Episode Four: (Dis)order in Court

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“It was incredibly hot, I remember that, kind of very humid heat.”

It's June 2023. Daisy Graham Brown is a young investigative reporter on a first overseas trip for work.

She's waiting on a residential street in Monte Carlo, Monaco. They're kind of quiet streets with palm trees, luxury tower blocks all piled up. You can kind of see through gaps in the apartment buildings opposite down to the sea, that beautiful sort of Mediterranean blue. This tiny enclave on the French Riviera is one of the wealthiest places in the world.

A few minutes walk away is the main port, filled with mega yachts belonging to the rich, famous and even richer unknowns. For Daisy, it's a less glamorous experience.

“In the sweltering summer heat, she's sitting on a wall waiting outside an apartment block.”

This is where your Katarina Barrett is believed to be living. I was sort of tearing my hair out wondering maybe we'd missed her, maybe there was an entrance we haven't considered. Your Katarina's financial feud with Bridget has now made the UK press, so Daisy's been sent here with a photographer for the Daily Mail. She's been sitting here for hours.

And then all of a sudden there was just this bright shock of orange hair, not ginger, not open like orange, bright orange hair. And I said, oh my god it's her, it's her, it's her. The photographer races up the hill to get the shot.

“She was wearing this incredible purple Chanel short dress.”

It's like a button up kind of jacket dress with these like knee-high black boots.

These are the photos that grabbed my attention when I first came across the story.

And then this like tangle of dog leads where she had these three Italian greyhounds, kind of trotting it alongside her. With a bajooled headband topping off the outfit, it doesn't feel like the look of someone trying to keep a low profile. Your Katarina also looks very pale and thin. She looks incredibly different from this sort of smiley kind of alluring woman that I'd seen in

past photographs of her. You Katarina doesn't appear to see Daisy all the photographer, and with a moment she starts to disappear out of you. So the next day Daisy comes back to making another approach. And after another few hours on the wall, you Katarina appears with one of her greyhounds. Everything is lie, what is written, everything ally.

Your Katarina's words here are spoken by an actress. She starts to talk about Bridgett, apparently trying to discredit the idea that she would ever have asked her for a loan. Your Katarina also makes her position on paying Bridgett explicitly clear. She says she'll not pay her a penny. I'm Vicky Baker, I'm from Novel and Association with BBC Studios. This is Fraudaceous.

Episode 4, The Windfall. Gosh, I haven't hit a ball all week, let's see. How it goes, not too bad. This is how Bridgett's friend Roger unwinds at the golf course. His club is in Surrey, a leafy county just outside London.

I've always been very competitive. Life generally I've always seen as a bit of a competition.

You keep the balance on that. We try to, you don't let it go too far. But you know, you give it your best, give it your best shot. These days, Roger has a new pastime. The pursuit of your Katarina, Barrett's. I almost see it as a hobby. Some people might still channel work or something like that

That's why she is a battle. You know, it's been for me a battle to fight on some of these

“behalf. We're back at Bridgett's apartment by the river Thames and a short drive from the golf club.”

Roger has been fully immersed in this story from the moment he found out about the extent of the loans. I've spent hours and hours talking about the case with him, trying to cut through all the smoke and mirrors surrounding your Katarina's wealth. Today is no different. I've come to ask him about his motivations for devoting so much time to the case and about how he keeps going, despite what seems like constant disappointments as your Katarina fails to pay up.

Once he gets started, there's no stopping him. I've got to be honest and say, you know, chasing a down has been quite fascinating. As much as he dislikes her Katarina, Roger admits he can't help being impressed by some of her skills. She is very clever. The way she does everything, she plays one off against the other.

“She knows how to give credibility to what she's doing. She's very good at that.”

Roger and your Katarina have never really properly spoken. They've only ever seen each other

in legal settings. But I can't imagine that your Katarina is his biggest fan either. Your Katarina has accused him and Bridget's other close friend Kevin, of driving the entire case and pushing Bridget into it. Roger is adamant that it was ultimately Bridget's decision to take legal action and that he and Kevin were there to support her. She said, no, I can't let it go. I can't let her rob me of all this money and then just look

back on it in two or three years time. See her doing it to a load of other people and not having tried to stop her. He says that is characteristic of Bridget. Yeah, she'd always stand up to a bully or yes, quite courageous. Roger is nonetheless extremely proactive. I've seen him in action. He follows leads, he badges lawyers for updates. What Roger really wants is to see Bridget come out on top. It's quite something to have your ex-boyfriend fighting your corner like this.

