Rupert Murdochs' Australian newspapers including The Herald-Sun, continue to run excellent (and balanced) coverage on the casino and gambling sector in Australia.
Let it be known that Murdoch also has some gaming (and igaming) interests, however they are further developed in the UK sector. Media Man has incidental joined some of News Limited's b2b affiliate programs as goodwill and we utilise some of their newsfeeds, so there's your disclaimer before we swing into things.
The age old connection between casinos, gambling dens and crime continues, albeit a different kind of animal than when the late George Foreman and his "Underbelly" crew ran the streets of Melbourne and Sydney. The late "Earthquake" Tim Bristow gave me a small taste of the scene via Sydney's Penthouse Executive Retreat, and "The Golden Mile" (Kings Cross), which Sydney's "Mr Sin" used to have a significant hold on.
Mr James Packers' Crown Casino has come under the spotlight (or blowtorch) again.... in Australia, if its not the anti gambling lobby having a dig, its the press, and if not them, the police. Crown Casino spokesman, Gary O'Neil, was recently quoted that Crown "is not a convent", but that's pretty much a given.
Australian law enforcement agencies have smartly noted and actioned revelations that some high level criminal networks (and some not so smart ones also) are using Crown Casino as quite the hub and centrepiece of criminal activity.
One of the scams that the crims operate is having Centrelink (Australia's unemployment benefits service) customers, and pensioners, buying chips at the casino which are then used as part of the money laundering process.
Media Man will be attending Crown Casino Aussie Millions next month and is in negotiations with media representatives for Crown. We look forward to providing news media and gaming media with more balanced reports on the casino and gaming sector.
*The writer does own shares in Crown Casino
*Greg Tingle is an Australian based correspondent for Gambling911 and the founder and director of Media Man a media, publicity and internet portal development company. Gaming is just one of a dozen of business sectors that Media Man covers.
Ben Packham of The Herald Sun reports:
CRIME gangs are using pensioners and the unemployed to launder millions in dirty money through casinos, authorities believe.
Centrelink has alerted organised-crime investigators to 15 clients it believes are involved.
They are understood to include a Victorian man who bought almost $13 million in chips at Crown, despite being on the dole. The Australian Crime Commission is closely watching casinos after an 18-month probe.
ACC chief executive John Lawler said that it had intelligence indicating organised crime groups were engaged in "high-level gambling activity" in legal casinos.
Its financial assessment team matched information from casino loyalty programs with other databases, including Centrelink records.
Last year, the Herald Sun revealed it had identified about 2600 Centrelink clients who each bought at least $50,000 in chips; 30 had buy-ins of more than $1 million.
Many were welfare cheats with gambling addictions and undeclared incomes. But further investigation revealed some had links to organised crime groups.
The Herald Sun understands Centrelink referred clients with suspected organised crime links to the ACC for further inquiries.
It's believed the ACC identified more suspected money launderers, independently of the welfare agency.
The federal crime-fighting agency refused to comment.
"The ACC will continue to work with the casino industry to ensure serious and organised criminal entities involved in money laundering are identified and pursued," Mr Lawler said.
The investigation also used Immigration, Customs, and tax office data.
The ACC estimates the cost of organised crime is $10 billion-15 billion a year, an estimated $6 billion of which goes offshore.
Its recent report, Organised Crime in Australia, said most such groups had overseas links, good advice and "professional facilitators".
Organised crime groups are typically involved in drugs, weapons trafficking and high-level financial crimes.
Human Services Minister Chris Bowen said hi-tech data-matching meant that welfare recipients with illicit incomes would be discovered.
"Welfare fraud is a criminal offence liable to long jail sentences," he said.
"People who fraudulently claim benefits from Centrelink should consider themselves warned. It's not a question of if you'll be caught, but when."
Casinos are required to turn over information to authorities under anti-money laundering laws introduced after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Crown refused to comment to the Herald Sun.
*Read the full article here. (Credit: The Herald-Sun)
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Monday, December 28, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Drug gangs buy nightclubs in hot spots - 18th December 2009
Clubs used for cocaine parties
Special gangster rooms
Prostitutes and criminals
A gang of wealthy criminals with links to mafia cocaine cartels has bought nightclubs in some of Australia's most popular tourist spots.
The nightclubs were used for cocaine parties and to house special gangster rooms providing drugs and prostitutes to local criminals, according to leaked Crime and Misconduct Commission documents.
The intelligence assessment, called Project Aurum, reveals that federal authorities failed to investigate the group's ringleader, who was suspected to have acquired substantial assets through cocaine importations that were linked to the Calabrian mafia.
Several of the men were able to buy into nightclubs on the Gold Coast despite having criminal records for drug offences, assault, weapons possession, tax evasion and fraud, says one of the documents, created in 2003.
One of the targets was recorded as snorting cocaine with a television celebrity who had a minor criminal record.
A CMC spokeswoman confirmed that the project was undertaken by the agency but said the commission could not discuss any operational details.
The intelligence assessment was based on surveillance reports, telephone records and tips from confidential informants and noted the suspects' high-flying lifestyle, substantial business interests in nightclubs and restaurants and extensive assets in property.
The group was recorded gambling thousands of dollars at the Reef Casino in Cairns, using high-priced callgirls on the Gold Coast and associating with senior members of some of Australia's most dangerous bikie gangsters.
At one establishment they frequented, the suspects were so notorious that their bar table became known as "the mafia table" and was where they held "white (cocaine) parties" with strippers in special "gangster" rooms.
