Walter Mitty con artist gets lower sentence from the NSW CCA … Ponzi schemer fleeced friends, lovers and whoever else he could get his hands on … Deficient personality … Original sentence excessive and the result of an unbalanced process … Too much judicial emotion … Pep-talk to the media on reporting sentences … Victims still largely penniless … Alan Zheng reports
It was McLaren’s cursed dream of deceit and chicanery which ruined the lives of 15 “good people” after defrauding them of a total of $7.6 million between 2011 and 2017.
His high life was cut short in 2019 following a 16-year sentence in the slammer, courtesy of Acting District Court judge Colin Charteris, and met with cheering from the gallery.
The ponzi scheme operator pleaded guilty to 17 counts of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception and one count of knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime for his efforts funnelling the money through 30 bank accounts and several registered shell businesses. The sentences for both offences were to be served concurrently.
But Charteris’ sentence – considered the highest recorded in NSW for offending of that kind – has been chopped short. An appeal by McLaren paid off last week with Justice Peter Hamill alongside Major General Cliff Hoeben and Stephen Rothman resentencing the prisoner to a maximum of 12 years.
In the process, the appeal court reaffirmed the need for sentencing judges to maintain an unemotional approach, even in the most serious of cases.
The $7.6 million had been variously dissipated on various pursuits that sustained McLaren’s louche lifestyle as a designer suit-wearing, wannabe James Bond whose two Ferraris and an Aston Martin were on loan from a car dealer.
“Lifestyle situations” including first-class travel were among the beneficiaries of his faux earnings.
McLaren’s brother-in-law described him in this way:
“A strange thing about him is that he will watch a James Bond movie and then will dress like James Bond. He will drive cars like what James Bond drives.”
In each of his schemes, McLaren adopted a new identity with a rich and textured personal history, tailored to impress victims before subsequently bleeding them dry.
Original first names did not come easily to him so he was Max Tavita but more often he was Hamish Maxwell, Hamish McLachlan or Hamish Watson.
Nevertheless, McLaren’s conversational arsenal contained a stockpile of well-spun narratives. Sometimes he was a former Goldman Sachs banker, a Harvard Business School or MIT alumni, who handled millions of dollars for the Commonwealth Bank and worked for Lockheed Martin.
In reality, he had been a landscaper and gardener with a diploma in con artistry.
He was the master of generic professional platitudes often found on LinkedIn profiles; taking the guise of “high frequency trader … financial professional [working in the] finance industry … financial markets or asset management” – lingo learnt while he was a trader at the Sydney Futures Exchange in the 90s just prior to his bankruptcy.
There were also stories of personal trauma and tragedy to lure the sympathy of victims, like the time McLaren accidentally reversed a car over his twin brother when he was nine.
On one occasion, he claimed to be a barrister with experience in financial matters, dealing with high profile clients.
The chosen victims were infinite in their frailty, always vulnerable to his fabricated investment schemes which promised high profits but ultimately delivered nothing.
Among their ranks were recent divorcees, elderly retirees, intimate partners (including his then, now ex-wife) as well as mutual friends. They wanted to invest life savings, redrawn mortgages, superannuation or other large sums put aside for rainy days and autumn years.
Each victim was regaled with a merry-go-round of fanciful and highly detailed stories. According to The Australian newspaper’s podcast Who the Hell is Hamish? McLaren told one of his victims, girlfriend Tracy Hall, that he had been under the World Trade Center on 9/11, even going as far as to imitate the sound of the explosion for Hall’s benefit.
Personal lives, businesses and livelihoods were destroyed by reckless financial advice that would have drawn the ire of a thousand Hayne royal commissions.
One of McLaren’s victims, Australian fashion designer Lisa Ho – whose husband and friend had also invested money with McLaren – was encouraged to publicly list her designer brand on the ASX, only for it to collapse shortly afterward, citing “one-off” issues.
Equipped with the litigation firepower of Rob Kardos (Kardos Scanlan) and John Dalzell (Dentons), Ho’s court proceedings against McLaren ultimately settled, with Lisa recovering $500,000 of $850,000 owed.
Unlike Ho, others were mere minnows rather than millionaires. Glenn and Vickie Pickard were defrauded of $754,900, virtually all of their superannuation. McLaren gave the couple a second-hand Toyota Corolla for their troubles.
Some victims quickly realised the financial irregularity of McLaren’s actions – the large “returns” he manufactured were photoshopped docs available off the internet.
When they demanded repayment they were partially reimbursed with money he’d acquired from other victims.
Charteris ADCJ applied a 25 percent discount to the individual indicative sentence for each of McLaren’s offences to recognise his early guilty plea – the “only mitigating feature” of his circumstances.
Charteris thought McLaren had no remorse even though he undertook to do anything to allow the release of his personal funds, including superannuation entitlements, to the victims.