I tell Roger I'm struck by it. It is quite rare and yes, you have different ideas about life and where you want to go and what you want to do. But I still care about Bridget to this day as much

as I've always done. I won't Roger to take me back to the summer of 2023. The same time

those paparazzi-star photos of your Katrina appeared in the newspaper. By this point, Bridget had been fighting for her money for more than four years and she was still high and dry without any further payments. But she hadn't given up. She'd already gone back to the high court to present evidence that your Katrina had failed to keep her side of the settlement deal in which she agreed to pay Bridget one million pounds plus costs. And a judge had ruled in Bridget's favour.

He had issued a final judgment stating that the debt now stood at 1,655,560 pounds. It's more than it was on account of added interest, which was around £180 per day since the settlement was first signed out of court one year beforehand. Yeah, Katrina must pay up, but will she? Can she? When Bridget first met your Katrina, it seemed that she lived a highly luxurious lifestyle.

And I've seen and heard evidence of that myself in May fair. I know she owned a 4 million pound

flat, but the source of her immense wealth is still unclear.

“That was the mystery. That was the million dollar question. Where did that money come from?”

This question has baffled Roger and Bridget, and it's also baffled me. A few years ago, I investigated the fraudster and Asorrakin, aka Anna Delvie or the fake Eris. Anna Audaciously reinvented herself as a billionaire trust fund kid in New York, despite coming from a very ordinary background. They're a clear parallels. Both Anna and your Katrina were born in the USSR. They both love fashion and luxury hotels,

they both insert themselves into high society, and they both skip bills, dabble in forgery, and explode friendships. But Anna appeared wealthy, mostly by posing in the right places with the right people on Instagram. She owned a tiny handful of designer clothes, which she wore on rotation, and she was no mad atly trying her luck. Staying at five star hotels and moving on after debacles with the bills. The difference here is there is some substance to

you couldn't invent. She really did have the Monaco apartment. She really did have the flat in May fair.

She did have the bank running around after her. And she certainly had a gigantic wardrobe of

“designer clothes. So she did have the money, a burning question remains. How did she build this wealth?”

Is any of it going to find its way to Bridget to settle the debt? From the get-go, Bridget's lawyers advised her to apply for a worldwide freezing order. Subject to approval from overseas jurisdictions, this can make it difficult for Yekaterina to sell, transfer, or hide anything she owns while the financial conflict is outstanding. Think of it as the legal version of putting someone's assets in a glass box until the case ends.

It's like look, but don't touch. The freezing order, which has to be approved by a judge, is supposed to help the negotiation process, too. So if Yekaterina says she has no money to pay Bridget back, Bridget can say, well what about that apartment or car that you have?

“You can sell that and pay me back. Yekaterina had already provided some financial documentation”

to Bridget's lawyers, including bank statements and account details, but they felt the picture

was incomplete. And as always with Yekaterina, it leaves them with more questions than answers.

Bridget's team needs to get a grip on what Yekaterina does actually own. And this is when it's handy to have a former estate agent on board. I probably was in my day, probably one of the most expert people you could ever call upon to give you values in that part of central London. I've been doing the job for over 40 years at the very top end of the market. Rogers lifted through the information unearthed by Bridget's legal team,

while using his own experience of the industry to do further slew things. He discovered a very messy financial picture behind Yekaterina's mafe air apartment. Yekaterina had a hefty mortgage on the property. And in 2021, she was looking to get a new deal, seemingly to release the equity and free up some cash. This was before the freezing order kicked in. Yekaterina contacted a finance company. Based in mafe air, it had a reputation for providing

fast finance to high net worth individuals. She tries to get a loan basically for as much as she could from them to increase the level of mortgage. The finance company sent an independent

value to put a price on the apartment as his customer. He valued it at close to five million pounds,

which in Rogers' professional opinion was way more than it was worth. I would have valued it at 3.75 million. The higher figure enabled Yekaterina to borrow more money via the finance company against the property, more than £3 million in total. She used part of it to pay off her very large original mortgage, which was also in the millions. It still left her with a chunk of money, somewhere between £700,000 and a million, which they still are debt, was cash in hand.

Unbelievable. Roger tells me he's suspected a scam when he first discovered this. His initial thought was that Yekaterina had somehow bribed to the valueer or done some other

“backroom deal. That's what I naturally believed. I found out afterwards it was totally genuine.”

