Australia Australia - Marion Barter - Missing After Trip to UK - June 1997 #17

[wallyworld]

Richard West!

I thought you were joking but YES Richard West is indeed the author.
Sorry Mr Blum, these slueths are running rings around you. Not so clever after all

 

[MrsWattle]

His coin buyers are also victims of fraud if he has been selling counterfeit rare coins for 55 years. His evil web is unlimited.

 

[TootsieFootsie]

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/ric-blum-is-a-walter-mitty-to-coin-a-phrase/news-story/ef3c0839785cd2fd657f191a350c6704?amp

Neighbours said he had a disability pension and a parking permit. Yet both went on 5km walks every morning, no walking stick or anything.

 

[TootsieFootsie]

His coin buyers are also victims of fraud if he has been selling counterfeit rare coins for 55 years. His evil web is unlimited.

The coins may not have been fakes. I think they were most likely ones he'd stolen.

 

[*juniper*]

The coins may not have been fakes. I think they were most likely ones he'd stolen.

Or bought with money he had stolen. Much easier to hide a rare & valuable coin than bring a bundle of cash back from overseas.

 

[TootsieFootsie]

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/ric-blum-is-a-walter-mitty-to-coin-a-phrase/news-story/ef3c0839785cd2fd657f191a350c6704?amp

The neighbours lived in next door units for around 3 years from 2009.
They knew him as Frederick De Hedervary.
When asked, which concentration camp he said he and his family were at, he had to think for awhile.
He said at 2 years old he was the only survivor. When asked how he managed to survive, he said he was at the next door neighbours. Snort!
He said he was at Woodstock but couldn't name one person who performed there.
Neighbours said if you heard the music he listened to you'd know he wasn't at Woodstock.
He listed to Susan Boyle.


I had to do some editing. The letter T on my keyboard seems to be having some problems.
I might turn it upside down later and shake it.
ttttttt...... just testing

 

[mishy66]

View attachment 405290
I wonder if this publication is produced by renov pubs.

Nice find Mrs Wattle!

No doubt where he got his alias from then is there

Richard West (journalist) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[mishy66]

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/ric-blum-is-a-walter-mitty-to-coin-a-phrase/news-story/ef3c0839785cd2fd657f191a350c6704?amp

The neighbours lived in next door units for around 3 years from 2009.
They knew him as Frederick De Hedervary.
When asked, which concentration camp he said he and his family were at, he had to think for awhile.
He said at 2 years old he was the only survivor. When asked how he managed to survive, he said he was at the next door neighbours. Snort!
He said he was at Woodstock but couldn't name one person who performed there.
Neighbours said if you heard the music he listened to you'd know he wasn't at Woodstock.
He listed to Susan Boyle.


I had to do some editing. The letter T on my keyboard seems to be having some problems.
I might turn it upside down later and shake it.
ttttttt...... just testing

What a bloody classic!

Thank God for the neighbours!!!!!

Please bring more neighbours Marion! x

 

[mishy66]

IMO just as likely RB nicked the name Richard West and passed himself off as that expert author...

Yep.
Totally

This is where he got his alias from

 

[mishy66]

( sorry about the links, it comes like that)​

​

Ric Blum linked to coins missing from auction house as neighbours reveal web of lies.​

... The Australian shed further light on his character and raise more questions about the extent of deception throughout his life.

<modsnip: Direct quotes or copy/paste of content or images from a paywalled article is a violation of copyright law>

 

[JBowie]

It's likely been said here before, but this saga is worthy of a Teacher's Pet type podcast.

 

[TootsieFootsie]

Probably not connected, but the author of a book about pawning in America, received an email from a Ric Blum asking where does stolen property go.

In Hock: Pawning in America from Independence through the ...
Google Books › books
Wendy A. Woloson · 2009 · ‎History
Ric Blum, e-mail message to author, May 26, 2004. 24. Ric Blum, “Where Does Stolen Property Go?” Today's Pawnbroker 16, 3 (Fall 2003): 9–10. 25.

 

[KinseyFan]

That's correct. Lots of these mags available on Amazon and around the world.
So many more questions in my hea

( sorry about the links, it comes like that)​

​

Ric Blum linked to coins missing from auction house as neighbours reveal web of lies.​

Six valuable consignments of rare coins went missing while a convicted conman – now a central figure in the disappearance of a Queensland mother – was working in the mail room of a major Australian auction house.
Ric Blum was never suspected of being connected to the missing coins until a rival auctioneer later tipped off the firm that their former employee had stolen and sold its prized mailing list of customers.
The new fraud suspicions can be revealed as associates and former neighbours described Mr Blum as a real-life Walter Mitty who couldn’t keep track of his complicated web of lies, including false claims his entire family was wiped out in Auschwitz.
An ongoing NSW coronial inquest has raised the possibility of Mr Blum’s involvement in the disappearance of schoolteacher Marion Barter, after he confirmed they were in a secret relationship before she vanished without trace a quarter of a century ago.


He denies any knowledge of what happened to her, but new accounts gathered by The Australian shed further light on his character and raise more questions about the extent of deception throughout his life.
Status International owner Stewart Wright said he briefly employed the avid coin collector, who was using the name Richard West, in Sydney around 1999.
Mr Blum embraced the position he was offered, turning up at 5am when most staff didn’t arrive until four hours later.

The role included posting items to customers, and coincided with a series of parcels failing to reach their intended destination.
“I can’t make accusations but in the stuff that went to the Post Office, I think the first, second, third, fifth, seventh and 10th most valuable consignments disappeared,” Mr Wright told The Australian.