The principle target was a southern businessman, who, four years earlier, had been recommended to federal authorities for investigation because of his substantial assets and connection to cocaine importations.
The same businessman had links to criminals who worked with the Calabrian mafia to bring in more than $30 million in cocaine hidden in stone blocks in 1999 and 2000.
(Credit: News Limited, Wires, AP, Australian Federal Police, Google News)
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Special gangster rooms
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A gang of wealthy criminals with links to mafia cocaine cartels has bought nightclubs in some of Australia's most popular tourist spots.
The nightclubs were used for cocaine parties and to house special gangster rooms providing drugs and prostitutes to local criminals, according to leaked Crime and Misconduct Commission documents.
The intelligence assessment, called Project Aurum, reveals that federal authorities failed to investigate the group's ringleader, who was suspected to have acquired substantial assets through cocaine importations that were linked to the Calabrian mafia.
Several of the men were able to buy into nightclubs on the Gold Coast despite having criminal records for drug offences, assault, weapons possession, tax evasion and fraud, says one of the documents, created in 2003.
One of the targets was recorded as snorting cocaine with a television celebrity who had a minor criminal record.
A CMC spokeswoman confirmed that the project was undertaken by the agency but said the commission could not discuss any operational details.
The intelligence assessment was based on surveillance reports, telephone records and tips from confidential informants and noted the suspects' high-flying lifestyle, substantial business interests in nightclubs and restaurants and extensive assets in property.
The group was recorded gambling thousands of dollars at the Reef Casino in Cairns, using high-priced callgirls on the Gold Coast and associating with senior members of some of Australia's most dangerous bikie gangsters.
At one establishment they frequented, the suspects were so notorious that their bar table became known as "the mafia table" and was where they held "white (cocaine) parties" with strippers in special "gangster" rooms.
The principle target was a southern businessman, who, four years earlier, had been recommended to federal authorities for investigation because of his substantial assets and connection to cocaine importations.
The same businessman had links to criminals who worked with the Calabrian mafia to bring in more than $30 million in cocaine hidden in stone blocks in 1999 and 2000.
(Credit: News Limited, Wires, AP, Australian Federal Police, Google News)
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Saturday, November 21, 2009
Heroin found in Maj-Jong tiles - AAP - 21st November 2009
More than $1 million of heroin concealed inside tiles normally used for indoor games has arrived at Sydney International Airport, police say.
The heroin was allegedly found inside four medium sized black cases of Maj-Jong and Domino tiles.
"The tiles appeared to be of poor quality and were subjected to further tests by Customs and Border Protection Officers," an Australian Federal Police spokesman said in a statement on Saturday (Credit: Fairfax - AAP)
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The heroin was allegedly found inside four medium sized black cases of Maj-Jong and Domino tiles.
"The tiles appeared to be of poor quality and were subjected to further tests by Customs and Border Protection Officers," an Australian Federal Police spokesman said in a statement on Saturday (Credit: Fairfax - AAP)
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Monday, April 13, 2009
Sydney Casino Brawl Results in 20 Arrests - Gambling911 - 11th April 2009
Police were called to Star City at Pyrmont early this morning after reports of a fight between two groups.
Police said the brawl started inside the venue before security staff threw a number of people out.
"A number of people fled the scene upon police arrival, however, 10 people were arrested at the location," police said in a statement.
"They have been taken to various police stations throughout the city and are currently assisting police with their inquiries."
Commenting on the brawls, Australian Media Man, Greg Tingle, told Gambling911.com:
"This is the latest of numerous high profile fights at Australian casinos. Last year a model was shot whilst working at Star City. In addition in recent months there's been a number of bashings at Burswood Casino in Perth and last month there was an in-play poker fight at the Rock Tavern (a club with strong similarities to a casino) Cairns, Queensland. Packer's Crown Casino in Melbourne currently has a number of legal fights on its hands, but has managed to avoid on premise violence to the best of public knowledge. Seems there's plenty more material available for more episodes of Network Nine's 'Underbelly' and Channel Seven's 'Gangs Of Oz'. These recent high profile criminal acts at some of Australia's premier gambling venues are certainly not going to hurt the popularity of online casinos."
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Police said the brawl started inside the venue before security staff threw a number of people out.
"A number of people fled the scene upon police arrival, however, 10 people were arrested at the location," police said in a statement.
"They have been taken to various police stations throughout the city and are currently assisting police with their inquiries."
Commenting on the brawls, Australian Media Man, Greg Tingle, told Gambling911.com:
"This is the latest of numerous high profile fights at Australian casinos. Last year a model was shot whilst working at Star City. In addition in recent months there's been a number of bashings at Burswood Casino in Perth and last month there was an in-play poker fight at the Rock Tavern (a club with strong similarities to a casino) Cairns, Queensland. Packer's Crown Casino in Melbourne currently has a number of legal fights on its hands, but has managed to avoid on premise violence to the best of public knowledge. Seems there's plenty more material available for more episodes of Network Nine's 'Underbelly' and Channel Seven's 'Gangs Of Oz'. These recent high profile criminal acts at some of Australia's premier gambling venues are certainly not going to hurt the popularity of online casinos."
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Paroled Murderer Kills Again After Blowing Money Gambling - Gambling911 - 16th March 2009
A paroled murderer in Australia killed again, this time a 78-year old woman. The motive: He blew his grocery money on the pokies, court documents heard.