“Mr McLaren is sorry for no one other than himself. He is sorry for his own predicament. He is not truly sorry for the ruinous results of his outrageous conduct.”
A longstanding involvement in surf lifesaving was to McLaren’s credit, yet ultimately little sympathy was spared for the conman. Even a last-ditch claim by McLaren’s lawyers that he suffered from Autism was knocked back.
“McLaren’s actions over a number of years have demonstrated a callous disregard for the multiple victims of his fraudulent offences, most of whom lost substantial sums of money, if not their life savings. In this respect, I am of the opinion Mr McLaren’s actions were likely driven by greed and deficient personality traits rather than any overt mental illness or mental disorder.”
Psychologist Philip Gorrell sheeted home these deficient personality traits to McLaren’s upbringing and desire to earn acceptance from his father and his parents’ later abandonment of him.
McLaren was well settled into Long Bay Correctional – the NSWCCA heard that he was meaningfully engaged in Sunday Services and was “polite, friendly and engaged”. His time had been spent thinking less about money and more about electrical safety and first aid, resulting in TAFE certificates in both subjects.
The scene was set for a small redemption, aided further by the NSWCCA’s consideration of McLaren’s lack of criminal offending before age 40, his long estrangement from his father and work in surf lifesaving and search and rescue on Canadian ski-fields.
On appeal, Gabriel Wendler (7 Windeyer Chambers) for McLaren argued Charteris erred in conducting an unbalanced sentencing process which ignored McLaren’s subjective circumstances and rehabilitation. Further, the 16 year aggregate sentence was manifestly excessive.
The court upheld both grounds of appeal.
“His Honour effectively transmogrified himself as a champion of the victims,” Wendler submitted.
Charteris had succumbed to an accidental whiplash of sorts. In condemning McLaren’s behaviour he had gone too far, taken up arms on behalf of the victims, employed an emotive tone and flavour in a number of comments that exceeded temperance and impartiality, falling foul of “the judicial function”.
In Charteris’ view (and who can blame him), McLaren was “consumed by himself … had absolutely no compassion for the victims … had no empathy” and engaged in behaviour that is “the most reprehensible one could imagine having regard to offences of this nature”, attracting the “massive disapproval of the community”.
“A man who had spent six years spinning yarns to people and having the gift of the gab did not want to talk to the police about what he had been doing and was unusually silent.”
But there were also comments that were less technical and more emotive, like describing McLaren as acting as though he would not have a judgment day.
“You were mistaken. That judgment day is today.”
Peter Hamill described this reference as having an “ominous quasi-religious flavour” which was unnecessary and inappropriate.
However, the religious reference was not entirely out of place as we find that McLaren had been engrossed in bible studies at the Emmaus Correspondence School – achieving excellent results.
Charteris couldn’t resist a “pep talk” to media in the gallery.
“There are a number of people from the media here. My experience is that the media seem to go deaf after the minimum period is announced, and I’ve often seen articles written which only contain the minimum period.
The fact is, a lot of people do not get granted their parole at the end of the non-parole period. And many people aren’t released until they have served all of their sentence. I’ve imposed an effective sentence of 16 years imprisonment with 12 years non-parole. I was rather hoping, if there be any headlines, they not say 12 years imprisonment because it’s important that it is a 16 year sentence.”
The Guardian dutifully complied but the Sydney Morning Herald and SBS proved to be enemies of general deterrence.
The NSWCCA accepted that McLaren’s conduct was a grave example of fraud which exceeded numerous similar cases in its magnitude and impact on victims.
Although out-rivalled by the 91 fraud related offences and 100 victims in Stroud and $9.7 million fraudulently transferred in Clarke, McLaren’s case still stands out for its uniquely emotional exploitation of victims, often relying upon close intimacy and friendship with multiple victims.
Justice Hamill concluded that Charteris not only ignored McLaren’s subjective circumstances resulting in an unbalanced sentencing process but, as a result, caused a manifest excess in the sentencing outcome.
McLaren’s original 16 year sentence was considered “too long and the outcome was unjust”.
Nonetheless, the victims’ coffers remain emptied all the same with $5.4 million unaccounted for to date despite efforts to locate it and in spite of a petition by the victims for further police investigation.
The court heard the prosecution was unable to prove where the money was spent or where it was now, if any remained.
Stranger still, some of McLaren’s victims described him as living a frugal lifestyle – renting a Bondi apartment and living a simple life. This has led to speculation that the prisoner has hidden the money – although that might be the denial stage of grief at work.
Many have been forced to contend with the consequences of the fraud in their own lives for the foreseeable future – marriages have broken down, homes have been sold, victims consigned to living in small rented flats, all the while blaming themselves for being conned by McLaren’s antics and moving on from sometimes years of intimacy with a fictional construct.
Under McLaren’s new sentence, he will be eligible for parole from 2026.
Possibly, a $5 million dollar nest egg awaits him.