, you know, who had the complaint, and we'd
write the story in a big exclusive, you know,
and then the council would get embarrassed and it would expedite
the repair process. I can always remember
this one house on the Tredega. No,
the Rasa Industrial estate. This
woman lived in this house with her kids and dogs and
whatever. And her problem
was the upstairs toilet was leaking. So urine
was leaking ceiling and it was
collecting in the kitchen in a bucket.
And I can, I always remember this. So
I went there to interview her
as I'm walking, before I even got outside the house, like the
smell was just over the general
smell of whatever was. It was
overpowering to the point where I thought
I was going to vomit. And because I'm British, I
remember thinking, well, this would be embarrassing if I
spontaneously vomit. Like, this is really embarrassing,
you know. So I managed to keep it together and I
walked inside the house. Honestly, it was like it was
overpowering, you know. And then within
six years I was working in
Bermuda, where there's no unemployment. I was,
you know, there was no unemployment and I worked there for four, six years.
I interviewed three billionaires, you know, like I
went from interviewing a woman whose, you know, urine's leaking, you know, into
a kitchen where she cooked food. To interviewing
billionaires. So how does that happen? How many of those billionaires do you
think later went to prison? Go on, I'm going to take a guess.
All of them. Well, let's see how good your math
is.67%.
Two of them. Two out of three. Not bad for
an enumerate lawyer. So, but tell us briefly, how
do you get from toilets with urine
leaking down to the kitchen to Bermuda? What's the.
So I wanted to leave the uk. I had enough and I.
I saw a job advertising UK Press Gazette,
right. For a job in Bermuda. I went for an interview. They were
interviewing in London. I went for an interview in
London. They told me I didn't get the
job. They had a lot of people going for the one job, as you'd imagine,
come to Bermuda, but they said the next
one will be yours. And we have a regular turnover of
people. So once I qualified as a
journalist, I left the job in Abbevale, went to
Bournemouth. That's right. Went to Bournemouth to work for
Bournemouth Evening Echo. It was while I was in Bournemouth that I applied
for this job in Bermuda. They said he wouldn't get it, so I then went
to work for the Western Daily Press,
which is based in Bristol. And I had an
area to Cava called the Forest of Dean, where, you
know, it's all right, all pa. How are you all but
right there, you know, it was a bit like Everl,
just different accent. I love it.
I. I worked for, you know, I
didn't want to live in the Forest of Dean, you know, so I lived in
Chaps. I found a beautiful muse cottage
to live in. Right.
And just to. I could. Each day. Yeah.
Oh, by the way, when I first started off as a journalist, I used to
do stories on a typewriter. There was no Internet, no
markup. Used to have a typewriter. I used to put
piece of paper, carbon paper and another piece
of paper. Yeah. I do my old
tricky Dicky finger routine. Yeah.
You know, and do the first sentence. Do the first. The intro.
On one piece of paper, I'd put one. Take it out of the typewriter.
I'd put one on a spike, that was my copy. And one for the
editor. And then put another two pieces of paper
sandwiched by carbon and just write the story. That way if you made a mistake,
you'd have to get like. I think it was called Tip X or whiteout.
It's like this liquid, you know. Right, come on, you've distracted me
now. How do you get to. So you eventually got the job in
Bermuda. So I got a job in Bermuda, yeah. And my first
you know I was working for the Western Daily Press. I got the
call I'd been there a year. I got the call saying one year after the
job interview okay. Come to so
on pretty much my last day at work at the Western
Daily Press. Yes. I'd written about called Norton's
coin was. It was a point to point horse. Point to point is
when you jump over hedges. Right. He was running in the
Cheltenham Gold cup against the housewives. Favorite desert
orchid. Right. 100 to 1. Norton's
coin was. I'd done a story on him. My landlord said oh you need to
put a bet. I put a £5 each way bet on Norton's
on Norton's coin to desert
orchid in 101. And then red hot favorite
was desert Orchid, a white horse. Norton's coin.
Bloody one. I got
604.35£ back. It was like
a windfall. I bought some
jewelry from Ratner's to give to a girl.
Listen to this. Went to Bermuda.
Now I don't know if you can remember. Ratner's was run by Gerald.
