Juggling work and childcare during the school holidays, Tracy was running on empty as she helped her seven-year-old daughter Asha into her leotard for gymnastics club.
Her stress levels weren’t helped by the fact she hadn’t heard from her boyfriend Max in 24 hours, which was completely out of character. She jumped when the phone went, but it was only her best friend Cath. Without saying hello, Tracy shared her panic about the radio silence from Max.
Cath then uttered the ominous words: ‘Trace, read the news article I’ve just sent you, then call me straight back.’
Tracy’s hands began to shake, as she assumed the worst; that he’d been found dead. But the link showed a video of an unidentified man being arrested outside an apartment Tracy immediately recognised.
‘The media tried to hide his identity by blurring out his face but, to my horror, I could see it was Max being led away by the police,’ Tracy recalls.
‘My stomach lurched and I felt sick as I called Cath. I just thought, “OK, so Max isn’t dead. But why on earth has he been arrested?” Nothing made sense.’
Tracy would later discover that her boyfriend of 18 months, whom she had loved and planned a future with, had not given her his real name – he was actually Hamish McLaren, not Max Tavita, as he’d told her.
He was also a serial conman who’d fleeced investors out of an estimated £3.7million. Tracy was one such victim. Not only had he fabricated stories about his life but, claiming to be a financial expert, he’d swindled her out of her life savings of £150,000.
Tracy is well-educated and intelligent, but she says she felt ’emotionally raped’ by her so-called soulmate’s betrayal
Hamish McLaren was sentenced to 12 years in jail after being convicted of stealing more than £3.7million from 15 different victims
‘I felt completely betrayed on so many levels,’ says Tracy. ‘I felt like I’d been emotionally raped. Clearly if I’d known the truth, I would have run a mile. I would never have welcomed him into my life, or my heart, let alone been intimate with him. But it wasn’t just the money, it was the fact that Max had been such a cheerleader for me. I loved him.’
Tracy is astute, well-educated and highly intelligent. At the time, she had a high-flying career heading up the marketing team at eBay. She says: ‘We think of vulnerable women as being an emotional mess or desperate for love. I was neither.’
The only risk factors that made Tracy, then 40, an ideal target were that she was time-poor and exhausted from work. If someone as savvy as Tracy could be deceived in this way, it could happen to anyone. Referring to her divorce a year before ‘Max’, then 41, had told her: ‘Trace, you’ve been through so much, all I want is to make sure you have the future and the financial security you deserve.’
Tracy says: ‘I trusted him completely. I was convinced he had my best interests at heart. I had no reason to believe otherwise.’
Over several months, Hamish began advising her how to invest her pension money and other savings, gradually convincing her to transfer more and more money into a trading account in her name.
His recommendations came, he said, from his role as a chief financial officer at work.
Max covered his tracks meticulously. Every day, he showed Tracy investment reports, proving his extraordinary financial acumen. He provided receipts and reports on headed paper for every transfer she made, tracking the progress of each one. In her eyes, he was helping her make a tidy profit.
But in reality, all the cash had been placed into Hamish’s own trading account, then distributed to his various bank accounts.
Tracy now suspects he was defrauding several victims at once, using multiple aliases.
In June 2019, at a court in Sydney, Hamish McLaren (or ‘Hamish Watson’, as he was known to some victims) was convicted of stealing more than £3.7million from 15 different victims, including Tracy. The police still suspect this is the tip of the iceberg and that Hamish may have fooled tens – or even hundreds – more people across the globe.
His 16-year prison sentence was later reduced to 12 on appeal. Even more galling, the vast majority of the money from his six years of fraud has never been recovered.
Looking back, Tracy says there were dozens of red flags, such as the fact he would never catch the same flight as her. As she knows now, this was so she would never see the real name on his boarding pass.
She first met ‘Max’ in 2016 via the dating app Happn, a year after her marriage ended. Wanting to take things slowly, Tracy got to know him for several months as a friend, before their romantic relationship blossomed. Tracy was drawn to Hamish’s sparkling sense of humour but also his deeply caring side. He showed such great empathy, claiming he too had endured painful struggles in his past.
