Episode notes
In 2006, Greg Wards was your average Kiwi backpacker on an overseas adventure in the UK, working hard, playing harder — and falling head-over-heels in love. After a whirlwind international romance, Greg married Lezlie Manukian in New Zealand. Their new life started out by setting up a small business north of Auckland. But a snowball had started to roll the day Greg met Lezlie Manukian. It wasn't long before this ball of chaos gathered pace and crushed Greg and his family. Starting November 3, binge episodes of Deep Cover Presents: Snowball early and ad-free with a Pushkin+…
Transcript
Read the transcript · about 890 words, follows along as you listen
Speaker 1:Pushkin.
Speaker 2:Hey, it's Jake here. We're hard at work on the next season of deep Cover, and trust me, it's a story you won't want to miss. But in the meantime, we wanted to bring you another show, this time by the Unravel podcast team at ABC Australia, that explores a story of outrageous deception. It's called Snowball, and for the next few weeks we'll be sharing that podcast right here. Snowball follows journalist Ali Wards as he unravels the wild story of his own family was taken in and taken down by a charming con woman from California, and he tries to find out where she is. Now we're talking financial ruin, shattered trust, and a mystery that stretches out across continents and decades. It's got all the twists and turns you'd expect from a high stakes crime thriller, only it's all true. If you love deep Cover for the detailed reporting, the unexpected characters, and the way that the truth slowly unspools, Snowball will absolutely pull you in. Starting November three, you can hear episodes of Snowball right here. Okay, here's a preview.
Speaker 3:My brother married an American corn artist.
Speaker 4:I find myself in a murky world of corn artists and swindlers. This isn't the kind of story you would expect to happen to a pretty average Kiwi family like mine. Oh, I was just gobsmaked as too, what's going on here?
Speaker 1:I just remember it being like, whoa.
Speaker 3:She had the dark, vivacious.
Speaker 1:And then whoa a surface skin and look to here, and then it's like two or three woes. She's a sociopath. It wasn't really a surprise. You're like, I wonder what the next one is going to be?
Speaker 3:What happened cost us everything?
Speaker 4:I held it up to the light and everything merged.
Speaker 3:In the end, my parents lost more than a million dollars.
Speaker 2:We had been done.
Speaker 3:Mum and Dad ended up homeless.
Speaker 1:We just were destroyed.
Speaker 4:It all started when my bro Greg was a backpacker in London.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she's very bubbly, affavescent personality. He met Leslie Minuchian. She has a laugh that.
Speaker 4:Could you know you hear it across the room.
Speaker 3:A confident, charismatic Californian.
Speaker 1:Well, let's throw in there.
Speaker 4:Kim Kardashian look alike, sophisticated female.
Speaker 3:Operative she knew as at the work people ready to woo me as well. Greg was wooed. I was an American a file, so he brought his American dream girl home to New Zealand. When you married someone, you feel like you really know them.
Speaker 4:Within a few months, Leslie had taken off to the US and none of us ever saw her again. I was living overseas when all of this went down. I normally work at an Australian radio station helping other people tell stories. Now I'm going to investigate the story of my own.
Speaker 3:It was. It was so weird, smuggled out of Armenia. What well explain? That's weird?
Speaker 4:It is weird. And as I start digging through what happened, weird doesn't even really cover it.
Speaker 3:You got on the wrong side of the local mafia, she witnessed.
Speaker 1:She might have got beaten murder, or she got home invaded at a house or something like that. They're going to kill me tonight, Dad and the CRIMINALSS got on this chartered airplane.
Speaker 2:Parents had to pay for a private jet to come get her before the mafia killed her.
Speaker 3:Oh God, there's just so many questions. How did this happen? Why did this American woman con my family.
Speaker 2:Why did you do this?
Speaker 3:How did she just get away? Oh?
Speaker 1:Shit, she's done it again.
Speaker 3:Who else does this happen to? Does the name Lislie Minuchian mean.
Speaker 1:Anything to you?
Speaker 3:Oh?
Speaker 1:You bet.
Speaker 3:Never forget her.
Speaker 1:This woman's a bit kind of like, you know, not what she claims to.
Speaker 3:Be, and that was her allure. You just followed her.
Speaker 1:I don't think she ever thought she would actually get caught.
Speaker 3:It just started getting shadier and shadier. I got home.
Speaker 4:There was a bong load, a martini and a blow job, and I just didn't think about it.
Speaker 2:I f a ask you, this is your karma?
Speaker 3:And who really is Lislei Minuchian? Like a part of me believes that she's just like, oh, the scammer of really broken person. You'll never really know what was real or not.
Speaker 4:To find answers, I'll have to get past her big shot lawyer to the stars.
Speaker 3:Can you believe this jerk?
Speaker 1:Oh? My fucking god, as your lawyer, I am starting to make threats.
Speaker 3:Also, are you serious?
Speaker 4:And I'm going to travel across the world to track Leslie down?
Speaker 1:What are we getting ourselves into?
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm running stand by.
Speaker 4:I'm only wards and I want you to come with me for the new season of Unravel.
Speaker 1:It's about to hit you.
Speaker 4:This time things really do get personal.
Speaker 3:Join me for Snowball.
Speaker 4:Okay, I see a subscribe to Unravel, the ABC's award winning true crime podcast. She's getting in a car wherever you're hearing this now getting or on the ABC listener.
Speaker 2:If you can't wait to find out what happens Binge episodes of deep Cover presents Snowball early and ad free with a Pushkin Plus subscription. Find Pushkin Plus on the deep Cover show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin f M, slash plus
Transcript supplied by the publisher with the episode.
Deep Cover
by Pushkin Industries · English · True Crime
Deep Cover is a show about people who lead double lives. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Halpern reveals webs of deception and dark underworlds, through interviews with federal agents and convicted criminals. Deep Cover: The Family Man: Elise and Marissa grew up in a seemingly normal house
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