A Nightmare Romance

0:01 My name is Matt Towner. And when I nearly died in a motorcycle accident and a girl that I'd only just met came to my hospital bedside, I thought it was the start of a beautiful love story, but in fact it was the beginning of a nightmare. I was forty years old when the global financial crisis hit. I was a very successful real estate agent and a beautiful beachside town Byron Bay in Australia, making one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, surfing and playing golf and being social. Then the global financial crisis hit. In that first year, I made seven thousand dollars one sale. Byron Bay is pretty much a luxury item, and no one was buying luxury items. Some friends and I had purchased fifty acres overlooking the beach and the mountains, and we were in a lot of trouble in terms of trying to pay our bills, as were people all over the world. The bank basically said if we didn't sell up, they will, so we had to sell and we bought a property for three million dollars.

1:15 Honey felt like three days. Was probably three months before the Global financial crisis, but we'd held on for a year and we just couldn't hold on anymore and sold for just over one and a half million. We all walked away with absolutely nothing. By the stage, we were just ready, all of us to do something. Before we considered whether we had to declare ourselves bankrupt or not. We went to Thailand and we wanted to go on an adventure and get it far away from civilization as we could. The night before I left my home in Byron Bay, Australia to go on a motorcycle adventure in the Jungles of Thailand, actually went on a first date with a gorgeous girl and it went very very well.

2:06 Have you ever thought about politics? I try not to. You have a face for it, and the I I'd vote for you hardly, don't be modest? Why are you single? Just haven't found the right person? I suppose I could ask you the same question. I want someone doing something with their lives. Most men, at least the men i've met, I'm very happy not to. You need a better class of companion. The search continues. How will you know when you find the right person.

2:50 I think I'll just know right now. I'm at a weird point in my life. A lot of things I thought would be my life have changed. I'm still finding my way to be honest. Not a good time to be alone, sounds like. No, I suppose not. From everything you've told me, sounds like you've already accomplished a lot. I'm sure you'll find your way through this. Yeah, I hope so. No, so. If you know so, it'll happen. That easier it can be. Yes, you're a very positive person.

3:30 Life's too short to not go for the things we want. And what do you want tonight? Your trouble, good trouble. I'd promise that when I returned from my motorcycle adventure after two weeks, we'd go on our second date. Sadly that didn't happen because. I had an accident. Literally on the first day of motorcyculd adventure. Hired some dirt bikes and went from Bouquet up over the mountains and into the forest and found a little bar on the beach and sat and watched the sunset. It was a beautiful way to get away from the world, but on the way back I was certainly being way too wild and free, careless and carefree. No helmet, no shoes, board shorts, singlet and as I came over a hill I got some are I could still see the pothole that I knew I could not miss. As I landed, the whole bike turned sideways and the handlebars went through my stomach and came out the back of my spine, and I went down the mountain with the bike basically inside me. By the time I landed at the bottom of the hill, I knew that I'd broken my.

5:02 Back straight away. It was classic Thailand. There were people all around me. I didn't know where they'd come from out of the jungle. Basically couldn't speak because I'd broken my ribs perforated by lungs. I'd fractured my skull, my spine, my ankle, my knee, my shoulder, my elbow, broken three ribs, and. Had a brain hemorrhage. My friend who was behind me, by the time he got to me, there were people all around me, and he didn't want me to see the look on his face because he says I was in four pieces. I kept saying my back, my back, don't touch me. But there was someone in a uniform there. I still do this day, don't know whether it was police or security, and he said okay, okay, ambulance, and just as I relaxed, they picked me up and put me in the back of a flatbed truck.

5:51 I spent forty minutes in. The back of a flatbed truck where the broken spine and broken everything from head to toe on the right end side of my body. My skull was split white, my eyes kept filling with blood. They were holding me down, four people basically, one on each limb, waving smelling salts under my nose to bring me back into consciousness, back from death, and every part of my body was moving as the truck was moving. The crazy thing is that doctors specialists have explained to me that people who end up in a wheelchair, it's not because you have a broken spine, it's because you have a broken spinal cord. I spent forty minutes on that truck, being held down, going in and out of death, and.

6:34 My spinal cord still didn't break, which your spinal cord is like a string of toothpaste. It was explained to me that's how fragile it is. So it was certainly a miracle. I have a rugby upbringing That's how I first started traveling. Contracted at twenty one to play rugby for San Diego, and I remember it was like when you're running on or off a rugby field and there's a tunnel of people either side of you cheering you on. It was like that with the opposite friends and family saying goodbye as I was going towards those pearly gates, and then the smelling salts had bring me back.

