There was a time when, if you were stranded at sea or lost deep in the bush, John Friedrich was the man you wanted to see.
He transformed Victoria’s National Safety Council of Australia into a multimillion‑dollar land, air and ocean rescue organisation unlike anything else in the world, and in 1988, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for it.
“Before John, it was just this sleepy little organisation that had been around for years and mostly made safety posters,” says Marc Fennell, whose new SBS series, Australia’s Greatest Conman? investigates Friedrich’s extraordinary rise and fall.
“And then it basically became Thunderbirds. They had a submarine, men were jumping out of helicopters with dogs, there were pigeons guiding search operations.”
But behind the spectacle was a house of cards – and it was only a matter of time before one of the most audacious frauds in Australia’s history came crashing down.
What did John Friedrich do?
Friedrich joined the NSCA as a safety engineer in 1977 and immediately set about reinventing it.
He snapped up millions of dollars’ worth of cutting-edge equipment and pioneered bold new rescue and firefighting techniques, some of which are still used today.
Under his command, the organisation exploded from a dozen employees to more than 400. As its size and influence grew, so did one uncomfortable question: who’s paying
for all this?
“John was a conman who was ripping off Australian financial institutions to the equivalent of $900 million today,” Fennell explains.
“He’d apply for multiple loans worth millions to buy something like a helicopter. Then he’d show that same helicopter to 10 different banks and say, ‘This is where your money went.’”
Yet, in a twist that still baffles to this day, there’s no evidence Friedrich ever used the money to line his own pockets.
There were no luxury cars or designer suits. No lavish holidays.
Instead, every stolen dollar appeared to be funnelled straight back into the NSCA.
“He kept meticulous records,” Fennell says. “The money was going into wages, training, running costs – and that was running into millions a year. The organisation and the incredible work it was doing was something that was very real.”
Who even was John Friedrich?
For years, as Friedrich rubbed shoulders with politicians, bankers and business leaders, almost nothing was known about the life he’d lived before arriving at the NSCA.
But, once investigators started digging, an international web of lies quickly began to unravel.
Friedrich was, in fact, German-born Johann Friedrich Hohenberger.
In December 1974, he fled Europe after defrauding a Munich road maintenance company where he worked.
But not before faking his death in a supposed skiing accident in Italy to throw authorities off his trail.
He eventually made his way to Australia and started a new life with a fake identity, and the lies only escalated from there.
As the truth began to surface and Friedrich was hit with charges, he declared bankruptcy with debts of more than $100 million.
In his February 1991 petition, he listed his only assets as $1500 worth of furniture, engineering textbooks valued at $1800, $300 in cash and a $150 trailer.
What happened after John Friedrich’s arrest?
On July 27 that year, days before his trial was due to begin, he died at 40 with a gunshot wound to the head, ruled as suicide.
“Clearly, he wasn’t doing this for financial gain, but he was getting something out of it,” Fennell says.
“I think what motivates him is less about money and more about proving a point. He just wanted to prove he could do it.”
Once the full extent of Friedrich’s con was exposed, the NSCA collapsed.
Hundreds of people lost their jobs as the lifesaving equipment was sold off to repay the banks.
“Calling him ‘Australia’s greatest conman’ really has a double meaning,” Fennell says.
“It’s about the sheer, vast amount of money he stole. But it’s also about what he did with it. For a little while, he built something truly remarkable – and it’s a real loss for the country that we don’t have anything on that scale in Australia today.”
Australia’s Greatest Conman? is streaming on SBS On Demand.
