In 1994, Ranogajec cashed cheques worth millions to spend on Keno, the pub lottery game, at the North Ryde RSL in Sydney. They moved into other forms of gambling, using more sophisticated mathematics combined with a brute-force approach. Both were good at maths and Ranogajec was already into gambling. Walsh revealed at an investment conference in 2022 that their syndicate, led by Ranogajec, placed about $10 billion in bets each year. The syndicate could still stand a good chance of losing most of that $4 million. He threw a party for some of the store owners at a sports bar, even though he failed to win the draw.

The company’s biggest revenue generator is its in-venue poker business, which attracted nearly a million Australians via about 25,000 tournaments last year. People started clamouring for the right box and rifled through it looking for the right envelope, which held 1000 tickets. By the end of Thursday, they had printed $US6 million of tickets. Marantelli, an early investor in the company, says he had not known this at the time. The Texas Lottery Commission had signed off on its licence renewal and approved 10 new terminals to be sent to the business.

• “His mates filled out tickets all week, and he organised a newsagent to stay open 24 hours a day so he could get the tickets on.” In the end, they held the only winning ticket.
• Marantelli says the commission was aware of how the bets were being placed.
• Crown says the latest reduction in jobs is designed to set the business up for the future and comes as the group faces industrial action in Victoria.
• “Because I knew the lottery I knew what was going on and they could have stopped it.” A few days later, the Lottery Commission said most of the sales were to “purchasing groups”.

But Nettles, watching the jackpot rise, could tell it was more than regular Texans would ever spend. Nettles lives in the suburbs of Dallas and has been playing the Texas lottery since it was founded in 1992. In April 2023, after a record seven months without a prize winner, the jackpot passed $US70 million. One, in a previous life, dated supermodel Miranda Kerr and spent time in a NSW jail for fraud.

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Using another failing industry as a justification for not adequately protecting Australians from gambling harm is a cop out, an opportunity fluffed.

“I was involved in the funding of the Texas lottery play,” he says. Then there was the NSW lottery win in the early 90s. “Mate, he’s big time,” one club patron told the Herald at the time. The club, which earned a commission, had ordered staff to place bets for Ranogajec on three Keno machines set up in the high-rollers’ suite. After six days’ work, he took home a $7.5 million jackpot.

The syndicate chose to forgo the full $US95 million, which would be paid out over 30 years, instead taking a lump sum cash prize of $US57 million, before taxes. At 10.12pm, the live broadcast of the draw began. Each ticket was catalogued and placed in a box. “I arranged for the syndicate to send these guys about $5 million, on my recommendation that we could work with them,” he says.

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Brier says Repcenko asked him for some help organising a bulk ticket purchase in Indiana. Brier was suing Texas-based courier Lottery.com for allegedly failing to pay $US15 million in a business acquisition. “He seemed charming, you know, looked clean cut,” says John Brier, an American businessman who spoke with him over a series of video calls in 2023. He had a new girlfriend – another model, this time from Lithuania – and a new name, Repcenko. After his release from prison, he was involved in a business deal with King of the Cross John Ibrahim. “He’s a smooth bastard,” says Winton Taylor, a Queenslander who came to invest money with him.

His team had bought more than 25 million tickets, which now filled the cardboard boxes stacked high against the hotel room wall. In a crowded hotel room not far from Austin, Bernard Marantelli and his team watched a live-stream of the Texas lottery draw. Bernard Marantelli has for the past few decades outsmarted many in the wagering industry, including US authorities after he won a $95 million lottery jackpot. The ASX-listed wagering group will upgrade its betting terminals and broadcast displays across the Laundy Hotels portfolio, but lock its rival out. Virtual Gaming Worlds was one of the early beneficiaries of a US legislative loophole in states where gambling is otherwise banned. The British bookmaker behind Ladbrokes and Neds allegedly allowed more than a dozen high-risk customers to funnel money through its accounts despite the risks.

Documents show executives at the gaming machines giant were paid $15 million by its billionaire founder shortly after he offloaded his 53 per cent stake. Court documents reveal details of the allegations against Perth gaming billionaire Laurence Escalante, who’s facing several assault and drug charges The co-founder of America’s biggest predictions market built a platform that lets people bet on anything. Crown says the latest reduction in jobs is designed to set the business up for the future and comes as the group faces industrial action in Victoria.

Marantelli says the commission was aware of how the bets were being placed. “‘We have been operating a syndicated crime organisation in the Texas government,” the former air force captain says. Lawyers for the syndicate have moved to have the online casino case dismissed.

The licence to sell lottery tickets in Texas lapsed. According to a former senior manager, the company’s founders had toyed with the idea of building systems to allow a “pro-buyer” to purchase huge blocks of tickets as early as 2020. At one retailer, a fishing tourism business in the suburbs of Fort Worth, two ticket terminals sat out the front amid the lures, souvenirs and beer coolers. They needed to find partners with licences to sell Texas lottery tickets who were willing to go all in. The team needed to buy close to 100 tickets a second for 72 hours straight between Wednesday’s draw and Saturday’s.

Sceptical of the Texas Lottery Commission at the best of times, Nettles was unconvinced by talk of a lottery fever. Draw after draw, week after week, the jackpot rolled over, unclaimed. No one had won the Texas state lottery in a long time. The state’s lieutenant-governor has called the lottery strike “the biggest theft from the people of Texas in the history of Texas”. “I think Texas is the only time we’ve bought almost every ticket,” Marantelli says.

In his eyes, the company was meant to focus on everyday lottery customers, not “rich jackasses trying to game the system, doing Hail Mary events once in a blue moon”. And he said, ‘Oh, we sent over QR codes, and we hooked them up to the machines, and we printed all the tickets’.” Repcenko lived in Malta, a hub for online gambling businesses. On top of the $US26 million spent in the final draw, “substantial money was wagered and lost on previous draws” in the weeks before. He declines to comment on other syndicate members or the amount of money he personally collected in winnings. “His mates filled out tickets all week, and he organised a newsagent to stay open 24 hours a day so he could get the tickets on.” In the end, they held the only winning ticket.

The commission had also approved an unusually large number of terminals to be sent to Lottery.com and its related business, which were not brick-and-mortar stores open to the public. The Fort Worth fishing business that printed the winning ticket later explained to commission investigators how the store had used phones preloaded with QR codes to enter the bets. Rule changes from the mid-2010s onwards violated state law, according to Hall, subverting a game meant to be played by people buying tickets in person at physical stores. Electrician Jerry B. Reed, a regular player of the Texas lottery, won a smaller jackpot directly after the syndicate’s win. Marantelli says about 40 people were squished into the hotel room along with 150 or so boxes of tickets.