7:21 They took me to a public. Hospital first because I had flashbacks of something like a Vietnam war movie. But I was still conscious or in and out of consciousness, and again with hardly being able to speak, I kept. Saying, insurance, I have insurance. I woke up three days later coming out of a coma in a five star private hospital which was brand new, the Bangkok Hospital Pouquette, and they'd stitched me all up, but they couldn't operate until I signed waivers because there was no guarantees I was ever going to be able to walk again. Lucky that I was alive. My head looked like a football with the stitches for the laces all the way down the top that had to shave my head. They had not yet put metal in my spine or metal in my ankle, but I still have both of those today. And I was in traction there for weeks, and then I was in that hospital for months before I could be flown back to Australia, and then in a wheelchair and.

8:14 On crutches for about twelve months. It was literally day by day process to learn to walk and talk again. I am very lucky to be alive. The first thing that came to me when I came out of my coma was a voice. It was my voice, but. It wasn't me strange to say, but whatever you believe in the bigger picture of things, this voice, my voice, said, this is going to be the best thing that ever happens to you. And I truly believe. I know that if I had had the opposite voice or mantra to that, I would be either dead or in a wheelchair. It was that poar of positive thinking that got me to where I am today. I've been through a lot of healing therapies, rehability with a lot of people who have had a lot lesser accidents than me, but a lot less positive spirit.

9:06 And I see them still with. Either serious physical issues or painkiller addictions and things like that, which I truly believe. Everything has its place, but the power positive thinking can be more important than anything else. I find everything funny. A lot of people don't find that funny, but I have to laugh. I was being way too careless and wild and free. That's what we were going there to do. But I was an extremist. Or it's have been, always will be. But I needed a. Slap, and I, or the universe or whatever, I gave myself a serious slap. Dave, who was traveling with me, was not only one of my property partners. That we purchased fifty acres overlooking Byron Bay with waterfalls and forest dwellings, and it was a paradise. But we'd certainly overextended ourselves, especially as the world thenmpletely changed. We just couldn't keep up with the payments. But at the same time, we'd gone back a long way. We were best of friends.

10:08 I owned a nightclub in Byron Bay and then a real estate agency, so I joked that I knew everyone and all their dirty secrets, and Dave and I were partners in that nightclub, and he also owned the local cinema. We were the best of friends and still are to this day. I think, to this day he's still more in shock than I am because of what he had to experience in terms of seeing me in pieces and then following that truck, not knowing if I was going to make it or not, then even the days that I was in a coma, and then the time to wait to know whether I could walk again, which it was close to that two week mark before I not only I'd first phoned another great mate of ours who was in charge of all of my insurance. I'm now the biggest fan of insurance, which is one thing I espouse in my books. And I will hear that my travels picked up my two hundred thousand US dollar hospital bill in countries like Thailand, in many countries, if I hadn't had that insurance or a credit card to be able to pay for that, I would have been left in a waiting room and I would not be alive. So insurance was a lifesaver. Those villagers were a lifesaver. That brand new five star private hospital was a lifesaver.

11:31 All of that was a lifesaver. And Dave was there to support me until I made the decision to firstly phone my friend who was in charge of all of the insurance. Again, I could hardly speak, so he then phoned my parents to let them know. I didn't want to phone anyone until I knew that I could walk again. I wanted to know the seriousness of the situation rather than people worrying from afar before anything was confirmed. And then I felt obliged to ring the girl who I had been on a date the day before I had the accident, to explain that that second date wasn't going to be two weeks, it was going to be. Two months or more.

12:13 I was in shock because I was really being a gentleman and being polite to postpone a promise, but she immediately offered to jump on a plane and fly to my hospital bedside. I was speechless. I was speechless anyway, I could really hardly speak, so I immediately thought that was either beautifully sweet or incredibly strange. But I wasn't really in any position to argue, so yeah, she flew to my hospital bedside, and for pretty much that first week that out of coma and out of surgeries, I had three different serious operations would metal and pyronic bits into me.

