Part 1 – Colleague

Part 2 – Friend

Part 3 – Conman a & b (see below)

Part 4 – Sociopath (next week)

At this point, the situation was somehow strangely thrilling and edging toward the bizarre.

My former housemate Myles was flush with cash, was offering us discounts on some pretty expensive computer gear and he  had a black $200,000 Mercedes Kompressor coupe out on hire as part of his new IT job, but actually, we hadn’t seen him in weeks. None of this seemed too odd because he was the master of the aloof.  He’s coming, he’s going, he’s committed, he’s disinterested… You coulnd’t pin him down but he you had no doubt he was always in control. Being calm under pressure was Myles’s M.O. Nothing defined him better, whether he was charming a 15-year-old, blagging a payrise or hiring a $100,000 Mercedes.

Six weeks after I had seen him when he hired out the Merc, I got a call from Myles about this time with another proposition Of course, that’s not how the conversation began but before long he was telling me that he may as well get rid of his Celica. He had no need for it now as his own Mercedes – a company car – was just days away from arriving on a shipment so, not really needing the cash, he was going to just take it to any car yard on Parramatta Road and take what they gave him.

“Are you mental?” I said. “They won’t give you anything for it. They give terrible trade-in prices, it’s what they do.  That’s like throwing it away! What’s it worth?”

Haha, he laughed. “It cost me about fifteen grand a few months ago.” And what would you accept for it? “Oh, I dunno.” He was completely nonchalant telling me he would probably get just six or seven thousand for it at a car yard.

“Well, we’d give you that,” I said, out of nowhere. And after I got off the phone, it wasn’t too hard to convince my wife that  Myles had gone bonkers and because he was earning so much he was happy to ditch his ‘old’ sports car on anyone who will give him six thousand dollars.

It was a 1992 Celica, sooth lines, pop-up headlights. I always considered it the best shape. It was a hairdresser’s car but hey, we were driving an ’86 Mitsubishi Cordia, non-turbo.

Within a day or two Myles had turned up to swap his car for cash and we sold our Cordia a week later for about $1000, not really caring because we had just scored a massive bargain.

It was about this time I caught up with my friend Mike. Mike is a tradesman who had hit it off with Myles while Myles lived with me. I guess they liked each other because they were both into hifi equipment and loved getting a good price. On anything. However, their methods could not be more different. Mike would play hard ball to get his way, Myles would lay on the grease and slide his way into a bargain.

While driving around in the inner west, Mike mentioned he had heard from Myles lately. He had turned up, just out of the blue like he did with me, only thing is, Mike had a few different experiences to me.

We were still driving when we started the conversation but I had to pull over when it got weird.

As we sat in my car in Glebe, Mike recounted how Myles had rung him up more than once saying that he had a new job and he was getting paid heaps. He added that he could help Mike get some great gear if he wanted. I assumed he meant computer gear. It all sounded very familiar.

Yes, I said, I knew IT jobs were well paid but his seemed to be really well paid. “I just can’t work out why he still lives in the mountains, now that he works in North Sydney.”

Mike: North Sydney? No, Parramatta.
Me: No, I am pretty sure he said North Sydney. That’s where all the big IT firms are anyway.
Mike: No, he’s not in IT. He’s working in some hifi job playing with hi-end audio equipment.
Me: What! No, no….. Is that what he said to you?
Mike: Yes, totally, That’s how he gets his hands on cheap hifi gear. And how he can afford that Mercedes.
Me: Err, no, he doesn’t own that. That’s hired. I was there.
Mike: Oh fuck.

We looked at each other as if we had stepped into another dimension. Was this a frickin’ film? How could this be? It was kind of funny. But mostly horrifying. We spent another hour going through every detail like young detectives.

From what we could work out between us, assuming that we were both being fed lies, Myles probably had no income, no job, no prospects, no access to cheap gear of any sort, and he probably had no actual friends. His life was a complete and utter fabrication. On top of that, we realised, his family was a mystery. His past, also, was a complete unknown. he had never revealed anything of himself. But we had bought into it up to about twenty thousand dollars between us.