The valueer had made the most enormous cock-up. Unbelievable. What luck? What luck? He just made a dreadful dreadful mistake. So Yekaterina comes out of this with money and her pocket. So she walks away. Guess what she did. Roger and Bridget believe they know where this money went. They've looked at the bank statement she provided via her lawyers. They show that in 2021 just after doing the re-morgage deal, Yekaterina went on an eye-popping summer spending spray

in Paris. She spent 179,000 euros in her maze and Chanel in just two days. I don't know for sure how she funded that, but I do know this spree is taking place during the same week that Yekaterina is going through mediation meetings with Bridget. I mean this is impossible isn't it? It's disgusting. Yekaterina failed to make the repayments on the new mortgage. I asked the finance company about this. They declined to comment. But I have seen evidence that they

luck of the devil every time things seem to go in her favor. Is it luck? Yekaterina certainly appears

to be an enormous risk attacker. To take out a huge mortgage like this, which she can't or won't repay, a meanwhile going on a huge shopping blowout? Is Yekaterina creating a financial time bomb for herself at this point? Kicking the problems down the road. She plays a game of chess in her mind.

“I believe and thinks, you know, four or five moves ahead. She's certainly not stupid. I don't think”

she's super highly intelligent. I think she is cunning enough, clever enough, manipulative enough and plausible enough to think far enough ahead to see what moves are likely to be thrown at her

and then to avoid the consequences. So what does this mean for Bridget?

In their settlement deal, Yekaterina said she would sell the apartment and use the proceeds to pay Bridget. And now that's off the table. After Yekaterina stopped paying the mortgage, the apartment was repossessed. Yekaterina is no longer its owner. For Bridget is a kick in the teeth. She's trying not to let these constant knockbacks get her down. Does she make you very angry? I think it first. But again, I'm quite a relaxed, easy-going person, so I'm not saying I'm doing

“yoga every day, but I took it in my step when I realized I had to pursue her.”

The other problem for Bridget is that Yekaterina is always backed by top-flight lawyers and she appears

to be instructing them to play hardball. It's like going into a gunfight, she's got it fully loaded. It's so crazy, if you behave like a normal person, you'll never win. Just when it's feeling hopeless, Bridget realizes she has another card to play. Now that she has an official high court judgement, she can also insist on Yekaterina appearing in court to be grills under oath about her assets. So you can't lie, you go before the

judge and you tell him everything that you've got. And you can be questioned on it. It feels like the moment when things are going to have to get real.

“Yekaterina's woven a tangled web of stories so far, but now it's down to facts, concrete assets,”

figures on bank statements. Bridget is optimistic that this will make a huge difference. This will start everything out and get everything onto an even path and will be able to move on. Whatever Yekaterina says under oath, it could be extremely enlightening and in Bridget's eyes there's still one major asset to play for, the Monaco apartment. This is now where they're pinning all their hopes.

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She took one look at me and started saying no, no, no, she has to go. She has to go. I can't, she has to go. Just two weeks after Daisy's reporting trip to Monaco, she's faced a face with Yekaterina in a courtroom in London. It's the morning of the 22nd of June, 2023. The assets hearing. The Katerina is not happy to see Daisy in court and she's letting the judge and everyone else in the room, no. As a reporter, Daisy is accustomed to some people not being happy to see her,

but this specific reaction takes her by surprise. She would just start saying these extraordinary things like, she was taking photos up my skirt and I was just stricken because I just out of everything she could have said. I did not know vaguely what that could refer to. It took two or three minutes worth of her barristers, her lawyers sort of having cushed discussions with her saying, "Come on, sit down, sit down, come down, come down." This appears to be Yekaterina's

modus operandi. Launch a missile that makes people doubt anyone who crosses her.

barristers, everyone's their heads of whipped round to look at me. I don't think I said anything. I just made a face as if to say, "What are you talking about?" Tensions are clearly high. If it feels strange for Daisy to see you Katerina again, I can't imagine how it feels for Bridget. Bridget and I Katerina have been communicating via lawyers for so long and now they're in the same room. Is it jarring, intimidating,

re-traumatizing? Bridget says it's none of those things because she doesn't recognize her. You're expecting this sort of person to come through and when she does come through, you think, who's that? Bridget says Yikaterina looks much sterna and she's also not used to seeing her

“with bright orange hair. I think when I see her, I don't really see her because she's changed”

her appearance. She's like a chameleon. So it's not as if you are dealing with the person you first

had all the trouble with. When there was spending time together, Yikaterina had a more natural look with brown hair loosely curled. Bridget finds that a new look helps her take a step back. I don't get head top or anything because you're not in awe, but you sort of think, "I can't believe it! Who is this person in front of me?" How did she be at to you? Did you make eye contact? She sort of locks through a minute, but then she's like back on the,

on the ball with the judge or whoever's talking. The hearing is about to begin. The judge starts addressing Yikaterina directly. He tries to reassure her. You don't have to worry he says,

“"All you have to do is answer the questions truthfully." Of course, Yikaterina says,”

then she moves into the witness box. Bridget's barrister, James MacWilliams, steps up to face her. And almost immediately, it becomes clear that Bridget is not going to get the clarity she hoped for. Yikaterina insists she has pretty much no money of her own.