Mark John Adams, 45, is charged with stabbing to death Barbara Doreen Risby on Hobart's Domain on May 23, 2007.
"Unfortunately this presents a most powerful argument for playing the pokes online and skipping some of the riff raff and undesirables who have a habit of frequenting traditional land based casinos," claims Media Man, Greg Tingle. "I think there's good cause for more security officers to be present at traditional casinos. Of course one needs to be mindful of what online casinos to visit also, but I am pleased to give a clean bill on health on those brands showcased on websites like Gambling911.com."
Ms. Risby was in the wrong place at the wrong time and had never met the alleged killer.
Adams's lawyer, Tamara Jago, told the court Adams spent the morning before Mrs Risby's murder playing poker machines in hotels in Hobart..
"He instructs that it came to him that he needed to obtain some money," Ms Jago told the court.
"He determined that he would effect a robbery."
She said Adams was in the habit of carrying a knife.
"He produced the knife with the hope that the threat of it would cause the surrendering of a handbag," she said.
The murder was not pre-meditated, Ms Jago said.
"He says he didn't specially seek out a victim but rather his victim was the first person who came into the area once he'd determined to do this," she said.
Adams had been out of jail for four years after serving 17 years for the 1986 stabbing murder of his neighbour, Edna Jean Story, in her Risdon Vale home. (Credit: Gambling911)
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Mark John Adams, 45, is charged with stabbing to death Barbara Doreen Risby on Hobart's Domain on May 23, 2007.
"Unfortunately this presents a most powerful argument for playing the pokes online and skipping some of the riff raff and undesirables who have a habit of frequenting traditional land based casinos," claims Media Man, Greg Tingle. "I think there's good cause for more security officers to be present at traditional casinos. Of course one needs to be mindful of what online casinos to visit also, but I am pleased to give a clean bill on health on those brands showcased on websites like Gambling911.com."
Ms. Risby was in the wrong place at the wrong time and had never met the alleged killer.
Adams's lawyer, Tamara Jago, told the court Adams spent the morning before Mrs Risby's murder playing poker machines in hotels in Hobart..
"He instructs that it came to him that he needed to obtain some money," Ms Jago told the court.
"He determined that he would effect a robbery."
She said Adams was in the habit of carrying a knife.
"He produced the knife with the hope that the threat of it would cause the surrendering of a handbag," she said.
The murder was not pre-meditated, Ms Jago said.
"He says he didn't specially seek out a victim but rather his victim was the first person who came into the area once he'd determined to do this," she said.
Adams had been out of jail for four years after serving 17 years for the 1986 stabbing murder of his neighbour, Edna Jean Story, in her Risdon Vale home. (Credit: Gambling911)
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Monday, February 23, 2009
Underbelly Series to Continue Says Channel Nine Exec - Gambling911 - 22nd February 2009
In its second season, Australia's Underbelly franchise has witnessed massive viewership. More than 2 million people tune in nightly.
Channel Nine Direct Sales Manager, Ian Sheppard, told Gambling911.com's Senior International Correspondent, Jenny Woo.
"Underbelly is based on real events," Sheppard said, and these events have had viewers on the edge of their seats each Monday night. "The name Underbelly is really just a franchise to dramatize real organized crime in Australia so it really is a question of what else they can go to work on. Another great story out of the 1970's and 80's are of the biking gangs in Australia or New Zealand, the Hell's Angels and the Commancheros; they basically ran the drug trade. So there's probably a good episode story there, which could be branded Underbelly. It's really just a question of how many interesting and real stories they can dig up from the past in terms of organized crime in Australia."
Media Man, Greg Tingle, agrees.
"There is enough material for the next few years," he said.
Tingle also told Gambling911.com that another network was in the midst of airing a similar series to that of Underbelly.
That said, a number of networks back in the United States tried and failed to copy HBO's ground breaking series, The Sopranos. Like the Sopranos, Underbelly is based on real events taking place in a sort of underworld society.
When asked if the series is exaggerated, much like the Sopranos could be at times, Sheppard said he wasn't fully certain.
"I think that's a hard one to answer. The only thing I can say to that is that the first two episodes in the current series dealt with the murder of a guy called Donald Mackay, who was an anti drug campaigner in a part of Australia where a lot of Italian families were growing cannabis. He disappeared and they found his truck with empty bullet casings in a puddle of blood but they never found out who actual killed him. They reckon beyond any doubt who it was and Underbelly ran with this particular story where they actually showed the guy shooting him. But I suppose historically the records show that no one was ever charged with his murder."
Last week, the series touched on the Underbelly casino elements.
"There will be more casino themes upcoming," Tingle informed us, though Sheppard would not elaborate on the subject. "It's an area that has quite a bit of history in Australia."
What's really gripped Australians, perhaps more than anything else, is the amount of violence depicted.
" I think that people are both shocked and fascinated to know that all this was happening here in our city, Sydney and Melbourne," Sheppard said. "We've always been shocked when we hear about violence coming out of Los Angeles, Miami or New York. We've always viewed ourselves as being away from all of that. I think it sort of shocked a lot of people here. We weren't naïve to think that nothing happened but I think a lot of people were shocked thinking the worst of the worst." (Credit: Gambling911)
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Channel Nine Direct Sales Manager, Ian Sheppard, told Gambling911.com's Senior International Correspondent, Jenny Woo.
