By Josh Hohne11:26am Jul 10, 2023

A Sydney-based private detective agency was contacted from the US with a unique request.

The caller represented the estate of a dead author – a biographer who left $500,000 behind in publishing royalties when they passed.

The catch? The only person named in their lucrative will was a long-lost distant relative, believed to be living in rural Australia.

With little to go off, the detectives had to draw on their decades of police experience to track down the man on the rural NSW-Victoria border.

Finding their target in the bush “with kangaroos for neighbours,” the detectives turned up at his house out of the blue, telling him about his inheritance worth over $500,000.

“He freaked out. He thought he was getting one of those Nigerian prince letters,” Danny Mikati, a manager at Precision Integrity Services, told 9news.com.au.

It sounded too good to be true.