NARRATOR: Brooklin Donohue grows up
adoring her successful father.
My dad is a very driven alpha male, and that's what
I was looking for when I was looking for a partner.
NARRATOR: Then Paul Carter roars into her life with style.
BROOKLIN: Paul showed up in a bright yellow sports car.
He was very sexual and very driven,
and I appealed to him -- that made me feel great.
NARRATOR: But soon, the thrill ride gets out of control.
We gave him the moniker the Casanova Con Man,
because his biggest cons were of women.
He's an opportunist, and he's a scoundrel.
All these revelations are coming out
from people who he has ripped off.
ANEEKA: This is where things took a dangerous turn,
and he made a threat against her life.
SEAN: You can't get away from a predator.
NARRATOR: And Brooklin's ride into
the sunset comes crashing down around her.
BROOKLIN: I went out and bought myself a rifle.
I was terrified of what might happen.
[theme music playing]
BROOKLIN: I grew up in Australia in a fairly rural area
on a cow farm.
My favorite memories of being on the farm
was spending time with my father on Saturday mornings.
I had two younger brothers who were both asthmatics,
so they didn't spend time out on the farm,
which made spending time with my dad more special to me.
That was the only one-on-one time that I got
to spend with him.
NARRATOR: Andrew Facey, Brooklin's father, is a wealthy
fourth generation real estate developer in Melbourne.
When I was a kid, I thought my dad was a superhero.
He took over his father's real estate business
when he was 18 years old, and he expanded the business
very significantly.
NARRATOR: Brooklin's mother is a beautiful socialite.
I had a very difficult relationship with my mother.
There was the expectation that I was going to be
as thin and as beautiful
as what she was, and it didn't seem to matter what I did.
It was never good enough for her,
and it's caused a significant amount of trauma in my life.
NARRATOR: Brooklin wants to follow in her father's footsteps one day,
but here, too, she meets with rejection.
My intention was to take over the family business.
But my father is somewhat old school in that he likes
to keep the men in the business and the women at home.
NARRATOR: Her dad does agree to support her
financially, and Brooklin sets her sights on college.
But then disaster strikes.
BROOKLIN: When I was 18 years old,
I had a head-on collision with a truck.
[crashing noises]
I had a closed head injury.
My face and jaw was smashed, and I have since had 54
orthopedic surgeries to rebuild my body.
I spent most of the year either in a wheelchair
or on crutches.
But I managed to get through that year at college.
NARRATOR: Brooklin eventually finishes her degree
but rethinks her future.
I couldn't spend time
standing and on my feet all day,
which is what's required if you're in real estate.
One of the things that interested me was esthetician.
So I did a course in that, and then
I opened my own business in a gym in Melbourne.
I met my first husband at the gym
after one of the surgeries.
After my car accident, I felt like I had been smashed
into pieces, and I felt that nobody was going to want me.
So as soon as somebody did
come along that appeared interested in me,
I feel like I kind of latched on to that.
NARRATOR: The couple marry in 1996 when Brooklin is 27,
and she gives birth to her first son
a year later.
BROOKLIN: By the time I was pregnant with my second son,
I was working, and I had a toddler, and my patience with
my husband was really just running low.
I said to him, "You're gonna have
to go, because you're not pulling your weight."
NARRATOR: After five years of marriage,
Brooklin takes full custody of her sons with minimal
resistance from her ex.
A year later, she's ready to dip
her toes back into the dating pool.
For anyone who's been a single mother,
it's -- it's an exhausting gig.
And I hoped that I would find someone who would come
in and be a part of the family and contribute to that.
So I signed up for an Australian dating
online service.
ANEEKA: She met Paul Carter on RSVP, the online dating site.
He came across to her as very available.
He was single, unmarried, without children,
and looking for love.
So the next night I went on my first date with Paul Carter,
and that was a date with destiny, to say the least.
Paul showed up in a bright yellow
sports car, and that epitomized Paul's personality.
He was flashy, he was showy.
We went out for dinner, and we laughed and talked
and got on great,
and he was just very easy to talk to, and we just
kind of clicked.
