Crown Hotels, Casinos, Restaurants & Bars

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.

April 2025

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.

Ladbrokes owner Entain slashes 10pc of staff, ends nine-day fortnight

The pair has overlapping gambling interests and serve as directors of the same data analysis company, which employs statisticians to work on horse races and sports matches around the world. Over two weeks, they bought Quick Pick tickets from convenience stores, carrying up to $US20,000 cash in cloth bags. The commission announced “players are turning out in droves to have the exclusive chance at winning the largest jackpot on the continent”.

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.

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.

• Draw after draw, week after week, the jackpot rolled over, unclaimed.
• The long-running vehicle invests much of the billionaire businessman’s fortune, and is run by a family lieutenant Lawrence Myers, who is also being sued.
• “The Texas Lottery Commission facilitated the play by providing terminals, paper and ink.

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.

It turned out Texas wasn’t Marantelli’s first lottery play. They collected the prize via Rook TX, a company set up in Delaware where information about company directors and owners is kept secret. “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”. She posted on her website that the jackpot would be won that Saturday night.

Over 640 pages, Austrac accuses the UK bookmaking giant of failing to catch “large amounts of money being regularly moved”. The body that runs the Matildas and Socceroos wants a bigger cut of money made from punters. The British bookmaker said about 120 positions in Australia and New Zealand would go as it tries to reset the business after a change of management. This has been corrected to say the company’s chairman.

The Star case is a warning for boards and a setback for the regulator

The casino company’s former non-executive directors may have scored a legal victory, but it will be tempered by judge Michael Lee’s brutal judgment. The Federal Court says the casino’s chief executive failed to manage the risk that junket operators were laundering money, but threw out ASIC’s other claims. The long-running vehicle invests much of the billionaire businessman’s fortune, and is run by a family lieutenant Lawrence Myers, who is also being sued. The casino giant had been working on overhauling its borrowing facilities, and will replace a syndicate of lenders that includes Soul Patts and Macquarie. The embattled gaming group has finalised a deal to sell its stake in Queen’s Wharf to Chow Tai Fook and Far East Consortium and manage it for a small fee. Sportsbet, the country’s largest online bookmaker, appears to be shrugging off new regulations, making a ChatGPT for gambling recommendations.

Marantelli says the commission online casino 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 case dismissed.

The article previously said “After the company’s chief executive received the video as an update”… “I was more excited when we printed the last ticket,” he says. The numbers drawn were beyond his control.

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.

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.