"Underbelly is based on real events," Sheppard said, and these events have had viewers on the edge of their seats each Monday night. "The name Underbelly is really just a franchise to dramatize real organized crime in Australia so it really is a question of what else they can go to work on. Another great story out of the 1970's and 80's are of the biking gangs in Australia or New Zealand, the Hell's Angels and the Commancheros; they basically ran the drug trade. So there's probably a good episode story there, which could be branded Underbelly. It's really just a question of how many interesting and real stories they can dig up from the past in terms of organized crime in Australia."
Media Man, Greg Tingle, agrees.
"There is enough material for the next few years," he said.
Tingle also told Gambling911.com that another network was in the midst of airing a similar series to that of Underbelly.
That said, a number of networks back in the United States tried and failed to copy HBO's ground breaking series, The Sopranos. Like the Sopranos, Underbelly is based on real events taking place in a sort of underworld society.
When asked if the series is exaggerated, much like the Sopranos could be at times, Sheppard said he wasn't fully certain.
"I think that's a hard one to answer. The only thing I can say to that is that the first two episodes in the current series dealt with the murder of a guy called Donald Mackay, who was an anti drug campaigner in a part of Australia where a lot of Italian families were growing cannabis. He disappeared and they found his truck with empty bullet casings in a puddle of blood but they never found out who actual killed him. They reckon beyond any doubt who it was and Underbelly ran with this particular story where they actually showed the guy shooting him. But I suppose historically the records show that no one was ever charged with his murder."
Last week, the series touched on the Underbelly casino elements.
"There will be more casino themes upcoming," Tingle informed us, though Sheppard would not elaborate on the subject. "It's an area that has quite a bit of history in Australia."
What's really gripped Australians, perhaps more than anything else, is the amount of violence depicted.
" I think that people are both shocked and fascinated to know that all this was happening here in our city, Sydney and Melbourne," Sheppard said. "We've always been shocked when we hear about violence coming out of Los Angeles, Miami or New York. We've always viewed ourselves as being away from all of that. I think it sort of shocked a lot of people here. We weren't naïve to think that nothing happened but I think a lot of people were shocked thinking the worst of the worst." (Credit: Gambling911)
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Dramatic Underbelly upsets those who were there, by Malcolm Brown - The Age - 16th February 2009
Barbara Mackay did not work in her husband Don's furniture shop. Robert Trimbole did not live in a "grass castle" in the Griffith hinterland, or grow oranges. And he did not tell Don Mackay — at least not in public — that he would kill him.
The people of Griffith, the Riverina town where Mackay was killed in 1977, noted the dramatic licence in the opening episodes of Underbelly 2 on Channel Nine.
Don Mackay's son, Paul Mackay, was not available when The Age called, but he was quoted in Griffith's Area News saying the show was riddled with errors.
"My mother never worked one day in the family business, while in the show she was in there answering phones," he said.
"And I've never heard of the character of the local police officer they showed.
"I realise the producers qualified it by saying it tells the essential truth of the story, but I don't know how telling a lie helps them tell the truth."
The wife of a former councillor, who asked not to be named, said the inaccuracies worried her. Barbara Mackay was a physiotherapist who gave prenatal classes. Trimbole lived in town, but not in a big estate. He might have owned a property in the district but he did not grow oranges.
Some of the events in the program touch on reality. Trimbole is on record as having gone angrily to the Griffith police station in 1974 saying he would "kill" Mackay and his wife and children.
But he did not do it to his face after a public meeting, as depicted in Underbelly.
Mackay, a campaigner against the marijuana trade, was killed by hitman James Frederick Bazley in the car park of the Griffith Hotel Motel in November 1977. (Credit: The Age)
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The people of Griffith, the Riverina town where Mackay was killed in 1977, noted the dramatic licence in the opening episodes of Underbelly 2 on Channel Nine.
Don Mackay's son, Paul Mackay, was not available when The Age called, but he was quoted in Griffith's Area News saying the show was riddled with errors.
"My mother never worked one day in the family business, while in the show she was in there answering phones," he said.
"And I've never heard of the character of the local police officer they showed.
"I realise the producers qualified it by saying it tells the essential truth of the story, but I don't know how telling a lie helps them tell the truth."
The wife of a former councillor, who asked not to be named, said the inaccuracies worried her. Barbara Mackay was a physiotherapist who gave prenatal classes. Trimbole lived in town, but not in a big estate. He might have owned a property in the district but he did not grow oranges.
Some of the events in the program touch on reality. Trimbole is on record as having gone angrily to the Griffith police station in 1974 saying he would "kill" Mackay and his wife and children.
But he did not do it to his face after a public meeting, as depicted in Underbelly.
Mackay, a campaigner against the marijuana trade, was killed by hitman James Frederick Bazley in the car park of the Griffith Hotel Motel in November 1977. (Credit: The Age)
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Thursday, February 12, 2009
Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities to Employ Gambling Theme - Gambling911.com - 12th February 2009
Gambling911.com has learned that upcoming episodes of Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities will feature "some casino and gambling themes". The show's second season was the highest rated launch in Australia's history.
George Freeman, played by Peter O'Brien, ran a number of Australian casinos (gambling houses... "with no name" and unadvertised, sort of the opposite of casinos to that of the James Packer's Crown Casino (which is all above board and advertised, mainstream and is legal etc).
As we have come to learn, the world of casinos and bookmaking in Australia is quite fascinating to say the least, and this should play in superbly with the Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities theme.