He has a big personality, and he is
an amusing person to spend time with.
NARRATOR: Paul is ambitious and has his sights set on a bright
financial future as a real estate developer
and independent business owner.
I needed a man that was going to step up, somebody
that had the sort of alpha male qualities that my dad had.
That's how Paul came across initially.
We got romantically involved pretty quickly
from that point -- I had come from being married to
somebody who was really not physically interested in me
at all, and here was this guy,
he was very sexual and a great lover,
and I appealed to him.
That made me feel great.
NARRATOR: Eventually, Brooklin introduces her sons to Paul.
BROOKLIN: My middle son was about 18 months old,
and my eldest son was about four, and he
got along great with them, and he was happy to play with them
and spend time with them.
And so they thought he was great.
NARRATOR: For six months,
the four are spending all of their weekend time together.
Eventually, work intervenes,
and Paul says he has to focus on some business matters.
He says that he can't see me this weekend.
Okay. That's fine.
No problem. I thought it was because
he was trying to get stuff done.
I ended up going to the South Melbourne Market,
and I'm wandering around the market, and I look up,
and here's Paul walking towards me,
hand-in-hand with a girl that I had no idea who she was,
and he couldn't get her to let go of his hand fast enough.
And I said to him, "What are you doing here?"
And he said, "Oh, I'm just showing so and so
"around Melbourne.
She's here visiting from Canada."
And I co-- I couldn't even think at that point,
like I couldn't think of anything to say.
I was left standing there like an idiot in shock.
And when I finally got to ask him about it,
his explanation was, "Oh,
I was holding her hand because she was scared."
She was scared.
He claims that she just showed up unannounced.
Nobody flies from Canada to Australia on a whim.
I'm not somebody that strings people out or plays games.
So I wasn't, at that time, familiar with
being played the way that he was playing me.
I started to get suspicious.
I couldn't understand why I was never invited to his place.
So one day, when he was in the shower,
I pulled his driver's license from his wallet
and got his address.
His name on his driver's license was Paul Carter.
But the address didn't really fit with the narrative
that he was putting up about
being this super successful guy and having all these
designer brands and this flashy car.
And I thought, okay, well, I'll --
I'll go pay a visit and see what's going on at this house.
I pull up to the house,
and I knocked on the door,
[knocking noises]
and this older man, Paul's dad, answered the door, and I said,
"Is Paul Carter here?"
And he said, "Do you mean Paul Cristalo?"
And I said, "No, Paul Carter. This is his address."
He said, "Well, Paul Cristalo lives here with his wife,
Sonia, and he has three kids from his previous marriage."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
It was surreal.
I have two little boys who are becoming quite attached to him,
and there was a sideboard just inside the door, and it had all
these photos from their wedding with pictures of the kids,
pictures of his wife,
and...
I felt like the ground was going to open up and swallow me.
NARRATOR: Brooklin Facey is reeling from the news
that her new boyfriend,
Paul Carter, is not the successful single man
he claims to be.
In fact, he's married with kids.
This was his second marriage that he was in
at that point -- the first marriage, he had three kids.
And he has a different last name.
At this point, I'm starting to wonder
if anything about him is real.
NARRATOR: Brooklin decides to confront Paul,
who simply shrugs it off.
He says, "Yes, I'm married, but we're separated,
and we're just living in the house together."
It didn't sound unrealistic.
I thought, "This guy's got a lot of potential."
He was an exciting person.
He's not boring like my last husband was.
In hindsight, I should have just stuck with boring.
NARRATOR: After the painful confrontation,
Paul divorces his second wife and moves into an apartment,
and soon, the deception
is in the rearview as he plays dad to a blended family
with Brooklin.
BROOKLIN: He had three young children.
I had two young children -- their ages
sort of meshed together -- every other weekend,
we had all five of them.
I loved having the kids there.
It was a lot of work for sure.
But my boys were happy to have playmates, thought Paul was
pretty good with helping
with things around the house, and he was involved in
everything that they were doing.