We were all pawns in an enormous, clever game that saw him driving around on my credit card, spending money Michael and I had given him for hifi or computer equipment he didn’t have.

And a car. I had a Celica out the front of my house he sold to me. Was it really his? My heart was sinking very fast. It was looking like the most foolish thing I had ever done and I had talked my wife into joining me in my stupidity.

It now made complete sense why we had not yet seen the rego papers. We’d been badgering Myles for the rego papers for weeks after he had ‘forgotten’ them on the night we paid him for the car.

Seriously, I know this sounds flacid of me, but if your mate sold you his car, would you call REVs on the spot to check him out, especially if you had known him for two years, having worked with him and lived with him?

I didn’t really want to know the status of the car right now. I had many other things worrying me. Like where was Myles?

We wanted to find him, and rearrange him.

Next

Part 4 – The Sociopath

Part 1 – Colleague

Part 2 – The Friend

Part 3a – The Conman (see below)

Part 3b – The Conman

Part 4 – The Sociopath

Conman
My brother and I left that Petersham sharehouse before Myles eventually did. We had attracted one disastrous flatmate who nearly got everyone killed when a neighbour tried to set fire to the house as retaliation for the poisoning of their rooster. Yes, it really did get more interesting after she arrived. This person also wouldn’t let anyone watch her TV, which was conveniently located in the primary living room. And so on. So it was no surprise that we heard through another friend that Myles had left. No word on where he had gone.

It was around the year 2000. I had left my casual job at Grace Bros – where I first met Myles – and now had a fulltime job as a website copywriter. I was soon to be married to my childhood sweetheart.

I got married in November 2000 but remained living in Sydney’s inner west, just down the road from Petersham at the leafy little village of Summer Hill. We rented the cheapest house in the suburb – it was 3-metres wide and had a dodgy toilet a ten metre walk from the back door. (You do what you can to stay in Summer Hill.)

It was while we were in this house, in mid 2001, that Myles called us up. I hadn’t heard from him in about a year so it was ‘out of the blue’.

After some small talk, I recall the phone call went something like this:
LB: How you doing, man?
ML: Really good man, really good.
LB: Where have you been?
ML: Well, I got this fantastic job working in IT and it is soooo sweet.
LB: Oh yeah, do they pay you well?
MB: It’s insane what you can get, you know how it is.

I did know IT staff could demand huge salaries – it was the middle of the dot-com boom, and Myles had the skills. He had often fixed the PCs in our house and reconfigured them at Grace Bros. (Hell, I was earning good money at lastminute.com, a site that didn’t exist a year before but was booming just because people couldn’t believe they could book a flight online.)
Now I think about it, Myles could well have just been a good hacker, a PC enthusiast who taught himself about hardware and software, but I didn’t know the difference. It was entirely believable he would find a cushy job.

The phone call worked its way around to the finer points of his package. He had been given a spot at the top of a small firm which meant he now had a huge salary, a great laptop, and a car. The car was a soft-top Mercedes, at least it would be when the hire company delivered it.

Anna was in the room listening excitedly. I was gob-smacked. Myles asked if we would like to come pick it up with him. YES! First ride in a new Mercedes convertible? I wasn’t just calling ‘shotgun’ I was planning on pashing those leather seats and finding reasons we should drive to Terrigal.

I think it was just a few days later when Myles called – it was the same day he was due to pick us up in his now superseded Celica. There had been some kind of problem at the office and the car was yet to arrive. As aback-up plan, the boss had told Myles he could hire a car, as long as it was the same model, and charge it back to the company.

Keep in mind I was only 23 but this is certainly the part in the story where I begin to feel sick.

We met at he car yard of a sports car hire car place on Parramatta Road. It had Porsches, Ferraris, Aston Martins and a 2-seater Mercedes Kompressor.

They were expecting Myles.

We checked out the car like thrilled teenagers who stumbled across it on a deserted road with the keys still inside. But once inside the office, Myles was all charm and sounding like the young professional he now was. Signing papers and showing his ID, I had nothing to suspect when the final signature was needed and Myles asked if I could do it.

