- Today, Expose.News begins a series of video interviews with the head of the Manx Taxpayers’ Alliance, Michael Josem.
- Josem is the maverick Melborne maths expert who went from fraud buster to pandemic whistle-blower.
- His name became familiar on the island five years ago, after he accused ministers of shredding an important letter, and needlessly destroying vaccines.
- His criticisms were born out – the Isle of Man ranked among world’s worst for per-capita deaths in first wave
- Lockdowns saw per-capita arrests soar and suicides nearly double
On a grey, spring morning in Douglas, Michael Josem sat in his small flat scrolling through government documents.
What began as idle curiosity, during the first weeks of lockdown, soon became something bigger: an unravelling of decisions that, in his view, cost lives on the Isle of Man.
‘It wasn’t really until the whole lockdown period, and the COVID period, where I became interested in what was happening in the policy, and the politics of the community,’ he admits.
‘And so for me…just some random schmuck in a little apartment in Douglas….I started poking around.
‘And so through that period, I uncovered documentation and confirmation that the government had shredded a letter from a health department employee to the health minister. And then that sort of blew up in the Isle of Man and got a lot of attention.
‘And then I discovered that during the pandemic, the Isle of Man government was destroying vaccines….’
Those discoveries — a shredded letter between health officials, destroyed vaccine doses, and others such as stockpiles hoarded in contradiction to UK medical advice — would thrust Josem, already known in niche corners of the online gambling world, into the centre of a local political storm.
From Poker to Politics
Josem’s story is unusual even by Manx standards. Born in Australia, he first gained fame in the mid-2000s as a sort of mathematical detective, exposing high-profile cheating scandals in online poker.
‘The short version is that some people were cheating in online poker.
‘They were able to see the cards of their opponents, and I helped to prove that there was cheating by doing a whole bunch of mathematics.
‘And that sort of went viral before the word viral was a thing.’
The revelations spread widely in poker circles and beyond.
Josem was profiled in newspapers, cited in books, and even provided inspiration for the 2013 Hollywood thriller Runner Runner, starring Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake. But more of that in follow-up story and video in this current series….
That notoriety brought him to the Isle of Man, where he joined PokerStars, the global gaming giant headquartered in Douglas. He spent years leading teams dedicated to fraud prevention.
‘I’ve been living on the Isle of Man for 14 and a half years now,’ he said. ‘I came to the Isle of Man for Work initially and stayed for good.’
Today he leads the Manx Taxpayers’ Alliance, a campaign group calling for greater accountability in government spending.
Sounding the Alarm
When the coronavirus pandemic hit in early 2020, Josem, like many, found his world shrinking to the confines of his flat. What set him apart was how he used the time.
‘I became interested because I fundamentally care about the community, and I saw things that the government was doing really bizarrely and poorly. And I’m a big believer in the philosophy of defeat of you can just do things.’
‘So I published the data, it was all freely available on the internet.
‘I published the sources, I published the documents, and some of the media picked up on some of these questions, some of these issues, some of them did not. But at the end of the day, this was a difficult period. But I think an honest reckoning of that period reflects very badly on the decisions made by the health minister.’
At the same time, public messaging appeared dangerously inconsistent.
In March 2020, while New Zealand and Australia were closing their borders, the Isle of Man’s chief minister told residents to ‘go out to the pub.’
The then health minister, David Ashford, reassured people that the risk was ‘medium to low.’ Within weeks, the island ranked among the ten worst-hit places in the world for deaths per capita.
Josem added: ‘There were thousands of people dying across the world. And so repeatedly the Isle of Man government panicked late. And so for much of the first period of the pandemic, the Isle of Man was one of the worst hit places in the world in terms of deaths per capita.
‘The Isle of Man was in the top 10 for the first phase of the pandemic, and then in the second phase in May, so in early May, the health minister said that it was not possible to eradicate the pandemic from the island.’
Lockdown Fallout
The consequences extended beyond the virus. Figures Josem unearthed showed the island had more than 200 extra arrests per capita for COVID rule breaches compared with the UK.
Even more troubling, suicides nearly doubled during the strictest restrictions, rising from a typical 9–11 deaths a year to 24–25. After restrictions eased, the numbers returned to normal levels.
A familiar theme in Josem’s work is his scrutiny of institutions and how they relate to populations.
‘So, one of the difficulties of the Isle of Man as a community, is it’s relatively small at 85,000 or so people,’ he explained. ‘And so compared to the 66 million of the United Kingdom, or the 25 million people in Australia, or the 300 and something million people in the UA, it is much smaller and it does not have the density of institutions that exist in a normal country.’
A Reputation for Accountability
For Josem, the COVID revelations are part of a larger pattern.
He insists his motivation isn’t personal ambition but civic duty. Still, his critics accuse him of grandstanding or exaggerating. Some dismiss him as a gadfly. Josem shrugs off the labels.
Looking Ahead
As the island moves further from the pandemic, Josem hopes there will one day be an ‘honest reckoning,’ which is more about recognising mistakes so that they aren’t repeated them.
From exposing card cheats to challenging ministers, Michael Josem’s path has been unconventional. But his method — persistent curiosity, rigorous use of data, and a willingness to speak out — has remained consistent, if at times, controversial. His conversations are littered with watchwords such as ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’ and ‘community.’
However, in the Isle of Man, his ultimate goal seems to be serving the common good by improving the political process – and he recognises the role played by journalists
‘It (the IoM) has very weak political parties,’ Josem said. ‘It has essentially no formal political opposition. It fundamentally has very little, if any, investigative journalism. And that’s why it’s good that you and others are asking questions and trying to shine a light on such things. And as a result, if you don’t like Rishi Sunal or Boris Johnson in the UK, the people of the UK know how to vote ’em out of office.
‘Whereas, it’s very difficult to do that in the Isle of Man.
‘And across the western world, our best decision-making institutions are a little bit more adversarial, whether it be the parliaments of the world….whereas the Isle of Man doesn’t have those normal checks and balances in its parliament, it has very few outside organisations that are looking to shine a light into these issues.’