‘During our first phone call, when I asked about his family, he told me his parents had died in a plane crash when he was six,’ says Tracy. ‘I was so shocked, I wasn’t sure how to reply. I remember feeling amazed at how strong and positive he sounded, given he’d been through something so traumatic, so young.’
This was the first red flag that Tracy is now kicking herself for missing. When she Googled ‘Tavita plane crash’ in bed that night, nothing came up. But after a long day at work, she didn’t dig any deeper.
It was the first of a string of lies that he told her. Later in court, he was described as having ‘the gift of the gab’.
He told Tracy he’d been working ‘less than a block away’ when the Twin Towers were hit during 9/11. Despite having no formal qualifications, he claimed to be a graduate of Harvard Business School, said he was a member of Mensa and that he’d had a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He even claimed he‘d done an internship at the American defence and aerospace manufacturer Lockheed Martin. But all of it was pure fantasy.
‘Max lived in a modest one-bedroom apartment, just one block away from Bondi Beach,’ recalls Tracy. ‘It didn’t seem odd. He told me he was looking to simplify his life after 16 years living in New York. It wasn’t that big or particularly flashy.’
But, somewhat improbably, he owned at least five cars. His fleet included two Range Rovers, a Porsche and an Aston Martin.
‘Looking back now, I realise he told me all these lies with the sole aim to gain my sympathy and trust,’ Tracy says. At the time though, she thought she’d managed to find the ideal combination of a successful yet thoroughly empathetic man.
It was only Tracy’s best friend Cath who sounded alarm bells, a year into the relationship.
‘Trace, the last thing I want to do is lose you. But if I don’t say this, I’ll never forgive myself,’ Cath told her one evening. ‘I’m really concerned about Max. I’m not sure he is who he says he is. And I’m worried about your money.’
Looking back, Tracy says there were dozens of red flags that should have alerted her to Hamish McLaren’s lies
Cath suggested Tracy look through his wallet for the name on his driver’s licence, but Tracy was appalled by the idea of snooping through her soulmate’s belongings, protesting: ‘He’s the most solid man I’ve ever known.’ But, in reality, the person Tracy thought she knew and loved was robbing her blind.
She saw Max every other weekend, when daughter Asha was with her dad, although he called and texted her multiple times a day.
Then, after a final weekend away together, on July 11, 2017, Max suddenly stopped responding to her messages. At 7pm, she texted him: ‘You ok, babe? Worried about you. x’. As the evening wore on, and she heard not a peep from Max, Tracy began fearing something terrible had happened.
Then something dawned on her. Considering they’d been together for nearly 18 months, it suddenly struck her how few of Max’s friends, family or colleagues she’d met.
She didn’t have the phone number of one single person who knew him. The only family member she’d ever met was Max’s brother-in-law Chris, but she could find no trace of him on LinkedIn. Her final desperate message to Max at 5.17am read: ‘I’m so worried hon. I don’t have anyone’s phone numbers to check if you’re ok. Please just text back or call me.’
Eventually, Tracy called the police, who took sympathy on her and eventually agreed to do a ‘wellness check’ on Max at his flat. They promised to call back but Cath – and the shocking video of Max’s arrest in the news article – pipped them to the post.
‘Feeling sick, I called the police to explain a wellness check
wasn’t needed because Max had been arrested by another force,’ she recalls.
‘Then just before I hung up, the officer stopped me and said: “Just so you know, the name of the person you gave us – as well as his date of birth – doesn’t match the person who lives there.”’
Then Tracy got a text message from an unknown number, reading: ‘Tracy, please call me back urgently on this number.’ It was signed, ‘Chris, Hamish’s brother-in-law.’
She rang him back immediately, asking, ‘Chris, who the hell is Hamish?!’ The call lasted under a minute, with Chris sounding deeply uncomfortable. As she put the phone down, Tracy realised Max Tavita didn’t exist.