“What’s this for?” I said. “Oh, said Myles calmly, “just because they need a credit card – not as a deposit, I’ve got that in cash. It’s just in case, you know, a security thing. I just don’t have mine on me. Can you do it man?”

I can’t recall how long I thought about this, but he was two minutes away from driving that car out of there and I had never even sat in anything like it. The two large men behind the counter were officious and showed no doubt in Myles’s entitlement to the car or my helping him out. (I feel it worth pointing out that their car hire company is now gone.)

We drove it out and headed straight for the city where my family happened to be meeting for dinner. It was a phenomenal experience driving up to the open-air restaurant and so my extended family fawned over Myles and his new car.

After that amazing night we probably heard from Myles, oh, zero times over the next month. He was gone. He still had the car, he still lived with his parents back in the mountains, but the old friendship had not sparked up again. I was most surprised that he never dropped in as he now worked over the bridge, but on the phone he would simply blame his long hours, saying “you know how it is, man!” blah blah blah.

Next

Part 3b – The Conman continued…

Part 4 – The Sociopath

Myles, the housemate.

> Read Part 1 – Colleague

I had moved into a house in Petersham with some pals, both guys and girls, all of us from the mountains, in early 1999.

My brother and I had a great time, day in, day out. But like in most sharehouses, people’s plans change and within months we needed a new housemate.

My brother delivered the first replacement, Randall, a top guy with whom I am still friends. Later on, when we needed another replacement, I suggested my workmate Myles as he had been commuting to the city from Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains and he seemed fun to be around.

Years later, we wouldn’t be friends, but instead, I would be exhausted from searching for him, he would have many flatmates around the state chasing him and the police would have him listed as “wanted for questioning”.

You see, Myles was superb at making friends. At 21, his voice already sounded deep and mature. He had encyclopedic knowledge of random topics like astronomy and indie rock (including an obsession with The Pixies). He feigned interest in subjects like astro-physics and brought academic books into the house as if to prove it.

In hindsight, a few things seemed odd about Myles’s paired-downed lifestyle but none were so strange or threatening that they warranted real concern.

I’ll list a few examples…
– Myles wanted to debate God and Christianity often but he but while asking many personal questions of us along the way, Myles actually revealed very little of his own beliefs, influences or his past. After months, with every night filled with deep and meaningfuls, all we really knew of Myles was where his parents lived and that he had left school early. He had worked in retail ever since. He carried only or two long-term friends. There was talk of a brother but no sign of him.
– Every night, without fail, Myles headed out for a drive that he had to take alone. He drove an aging Toyota with a terrible paintjob as he had once tried to respray it. He wouldn’t say where he drove, he “just liked to drive”. Only, he had to be alone. Never discussed where he went, wouldn’t let anyone come with him, but he was religious about it.
– In our sharehouse, we usually shared the cooking around and ate at the same time but Myles always refused to share anything. He wouldn’t even share his utensils. As i recall, he survived on one frypan and one set of cutlery.
– He had obscure/inappropriate sexual preferences. He once voiced a love of Natalie Portman especially pointing out her beauty in The Assassin – a film where she was about 8 years old. He said he would ‘do her’ and failed to see any problem with this. Later, when a housemate’s two female 16-year-old cousins came to visit, Myles took them under his wing and showed them the city night after night until it got so out of control my housemate had to confront the 16-year-olds about going out alone with a relatively unknown 21-year-old, especially one who had started talking about moving to the distant state where the girls lived.

Should all that have been enough to make us wary?

I can only think we let it all go because Myles would dodge any question confidently with a likable nervous laugh and he was such a good conversationalist, always interested in others, that you never thought he was hiding something.

Oh, and another significant piece of strangeness.

Myles had lots of cool stuff. His car was shite, he ate poorly and wore the same clothes to Grace Bros every day, and yet, he regularly came home with new hifi equipment, digital cameras, speakers and CDs.

This alone could be enough to arouse suspicion, but, imagine if he then sold you the stuff at a sensational discount! This occurred multiple times. I am typing this blog in front of two $500 Sony speakers he suddenly gave me one day for the ridiculous price of $50. They were brand new.