Media man, Greg Tingle gives us a taste of the old school gambling lifestyle in Australia:
"My grandfather, Eric Fraser Cameron Tingle ran a SP bookmaker operation from Newport Beach plant nursery which also doubled as a barber shop... tripled as a SP hangout. Today Newport Beach TAB is next door. A decade ago I used to regularly have a punt at the TAB with the late, great (and notorious) Big Time Bristow.
"I caught up with Tim at his home at Newport, just around the corner from my old home at Pittwater, 3 weeks before Tim's unfortunate (and natural) death. I pointed to Chris Master's book entitled 'Not for publication' and the chapter entitled, Guilty Buildings'. I recalled to Tim, ‘That's you isn't it Tim?' TB replied, ‘You nailed it in one Greg'. That's the scoop... its never been published or put in the public domain before." (Credit: Gambling911.com)
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George Freeman, played by Peter O'Brien, ran a number of Australian casinos (gambling houses... "with no name" and unadvertised, sort of the opposite of casinos to that of the James Packer's Crown Casino (which is all above board and advertised, mainstream and is legal etc).
As we have come to learn, the world of casinos and bookmaking in Australia is quite fascinating to say the least, and this should play in superbly with the Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities theme.
Media man, Greg Tingle gives us a taste of the old school gambling lifestyle in Australia:
"My grandfather, Eric Fraser Cameron Tingle ran a SP bookmaker operation from Newport Beach plant nursery which also doubled as a barber shop... tripled as a SP hangout. Today Newport Beach TAB is next door. A decade ago I used to regularly have a punt at the TAB with the late, great (and notorious) Big Time Bristow.
"I caught up with Tim at his home at Newport, just around the corner from my old home at Pittwater, 3 weeks before Tim's unfortunate (and natural) death. I pointed to Chris Master's book entitled 'Not for publication' and the chapter entitled, Guilty Buildings'. I recalled to Tim, ‘That's you isn't it Tim?' TB replied, ‘You nailed it in one Greg'. That's the scoop... its never been published or put in the public domain before." (Credit: Gambling911.com)
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Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Underbelly 2 rocks the ratings, by Michael Idato - The Sydney Morning Herald - 10th February 2009
Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities - the second chapter of the most talked about crime series in Australia's modern history - made an explosive debut on television last night, with 2.5 million viewers tuned in.
Only two days into the ratings year, the win pushes Nine almost 10 percentage points ahead of rival Seven for the week.
Few would disagree it is an impressive start, though Nine still faces a massive challenge if it hopes to regain its lost ratings glory.
The win also gave Nine more than 40 per cent of 25-54-year-old viewers, the demographic which most advertisers prefer. In comparison, Seven's share of the same demographic last night was only 24.1 per cent.
Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities dramatises the Sydney drug trade between 1976-1987, and the rise of underworld figures Robert Trimbole (Roy Billing), Terry Clark (Matthew Newton) and George Freeman (Peter O'Brien).
Last night's two-hour premiere focused on the assassination of anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay (Andrew McFarlane). It also introduced robber Ray Chuck (Nathan Page), underworld wife Judi Kane (Kate Ritchie) and hit man Christopher Dale Flannery (Dustin Clare) all of whom will feature prominently in later episodes.
Last night's Underbelly debut compares to 1.93 million viewers who watched the first episode of Packed to the Rafters, Seven's monster drama hit of 2008.
It also out-rated the first series of Underbelly, which dramatised the 1995-2004 gangland war in Melbourne, which was watched by an average of 1.7 million viewers. That figure fell short of an expected 2.5 million-plus because the first series was not aired in Melbourne due to a court injunction. (Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)
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Only two days into the ratings year, the win pushes Nine almost 10 percentage points ahead of rival Seven for the week.
Few would disagree it is an impressive start, though Nine still faces a massive challenge if it hopes to regain its lost ratings glory.
The win also gave Nine more than 40 per cent of 25-54-year-old viewers, the demographic which most advertisers prefer. In comparison, Seven's share of the same demographic last night was only 24.1 per cent.
Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities dramatises the Sydney drug trade between 1976-1987, and the rise of underworld figures Robert Trimbole (Roy Billing), Terry Clark (Matthew Newton) and George Freeman (Peter O'Brien).
Last night's two-hour premiere focused on the assassination of anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay (Andrew McFarlane). It also introduced robber Ray Chuck (Nathan Page), underworld wife Judi Kane (Kate Ritchie) and hit man Christopher Dale Flannery (Dustin Clare) all of whom will feature prominently in later episodes.
Last night's Underbelly debut compares to 1.93 million viewers who watched the first episode of Packed to the Rafters, Seven's monster drama hit of 2008.
It also out-rated the first series of Underbelly, which dramatised the 1995-2004 gangland war in Melbourne, which was watched by an average of 1.7 million viewers. That figure fell short of an expected 2.5 million-plus because the first series was not aired in Melbourne due to a court injunction. (Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)
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Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Nine's a glutton for Underbelly, by Richard Clune - The Sunday Telegraph - 1st February 2009
A week ahead of Underbelly's second series launch, Insider can confirm that work has already started on a third series of the crime franchise, expected to launch later this year.
The third outing will explore the corruption of the NSW and Victorian police forces throughout the 1980s and the clean up job that started in the early '90s.
Production company Screentime's Des Monaghan confirmed the new series, while Nine CEO David Gyngell alluded to the program's possible 2009 debut.
"Its a no-brainer to go again and have Underbelly 3 on Channel Nine as soon as possible,'' Gyngell said.
Next week (Monday 8.30pm) Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities debuts.