During a series of police interviews she discovered the truth about her so-called soulmate. ‘Near frantic, I asked the detectives if all my money had gone and to my horror, they replied: “More than likely, yes.”’
The police advised Tracy to collect every piece of paperwork and evidence she could find, so she could make a full statement to them. ‘I had to unpick 18 months of my life,’ she recalls.
During a three-year trial, in which the judge said Hamish had ‘absolutely no compassion for any of his victims’, it became clear the blue-eyed, blond conman had hoodwinked not only women, but also men and even preyed on one elderly couple.
He operated internationally, living in America for several years and even spending three years in London before settling in Sydney, a 40-minute drive from Tracy’s home. She was his last victim and had the unfortunate ‘privilege’ of being the only one he’d formed a romantic relationship with.
But she found she had much in common with several of the women he so cruelly duped.
Indeed, she is now in regular contact with Karen Lowe, another woman Hamish conned by posing as a charming investment banker and friend of a friend. But it was the story of an elderly couple he defrauded that upset Tracy the most.
Hamish somehow found out that the married pair had recently received a big insurance pay-out, after the husband had been involved in a serious accident at work. It had left him with a life-changing brain injury. Hamish saw an opportunity and pounced.
After a series of court hearings, he eventually pleaded guilty to 19 counts of fraud in 2019.
Once in prison, though, the manipulation continued. In a disturbing series of letters, Hamish implied she might get her money back one day if she came to visit him. But this time she knew better than to believe him.
Yet still he wouldn’t leave her alone. ‘One day he sent a huge bunch of flowers to my work. When I saw the card signed, “See you soon, Love Hamish,” I threw up,’ says Tracy.
‘It was such a shock. I thought for a moment he’d been given bail and was waiting downstairs in reception for me.’
Terrified, Tracy immediately called the police. ‘I never heard from Hamish again,’ she says.
So far, he has served nearly nine years of his 12-year sentence and will be eligible for parole in July next year. After the court case, Tracy worked long hours in marketing for another eight years in a bid to rebuild her finances, before leaving the industry to start a new chapter as a campaigner.
Now 50, Tracy is determined not to let Hamish destroy her future. ‘My daughter gave me the strength to keep going,’ she says. ‘I made the decision early on that there would be no tears at the family dinner table, no matter how bad things got.’
So, does she believe he ever loved her? ‘No, absolutely not, he was only ever out for selfish financial gain,’ she adds.
Tracy is now on a mission to raise awareness of just how insidious romance scams are.
As such, she has published a new memoir detailing her shocking ordeal at the hands of ‘Max Tavita’. She also travels the world as a speaker, educator and advocate for other fraud survivors.
In keynote speeches across the globe, Tracy publicly condemns the derogatory language used to shame scam victims.
She also challenges the way people – female victims in particular – are often ‘blamed for their stupidity’ in the media.
Tracy has seen first-hand that, for many victims, falling prey to an evil trickster like Hamish can cause irreparable damage. ‘If what happened to me happened to some people, they’d never get out of bed again, or would even end their lives,’ says Tracy today.
‘Some of his victims are now homeless or can’t afford food. They’ve had to sell everything they own.
‘What breaks my heart is that the elderly couple he preyed on have no way of rebuilding their lives,’ she adds, close to tears. ‘As the husband has a brain injury, his wife now has to look after him.
‘They should have been enjoying their retirement, but thanks to Hamish, they’ve been left with nothing.’
For several years, Tracy clung to the hope that maybe one day she’d get her money back from Hamish, but now she’s been forced to accept that her savings – all £150,000 – are long gone.
As far as she is concerned, Max Tavita is dead to her.
But her story does have a happy ending. For the past seven years, she has been in a relationship with someone she’s known since her 20s.
‘My partner and I first reconnected back in 2016, just as friends. I cried every day for a year after what happened with Hamish and he stood beside me and helped me through.
‘I feel like I can tell him anything. Above all, I’ve known him for so long that I trust him completely.’
The Last Victim by Tracy Hall, published by Hachette, is out now.