So we had a pretty good team situation going on.
It meant a great deal to me,
because I was looking for a partner.
NARRATOR: In March 2003,
8 months after first meeting Paul,
he surprises Brooklin with a grand gesture.
BROOKLIN: Paul proposed to me at the beach.
He got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.
I was thrilled.
I was so excited.
He convinced me that the life that we were
gonna have together was going to be wonderful.
I didn't really get a sense that my parents didn't like him
until I said to them
that we were getting married, and they were not in
favor of the idea.
Right from the get-go,
my father thought Paul was sketchy,
and he couldn't put his finger on it.
But, you know, I was an adult.
I was in my thirties by that stage, and I
was going to do what I was going to do.
So we got married on St. Kilda Beach in Melbourne.
My father came to the wedding.
My mother did not come to the wedding.
We had all the kids there all dressed up in
black pants and white shirts, and it was so beautiful,
and everything seemed so perfect that day.
I finally felt like I had the family
that I had not had for my whole life,
and I was the mother in the family, and I was
never going to let my kids
feel lonely or sad or unloved.
Just thought that was the beginning
of the happily ever after.
So after we got married,
the first couple of years were kind of rough.
I was dealing with chronic pain from my car accident,
but I felt like Paul had my back.
I felt like he was there for me.
For the most part, he seemed to be on my team.
NARRATOR: The couple doesn't have to worry about money.
Brooklin may be cut out of running the family business,
but her dad is still supportive.
They move into a bigger house, and when she starts
feeling healthier, they take another big step.
[baby cooing]
BROOKLIN: We decided to have a child together,
and we had Mac,
who is the love of my life, and he is...
my heart and soul.
NARRATOR: After Mac's birth, Brooklin and Paul buy
an outdoor equipment company to run as a family business.
I was hoping that it would be something that we could work
together in, and then there would be, like,
a legacy for our kids.
I was working there part-time, and I was doing the books,
and Paul was selling
the items, and he was very creative with his marketing,
and he would start selling things on eBay.
My dad injected a very significant amount of money so
we could try and, you know, make a go of it.
He was trying to protect me financially, and he wanted to
help Paul create something that was going to be good
for us.
NARRATOR: But after 18 months, they don't have
enough cash flow to replenish their stock.
BROOKLIN: Paul was spending more money than he was bringing in.
It wasn't until he was working for something that I was
involved in that I got a glimpse of his poor
business practices,
and my dad basically bailed us out of it.
So once we lost the company,
my dad then had that over me,
and I was going to hear about that forever and a day,
that he had saved me and that otherwise,
we would have been bankrupt.
Paul really did a good job of putting a wedge between us.
ANEEKA: In 2010, Paul was appointed the CEO
of United Housing Victoria,
which is a publicly funded community housing company,
and there, he ran big sort of multimillion dollar
construction jobs.
NARRATOR: The organization provides housing
for low-income families.
He manages to pull this great job with United Housing,
a very secure job paying very well, and I'm thinking great,
everything's back on track now.
I had no idea that he was doing anything wrong
at the time.
ANEEKA: He was let go after two years,
because they saw they were just hemorrhaging money.
The suspicion was that Paul was blowing out
the contracts of --
of these construction jobs and pocketing that money.
NARRATOR: Brooklin and Paul have huge mortgage payments
for the house they own together,
and their debts are mounting because of Paul's
excessive spending.
I was panic stricken, and Paul's way of placating me was
to say, "I'll just pick up extra jobs on the side."
We were in a bad place in our marriage.
We ended up having to sell the house.
My dad was furious.
He was telling me that Paul doesn't know what he's doing.
I was humiliated, totally humiliated.
The fact that Paul was so irresponsible with money was
another reason that my dad felt that he was not
a good influence on the boys and that they would be
better off with their biological father.
He was putting pressure on my ex-husband.
My father said to him,
"I will pay for your lawyers,
and I will put the kids through school."
They took me to court, and they filed for custody of my sons.
NARRATOR: The custody battle continues for three years.
I had run out of money for lawyers.
I had no chance of winning, no chance.
