Who The Hell Is Hamish is a podcast produced by The Australian newspaper. The team behind the Teachers Pet, another Aussie true crime story which shot to public awareness around the case of Lynette Dawson, ultimately leading to the arrest of Chris Dawson. That series has currently been removed for distribution as the result of the ongoing case at the request of the government because with more than 28 million downloads.
In this series titled “Who The Hell Is Hamish”, they put Hamish McLaren under the microscope and look into the elaborate, desperate and manipulative mind of a serial conman. Introduced to us initially as Hamish Watson, were told he’s a successful 40-year-old from Sydney’s northern beaches who met a single mother of two, Tracy Hall – one of his last victims before it all began to unravel. The show goes on to illustrate the widespread destruction he caused including grooming Tracy’s eldest son’s girlfriend into a relationship that almost tore their family apart.
The show includes in-depth interviews spanning all corners of the globe, those who encountered him all seemingly gleaned the same image, he flew private jets, owned houses across the globe, drove fast cars and had everyone convinced he was a successful, wealthy businessman – varying his source of wealth between owning the McLaren F1 team, and lucrative investments he had his hands in.
The truth was he was a high school drop out. He began his crimes in the early 90’s on the trading floor of the stock exchange, went on to dupe tens of millions from people he conned into believing he was a business mastermind across Canada, United States; Hong Kong and The United Kingdom. Now he’s facing up to 15 Years in prison for his crimes.