She has no money, she has no assets. Basically, it doesn't know what we started talking about.

Yikaterina says, "Any money she spends comes from her family." What you're about to hear are the real words spoken in court voiced by actors. So your family support you, but how much money on average do they give you each month? Money? Yes. I don't have money. I have everything. They give it to me. What money? What money? Money for what? Money for food? Yes. I have everything. I have delivery all the time twice a week. Who pays for that? A coupé for this? Yes.

My family? My brother? What so he orders the food that you're going to eat? He orders the food that you are going to eat. He organizes everything. He don't be concerned to do it. He

have a lot of people who can organize my comfortable life. Okay, so you never get transferred any

money by anyone. Sorry? Your family do not transfer you money. My family paid all my expenses for everything. Whatever I need, me and my dogs. It's also part of the family. I wish I'd been in court to hear this in person, but the court transcripts tell the story. It's a bizarre and evasive performance. She describes the casher family sense as pocket money. Apparently they pay all her bills. Bridget's barrister tries to drill down on the practicalities

of how this works. Does that mean they put money on your Catherine's credit card? No, she says. She appears to be tying herself in knots. Here we go again. Here we go again. It is unbelievable. Your Catherine has asked about the Monica apartment. She now says that the apartment belongs to her brother.

“Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. According to your Catherineer, her mother plays a key”

part in bankrolling her lifestyle. Bridget again is skeptical. She met the mother when she travelled to Israel with your Catherineer in 2018. She visited the flat where she lives in the coastal area of Nithania. It's just a very ordinary apartment,

I thought, this is unusual. I expected a mum to be in a very nice, brightly lit, white marble.

I have been in people's homes who do have a lot of money and this didn't look like one of those homes. Bridget stayed at a hotel on the Israel trip. They did serve a buffet, sort of breakfast.

“So in would come her mum, I think two or two aunties and calling them aunties, two ladies,”

she just invited her members of her family. Yeah. And they would get the buffet and actually train her probably didn't teach anything. And I know that the hotel is actually said, you know, this is not meant for her. But guess what? Next there, in Dikon. She's got the goal and you know, it's like, oh my goodness, how embarrassing is this? You cannot embarrass a Katrina. You cannot. She puts herself in enough situations.

Back in the courtroom, your Katarina continues to answer questions about who pays for her lifestyle. She seems to imply that her family tightly control her allowance because she had a difficult divorce and they want to protect their fortune. She also briefly mentions a wealthy boyfriend, but she doesn't name him. And she repeatedly refers to a Swiss family who she implies a benefactors. She says she often stays with the Swiss family. They pay for her plane tickets. They send a car to

pick her up from the airport and they buy her lots of presents. And remember the roles were always

she was bragging about. She's asked about that too. You Katarina admits it was bought on finance, but the payments haven't been made and the finance company has been chasing her. The role's voice is in Switzerland, she says, somewhere with a friend, maybe in Basel, she can't say where exactly. I mean keeping tabs on your role's voice is tough, right? Yeah Katarina says her Swiss lawyers are dealing with it. She's also lost track of the whereabouts of her Bentley.

It was a Bentley that Bridget Sawyer Katarina driving outside of Pandora dress agency, the day that she agreed to dog sit for the first time. Bridget took it as one of the many hallmarks of her wealth back then. The barista also asks you Katarina about her spending.

“Have you been shopping in Chanel or Hermes this year? In London?”

Anyway, when? Have you bought anything in those shops this year? This year? No. What about last year? No. Any other high-end fashion house? No. I got some presents. For my birthday I got a lot of presents. I don't buy nothing from Chanel. I don't like Chanel anymore. What do you like? I like another branch. Which one? Maxim Spencer.

If Chanel has fallen out of favour with your Katarina, this must be relatively recent. Bridget's team has seen those credit card statements from 2021, two years earlier, when your Katarina went on the huge shopping splurge in Paris. The barista refers to those statements, and asks her about one specific item. A hope-culture dress bought from Chanel on the 29th of July 2021, for 62,000 euros.

