I fought back and beat a $300k con artist
When Emma Ferris discovered her partner was a conman, she started a dangerous game of double deceit. Debbie Jamieson
It’s April 9, 2019, and Emma Ferris is walking into the Queenstown branch of Westpac where she gives her partner of six months a kiss and a cuddle. ‘‘I’m so sorry,’’ she says. ‘‘I don’t know why my family’s doing this.’’
‘‘I’m sure we can sort it out, but this is bad,’’ responds the man she knew as Andrew Thomson until only a few hours earlier. Now she knows he is also Andrew Tonks, Andrew Tonks-Thomson and Andrew W C Tonks Thomson, a convicted conman.
Emma, an outgoing physiotherapist and mother-oftwo, is holding herself together as best she can. A day earlier she paid $250,000 into Andrew’s bank account. Since she learned his true identity the bank froze $200,000 of it, but to get that money reversed he has to sign the paperwork. She acts as though nothing has changed between them and that her overcautious brother is behind her actions.
Andrew has been an attentive, caring and fun boyfriend for six months, but today he is suspicious. He stands over Emma as she signs the documentation. Quietly, he threatens her brother. ‘‘I know people. This is the kind of thing I would take people’s legs out for,’’ he tells her.
Emma is terrified but the remark also makes her angry. ‘‘Don’t you dare say that about my family,’’ she fires back. Andrew’s mask, the one that is quietly confident he can cajole more money from Emma, returns and his tone changes, ‘‘I wouldn’t do anything,’’ he says.
Bank staff are in on Emma’s deceit. A receptionist makes small talk. ‘‘How’s your day been?’’ she asks. Andrew looks away, and the receptionist mouths, ‘‘Are you OK?’’ Emma responds, ‘‘no’’.
The 10-minute transaction feels like an hour to Emma. Paperwork is signed, but the reversal is not yet confirmed. The couple, each playing their own game of pretence, awkwardly stands outside the bank. Andrew wants to go for a drink. Emma apologises. She has to work, she says. ‘‘We had a hug, which made my skin crawl.’’ He drives away. She drives around the car park and runs back into the bank.
‘‘I actually collapsed. The whole build-up to that point was just exhausting. I didn’t realise because I was just in adrenaline mode. The bank managers came out and were like ‘Are you actually OK? Are you safe?’ I was like ‘I don’t know, but please tell me the money is there’.’’
Moments later the money has appeared in her account. Emma is delighted, but scared. She drives the hour home to Glenorchy, feeling numb. Friends and family gather. Her ex-husband takes the children. ‘‘We were worried about their safety and my safety because we didn’t know who this person was. He’d threatened my family.’’
But Andrew returned to his caring role. He texts: ‘‘Babe... please try not to stress. Someone looking out for you is good. I know there’s some scum out there... trust me I’m not one of them.’’
He still has $100,000 of Emma’s money, which he promises he will return within 24 hours. She knows she will have to maintain the pretence of a relationship. She does not know it will be another two months before Andrew is behind bars, and she can breathe easily.
During 2017, Emma Ferris, 36, felt she was in a happy space. She had completed an amicable divorce and was raising her two children in a new home in Glenorchy. She had started a new company, was financially stable and ready to meet someone.
Emma hadn’t dated since meeting her husband at 22 and 14 years later – and few options in Glenorchy (population 450) – there was the exciting new world of online dating. That Christmas her large family delighted in creating her Tinder profile. The feeling of embarking on a new social experiment was wonderful, she said.
In October 2018 she came across Andrew Thomson, a businessman who lived in nearby Alexandra. They appeared to have a lot in common including a love of the outdoors, travel and snowboarding. He seemed friendly and had a nice smile, she said.
In the early days they talked online. He was from Tasmania and had played in the Australian Football League, he told her. He had been a pro wakeboarder and a successful businessman, he said.
For their first date, they met for a coffee at the exclusive golfing resort of Millbrook, near Queenstown, but ended up staying for three hours. Andrew told Emma he had had built up and sold a successful trucking company, using the capital to purchase and operate five successful restaurants in Hobart. He had sold those and was in New Zealand looking for new opportunities, he said.
Emma, herself an astute businesswoman who has been involved in successful property development and running her own businesses, says his stories
were believable. ‘‘They were so colourful and detailed and... there was a genuine connection between us.’’