Gerald Ratner. Do you know what he was known for? He gave a speech.
Somebody asked him during the speech why is your
jewelry so inexpensive? And he said because it's crap. Crap.
Yeah. And he had to leave. Yeah, he got kicked out.
I, I knew I knew his or one of his children.
So that was my era as well. So.
So hold on. This is quite romantic the first time.
We'll leave it there, you know is I
let. I. You know that was just, just as I was, you know just before
I was getting on a plane to go to Bermuda. I went to Bermuda as
a general news reporter. My and this is
core right to the
Offshore could not have existed. If there's one thing did not happen,
okay. They at work they said oh, you'll be covering
business. And I'm like well, I don't know anything about business.
I didn't even. I don't even know about like corner shop business. I know
nothing, much less the highly
sophisticated, you know international insurance reinsurance,
hedge fund business that goes on in Bermuda. Well
tough. You're covering business. Well what did you think you went there to cover?
General news.I went there as a general news. I went to covered
golden wedding anniversaries but just in a sunnier climate
basically, you know. Right. So at that
stage you didn't even. You wouldn't have known that Bermuda was full of
all these either already well off or wanting to be
well off. Lawyers, accountants, insurance about it at all. Didn't
know much about it at all. Anyway, I went there and you know, for the
first couple of years in Bermuda, I was just looking for a good time.
But that's difficult to find in Bermuda because it's a very.
The best description of Bermuda I ever heard was it's a well kept
graveyard.
20 miles an hour,
right. 20 miles an hour speed lay there. I got caught once
speeding twice in like one of my. I'd been there only a couple of weeks
and within one week I got caught speeding twice. Normally that's a ban,
but because mine had happened back to back, I didn't have any like
prior convictions. They dealt with it all at the same time. So I didn't get
banned. But when I say speeding one, I was going 30 miles
an hour on my scooter on one occasion and
35 miles an hour on the other. You know,
you're a bit of a Hell's angel. Now. Listen. Exactly. Yeah. You may just
shout me down because you clearly didn't want to go into the romance thing.
So you're quite a solitary guy. You don't actually.
I'd like a left hurt. You listen, to be honest, you know, listen,
to be honest, to be an investigative journalist, you've got to be.
I'm just trying to like choose
my words correctly because I don't want to give like a false impression.
You've got to be wired differently. Yeah. Okay.
And I don't say you've got to be wired better or worse, but you definitely
differently. And you
know, I, you
know, like I said, I had some years where the, my own legal
fees.
So. So that makes no sense. Right?
What sort of person just continues
like this? You gotta be, you know, if you wrote it down on a piece
of paper, wrist or what, it doesn't make any sense. Right, but, but you know,
my, I think it's quite difficult for anyone to
live with me, to be honest, because I'm very sort of determined,
very bloody minded. So you have like tunnel
vision. So honestly, like for me the
worst thing to happen was if my company
went bust, it would have destroyed me
personally. I see. So who would think if we wasn't, oh, do I have a
good social life, you know, or if I met the woman of my dreams.
It was just, I cannot fail at this. Right. So I
work like whatever it took seven Days a week,
get. Get up at, you know, five in the morning, work till, you know, nine
at night. I was just obsessed. And
so you've got to be wired differently. You've got to be, like I said, a
chip on each shoulder. You got to be a bit pissed off, to be honest.
And. And, you know. You've got to be, you've got to be.
comfortable in your own skin and in your own
company. You've got to not mind being solitary.
Yeah, well, a lot of that stems from,
you know, from my, you know,
childhood, where. Yeah. I'm
going to say the one thing I was going to say earlier. My dad ran
off for the next one. Right. Okay. That.
Bloody. Honestly, that,
that was,
you know, it led to a lot of isolation
and thinking on my part because it was a
high, highly stressful environment. So I used to,
you know, Robin Williams, the comedian, you know, who's no
longer with, you know, I read about, like, his child,
and it was sort of similar to mine. He used to, like, spend a lot
of time on his own and he used to invent his characters
in his head. Yada, yada, yada. That was the
groundwork for comic genius, you know.