If the first series gave Gyton Grantley a platform from which to launch a strong career, Insider believes it to be Nathan Page's turn this year. The largely unknown actor shines in the opening episodes as Melbourne hard man and bank robber Ray Chuck (real name Raymond Patrick Bennett), famed for the 1976 multi-million dollar Great Bookie Robbery.
Page has been trawling the local scene with obligatory appearances in Home & Away, Secret Life Of Us and opposite Kylie Minogue in forgettable flick Sample People but this will certainly prove his breakthrough role. (Credit: The Sunday Telegraph)
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The third outing will explore the corruption of the NSW and Victorian police forces throughout the 1980s and the clean up job that started in the early '90s.
Production company Screentime's Des Monaghan confirmed the new series, while Nine CEO David Gyngell alluded to the program's possible 2009 debut.
"Its a no-brainer to go again and have Underbelly 3 on Channel Nine as soon as possible,'' Gyngell said.
Next week (Monday 8.30pm) Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities debuts.
If the first series gave Gyton Grantley a platform from which to launch a strong career, Insider believes it to be Nathan Page's turn this year. The largely unknown actor shines in the opening episodes as Melbourne hard man and bank robber Ray Chuck (real name Raymond Patrick Bennett), famed for the 1976 multi-million dollar Great Bookie Robbery.
Page has been trawling the local scene with obligatory appearances in Home & Away, Secret Life Of Us and opposite Kylie Minogue in forgettable flick Sample People but this will certainly prove his breakthrough role. (Credit: The Sunday Telegraph)
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Underbelly 2 start date announced, by Amanda Meade - The Australian - 28th January 2009
The highly anticipated TV drama Underbelly 2: A Tale of Two Cities will premiere on Nine at 8.30pm on Monday February 9.
The date has been closely guarded by Nine because once the rival networks know the timeslot they can program competitively against it.
So feverish has the speculation been the media has taken to guessing the date.
A Nine source revealed to The Australian the series would begin the day after the start of official ratings - Sunday 8 February - and stay in the Monday timeslot.
Under CEO David Gyngell Nine has grown in confidence, improving its audience share last year and undermining Seven’s grip on the top spot.
With Underbelly 2, the cricket and a host of news shows, the network may be able to regain even more ground this year.
Series two is a prequel and the story moves to regional New South Wales, as well as Sydney and Melbourne, and features crime boss Robert Trimbole, to be played by Roy Billing.
Matthew Newton plays Terry “Mr. Asia” Clark, Andrew McFarlane plays anti-drugs campaigner Donald McKay and Peter O’Brien portrays George Freeman.
“Nine is thrilled to be bringing Underbelly- A Tale of Two Cities to the small screen in 2009,” said Nine Drama Exec Jo Horsburgh last year.
“I think the audience will love it.” (Credit: The Australian)
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Underbelly
Crime News Media
The date has been closely guarded by Nine because once the rival networks know the timeslot they can program competitively against it.
So feverish has the speculation been the media has taken to guessing the date.
A Nine source revealed to The Australian the series would begin the day after the start of official ratings - Sunday 8 February - and stay in the Monday timeslot.
Under CEO David Gyngell Nine has grown in confidence, improving its audience share last year and undermining Seven’s grip on the top spot.
With Underbelly 2, the cricket and a host of news shows, the network may be able to regain even more ground this year.
Series two is a prequel and the story moves to regional New South Wales, as well as Sydney and Melbourne, and features crime boss Robert Trimbole, to be played by Roy Billing.
Matthew Newton plays Terry “Mr. Asia” Clark, Andrew McFarlane plays anti-drugs campaigner Donald McKay and Peter O’Brien portrays George Freeman.
“Nine is thrilled to be bringing Underbelly- A Tale of Two Cities to the small screen in 2009,” said Nine Drama Exec Jo Horsburgh last year.
“I think the audience will love it.” (Credit: The Australian)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Underbelly
Crime News Media
Gangland murder witness to plead guilty to driving charges - 4th February 2009
A man who claimed to be unfit to answer driving charges because of injuries he sustained in a gangland shooting has failed in his bid to avoid prosecution.
Herbert Wrout will now plead guilty to a series of driving charges, his lawyer Chris Triscott told the Melbourne Magistrates' Court today.
Wrout, 66, was sitting alongside his friend Lewis Moran when two balaclava-clad men burst into the Brunswick club on March 31, 2004.
Moran was shot dead in the ambush but Wrout survived with wounds to his chest and arms.
Wrout lost his spleen and suffered extensive injuries in the incident.
At a hearing last October, Wrout claimed he was unfit to answer charges of unlicensed driving, driving while disqualified and refusing a preliminary breath test. But Mr Triscott told the court that his client would now plead guilty to the charges.
He asked for the hearing to be adjourned to allow more time for reports to be obtained.
Magistrate Simon Garnett ordered Wrout to face court again on March 12.
Evangelos Goussis was found guilty last May of shooting crime patriarch Moran and of causing Wrout - who was shot by a second gunman - serious injury.
Goussis is serving a minimum of 15 years for killing gangland figure Lewis Caine in May 2004.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Bert Wrout
Crime News Media
Herbert Wrout will now plead guilty to a series of driving charges, his lawyer Chris Triscott told the Melbourne Magistrates' Court today.
Wrout, 66, was sitting alongside his friend Lewis Moran when two balaclava-clad men burst into the Brunswick club on March 31, 2004.
Moran was shot dead in the ambush but Wrout survived with wounds to his chest and arms.