Overall, Myles was sensational to have around. Never caused any fuss. Everyone liked him. He was always happy.

The sad thing is, we were being buttered up.

Next….

Part 3a – The Conman

Part 3b – The Conman continued…

Part 4 – The Sociopath

The name Myles is forever tainted in my family. Ever since a flatmate with that name ripped me off to the tune of $10,000 a few years back, it has been difficult hearing the name Myles without wanting to damage something irreparably.

Myles – he did not like having his photo taken. I no longer wonder why.

Myles Lambert is a con man and this blog post is intended not just as a memoir but a cautionary tale of what a sociopath can do to others, and a warning to anyone who comes across this charming Australian – last seen in Katoomba, NSW. He’s out there and doing this to someone else right now. He can’t help himself.

Part 1 – The Colleague
I first met Myles on level 6 of Myer – then, Grace Bros – where we were both retail workers. I bludged terribly in that job. I had a philosophy that I couldn’t convince anyone to buy anything they didn’t already plan to get. Not a good philosophy to go far in retail, but then, I didn’t want to. I wanted to interview rock bands, so that is what I did during my regular coffee breaks. It was all on the phone so no-one noticed.

Myles didn’t want to go far in retail either, but the most interesting part about him was that this charming, deep-voiced chain-smoker had the job totally nailed.

Myles was in cameras. And he did such a good job of selling cameras that he totally outclassed the elderly gentleman who had been there for decades and is still there to this day.

I started talking to Myles whenever I got the chance because he laughed at my sarcasm as if it was outrageously funny, and yet he had confidence in spades. He clearly respected people and could talk anyone’s language.

One day while on a break at Grace Bros, Myles told me he was negotiating a better salary package. He worked full-time so this was conceivable but the package he was asking for was not. Myles wanted $75,000/year.

Now, I had seen Myles at work. He could get a middle-class mum or dad to buy a better model camera than they wanted and they’d end up getting several extras they didn’t plan on buying. He was clever, not sleazy, just very savvy.

It didn’t surprise me that management loved Myles for his sales figures but his methods were, at best, odd. Typically, Myles would get customers over the line by giving them hefty discounts.

This was something we all did at times – mark downs were to be used at staff’s discretion – but his were extravagant. Cost price plus a few bucks.

(Before long, I was trying this method out too and sure enough it was never questioned until I reduced a HiFi system by about $300. Yes, we still made a profit, I reasoned. No wonder no one offered this casual any fancy salary package.)

Anyway, Myles had promised the Electrical manager that he could double their budget in six months and he said he had already spent the first month proving he could do it. He was on track and it was phenomenal.

Achieving that target would see his salary nudged to $50,000 – a 30% pay rise, at least. When that figure was agreed to, Myles waited a month then promised more and pushed for $75,000. The manager agreed and I was sworn to secrecy. If anyone else on our level knew that kind of salary was being handed out to a 21-year-old selling first-generation digital cameras and SLRs, not products known to draw millions, there would be a walk out.

It was astounding. He was cracking jokes with the manager who, despite the agreement, looked like he had found a goose laying golden eggs. And he had.

Myles could do any deal he wanted. It was the year 1999 and an early Sony Digital camera allowed you to put a 3.5inch floppy disc straight in the side. The shots were 640×480 pixels and grainy as hell but it was awesome and worth about $950.

One day, not long out from Christmas, Myles made his move. He had waited for the right time in the product cycle, hidden the box and the charger and then talked to the older camera salesman into selling it to him. Look, it’s the last one, it’s missing everything and I have cash. He got it for $90.

How do I know? He later sold it to me and late one day after the store shut he got me the charger.

But that’s not the weirdest thing. What happened to his $75,000? The manager agreed, he said, but then Myles had suddenly changed his mind. Myles was no longer interested. The thrill had gone.

Part 2 – The Housemate
Next week…

Part 3a – The Conman

Part 3b – The Conman continued…

Part 4 – The Sociopath