Guy Sebastian arrested at gunpoint after driving stolen car in Los Angeles that was taken from Ian Thorpe's Hollywood Hills house
Guy Sebastian has recalled the time he was held at gunpoint by multiple police officers in Los Angeles for suspicion of grand theft auto.
The Australian singer, 43, recounted having a knee placed on his body while a gun pressed his face into 'wet concrete'.
During an interview on Nova 's Smallzy's Surgery with Kent 'Smallzy' Small on Monday, Guy recounted his terrifying ordeal.
The incident, which occurred in 2011 when Guy was living and working in the United States at age 29, was confirmed by his management to Sydney Morning Herald at the time.
'I was living at Ian Thorpe's house in LA. I was just renting it for a while,' the singer began.
'I parked my car there, literally in the driveway, and I came back and it was gone.'
Guy told radio host Smallzy his car - 'bought on eBay ' - was illegally towed by a dodgy company and taken to an undisclosed location without telling him.
The company was attempting to exploit a loophole in the law, which allowed them to sell impounded cars that wasn't claimed by the owner after three months.
In the lengthy time it took him to track down his 'stolen' vehicle from the mystery tow company in the Van Nuys neighbourhood, Guy said he had diligently reported the 'theft' to local police.
'Police told me the car had been taken by a tow company. So I'm going from tow company to tow company, over three or four weeks,' Guy said.
'Eventually I went to the police for the third time, after I'd been to 20 or 30 tow companies. I said it's a needle in a haystack. So they marked it as stolen which alerted the tow company.'
'I go to pick it up and they charge me $4000USD. It's a scam that they do,' he explained.
Guy had been renting Australian Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe's two-bedroom hideaway in the Hollywood Hills, located behind West Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard when his car was stolen.
Upon picking up his car from the impound lot, Guy said he called police straight away to notify them that the car was no longer missing or stolen.
After 45-minutes of being left on hold, Guy decided to drive to a local car wash while he waited to speak to police.
'I pick up this car. It's all damaged from the tow thing. I'm livid. I hop in this car and head down to the car wash because the sheriff is up the road,' he continued.
'I thought "Bugger it, I'll go there after I wash this car". Didn't think anything of it. One police car pulls up in the next wash bay.
'I'm still on the phone to the sheriff and I see another one pulls up. Next minute there's eight or nine cops with their guns drawn, screaming: "SHUT UP AND GET ON THE GROUND!"'
'I'm on Bluetooth in my car and one cop pulls the phone out and throws the phone, smashing it. It was like a movie,' Guy said, able to laugh about the incident now.
Guy attempted to notify officers that it was a misunderstanding and that he had the correct paperwork on the front seat and was on hold to police, but they refused to let him talk.
'He actually had the gun pressed into my forehead. It was full on. I could feel the metal of the gun,' Guy said, as another officer apparently told him to 'relax'.
'I was telling them it's my car. They wouldn't hear it. They put me in cuffs, pushing my face into this wet concrete.'
Guy said he was eventually let go after, his paperwork was checked and cleared, and said he understood why the police needed to act the way they did.
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Anne Hamilton-Byrne, who Ben would grow up to know as his mother, became the leader of the cult based in Australia, which drugged and beat him. He had no idea of his life before Anne, as she went to great lengths to keep his adoption a secret, even bleaching his hair platinum blond like hers and his new 'siblings'. Despite abusing more than 20 children, including Ben, Anne and her husband and cult co-leader, Bill Hamilton-Byrne, never faced justice. Now, over four decades on from the abuse, Ben shares his story of growing up in the "Kai Lama" compound, where children were locked in with barbed wire and tortured. FIRST IMPRESSIONS Anne first started out as a yoga teacher before turning to a more 'spiritual life' and eventually believing she was Jesus Christ reincarnated. She was born with the name Evelyn and had three marriages in total - the first coming to an end when her husband died in a car crash, which led to her 'spiritual awakening.' 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Ben Shenton Detective de Man recently told The Age: 'My only regret is she was never held totally to account for the misery she caused to the former cult children. 'I have no sympathy for the woman I consider the most evil person I ever met in my police career.' LIFE NOW Ben moved into foster care when he left the cult, and while lying on his bunk bed with fresh pyjamas and a meal in his tummy, he realised he'd never go back to The Family again "I realised then I (didn't) have to do this anymore, I'm free. I don't need to go back," he said. "That, to me, was when I shut the door." Four decades on, Ben is a proud husband to Rajes and a dad to Ellie and Callum, who live in Perth, Australia. He has written a book on his time in the cult, Life Behind the Wire, and runs the organisation, Rescue The Family, to raise awareness on cult manipulation. In 2019, Anne passed away while in a Melbourne care home at the age of 98 and Ben has reconnected with his biological mother. 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