12:55 I then had someone i'd only just met on a first date. But it'd been a beautiful state in my hospital bedside, attending to me as well as the TI doctors and nurses were so yeah, I wasn't complaining. I had a morphine drip, which I think by the time she arrived, I had already overdone that and asked them to take that away because I got so carried away that I remember one night I was still in traction, so I was in a hospital bed, but I had metal coming out of me everywhere, wires, so I was, let's almost raised off the bed because of my broken spine, tubes coming out of to get the fluid off my lungs and all sorts of things. It was like I really wasn't like a scene out of The Bionic Man or some crazy movie. And I had gone so much on the morphine, which was unregulated, that I was hallucinating that I was sword fighting with dragons. And that's the night I thought, right, that's enough of the morphine and the nurses. The next morning I was I take that away, and I slowly but truly weaned myself off that intense a pain killing situation. I was still having to rest a lot when she arrived. One of the most painful things was redressing wounds, which they had to do every day, which was like tearing goreze off open patches where literally I could see bone, I could see some of my toes, I could see through my knee from my elbow, you could see. It was very bizarre, but she was there

14:30 as well. She immediately jumped into the role of my girlfriend after a first date, being there supportive and caring and loving in that stage while I was in and out of a purple haze of pain. She was very convincing, one hundred percent hook line and sinker in every way. She immediately jumped into not just girlfriend like roll, a wifelike roll, cheering me up in every way. She was being very romantic but also being very much my naughty nurses, which when I look back, was really eccentric. But I am a bit eccentric, so that was really sweet.

15:29 What are you wearing? That's some man's coat, isn't it. You've been so glum now. It's not as if I stubbed my toe. Fair enough, but I thought you needed something to cheer you up. You caught me a coat. No, oh, we need to check your vitals. Mister Twner. I'm not sure I can.

16:10 Oh I think you can. Oh my. Oh oh, mister Tanner, I'm just being professional. Here are you staring at me? I might be that's inappropriate. Oh, I apologize. This is a hospital regulation outfit, sir. Uh huh. I might have gotten one a size or two too small and pouring out of it, aren't. I It would be ungentlemanly to say you just went back.

16:54 Mister Tawner. You need your rest. We wouldn't want you're getting too excited. No, certainly not tell me. If you see the nights coming, I will. Wipe that smile off your face. I'm a professional, sir. Yes, ma'am, ha ha. Hands to yourself, mister Turner. Yes, ma'am. I don't want to get in trouble with my supervisor. I won't tell him. If you want a little secret then.

17:43 Mm hmmm. Uh huh. Oh ah oh my. Mm hmm. Thank you. This was you didn't have to do this. Stay in the moment, mister Towna. Don't go all gushy on. Me now, okay, okay.

18:25 I had a lot of very professional care, but it was also nice to have some affectionate care, even in funny nurse's uniforms and things that she would dress up that was fun and funny. She was already pitching me not only this white picket fence of my recovery and her nursing me back to health, which by I said, we knew was going to be a twelve month process, but then getting me onto some seminar circuit speaking about the power positive thinking and being able to sell this program that she was involved in, which then allowed people to also start to have stepping stones to be able to do the same. I've always been a seminar junkie, even from when I was in my early twenties.

19:11 I was going to Anti Robinson, Dan Millman, and I've done all of. Those full theories, the way the peaceful worry out through to unleash the power within and raba kusaki. You name it. I've done them all. And then I'd been into a position where I was speaking the property investment seminars throughout Australia and Asia about the power of positive thinking in terms of cash flow, positive properties. It was all about positive investments. I had a database of over thirty thousand property investors that I'd been helping to buy cash flow positive properties over a decade and I was the perfect patsy for that at that stage. So like a seminar speaking multi level marketing business where you had to pay ten thousand dollars just to go to one of the seminars, for example in a or in the Caribbean. It was an American based scheme, but it had just arrived in Australia. There was already a woman on the Gold Coast who'd made a million dollars in the first year of doing this system just by introducing people who were paying ten thousand dollars a time.

20:16 But it was very much a classic Ponzi scheme, but there was always an ulterior motive and I didn't really see. I guess my senses were down and also numbed, not only. By pain but by pain killers and by the accident. My brother and my sister still laugh, but they weren't laughing at the time because obviously, when I landed back in Australia after three months in intensive care and Thailand, we went immediately from the airport to my sister's house. My brother was there, my parents were there, obviously, very keen to see me and I was wheeled in by this woman who they immediately saw red flags all over.