One day, Mr Blum “just disappeared”, leaving his job without saying goodbye. “He didn’t come back and subsequently a dealer in Ballina, Barry Cooper, told me he’d offered Barry Cooper a copy of my mailing list. It was probably just laying around, we always had a paper backup,” Mr Wright said.

In recent years, Status International had a new customer, Ric Blum. “I had no idea they were one and the same person (at the time). He bought a few coins,” Mr Wright said.

Another respected coin trader, who asked The Australian to withhold his identity, interacted with Mr Blum many times.

“Do you know Walter Mitty?” he said. “We felt that he was a bit of a Walter Mitty character when it came to describing what he owned and possessed.

“He described having magnificent Australian rarities. They’d be very valuable and unique, and he wouldn’t have had them; we just didn’t believe it,” he said.

On the Gold Coast, Mr Blum and his wife Diane were on friendly terms at first with neighbours Martin Miezis and his wife Ingrid Neubarth. The two couples lived side-by-side in units in Miami for about three years from 2009.

However, the relationship deteriorated as Martin and Ingrid discovered some of the many names of their charming neighbour, who they knew as Frederick De Hedervary.

In 2011, Mr Blum convinced Mr Miezis to vouch for his identity for a new passport under the name Willy David-Coppenolle.

Mr Miezis said Mr Blum had spun a story of running into tax problems with his coins in Europe. “That’s why he wanted another passport, so he could go back to Europe and circumnavigate his original passport,” Mr Miezis said.

A copy of the passport application with Mr Miezis’s name and signature has been obtained by police. Mr Blum also asked his neighbour if he knew anyone who could create a metal press for him. “The people who made it asked him, ‘what do you want this for?’ He said, ‘to make a medallion to hang around your neck’,” Mr Miezis said.

“I think he was trying to make coins.”

Mr Blum, whose birth certificate shows he was born in Belgium, told his neighbours he was born in Paris.

Other lies were more disturbing, Ms Neubarth said.

“He said … his whole family were exterminated in Auschwitz. I said ‘what about you, how come they didn’t see you?’.

“He said ‘I was two years old and I was at the next-door neighbours’. And every time he told the story it changed.”

When Ms Neubarth asked him which concentration camp, he had to think for a moment before answering.

“If that happened to your family, you would know, you wouldn’t have to think about it first,” she said.

A death notice shows a funeral service for Mr Blum’s father Désiré David was held at a Catholic Church in Belgium in 1943.

In his evidence at the inquest, Mr Blum said his brother, stepfather and mother all died in 1989 and 1990.

“He was just a pathological liar,” Ms Neubarth said.

“He said that he was in Woodstock and the Isle of Wight festival. If you ever heard the music he listened to, you knew he was never in Woodstock. He listened to Susan Boyle.

“Besides, he could not recall one single artist that played in Woodstock.”

Years before Mr Blum was publicly linked to Barter’s disappearance, Ms Neubarth emailed the welfare, immigration and transport departments to report her suspicions about his multiple names and purported disability that he used to obtain a pension and parking permit.

“I saw him every morning on my walks. He and his wife walked from Miami to North Burleigh which is about 5km each way.

“They got out of the car, not with a walker or a stick, nothing, just normal.”

A letter from the transport department mistakenly placed in the letterbox of Ingrid and her husband was addressed to “Willy Wouters”. It was another alias used by Mr Blum.

“I never came across anybody like that,” Ms Neubarth said.

Thank you! I’m devouring this article now. Is it bad that this makes me so happy? It’s given me a spring in my step!

 

[wallyworld]

I had a look through my sherlock holmes magnifying glass.
I looked first for the big lumpy nose. Yep the noses passes my test.
White hair though. Would his hair have been white in 1988 ?

Body looks thinner, but it was awhile ago.

It does resemble him. can anyone sharpen the photo?

 

[TootsieFootsie]

Seems there is a Ric Blum in America who is a gold buyer.
Maybe our Ric Blum modeled himself after him.

Rouge Gold Buyers: A Conversation with Ric Blum | Kohn's Money Vault Pawn

www.moneyvaultpawn.com

 

[MrsWattle]

It's likely been said here before, but this saga is worthy of a Teacher's Pet type podcast.

The Lady Vanishes podcast about missing Marion Barter is a very popular podcast. Maybe 20 million listeners or more.

 

[TootsieFootsie]

The Lady Vanishes

News Podcast · A much-loved mother, teacher and friend steps on a plane for an overseas adventure and is never seen again. Marion Barter, the former wife of Australian soccer great Johnny Warren, went missing in 199...

podcasts.apple.com

 

[Eyespywithmylittleeye]

this edition has a photo on the cover. Is that him, hard to tell

Nah I don’t think it’s him

 

[KinseyFan]

@JBowie Please ignore me if I’ve misunderstood your comment. But just checking you know about ‘the lady vanishes’ podcast.

 

[mishy66]

Probably not connected, but the author of a book about pawning in America, received an email from a Ric Blum asking where does stolen property go.

In Hock: Pawning in America from Independence through the ...
Google Books › books
Wendy A. Woloson · 2009 · ‎History
Ric Blum, e-mail message to author, May 26, 2004. 24. Ric Blum, “Where Does Stolen Property Go?” Today's Pawnbroker 16, 3 (Fall 2003): 9–10. 25.

This Ric Blum was searched by WS before I think, ages ago.

He is a legit Broker - Probs where AH got his alias from

Ohio Loan Co., Inc. | Dayton Pawn Shop – Ric Blum of Ohio Loan Co. Named Pawnbroker of the Year

www.ohioloanco.com

Ohio Loan Co., Inc. | Dayton Pawn Shop – Rogue Gold Buyers with Ric Blum

www.ohioloanco.com