NARRATOR: Finally, in 2013, Brooklin loses custody
of her two oldest sons, who are now 12 and 15.
Perhaps influenced by their grandfather,
they choose to side with their father.
BROOKLIN: So my ex-husband, he allowed my father to do this,
and he really hasn't worked a day since then.
There's only one thing that I really take pride in,
and that is that I think I'm a good mom,
and for me to lose my kids like that was just
so devastating.
If it wasn't for Mac, it would have been the end of me.
NARRATOR: But for Brooklin,
these losses are just the beginning.
NARRATOR: Brooklin Carter is staggering from
the heartbreaking loss of her custody battle.
BROOKLIN: My family, I have no connection with,
because they've all taken my dad's side.
I've lost two of my sons.
So all I have left is my youngest son and my husband.
It would have been easier for me if I had died that day.
Everything that I had tried to keep safe and everything that
mattered to me had just been handed over to someone else.
And I just hope that when my boys are older,
they realize that I never, ever stopped loving them.
For a long time,
I was so focused on the court battle with my kids
that I was not paying attention to my husband.
He felt that he was missing out on time
and energy that I should have been putting into him.
He was going to motocross meetings
and joining motocross clubs.
He was buying cars and changing cars frequently.
ANEEKA: Paul would use Brooklin to subsidize his lifestyle,
things like fast cars, properties, credit cards.
There was constant stress in the house.
Bills needed to be paid.
NARRATOR: Brooklin has managed to protect a portion
of her nest egg from Paul's spending,
but she's concerned he might eventually
drain all of her money.
BROOKLIN: I really didn't have a lot of
options other than to take back control myself.
And my version of that was to take my money and put it
somewhere else where Paul couldn't touch it,
and I knew it would be safe.
So we got an E-2 Treaty visa,
which is granted to Australians who invest into
a business in the United States.
We had been to Boston to visit, and I loved it there.
So I bought a couple of houses and rented them out.
NARRATOR: Coincidentally, just as Brooklin ties up her finances
with offshore real estate and her money is out of his reach,
Paul comes into a windfall.
On my son Mac's fifth birthday,
we were having a party at our house for him, and Paul
announced to me that he had inherited a large plot
of land from his grandmother, and the government were trying
to buy that land because they wanted to put a highway through.
NARRATOR: Paul explains that this land is in Italy,
and the sale is slightly delayed by red tape.
BROOKLIN: He showed me some documentation,
and it all looked very bona fide to me,
which was incredibly exciting, because he was telling me
that it was worth tens of millions of dollars.
And that's one of the things about Paul.
He always bounces back, often bigger and better
than he was before.
NARRATOR: Brooklin feels hope for the first time since losing
custody of her oldest sons,
but she's worried how their absence is affecting Mac,
her youngest.
It was very difficult for my youngest son to come home
every night and not have his brothers there
and go to the same school and not see his brothers.
Brooklin suggests to Paul that they move to Boston.
BROOKLIN: By this stage, he was working for himself as
a builder, and he had various projects underway.
He said, "Okay, great.
"We'll buy houses, renovate them,
and flip them, and start a new life."
NARRATOR: Brooklin and Mac head to Boston in April of 2014.
BROOKLIN: I was still devastated about my sons,
but it was easier to try and move forward when I wasn't
faced with the same things
every day that reminded me of them.
So Mac and I are in Boston -- he was happy,
I was happy, and we were expecting that Paul would join
us within two, maybe three months.
[numbers dialing]
[phone ringing]
Then suddenly, the communication starts to
dwindle, and he's not calling every day.
He didn't contact me for my birthday.
It didn't take long for me to
question him about what was going on.
So he says to me, "I would finish these jobs
"a lot quicker if you can fund them.
"And then once I finish them,
I'll get the final payment, and then I'll repay you."
NARRATOR: Brooklin knows that lending money to Paul is a risk.
But after 11 years of marriage,
she doesn't want to give upon them.
I don't like quitters, and I
don't like to quit on things myself.
I'm gonna stick with something until the very end.
