Australia and its colourful, often daring, gaming and casino entrepreneurs and their schemes, have been in the news a lot lately, and its been far from all good.
Yesterday Media Man and Gambling911 brought you the explosive Melbourne Storm sports betting scandal, and days prior, Gold Coast whiz kid, "payment processor" (and alleged money launderer), Daniel Tzvetkoff. Well customers, today we bring you not 'Con The Aussie Fruiter' but Constantine 'The Con' Barris, whose lotto scheme failed to lay golden eggs for his investors, and has landed him in boiling hot water.
Media Man and Gambling911 probe and stick a fork in this goose...
A Queensland 'Banana Bender' and semi pro scammer, who claims include having "secret method" to predict future lottery aka Power Ball draws, has been ordered to repay $10,000s of his ill gotten gains to his barn yard full of victims to his devious scheme.
Surfers Paradise entrepreneur start-up Constantine 'Con' Barris had a rush of blood to the brain and hatched a hair brain type idea. He went about establishing a website, Power Ball Win (no, we're not linking to the mongrels site) and distributed 163,000 flyers primarily via junkmail to households across Australia, which claimed "an amazing discovery that disputes the theory of random probability and has totally shocked the experts."
The bad egg cunningly tricked customers forked out a $59 "subscription fee" in order to receive a series of so called predicted numbers to help win all divisions of Powerball. Yeah right....guess what, numbers failed to produce any dividend for subscribers, but it did garner the goose some unwanted attention to himself and his nest egg.
Barris appeared in the Melbourne Federal Court where Justice Richard Tracy ordered him to repay $48,163 to subscribers and flyer distributors and the legal costs of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
Legal Eagle Words Of Wisdom To Bad Egg...
"All too often unscrupulous individuals seek to enrich themselves by devising schemes under which unsuspecting victims are induced to part with their money and other property," Justice Tracy said.
Justice Tracy said there could be no 100% guarantee that a number provided by Power Ball Win would be drawn in any given game.
"Nor could any other information, supplied by the company, assist anybody to choose the five remaining numbers. They (the subscribers) would have been in no better position than if they had relied on their own intuition," he said.
ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel advised the verdict was a compelling reminder for punters to be wary of schemes, including those which claimed to be able to accurately predict the outcomes of any form of gambling.
Con's scheme was a game of chance, not a game of skill. Con has some element of "skill" and grey matter in dreaming up and executing the plan, but his goose was a touch hair brained and half cooked.
"Whether the schemes claim to be able to predict the outcome of lotteries, horseracing or other sporting betting schemes the golden rule is if it seems too good to be true, it probably is," Mr Samuel said.
Gambling911 and Media Man also advised punters to fully check out systems that claim to help make you a better poker or online slots players.
Con ya goose, you've got egg and white stuff on you now sunshine. Media Man, Gambling911 (and our spiritual mate, Plucka Duck) at Network Nine are not amused. Any more bad eggs from you and it might just be a special appearance on Nine's Gold Coast themed 'Underbelly. Punters, if your up for a lotto punt we reckon you should just visit your local newsagent and buy a ticket, or if online is your poison, ethical companies such as PartyGaming offer alternatives such as PartyBingo and Foxy Bingo. Virgin's Richard Branson also has a Virgin Bingo service (but Virgin's isn't available to Aussies at this stage). Bottom line, newsagency or Party's Bingo, if you're still in the mood to play. Stay tuned as Gambling911 and Media Man continue to scour the earth for goose's and cons the world over. Have an eggs stroadinary and fun weekend, happy and good hunting, and even better punting.
*Greg Tingle is a special contributor for Gambling911
*Media Man http://www.mediamanint.com is primarily a media, publicity and internet portal development company. They cover a backers' dozen of industry sectors including gaming.
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