So with me, you know, I used to spend a lot of time at home
trying to process what the hell was going on, you know, and
I don't know if that's, you know, there's certainly a significant
reason, but I'm very, you know, you know, where I live, I've got
my own, well, system. I got my own solar system,
I've got my own septic system. The last two
miles to my house is a dirt road. Right. Well, why is that? I left
Miami, which is party central,
when I'm very happy, very comfortable
in my own skin. I'd rather
spend time on my own being productive than out
at dinner parties just gossiping, you know,
talking about things that aren't particularly important, you
know, or don't interest me.
So who the hell knows, you know. Such a variety. Yeah. So how do
you. How do you select? We're getting towards the end, but I've still got
so much more to cover. But how do you select the people you investigate? Do
you go through the tabloids or whatever and say, I'm going to go
and have a look at this Giza? You know, listen,
I've been doing this for so long that we're a, you know, I'm a lightning
rod. Offshore, there's a lightning rod for victims
frustrated that the police won't help them. Regulators want to help them. So they come
to me. That's one. One way. I'm
constantly doing research, so, you know, I can spot
a fraud. Fraud
aren't complicated. I could spot a fraud in seconds.
And for example,
if you see a purported performance chart and it's like a Nazi
salute in the sense that it's a diagonal
line with little or no variation, trending upwards
over a long period of time, well, it's a Ponzi scheme. You need
to know nothing else about it. Who's buying it.
You don't need to know what they're investing in. It's literally a Ponzi scheme.
It's like if you walk down the street, how do you know
a car is a car? You don't need a certificate saying, oh, this is a
car. Well, it's got a chassis, it's got four tires, got a steering wheel.
That's a car. Well, that's how easy it is to detect fraud for me, because
I've been doing it for a long time. Yeah. And so
you get this, this incoming, as
they say, of how many cases a week or whatever would you get
or do you get from people saying, I need help? Listen.
Sometimes hundreds. It's like a London bus, you know, they come in. I
see, okay. But I'm, you know, I've got
a sophisticated monitoring system in place where
information comes to me, you know,
but one thing I'd like to say before we wrap it up is, you know,
I don't have any. You know, we don't have liable insurance, you know,
because I. The best libel insurance of all, that's
putting people in prison. People who sue you put them in prison. Right.
And who's nass who wants a piece of this action?
You know, journalists normally live in fear.
Honestly, you know, you're a lawyer, Gary, you know, and you know, when a
lawyer sends a threatening letter to a journalist, it has a chilling
effect. Right?Well, I. I'm fortunate enough to live in the
United States, where the libel laws are kinder to journalists
than they are in the uk. But one thing, I had to figure
this out on my own. These lawsuits have to go away. I
can't continue like this. It's financially
unsustainable. Okay. Mark Harris sued me, got
sentenced to 17 years. The First International bank of
Grenada Group sued me. One of the five of them got criminally
charged. One died pending trial. The other four got
varying prison sentences. More recently,
you know, Timothy School's got 14 years in England. You know, so when
people sue me, I'll say, okay, listen, I'm a professional journalist. I'm
just going to do my job, right? If you're, you know, I approach
your client before I publish, he or she declined to comment.
There's an open offer. He or she wants to put their side
of things after the fact, I'll publish it. I'll publish it. This is
the way I operate. But let's get one thing straight. Your
fucking client sues me, this is what the fuck
is going to happen. I can't guarantee I'm going to
put him in prison or her. I can guarantee I will do
everything I can to put him or
her in prison. And this is no idle threat.
Here are some case numbers for you to research which
gives you an insight into who I am and what I'm
capable of. Right? Here's a
defamation case number. Here's a corresponding
criminal case number a few years later, over and
over and over again. So
sue me. See what happens to your client. Timothy
Schools didn't believe me. He got sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Now, not just because of me, right. But
that investigation was triggered as a result of us. So
no one yet, thankfully, no one yet, has succeeded
in a defamation suit against you. Well, that's. Well, it
depends what your definition of success is. So 2010,
wherever I was sued, I would defend it.
In 2010, the Speech act was passed.
This means that essentially foreign
defamation actions are unenforceable
in the United States as a matter of federal law.
Right. So they're literally unenforceable.
So since 2010, if I'm sued outside the United States, I don't
defend them because this is the decision. And I've been sued twice
in London. Either
I'm putting myself at risk of spending
hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not in
excess of a million pounds per case,
which I don't have. Yeah. Or I can
spend nothing, right.
