In 1966 Robert ‘Skip’ Gardner crossed the Tasman with a small group of grifters to to pull off one of the biggest swindles in New Zealand history.
What eventuated is an incredible tale that also takes in corrupt Sydney cops, scams in multiple jurisdictions, and even a brush with Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs.
It’s all neatly wrapped up in The Fix: The story of New Zealand’s biggest swindles, by true-crime author Scott Bainbridge – who’s also written Without Trace and Still Missing.
Photo: Supplied
In the 1960s, the only place in New Zealand you could buy cosmetics was in a pharmacy or supermarket, Bainbridge tells Kathryn Ryan.
With dairies open seven days a week, Gardner and his associates had an idea for a scheme –they would manufacture their own cosmetics and market them as Hollywood-like cosmetics at low prices.
“I would compare it to a $2 shop cosmetic that’s been marked as something quite expensive.”
It ran a bit like a pyramid scheme – as an agent, all you had to do was get the cosmetics into the dairies in your zone.
Agents were told a cosmetic factory was about to open in Auckland and there had been success overseas with the brand.
“It wasn’t a lot of work you needed to do and so it attracted a lot of would-be investors, or people who wanted their own little business.”
Ads in newspapers and at movie theatres brought in a lot of people, and money, Bainbridge says.
But as the launch day neared – the product failed to materialise.
“It could have legitimately worked but these guys had no intention of it working.”
Gardner and his associates, Noel, Warren and Peggy, were never planning to open a factory.
In fact, Gardner wasn’t even his real name – it was one of about 17 names he’d used as he made his way around the world working similar schemes.
It was the name he was using in Australia, where he ran a used car company – a legitimate business. Noel and Warren had been his two best salesmen.
“They felt like New Zealand was easy pickings, the idea was to come across, get as much money as they can and then leave and try it elsewhere.”
Here in New Zealand, they ran the scheme out of an office in Parnell.
But it wasn’t long before the police received phone calls from suspicious investors. Even the office workers thought it was odd that the company launch date kept getting pushed out further and further.
One night, Noel was instructed to get all documents from the safe, put them in a briefcase and chuck it off the Harbour Bridge, weighed down by a brick.
Noel did as he was told but made one key mistake – he forgot the brick.
“Back in the 60s, if you were ever arrested for being drunk you were sent over to the ‘inebriates islands’ (Rotoroa Island) in Hauraki Gulf and the Salvation Army would pick you up to take you to court.”
The next morning, as the Salvation Army barge steamed under the Harbour Bridge, the captain happened upon the suitcase floating on the water.
In the meantime, the office workers became suspicious after Noel and Gardner didn’t show up for work. They broke into the safe and called the police.
Peggy and Warren were arrested but Gardner and Noel had already skipped town, and flown to Australia, where Gardner was looked after by one of the most corrupt police in Sydney at the time.
But it wasn’t long before long Gardner left for the United States and started another import car business – and another scheme.
It took two years to arrest Gardner and have him extradited to New Zealand – he had eluded the FBI, Interpol, the Royal Canadian Mounties and Scotland Yard.
By this time, he was in England, doing what he did best.
“[After his arrest] he tried to pass off that he had a heart condition and couldn’t fly back, he wanted to come back by boat. He actually even offered to pay the extra.”
It would have only taken him minutes to bribe the captain, it was thought.
“He got a two-year sentence here in New Zealand and he even managed to get that shortened by telling the prison warden at Mt Eden that he’d heard there was a rumour that there was a gun in Mt Eden jail. The warden panicked and Gardner said, ‘Look I’ll sort it out’.
“He managed to get a gun smuggled in himself and then presented it to the warden to say, ‘Hey I’ve found your gun’.”
He got six months shaved off his sentence.
The last variable sighting of Gardner Bainbridge could find was in Uruguay where he tried another similar scheme “and got banged up with a whole lot of revolutionaries. The revolutionaries in 1971 blew the prison and he was the only lucky gringo to be seen jumping over the wall with all of these revolutionaries”.
From there he made his way to Brazil where he tried to sell a business idea to Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs.
It’s rumoured he eventually made his way back to New Zealand to live under yet another false identity.
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