Sport is made for betting

The fallout from this one isn't going to stop anytime soon - more victims will emerge, more details will be revealed in court, and we still have heard very little about the health of 'Jimmy', the $5m half-brother to Black Caviar. Today's revelations guarantee a special series of the high-rating TV show Underbelly. Links to the underworld run a little deeper than Bill Vlahos buying Pillar of Hercules for $1.8m when Racing Victoria decided Horty Mokbel was not a suitable person to be owning racehorses. It is alleged that a key member of the BC3 staff has dated "Freddie the Bear" , a suspected drug trafficker, for several years. D'Amico regularly attended the races with his brother-in-law, the nephew of Melbourne gangster Mick Gatto. Coincidental? The Age is leading with a story today that BC3 was a vehicle to launder money for criminals and bikie gangs. Hardly a surprise after reading the previous paragraph. Tens of millions of dollars is the figure quoted...

Another day, another roundup of the Vlahos debacle... Racing identity Bill Vlahos' emails reveal fear of attack, and warn of club collapse It seems Billy has had troubling paying out for many months, since the start of 2013. Apparently this came from boasting about exorbitant returns (46% profit) in the last quarter of 2012. Rather than serving as a great advertisement to the scheme to bring in more members, all it did was encourage existing members to start enjoying the benefits of their new-found wealth, thus creating a major cash flow problem for the fund. And then the slow pay went on, and on, and on, throughout the year. One of his many excuses was they were now 'having difficulty placing their bets' and 'big mouths have made it hard for us again'. No wonder he moved to Singapore for several months - in a top end luxury hotel no less! Then Billy got desperate, the ego couldn't be stopped. He had to find the missing money, so he was in discussions with ...

There's at least one series of Underbelly in this saga - or perhaps there isn't? After revelations earlier in the week that the man behind the multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme Bill Vlahos had been bashed and his ute torched.... it appears that he did it all himself! Very flimsy witness statements and evidence which just doesn't add up.... Police have task of unravelling puzzling tale of Bill Vlahos and his punting club The house apparently had virtually no furniture in it, Vlahos hadn't been there for months and the 'thugs' just happen to find him there. Plus they managed to find the fuel can in the shed to torch the ute. Not just any fuel can, but the one with diesel in it rather than petrol, because the latter might cause an explosion and injure the person igniting it (cheers to @chyde33 for that tip out of the arsonist's handbook). All the paperwork (if there actually was any) just happened to be in the ute and probably any laptop too. Investigatin...

What do you get when you have a individual fronting a Ponzi scheme with anywhere between $200-500m in funds that have disappeared, links to Melbourne's underworld and potentially thousands of investors who have lost anywhere from a week's takings in their own business, to their entire savings and nest egg for retirement? A bloody mess which soon turns nasty. Vlahos bashed, car torched as BC3 Thoroughbreds turns ugly Syndicate leaders bashed as investors face huge fleecing You bet 600 Yarrawonga residents are angry at losing $74 million in punting club Racing Victoria to investigate BC3 Thoroughbreds, alleged assault at Bill Vlahos property Leading bookmakers in the dark over Bill Vlahos' alleged punting scheme A lot of people have woken up to the stark realisation that if something seems too good to be true, it invariably is. The global financial crisis killed off strong returns from the stock and property markets, so people went looking for other 'easy' ...

When the term ' Ponzi scheme ' is mentioned these days, the names Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford instantly spring to mind. The pair of them ran multi-billion dollar frauds (US$60bn and $8bn respectively) that destroyed the lives of thousands of investors who had put their life savings into a 'wonderful' investment strategy. How so many people were sucked into the scheme is baffling to those on the outside. The lifestyle, the sales pitch, the success stories of the early investors - I suppose it all adds up. So where does this link to racing you ask? A prominent Australian 'racing identity' this week has been reported to have lost access to a bank account with punters' club funds of $194m in it. Firstly - is there a worse term for anyone to be labelled with that 'racing identity'? It ALWAYS ends up meaning shonky crook! Secondly - who the hell has a punters' club with an active bankroll in the tens of millions? It simply can't be done. T...