Over the next few weeks Andrew would check in on Emma to see how she was. In time, they went on further dates. But there were signs that not everything was as it seemed with Andrew. He had warned her that she would not been able to Google him as he had been a victim of identity theft in America and had engaged a public relations agency to help wipe his identity from the internet.
Later Andrew confessed he had spent six months in jail in Melbourne having unwittingly imported and sold motorbikes to gang members.
Emma did search to find out more but discovered little. She also noted that she was never introduced to his friends.
In hindsight, she sees ‘‘warning signs with bright flashing and screaming sirens attached to them’’. At the time she erred on the side of trust. And as for his time in prison, she thought everybody deserved a second chance.
By February 2019 Andrew had met Emma’s children and wider family who had come together for her mother’s surprise 70th birthday celebrations. Many of her siblings had developed their own suspicions, and her sister Sarah, who had come from London, grilled Andrew. ‘‘He was so affable and charming and not arrogant... there were still red flags but on meeting him he could overcome them so easily,’’ Sarah said.
Andrew often talked about business ventures and picked up on Emma’s interest in property developments, often taking her to look at Queenstown properties while on dates. There was a section at Moke Lake he claimed to own and a potential development site at Fernhill. He surprised her with gifts and weekends away to celebrate her birthday and Christmas.
‘‘When you’re in a relationship and you’re starting to get to know someone there’s so much happy hormones and you want to trust this is good and you feel swept away,’’ says Emma.
Pushed by her still doubtful siblings, Emma asked to see Andrew’s passport. He resisted. A brother had looked into Andrew’s supposed directorships on the Companies Office website, but could not find him. Andrew said the companies were in transition and he had an agreement with the owners. ‘‘I couldn’t find the information I wanted to find to prove or disprove him,’’ Emma said.
In February Andrew shared a document, supposedly from his Australian accountant, that showed he had assets worth $8 million in Australia.
Soon Andrew had a proposition. She could loan him money for his newly established company, ATI Group Ltd. The money would be tagged to the Fernhill property development. It would earn interest and at any stage Emma could withdraw her funds, he said.
Emma had her lawyer draw up an agreement. The Moke Lake property was to be security and Emma would loan $50,000. ‘‘I thought it was water tight,’’ she said. She has since changed lawyers.
Interest payments began coming in and Emma became excited at the prospect of more time with her children. Andrew moved into a Queenstown rental costing $800 a week, and leased a new Ford Ranger.
Later that month, Andrew suggested investing more money in his company. He had paid a deposit on the Fernhill property, he said. Emma contacted her bank and emailed the Australian accountant’s document. The bank accepted it and proceeded.
On Friday, April 5, Emma was setting up the trust document to allow the loan. She confides in friend Sarsha Hope, who goes home, alarm bells ringing and contacts Jo, another friend of Emma’s. The women and their husbands urgently dig for more information on Andrew Thomson without realising that on Monday the bank funds arrive in Emma’s account, and she is transferring them to Andrew on Tuesday morning.
That Monday night Jo’s husband, Tom, notices an attached consent form on the ATI Group’s registration page at the NZ Companies Office. It mentions a new name: ‘‘Andrew Tonks Thomson’’. A Google search later they find a 2016 Queenstown court report in the Otago Daily Times about an ‘‘Andrew Charles
Tonks’’ who was sentenced to almost two years in prison for two frauds totalling $35,000. The two Andrews were the same person.
Believing Andrew was staying at Emma’s home and not knowing what risk he posed nor that the transfer of funds was imminent, the friends decide to wait until the morning to notify Emma.
At 7.30am Emma received the call revealing that Andrew was a convicted conman. She panics. She doesn’t know what to do. She rings the bank, her brother, the police. She texts Andrew suggesting they slow down the deal. He resists. Operating on adrenaline, she decides the best chance of getting her money back is to con Andrew into reversing the transfer.
‘‘At one point I went into my room and just had this realisation of what had happened, what this person had done to me and my family. How he had targetted me. And I sat on my bed and I thought ‘there’s no f...ing way he is going to get away with this. There is no way somebody does this to me.’ And I was prepared to fight.
‘‘That was a huge turning point and motivated me all the way through.’’
