National Safety Council
In November 1976, the Friedrichs had taken a holiday to Victoria. While there, having seen an advertisement in The Age, Friedrich applied for the position of safety engineer with the National Safety Council of Australia (NSCA) Victorian Division, to be based at the State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SECV) Yallourn power station in the Latrobe Valley. Upon returning to Mornington, Friedrich was informed that the job at Yallourn was his if he wanted it. Friedrich began working for the NSCA in January 1977.
Friedrich became executive director of NSCA in 1982 and began to transform it into a national search and rescue organisation. He built up the company with loans in which 27 banks agreed to lend millions of dollars with little more surety than Friedrich's word. McGregor-Lowndes attributes this lack of probity to the halo effect of NSCA and Friedrich himself. In 1988 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) "in recognition of service to the community, particularly in the area of industrial safety and search and rescue services".
Following the financial collapse of NSCA in 1989, Friedrich went into hiding. After a nationwide and international manhunt, involving all Australian police forces and Interpol, he was arrested in Perth, Western Australia on 6 April 1989. He was initially charged with one count of obtaining financial advantage by deception. On 1 November he was charged on a further 91 counts of obtaining property by deception.
In subsequent investigations it was discovered that he was not an Australian citizen, did not possess any valid birth certificate, and did not appear on any electoral roll. This caused considerable embarrassment to the Department of Defence, which had given him a security clearance and almost unlimited access to Royal Australian Air Force bases.
The Friedrichs lived with Shirley's brother in Sydney until the start of the trial. On 23 July 1991 he appeared in court for fraud involving $296,662,436.99.
Read more about this topic: John Friedrich (fraudster)
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