Wrout lost his spleen and suffered extensive injuries in the incident.
At a hearing last October, Wrout claimed he was unfit to answer charges of unlicensed driving, driving while disqualified and refusing a preliminary breath test. But Mr Triscott told the court that his client would now plead guilty to the charges.
He asked for the hearing to be adjourned to allow more time for reports to be obtained.
Magistrate Simon Garnett ordered Wrout to face court again on March 12.
Evangelos Goussis was found guilty last May of shooting crime patriarch Moran and of causing Wrout - who was shot by a second gunman - serious injury.
Goussis is serving a minimum of 15 years for killing gangland figure Lewis Caine in May 2004.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Bert Wrout
Crime News Media
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Aussie Welfare Recipients Laundered $25 Million Through Casinos, by Tina Golden
As a result of a year and a half long investigation by Centrelink authorities, more than 160 welfare cheats have been identified as being involved in money laundering scams. Officials say it is likely to be connected to organized crime syndicates as well as outlaw biker gangs.
In this type of money laundering scam, dirty money (acquired by illegal means) is used to buy casino gambling chips thereby cleaning the money. When unusually large chip purchases began to be noticed at casinos across Australia, Centrelink began investigating. Officials can track either the dirty money or the chips when they are cashed in once they have identified suspicious activity.
Whether through the cashier or at the gaming tables, any transaction greater than $10,000 requires the proof of identification so large transactions are recorded and thus able to be tracked. Centrelink found 30 cheats who had converted over a million dollars each and the average chip purchase was $155, 000.
Two cases stand head and shoulders above the rest – an elderly pensioner who cashed in $1.5 million and a single mother who converted $1.3 million dollars in chips. Some of the dole recipients were found to have purchased luxurious penthouse apartments and had been enjoying frequent comps from the casinos such as free accommodations and trips.
All cases have been turned over to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions for criminal charges to be filed. (Credit: World Casino Directory)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Crime News
In this type of money laundering scam, dirty money (acquired by illegal means) is used to buy casino gambling chips thereby cleaning the money. When unusually large chip purchases began to be noticed at casinos across Australia, Centrelink began investigating. Officials can track either the dirty money or the chips when they are cashed in once they have identified suspicious activity.
Whether through the cashier or at the gaming tables, any transaction greater than $10,000 requires the proof of identification so large transactions are recorded and thus able to be tracked. Centrelink found 30 cheats who had converted over a million dollars each and the average chip purchase was $155, 000.
Two cases stand head and shoulders above the rest – an elderly pensioner who cashed in $1.5 million and a single mother who converted $1.3 million dollars in chips. Some of the dole recipients were found to have purchased luxurious penthouse apartments and had been enjoying frequent comps from the casinos such as free accommodations and trips.
All cases have been turned over to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions for criminal charges to be filed. (Credit: World Casino Directory)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Crime News
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Repentant ex-mafia boss says tennis a top target for fixers - The Sydney Morning Herald - 1st January 2009
Former mafia crime boss Michael Franzese says top-level tennis matches are being influenced by gamblers and the sport would be his prime focus were he still in the business of impacting outcomes.
Franzese, a former boss in the Colombo crime family, serves as a consultant and speaker regarding his days with the mob and has spoken with ATP players about the methods that are used to spread corruption in sport.
"It's definitely going on," Franzese told AFP. "If I were in this business now, tennis would be my major target because one player can impact the game. That's all you need."
An FBI probe in the 1980s and a decade in prison helped push Franzese to change his ways and help those who safeguard the integrity of sport, but his crime contacts lead him to believe organized crime remains involved in tennis.
"I have to believe they are, certainly from the feedbacks I've gotten since I got involved with the ATP," Franzese said. "Sports has become such an incredibly lucrative racket, so to speak, for guys on the street."
Franseze, 57, has spoken with National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, tennis stars and elite US college athletes about the dangers of match-fixers, often counseling newcomers on how to avoid being ensnared in gambling woes.
His talks included a March 2007 session with ATP players.
"They told me there's a problem in the sport. It is something that has to be addressed," he said. "Mainly, I told them how damaging and dangerous it could be for them to get involved in gambling and get around the wrong people.
"Gambling is a very serious business. If you put yourself in a gambling situation, you're most likely going to attract the wrong people because those same people are watching you. They want to find out who's got a gambling problem."
Less than five months after Franzese spoke came a match in Sopot in which unusual on-line betting patterns were registered about Russian Nikolay Davydenko's loss to Argentina's Martin Vassallo-Arguello.
An ATP investigation into the match concluded last September that there was no wrongdoing by Davydenko or his rival.
Franzese remains suspicious.
"He is a pretty top player. Something else is going on there. Somebody has a hook on him," he said.
Franzese claims first-hand expertise at influencing athletes to drop a match to satisfy gamblers, including threats of bodily harm for failure to comply.
"None of these players want to do it. They do it because they're put in a situation," he said. "It's sad because they're doing it against their will. They have no way out. They all regret it. And that's why it's so damaging to their career. Psychologically, it gets to them.
"I've seen it happen so many times. They just can't perform the same. It does affect them. It affects their careers. Sometimes it's irreversible."
The impact on the sport could be as damaging as on the players. If supporters feel betrayed and have no faith the match results are legitimate, interest is likely to fade.
"All of them have a fear of gambling. All of them are not quite sure how to deal with it because they know it can happen at any time," Franseze said.