21:03 And they still talked to this. Day that they didn't know what to say, or they were just glad that I was alive. At that stage, I was still in a wheelchair, but they still laughed this day that it was like. Something out of a misery. It was a misery moment for my family, but they know what I'm like and they let it play out. After three months in hospital and Thailand, I spent three months in a wheelchair in her house, going back and forth from hospital for treatments and all of the things that I needed to do. And again she was very much assisting me with that. But by this stage, because she was pitching me from my hospital bed about this whole business model, and at that stage I was on the verge of bankruptcy from just having lost my property. I was open to a new career path. I was now incapacitated, and she was offering to use my email database of over thirty thousand people and create a cash flow positive income just from my story of survival, I became sort of the poster boy of this Ponzi scheme, which again had all the elements.

22:18 Now that I look back on it and learned more about these sorts of things, all of these cult like especially the churchy based then business aligned pyramid schemes, have a very similar thing in common. They immediately indoctrinate. By this stage, we were tens of thousands of people. It was expanding all over the world, so there would have been hundreds of thousands of people. In fact, the seminar that I was wheeled to, she flew me to Hawaii to a seminar which can I paid for again out of the bottom of the barrel of any income that I had. There was this whole idea that don't read the media. You had to go on a total media block for while you learn about listen to what we're saying about the power positive thinking and how this model works, and how it's different than a whole Western world and the capitalist system. It becomes like your own church and then your own economy. Don't believe anyone who is a negative thinker is going to just put it down and you can disassociate from them, and a lot of your friends and family won't believe you, but they're going to be left behind. And it very much created this even within my little community. The people that she was starting to recruit, some of them were friends of mine. It became their own network that then you weren't sort of associating with anyone else, only people that were in this tupwar style club that were meeting for meetings. And then as soon as I got back to her place, it was very much a strict regime. I was certainly being

23:51 fed and taken care of, but instead of being a very beautiful way, it was pretty harsh. She was a very hard task whist and basically it was her way or no way. Matt, Matt, from here. You drank all the milk. I had some cereal. Now I've got no milk for my tea.

24:32 I'm sorry. We talked about this before. When you finish something, you tell me. I forgot the medication. Makes me a bit loopy. You know that's an excuse. I would get you more milk if I could. But you can't. I get the groceries every week, and had I known we were out of milk, I'd have gotten it. Just a word or two, that's all I am. As I care for you morning, and no is there anything I don't do for you? I guess not. Then, is this too much to ask for for this basic courtesy?

25:13 No? Sorry, I forgive you. Ah, thanks, just don't do it again. All right? Okay, we need to do your exercises. I'm a bit tired at the moment from. What all you do is sit around. I didn't sleep. Well. It won't get better if we don't do your exercises. It's best to get them done straightway. Okay, don't give me that look. This is for your own good. All right, After we do your exercises, I want you to have a look at this email that I'm sending out about the program.

26:00 Perhaps you should slow down on those. People don't like being bombarded with a lot of emails. In short order. Bombarded you've sent three in three days. This program will help people. We're not selling steak knives here. You should be dead, Matt. The power of positive thinking is the only reason you're alive right now? Don't you want to give that gift to others? I just think a breather would be good. Are you saying you won't help me? No? I guess not. Huh? All right? Then?

26:48 She was very focused on, especially once she had the access to my database on just constantly following this model. That was all. This was very much early days of these online systems. You followed the leader, and that's literally how it worked. So the person above her would tell her what to do, and then she would get people under her and tell them what to do. And I was one of those, even unbeknownst to me in some ways, I was just being told what to do, but then pushed my wheelchair out of the way, whilst she could do everything and had access to all of my social media, which was pretty early in those days, but still after thirty thousand people on an email database, I think I had close to ten thousand social. Medias, which again then went horribly wrong.

27:37 There were times when I was being treated like a disabled child in a wheelchair and I had a very grumpy matron hitting me. With a wooden ruler. It was when I remember, literally she wasn't letting me out of her sight. For forget. It was probably three months. I've done three months in intensive care in Thailand, and I was three months in her house and still in a wheelchair. But there was a moment when I was left. Alone, and again there had been all these rules, but there was no watching any news, No reading newspapers, no, you know, this whole cult like Ponzi scheme. You weren't allowed to even google the company. You know, there was very strict rules about just had to stay focused on this whole goal and this model. But I took the opportunity to stray outside that and as soon as I started googling, because so this stage, it had been in Australia for three months, so there had been cracks had started to show, firstly back in America where it had been going for a year or more, and there were multi millionaires from again anyone at the top.

