JOHN FRIEDRICH - AUSTRALIA'S GREATEST CONMAN?

AFTER MILLIONS OF DOLLARS VANISHED, BIG QUESTIONS STILL REMAIN OVER WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CASH

- Kylie Walters

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.

In 1988, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for transforming the Victorian division of the National Safety Council of Australia into a multimillion-dollar land, air and ocean rescue organisation unlike anything else in the world.

"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.

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.