Later that same day Emma finds herself in the bank with Andrew, pretending everything is normal. It is the last time she will see Andrew until she reads her victim impact statement in the Invercargill District Court a year later. But to get to that point and fight for the $100,000 she was still owed, she has to continue the deceit.
Once Andrew’s true identity was revealed, Emma established he was not the owner of the Central Otago trucking company as he suggested, but worked there. Subsequent investigations found he had invested some of her money in an alcohol company, that he had never owned the
Moke Lake property and hadn’t paid a deposit on the Fernhill section. His plans to buy a wellknown Queenstown restaurant were well under way, too.
Andrew had also legally changed his name after serving his 2016 sentence and had seven previous convictions for stealing, recorded by the Hobart Court. The accountant’s letter detailing his wealth is a fake.
Andrew stayed in Queenstown for a short time before moving back to Australia. He was at times suspicious of Emma, but appeared to double down on his stories, sending Emma his 11-page
‘‘Tonka Trilogy’’, the beginnings of his autobiography.
It included a chapter on his international espionage: ‘‘Getting arrested to gain the trust of inmates to working as a multimillionaire to get alongside money laundering and human trafficking rings, to being an actual well-off entrepreneur who is asked to be a homeless person in piss-soaked clothing to scope a possible terrorist cell safe house,’’ he wrote.
Andrew assured Emma he would repay her once he had completed a final spying mission.
On June 13, 2019, a
Queenstown detective texted Emma to tell her Andrew was due to land in Christchurch Airport in half an hour.
‘‘I think I screamed and laughed and cried all at the same time. I dropped to the ground in my living room... I couldn’t believe we’d got him... Then doubt creeps in ... Time slowed down. I was just waiting for that phone call. What if it’s not him? What if he slips through?’’
At 3.30pm Emma gets the call. Andrew has been arrested and is heading to Christchurch Men’s Prison. ‘‘It was the most crazy, unreal feeling... it was the feeling of justice. I didn’t know if I would ever get there. It was so good... he was behind bars and I could breathe again.’’
Ironically, that night a Christchurch-based police officer rings on Andrew’s behalf to inform Emma he is very sorry, but he will not be able to meet her the next day as planned. ‘‘I think at that point I actually laughed like a crazy person. ‘I know. I’m the one who put him there,’ I said.’’
The officer pauses. ‘‘So you don’t want to be his next of kin or contact person?’’
Under the name Andrew W C Tonks Thomson, Andrew was sentenced to 28 months in jail for the theft of $300,000 from Emma and fraud against the Queenstown restaurant owner and the alcohol company, in March 2020.
He was ordered to pay Emma reparation of $63,800 and emotional harm of $8000 once released – far less than the $88,800 he still owed her. However, she was shocked to discover in June that Andrew had successfully applied to have the reparation reduced to $5000, because of his limited ability to repay.
Then, last week she learned he had been released on parole in January and was living in Auckland where he had started dating on the Bumble app. A woman he had dinner with contacted Sunday News to say she had been on a date with him and, alarmed by his stories of working in counter-terrorism, she searched him on the internet and discovered his criminal convictions.
Andrew’s parole conditions state that he is not to possess or use electronic devices capable of accessing the internet without probation’s approval and is to disclose details of any intimate relationship. Bumble has since removed him.
He told Sunday News he was living beyond his means when he met Emma and was trying to make a name for himself in New Zealand.
‘‘I have romantic notions of maybe one day having a family of my own, but that’s probably impossible with my history unfortunately.’’
Emma is still hurting and wishes she had followed her gut sooner, but believes she has taken back the power. She is not his victim.
‘‘I’m in the best place I’ve ever been with work and personally where I wanted to take my life. This hasn’t stopped me from being my best version of me.’’
She has subsequently had her name suppression lifted by the courts and is now telling her full story, which she describes as deeply personal, heart-breaking and at times ridiculous, through a 12-episode podcast series entitled Conning the Con, with the help of her London-based sister Sarah. The first edition reached the top10 list of NZ true crime podcasts.
‘‘It’s scary to put it out there, but I want to do it to help others who have been hurt by him or other conmen or women and to reduce that shame of fear of being in that situation.’’
‘I sat on my bed and I thought ‘there’s no f...ing way he is going to get away with this. There is no way somebody does this to me.’ And I was prepared to fight.’ EMMA FERRIS