Knowing that it will have
hopefully no material impact on me because it's unenforceable in the United
States. So any assets I have are in the United States.
So. But what, what, you know, that means that. So if you, if you are
sued outside the United States, you don't defend it, the plaintiff can apply for
it, judgment in default of appearance, you know, and get
a judgment. So this has
happened twice in England and once
in Canada, where default judgments have been entered.
And one of the cases,
privileged wealth, which was brought by
somebody who became a disqualified director in the uk,
they got a default judgment against
me. And my understanding, which is based on the opposing Attorney's
boasting of it is that the biggest award
given ever obtained by a corporation,
the biggest defamation award in favor of a corporation,
not an individual, in the history of
UK law, you know, but what does that mean? It's
unenforceable in the United States, I hope. And by the
way, that judge in that case,
even though it was a default judgment, he issued,
like a written judgment that said on its merits,
this idiot judge, he's an idiot,
a disgrace to the legal profession
because this was a fraud that preyed on the elderly.
He issued in his judgment, default judgment. I hadn't ended an appearance
in. This is so obviously not a fraud.
I need to send a message so that privileged wealth can
take my message to their clients and
reassure them. And I'm thinking, jesus Christ,
man, you've got to be a fucking idiot. It sense makes. Made
me angry. Right. I bet it did, you know,
and what happened? What happened to privilege? Within two weeks,
this. Within two weeks, this idiot's judgment,
the fund had been suspended because
there had been an internal dispute. Yeah.
This was based in Panama as well. And
one of the insiders got
shot by another insider on a motorbike. There
had been an assassination attempt. There was, like, an internal dispute over how
to split up the money that they'd ripped off from the elderly. This happened
within. Within a couple of weeks, this guy writing, oh, this is so obviously not
a fraud. And by the way, it was, like, offering ridiculously high,
you know, rates of return. I mean, honestly, I don't know what the judge was
thinking. Maybe he wasn't thinking, you know. No. So what
happened? Did. Did the police investigate? Not just the assassination?
Yeah, there was, you know,
I got a photograph, I think, of the guy maybe in
hospital or something. And so the fund was
suspended. And then everyone admitted it was a fraud. Right. You
know, it went into liquidation. Everyone admitted it was a fraud, but they just
could not agree. Agree on who committed it, you know, within two
weeks of this idiot saying it's not a fraud. I mean, Jesus.
Okay. I don't enter an appearance, enter a default judgment against me.
Write something appropriate. Yeah. Don't.
You know, because there are real people with real
money. Yeah. Whose lives are being ruined
by this. You, victims of frauds I expose,
commit suicide. You know. Disgraceful,
disgraceful. People might be watching. I can be animated, Gary,
you know, but they might be watching a single. He comes across like
this, like that. I'm not sure if that's particularly appealing. Whatever. But
listen, I live on planet Earth. I've got my feet on the
ground. Money we're dealing with. This is life savings.
This is depression. This is people who kill
themselves. Right. Because of this activity. So I make no
excuses. You are an attorney. I couldn't care if
you're a former president of the Law Society of England, Wales. You
want to take me on frigging, do your best because
I'm going to destroy you by destroying. I'm not talking about being
unprofessional. You write me an obnoxious letter, I'm going to
publish this. And guess what? Your kids are going to read this.
They'll know what you do for a living, and they're not going to look
at you the same ever again. And there's nothing to do about
it. You want to be an asshole? You want to represent crooks? I'm going
to hold you accountable. That's probably a
great phrase to end
one of the most interesting podcasts so far.
David, you're going to be an a hole. I'm going to hold you
accountable. There's so much more for us to talk about. We haven't
even touched most of the cases that you've done. But I
think. I think we've
gone into what makes a little bit of. What makes
David Marchant. David Marchant. And drives you the way it
does. So I gotta say, I enjoyed every single
minute of it. David, thank you very much. I'm definitely gonna
come knocking again on your door for stage two and
stage three. All right, I appreciate. Gary. I'm gonna have a lie down.
Take care, buddy. All right, Gary, all the best then. Cheers. Bye.
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