Ninepart podcast about city fraudster heard internationally
THE story of a fraud perpetrated mainly against Otago and Southland residents now has a worldwide audience.
Barry Kloogh, once a highprofile and trusted financial adviser, is serving a sentence of eight years and 10 months after stealing an estimated $12 million from his clients.
Sarah Ferris produced the
Conning The Con podcast, an awardwinning account about how a Tinder fraudster who attempted to steal $300,000 from her Glenorchybased sister was foiled.
Ms Ferris has now turned her attention to the Kloogh case, attracted to it by her newfound familiarity about how con artists operate.
Klooghless: The Long Con examines Kloogh’s decadeslong offending, focusing partly on his motivation and methods, but mostly on the devastating impact that his theft has had on his victims.
The most recent liquidator’s report suggested that they would probably get back only 2.5c of every dollar they had taken from them.
The ninepart series was launched in April at the Las Vegas Crime Con, the largest true crime convention in the world.
It has since been downloaded 70,000 times and has featured in the top Apple podcast charts in several countries.
‘‘I thought it might be an interesting angle to look at the victims’ experience of sharing their stories,’’ Ms Ferris said.
‘‘There is so much shame and many misconceptions about victims of cons — that they are gullible, they must be rich and therefore can afford to lose the money — and that shame is what so often stops victims from talking about their experiences.’’
Ms Ferris said that Klooghless: The Long Con attempted to shift the blame for a con to where it rightfully belonged, to the con artist or fraudster.
‘‘But sharing the story can be really scary. You are opening yourselves up to victimblaming and shaming and I think that is reflected in the fact that of the 81 victims of Barry Kloogh, only 12 felt comfortable enough to be on the podcast,’’ she said.
‘‘Even then we took measures to protect the identity of those who felt strongly enough that they wanted their story told but were fearful of the backlash enough to use a fake name.’’
Suppression orders protect the identities of most of Kloogh’s victims, but Karyn Churcher — whose late husband’s life insurance payment was stolen by Kloogh — declined suppression so she could tell her story as a warning to others.
She told the ODT that repeating her story for the podcast was personal and challenging, but it needed to be explained so that people knew it was a real story which had happened to ordinary people.
‘‘There is still a chance this will happen again and all of our family’s lives have been changed by this man’s actions,’’ Mrs Churcher said.
‘‘But if we can stop this happening again, we can make others aware, and get the government to offer better protection to investors, then that is still a goal.’’
Mrs Churcher agreed with Ms Ferris that many people made judgements about the victim of frauds, and that Klooghless: The Long Con highlighted how easy it was for it to happen, and for it to still happen.
‘‘One of my children phoned me after she had listened. She knew the whole story, she lived it with me, but the impact of hearing it from the start , but with the other victims’ stories, this had a big impact.
‘‘The length of his crimes, his actions, deceptions, conning, the fact it happened in New Zealand where we think we have protection, let alone Dunedin where everyone knows everyone seemed almost unreal.’’
Mike Houlahan was interviewed for and features in Klooghless: The Long Con.