28:44 That's how those things work. But then I sort of realized the reality of what it was and that there were people who were going to get burnt because basically it was especially Australia is nowhere near the size of America. And I then realized what she was sending out to my database. That I'd offered cash flow positive properties to for a decade and had some very successful clients. In fact, I'd ridden the boom of Australian real estate and made people very happy, which was always my goal. It was then that I saw the issues. Then I sent an email myself. I was at a point that I'd wean myself off morphine.

29:28 I'd gone from being on intravenously in the hospital, then on painkillers when I was in the wheelchair. But I was slowly but truly weaning myself off those to the point that I was even trying to not take as many as she was giving me. Yeah, it was then after that three months mark that I decided to get out of there. So I sent an email to my database to say that these emails aren't coming from me, and it's not a property investment. A lot of the time, you would just get really angry if I ever suggested due diligence, because he was such right down that rabbit hole, which a lot of people were. That's how those churches, those cults, those business models work. And I rang Dave, my friend who had been with me in the mozarcle acts, and he came and picked me up and we got out of the house.

30:27 Your car has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. Matt Chawner is. Not available at the town. Please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up or press one for more options to lead your callback number, Press five. Matte, I don't know where you've gone or what you think you're doing. But I know you couldn't have gone far on your own. You know, after everything I've done for you, this is what you're doing. I was there for you. What other woman on planet Earth would do for you, the things I did upturn their entire life to care for you. I let you in my home.

31:10 How could you do this to me? You're the most ungrateful man I've ever met. I thought you were special. I thought that you understood what I'm trying to build. I thought we could do it together. I guess I was wrong. Good luck Without. Me, we were literally making a run for it and getting out of there, and I remember feeling such a sense of freedom, and we actually went for a beer. It was the first time I had a beer after three months in hospital and three months in nurses care.

31:52 It was then that I got the phone call from a friend of mine who used to run a lot of my business online thing I never forget. She said, are you online? And I said, no. I'm back where Dave and I had had our nightclub for the first time, celebrating that, and she said, someone's hacked in and is posting everything to everyone that you're not only bankrupt, but you're on child sex charges and suggesting that's you. I can still remember the feeling of the ball in. Your throat that it's. Like what we went straight from the bar to the bar and by police station. And again, the more that I've looked into this since it's classic textbook again from those sort of cults, churches, Ponzi schemes. As soon as anyone starts to discredit their more point fingers, the first thing they do is create a smear campaign to discredit that person immediately. It's wrong that people can do this without any evidence. Beat me to the police station and told the police that I had sent her hundreds of threatening text messages and emails.

33:07 I hadn't sent one. I didn't even I'll have access to them. Basically, I then couldn't do anything because the charge has already been put against me, which was hilarious but not funny at all. I then went down the road of enlisting a lawyer fighting these Navy Oh it's called an Australian apprehended violence order against me by this woman who was basically just trying to discredit me, because by this stage, all in the same afternoon, while I was enjoying my first beer my freedom and thinking that I had nipped it in the bud, sent an email saying, this isn't a positive investments email that's coming from me. Do your own due diligence.

33:49 I wasn't doing anything to the level that I didn't expect where it. Would go next. I just said, Okay, that's me taking charge of my life, of my database, of my business. But the email that she then sent was to thirty thousand business contents that I'd created over a decade, as well as posting all over social media five thousand people on Facebook and thirty thousand people on. An email that she'd sent this email from me as if it was from me. Even wording this whole sad story that I had to tell people that I was bankrupted on child sex changes, which we then took to court. She didn't even turn up.

34:32 There was no evidence of any threatening emails or text messages. The case was thrown out of court. It cost me eight thousand dollars in legal fees. My lawyer, I remember, said well, where's the retribution of my client's costs? And the judge said, well, you know, it doesn't work. Like that, which again sadly is a problem with the legal system in some ways that people can just make accusations with no evidence whatsoever and then walk away. And I haven't seen her since. All we could do is go back to the pub and have another beer. Dave and I did that, and again watch the sunset in our beautiful town of barn Bay, but this time after one more beer before sunset.

35:17 Instead of jumping on motorbikes, we got a taxi. Allegedly is a production of Voyage Media. The series is produced by nat Mondel, Albertmidus, and Dan Benimore. This episode, a Nightmare Romance, was written and directed by Dan Bennimore, Executive produced by Matt Towner. You can learn more about Matt's slave by reading his book Positivity, available now. A link is in the show notes, starring Jonathan Riguier and Laura Balomo. Edited sound designed and mixed by James Scully.

36:02 If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts or anywhere you're listening, and subscribe now for future episodes.