It had been referenced in her affidavit or written statement. It was money from my brother or my mother. I don't remember. They beat Chanel. But your affidavit here says, I was only reminded of the value of the dress, when reviewing my credit card statements. And of course, they are in this affidavit.

“Yes. So you must have paid for it yourself on your credit card.”

No. I didn't pay it myself.

This is how it goes on and on, round and circles. English is not your country's first language,

so you have to give her some leeway. But the answer's just aren't adding up. Coming back to the cache, anywhere in the world, how much cache did you have right now? Ziya. The barista says she previously provided a statement showing 79,000 pounds in one account. That's gone, she says. She's asked about the luka trust. This is the trust she used to say was the source of her living expenses according to Bridget. The one she allegedly said she couldn't

access temporarily, leading her to ask Bridget for money at the start of all this.

Yikachrina makes it sound like she's living almost hand to mouth. Bridget certainly doesn't

believe that she only has a few euros in her pocket. Trust funds aren't always a sign of her

regulatory wealth. They can be set up for a number of reasons, including asset protection, tax planning, and philanthropy, but people often associate them with family fortunes. Couragey Catrina's family be hugely rich as she suggests. I don't know enough about them to be sure, but I have spoken to other people aside from Bridget, who've met Yikachrina's mother and father. They say they showed no signs of excessive wealth. They appeared middle class, living without

luxuries. I know the couple both believed to be from the USSR separated long ago. Yikachrina's mother is now in her 90s and has lived in Israel for years. Her father moved to

Munich. Various people have told me that they liked Yikachrina's mother, even though they didn't

know her properly and couldn't communicate directly as she doesn't speak English. They've used adjectives such as sweet, cayenne, grandmotherly. The antithesis of Yikachrina said one. I know Yikachrina has a step brother on her mother's side. He signed court papers for her, giving his

“profession as a dentist. Is this the brother she says owns the property worth multi-millions in Monaco?”

It's certainly possible, just as it's possible that her parents are masking their wealth. I'm trying to keep an open mind here, but Yikachrina is making it very hard. I think when she was younger, she had it tough. Probably a lot of people had it tough in certain

parts of Russia or, you know, Russian-like countries. When she got out, I imagine she even

hitched a lift out. Bridget is now letting her imagination run wild. We don't know how Yikachrina left the USSR, but having been born there in the 1950s and a communist rule, it's likely that her beginnings were modest. There was a bit of what I'll have village girl in her though. She used to like going buying her on vegetables in Monaco. I also know nothing about Yikachrina's teens, or 20s, or 30s. I mean, I know she's quite educated, she could have been an engineer.

Yikachrina's profession on various official documents is listed as engineer. I understand that she has an engineering degree, but I don't know where she studied. I only believe, rightly or wrongly,

“that somehow she got into Monaco, she was a very young girl, and I do remember bumping into a”

concierge guy stood at the door, don't ever as casino, but a nice building, lots of steps going up to it in Monaco. She said he's known me the longest, he's known me for over a since I was 18, she actually said that to him, and he was, yeah, you know, and I remember thinking, I wonder why he knew her? Do you think that's true though, because since she introduced you, it was like, "Oh, Bridget's my oldest brother." Yes, yes, she does, so yeah, she could do that.

But because it was off the cuff, I thought there might be a bit of truth in it. Bridget's legal team assure they can prove that your Katrina has been lying in court. It's up to them to collate the proof and make their case to the judge. Roger says they had to narrow down their focus to the points that mattered. The ones they believe showed, the her Katrina was masking her assets and making it difficult

for Bridget to get her money back. You've lied, umpteen times, but we're only going to pick out a specimen number of lies that we consider as so serious that the court must be made aware of them. And this was all about our ownership of her apartment.

“He means the apartment in Monaco. That's what they're going to home in on in their complaint.”

I'm reminded of something Bridget's lawyer Philip Barden said to me. After the assets hearing, he was sure the judge was going to come down on your Katrina. This is somebody who is severely dishonest. At some point in time, the roof falls in, because you just tell too many lies. Lying under oath brings consequences. It's contempt of court, and that in itself can bring a

prison sentence of up to two years. I think back to the start of this story. According to Bridget and Roger, your Katrina was trading on her credibility. She was surrounding herself with the right people, the bankers and lawyers. She was splashing cash in the casinos and on designer clothes. We know the May fair apartment was bought by her under her own name.

