So it was around 1995 and my partner at the time was a foreign exchange worker.

He would have thought that after more than six months of investigations and a podcast

series where Hange McLean's shell-shocked victims laid bare their pain. We'd heard it all,

but with Hamish there's always more. We published our last episode three months ago

and the human wreckage caused by this one man continues to wash up.

This first story goes all the way back to 1995, almost a quarter of a century ago,

when this woman and her partner, whom we'll call Mark, got tangled up with Hamish.

It was around the time in Australia where the foreign exchange system was changing

and they were getting rid of people and putting in computers to save money.

He went on a lot of foreign exchange workers, but became entrenched at the time.

And as part of his infringement settlement, he got a payout which would

be tied up over for a few months.

Even back then, Hamish had an innate ability, like a pig to a truffle, to sniff out her redundancy.

Hamish proposed a business idea that they import fish and fish to mare,

sea cucumbers from Tonga and the Pacific Islands to sell to wealthy Asians in Sydney and China.

Neither of them had any expertise in fish, but Hamish convinced Mark that it was a good idea.

He also convinced him to put up all the money.

Hamish turned up to meetings with a Rolex on his wrist, a Swedish model on his arm,

but never a wallet in his pocket.

He did talk a talk and he did think he had a basic knowledge of what he was talking about

to the degree where I couldn't fault it because I didn't have a debt in knowledge.

So I kind of had to go with what it was saying and turn to importing more,

...