So I went ahead and gave him the money.
NARRATOR: It won't be long before Brooklin
discovers the real purpose of the money.
It was the middle of the night,
and I was woken up by Mac, who was then
eight years old, who had his iPad in his hand.
[door creaking]
So he hands me his iPad and says,
"Who is this lady in the picture with dad?"
Somebody had sent him a Facebook notification.
Hang on. Is this an old picture of Paul?
This is my husband, but I've got no idea who this woman is.
Paul's wearing a black tie suit, and this blonde
woman is wearing what looks like a ball gown.
I had no idea when the photo was taken, who this woman was,
what Paul was doing there, or what the event was.
I felt sick.
I felt like my whole life was spinning out of control.
NARRATOR: Brooklin Carter is mortified to discover
pictures of her husband in the very close company
of another woman.
I'm realizing that this is not an old
photo from some time before my time with Paul.
This is something that's going on
now that shouldn't be going on.
NARRATOR: It doesn't take long to figure out that the event is
an engagement party, and the lady in red is Paul's
new fiancee.
ANEEKA: Katherine de Bois was a Melbourne woman.
She was a bit of a socialite,
had great friends, but love was missing.
And so she went online to find that.
Katherine met Paul on Tinder.
Paul rocked up to that date driving a Maserati
and claimed he owned a big fleet of them.
He claimed to be a self-made millionaire with
this big property empire across Melbourne and Queensland.
NARRATOR: The courtship begins after Brooklin leaves for Boston.
ANEEKA: Katherine said it was something of
a whirlwind romance.
He was extremely kind.
He paid a lot of attention to her
and came across as extremely committed.
She decided to move in with him and, to her shock, he lived
in this basic townhouse in Box Hill,
which is certainly not where you'd think
a multimillionaire lives.
Paul had an explanation, and that was that this was
a temporary place that
he was living while he and his ex-partner had been building
this dream home.
He actually told her his ex-wife
had passed away with brain cancer.
So she stopped asking questions.
It was about 12 weeks into their love story.
Paul got down on one knee and asked Katherine to
marry him, and it was an easy yes for her.
Katherine owned a beauty bar just outside of Melbourne,
and it was to be acquired by the government
to make way for a major road project.
Katherine said that Paul really convinced her
that he was something of an acquisitions expert.
And so she was quick to transfer him power of attorney.
NARRATOR: With Brooklin conveniently tucked away in Boston,
Paul Carter feels confident that he's safe to openly
celebrate his new love,
but he fails to consider the massive reach
of social media.
After several months of me questioning whether he was
having an affair or as he was becoming more and more distant,
I finally had the proof.
So I called him, and I said to him,
"What the hell is this? What is going on?"
He said that he would come over to Boston.
And in the meantime, we were doing counseling over the phone
and trying to figure out if this was at all salvageable.
[phone buzzing]
NARRATOR: In Australia,
Katherine de Bois receives a very similar shock.
After Katherine and Paul's engagement party,
she receives a call from somebody who knows Paul,
and they tell her, "He has a wife and child in the U.S.
You need to end this."
Katherine now believes that he was trying to take
over the beauty salon that she'd transferred into
his name.
NARRATOR: Paul and Katherine break off their relationship.
And in November 2014, Paul heads off to Boston
and attempts to patch up his relationship with Brooklin.
BROOKLIN: He was able to convince me that
he was remorseful for what he had done.
I'd already been through a divorce and lost my kids.
I wasn't gonna risk doing that
again and losing my youngest son.
So I was gonna do whatever I had to do to make it work.
I still felt like I could pull out the defibrillator
once again
and restart the heart and try and get things back on track.
NARRATOR: On a romantic trip to New York City
for Brooklin's 46th birthday,
Paul tells her he wants to renew his commitment to her.
We had a lovely weekend in New York City, and he had organized
with a jeweler
to look at some diamonds, 'cause he was going to get a ring made
for me.
NARRATOR: But within weeks, it becomes clear
she'll never get that diamond ring.
The money hasn't been transferred to the jeweler.