The narrative is falling apart, and that's totally on your Katrina. Because she's the one up there telling her story, and it doesn't make sense. Bridget wants to know the truth so she can get her money back. And I want to know the truth, because as a reporter, this is madening. The family fortune story just doesn't sound credible.

“I think somewhere along the line, she has got a pot of gold, and she knows that never”

never must she talk about it. I can't believe she's ran herself to the wire,

that she's got nothing but what's in her pocket. Is there a pot of gold? And if that is where is it? Alongside trying to prove that she lied in court, Bridget also desperately wants to find out the source of your Katrina's wealth. We focus on the part of the internet that most people don't know about that's called the Dark Web.

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Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get to a BBC podcast. Not long after the assets hearing, Rudra's back at home in South West London making a phone call. He feels he knows what to expect if someone picks up. A very hostile reception. He's been digging around as usual, and he thinks he's identified the Swiss family, yet Katrina mentioned in the court hearing. Her dear friends and benefactors.

He's trying their phone number.

“I will remember the strong accent answers. She sounds roughly the same age as him.”

Late 60s, maybe early 70s, Rudra says he's calling on behalf of a friend, called Bridget. He braces himself. She said to me, "Oh, I wondered if we would ever hear from you." Rudra is taken aback. She doesn't sound at all hostile. I said, "Well, we saw the article in the Daily Mail, and we wanted to contact you after that, because we have had a similar problem. We've lost an awful lot of money to bar it ourselves."

Rudra is astounded. The story she goes on to tell sounds so similar to Bridget's. A friendship that dramatically sourd after Katrina refused to pay back a large sum of loaned money. She gave them a bit of the same story that, you know, I've got my money, but I can't touch it yet, until this trust is sorted.

“Rudra says the woman tells him she had a husband who yet Katrina originally targeted.”

He since died, but Rudra recognises the name. It's the man that Katrina said controlled her trust according to Bridget. The one who became sudden meal, causing you Katrina to have cash flow issues, and meaning she needed Bridget's help to pay her divorce lawyers. The widow says that Katrina also spun similar stories to them, and result was devastating.

She managed to get about three and a half million euros.

The Swiss family don't want to be named, and I know they launch their own legal case against your Katrina in Liechtenstein. Sewing her for 2.9 million Swiss francs, which is actually 3.1 million euros or 2.7 million pounds. I have my jaw on the floor hearing how your Katrina managed to get so much money out of yet more individuals. Roger was also shocked when he first heard it. It looked like your Katrina was playing

both the Swiss family and Bridget at the same time. Roger believes that she'd use the Swiss family's money to sustain her lifestyle in front of Bridget, and she'd use Bridget's money to do the same in front of the Swiss family. They both thought there was something more power behind it all. It looked like everything a Katrina was saying was genuine. It gave substance to the financial side, right? So it was very clever, and she can turn it on. She can be the most charming person

on the planet. Bridget Roger and the Swiss family decide to come together behind the scenes

apartment. Not long after Roger's phone call, the family invites him and Bridget to stay with them

“in Switzerland to chat more. His lovely, most beautiful views, beautiful, stunning, they're very”

modest people, but obviously incredibly wealthy. And then the Swiss family drops an even bigger bombshell. It's one that when I hear it years later will stop me in my tracks too. They say that they weren't the only people in their town that your Katrina got close to. One of their wealthy neighbors had already been involved with her too, they say. So what we then discover is that a Katrina has become entangled with a Belgian steel magnate.

She had managed to get him to sign over 62 million euros, which I know makes no sense at all.

“Wait, 62 million. Could this be how she got the ultra expensive home in Monte Carlo?”

Could this info help find them away to wrestle out of her hands?

And ultimately, can any of this be true?

For audacious, it's produced by novel in association with BBC Studios.

“For more from novel, visit novel.ordio. The show is written and produced by me, Vicky Baker.”

The assistant producer is Valeria Rocker. The editor is Philippa Goodrich. Our fact checker is Daniel Suleiman, production management from Shiree Houston, Charlotte Wolf and Joe Savage. Sound design mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson, narration recorded by Nick Thackeray Cron, development by Sonny Mar, Jess Brown Swinburn, Anna Fielin and Willard Foxton.

Additional production by Leona Hamid, Sasha Baker and Ziana Yusuf. Our voice actor is Olga Betco. The series artwork is designed by Christina Lemko. Our executive producer is Max O'Brien. Fraudacious is a novel production for BBC Studios. The BBC's commercial subsidiary.