CAPTAIN CROOK

A series of stories on a convicted conman and romance scammer who targeted vulnerable women using fake names, accents and identities.

I first exposed Brett Turton’s real identity in 2018 and revealed he had been jailed in Victoria for similar offending. Turton kept resurfacing under different personas, moving quickly into relationships and promising women the high life before disappearing when he could not keep up the act…or accent.

Women contacted me months later to say they had found my reporting after becoming suspicious. Many had been fleeced of money or provided him with accommodation for months, and were left devastated by what happened.

My reporting uncovered the difficulties WA Police faced dealing with this kind of offending, raising questions whether WA laws were equipped to deal with it.