Documentary series · SBS On Demand
Australia's Greatest Conman?
The Nutevio profile
TV DNA
How Australia's Greatest Conman? actually feels to watch, measured on the traits our editors track across every series.
Signature profile
Australia's Greatest Conman? reads strongest on Tension, Cliffhanger Intensity and Serialized.
The sustained pressure the series keeps you under.
How often an episode ends on a hook you can't ignore.
How much each hour depends on the one before it.
The scale, internal logic and texture of the world.
How often the series is genuinely funny, by design.
Visual ambition — scale, craft and set-piece filmmaking.
How hard it is to stop after one episode.
How fully written and psychologically layered the ensemble is.
How much the series is designed to affect you.
The story
What it's about
In the 1980s, John Friedrich led an elite sea and land rescue squad out of Victoria, winning an Order of Australia, top-secret government contracts and hundreds of millions of dollars in loans. But no one knew that John Friedrich was not who he made out to be, and his undoing revealed one of the most audacious scams in Australian history, an estimated $900 million in today’s value.
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Never stop watching
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