No money has come into our accounts.
I had faced about as much humiliation as I could take
at this point.
I was really losing faith in Paul.
But I wanted to be able to say to
my kids that I gave it my best shot.
I didn't just quit because it got too hard.
I just wasn't prepared to lose all that money
and then find out
a couple of weeks later that he inherited tens of millions
of dollars from his grandmother.
NARRATOR: Paul has one more gambit to keep Brooklin happy.
Early 2018, we took over a lease on
a horse farm that we were to purchase.
We had scheduled the closing to coincide with plenty
of time for the money to come from overseas.
ANEEKA: Paul spent many years convincing Brooklin that he was
to inherit, and every time this deal was due to close,
there was always an excuse as to why it wasn't happening.
He would go to extreme lengths to keep up the con.
Fake contracts written in Italian
would be delivered to her door.
And another time that she'd receive calls
from a fake number,
explaining to her why this was being delayed.
NARRATOR: With the final payment on the farm looming,
Brooklin puts pressure on Paul for some financial relief,
and this turns into his breaking point.
BROOKLIN: Paul came home and said,
"There's no inheritance.
There isn't any money coming. There's no money."
I slid down the fridge
and onto the floor like a cartoon character.
The whole game was up.
NARRATOR: Furious and deeply betrayed,
Brooklin kicks Paul out.
I was now left with this farm that I had to pay for.
I enlisted the support of my dad to help figure out
the financial part of it
until I was able to sell my house and repay him.
Fortunately, for me, my father made me sign
a prenup with Paul.
So I didn't end up having to split our assets.
Finally, I had control of my life
back again from Paul Carter.
Or so I thought.
NARRATOR: Paul, cut off from his slush fund,
is angry and desperate.
BROOKLIN: Paul shows up to the farm.
He was really angry,
and he says to me, "I'm going to kill myself,
but I'm going to make sure I take you down with me."
And I just felt chills go down my spine.
NARRATOR: Brooklin Carter is finally coming clean
with herself about who her husband
really is, and she's terrified.
BROOKLIN: He was not in control of money,
property, our child, nothing.
The gravy train had well
and truly stopped, and it just enraged him.
I went out and bought myself a rifle.
My son was sleeping with a baseball bat next to his bed.
I was terrified of what might happen.
NARRATOR: Brooklin gets a restraining order,
and then finally, after 16 years of marriage,
she files for divorce.
I couldn't lose any more money.
I couldn't lose any more sleep.
I couldn't be any more miserable.
I thought, if I don't do something now, I'm not even
going to have the energy to get out of this marriage.
NARRATOR: In August 2019, the divorce becomes final,
and Brooklin gets full custody of Mac.
BROOKLIN: I couldn't hold back my emotion,
and I burst into tears, and my head
fell onto the desk in the courtroom.
NARRATOR: But there is just one problem.
I became increasingly concerned about being
on the same visa as Paul Carter.
I decided I needed to get Mac and I a new visa.
My very close friend suggested that we get married because
we both had no intentions of ever remarrying in our lives.
NARRATOR: Brooklin and her female friend hold
a garden wedding in Albany in September 2019.
BROOKLIN: She was gonna come and live at
the house that I had built at my farm,
and we were just gonna grow old together
and help each other out and be companions for each other.
NARRATOR: Before the couple can even move in together,
Brooklin's life takes an unforeseen turn.
I get a call from "60 Minutes Australia."
REPORTER: He may look like an ordinary bloke,
but this is one of Australia's most cunning con men,
a ruthless operator who's fleeced millions from family,
friends, the rich, and the poor.
60 Minutes seemed to have even more information about things
that he had done that I had no clue about.
We gave him the moniker the Casanova Con Man,
because his biggest cons were of women
he made believe that he loved them.
Paul Carter!
BROOKLIN: They tracked him down at a job site, which was
a very rewarding moment
to see, because they made him come down off the roof,
and it was just perfect.
Why would you tell Katherine
that your partner had died?
Yeah, that was a mistake.
I was going through a bad time with
my then wife, and it was just a mistake.
They knew about the Uniting Church fiasco, and they just had
facts and figures and numbers on different projects
that he was doing.
He hadn't had time to prepare any answers,
but he still denied everything.
So I keep hearing this, but
I don't know who you're talking about.
He's just deny, deny, deny, deny.
What about the Italian inheritance that didn't exist?
There -- there isn't one.
-Was that another mistake? -Yeah, it was, yeah.
NARRATOR: After the expose,
Paul Carter becomes the subject
of a Homeland Security Investigation.
He had engaged in these fraud schemes for
many years with almost no law enforcement intervention.
We were able to determine that he
had used multiple identities -- at that time,
his most recent name is Paul Hamilton.
We execute a search warrant at his residence.
We found a law diploma under the name of Paul Hamilton.
We found a document that was fraudulent
from the Department of Homeland Security
indicating that he had been awarded
United States citizenship.
We found military uniforms in his closet.
We found a document indicating that he was
the beneficiary of over $30 million in trust funds.
All of these items were in line
with what the underlying allegations were about him.
We immediately arrested Paul Carter.
So we took him into custody on
the felony charges of visa fraud and false statements.
NARRATOR: This should have been the end of Brooklin's
nightmare with Paul,
except that her marriage to him has put her under
the microscope of homeland security, as well.
BROOKLIN: A couple of months later,
it was about 9:30 or 10 o'clock in the morning,
and there's a knock on the door.
"Brooklin, we need you to open the door.
It's Homeland Security."
The execution of the search warrant at Brooklin's house was
specifically in regard to the allegations of marriage
fraud against her.
BROOKLIN: They're bashing on the door, "Open the door, Brooklin."
So I opened the door, and eight agents in bulletproof vests
with guns stormed through my door and up the stairs.
They took all our cell phones and computers,
took my son's gaming computer,
everything that they could get their hands on,
and sent it to Quantico to get analyzed.
NARRATOR: Brooklin is suspected of committing marriage fraud
with her wife in order to gain a green card.
I was not prepared to drag her or her family
through the mud with the government.
This was supposed to be a happy situation
for both of us.
NARRATOR: Brooklin divorces her wife in June 2020.
They never charged me with marriage fraud,
but it was enough for them to then
look at the ESTA form that I filled in and decide,
oh, well, that's not right either.
There was a felony charge for filling in
the ESTA while I was still in the United States.
Brooklin Carter ultimately pled guilty to making false
statements on the ESTA application,
which is utilized to re-enter the United States at some point.
NARRATOR: Paul Carter also faces his day of reckoning
in a federal court,
and despite the many allegations,
he too is charged with visa fraud on April 7th, 2021,
and held in an Albany jail.
IAIN: Paul Carter was sentenced to time served
and a $5,000 fine.
We were not, as an agency, pleased with the sentence,
but he's now a convicted felon,
which in part is based on the work that our agency
and our office did.
His deportation hearing has been delayed
and now he has moved to
the other side of the country and applied for a green card.
So it seems that he's bought himself another couple of years
of stalling techniques.
IAIN: I think based on his history,
it's likely that he'll come back around.
I'd be surprised if we haven't heard the last of Paul Carter.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, because of Brooklin's conviction,
she must leave the United States,
a huge disappointment,
but there is a silver lining,
a man named Sean Donohue.
I heard that she had to leave the country, and I said,
I'm gonna marry you, and I'm gonna get your son away
from Paul,
and if he'll have me, and you'll allow it,
I'm going to adopt him and make him a Donohue.
I can't overstate how wonderful he has been to Mac
and I -- he's the happy ending that we deserve.
I've brought chaos to this man's life, and he's still there
standing right beside me,
and I believe he will be till our dng days.
SEAN: We're happy as can be now.
We are not going to let anybody shatter our marriage,
and I'll be with Brooklin as soon as I can
in another country at the soonest available time.
BROOKLIN: I've been dragged through the gates of
hell to get to the happy ending.
But I've come out the other end.
It's gonna make a good story for my grandchildren,
that's for sure.