"In this country, we've had dogfighting incidents, a massive steroid scandal in baseball. They can overcome those things. They will not be able to overcome a major gambling issue.
"Once people start to believe that sports are fixed, that it becomes staged, forget it, the sport is done. Every pro sport knows that."
Media Man Australia Profiles
Sports Betting
Crime News
Sports News
Franzese, a former boss in the Colombo crime family, serves as a consultant and speaker regarding his days with the mob and has spoken with ATP players about the methods that are used to spread corruption in sport.
"It's definitely going on," Franzese told AFP. "If I were in this business now, tennis would be my major target because one player can impact the game. That's all you need."
An FBI probe in the 1980s and a decade in prison helped push Franzese to change his ways and help those who safeguard the integrity of sport, but his crime contacts lead him to believe organized crime remains involved in tennis.
"I have to believe they are, certainly from the feedbacks I've gotten since I got involved with the ATP," Franzese said. "Sports has become such an incredibly lucrative racket, so to speak, for guys on the street."
Franseze, 57, has spoken with National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, tennis stars and elite US college athletes about the dangers of match-fixers, often counseling newcomers on how to avoid being ensnared in gambling woes.
His talks included a March 2007 session with ATP players.
"They told me there's a problem in the sport. It is something that has to be addressed," he said. "Mainly, I told them how damaging and dangerous it could be for them to get involved in gambling and get around the wrong people.
"Gambling is a very serious business. If you put yourself in a gambling situation, you're most likely going to attract the wrong people because those same people are watching you. They want to find out who's got a gambling problem."
Less than five months after Franzese spoke came a match in Sopot in which unusual on-line betting patterns were registered about Russian Nikolay Davydenko's loss to Argentina's Martin Vassallo-Arguello.
An ATP investigation into the match concluded last September that there was no wrongdoing by Davydenko or his rival.
Franzese remains suspicious.
"He is a pretty top player. Something else is going on there. Somebody has a hook on him," he said.
Franzese claims first-hand expertise at influencing athletes to drop a match to satisfy gamblers, including threats of bodily harm for failure to comply.
"None of these players want to do it. They do it because they're put in a situation," he said. "It's sad because they're doing it against their will. They have no way out. They all regret it. And that's why it's so damaging to their career. Psychologically, it gets to them.
"I've seen it happen so many times. They just can't perform the same. It does affect them. It affects their careers. Sometimes it's irreversible."
The impact on the sport could be as damaging as on the players. If supporters feel betrayed and have no faith the match results are legitimate, interest is likely to fade.
"All of them have a fear of gambling. All of them are not quite sure how to deal with it because they know it can happen at any time," Franseze said.
"In this country, we've had dogfighting incidents, a massive steroid scandal in baseball. They can overcome those things. They will not be able to overcome a major gambling issue.
"Once people start to believe that sports are fixed, that it becomes staged, forget it, the sport is done. Every pro sport knows that."
Media Man Australia Profiles
Sports Betting
Crime News
Sports News
New laws delay drinking, playing pokies until 10am, by Patrick Lion and Gabrielle Dunlevy - The Courier-Mail - 31st December 2008
New Year's revellers will be unable have a beer and a flutter on the pokies first up this morning under one of several new laws effective from today.
The poker machine crackdown comes as the Bligh Government increases every fine by 33 per cent, putting infringements for speeding, parking and smoking in line with other states.
For example, drivers caught using a mobile phone will now cop a $300 fine instead of only $225 previously.
Premier Anna Bligh yesterday said the new hotel opening times would make communities safer.
Almost 900 licensed liquor outlets will not open until after 10am today while others with specific approval to open earlier will have to wait until 9am instead of 7am to serve alcohol.
"There remains more than ample time to have a drink or a flutter with 14 hours trading from 10am to midnight," Ms Bligh said.
On-the-spot fines for public nuisance offences such as urinating in public will also be trialled from today in a move aimed at freeing up the courts.
Today will also herald several policies to better protect householders from noise and air pollution.
The new Environmental Protection Policies will help guide government agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and local councils, manage air quality and noise standards.
Councils will be largely responsible for air and noise complaints, but will have greater flexibility in dealing with them.
There will also be changes affecting the building industry.
The Government will enforce tighter controls over the labelling of rainwater tanks that supply water to plumbing fixtures, to ensure they are clearly identified.
A new code for maintaining fire safety installations will be introduced, specifying the maintenance records required.
In tax changes from today, home transfer and home mortgage duty concessions will not be lost if the home is being disposed of due to an event such as a natural disaster, death or incapacity.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Crime News Media
The poker machine crackdown comes as the Bligh Government increases every fine by 33 per cent, putting infringements for speeding, parking and smoking in line with other states.
For example, drivers caught using a mobile phone will now cop a $300 fine instead of only $225 previously.
Premier Anna Bligh yesterday said the new hotel opening times would make communities safer.
Almost 900 licensed liquor outlets will not open until after 10am today while others with specific approval to open earlier will have to wait until 9am instead of 7am to serve alcohol.
"There remains more than ample time to have a drink or a flutter with 14 hours trading from 10am to midnight," Ms Bligh said.
On-the-spot fines for public nuisance offences such as urinating in public will also be trialled from today in a move aimed at freeing up the courts.
Today will also herald several policies to better protect householders from noise and air pollution.
The new Environmental Protection Policies will help guide government agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and local councils, manage air quality and noise standards.
Councils will be largely responsible for air and noise complaints, but will have greater flexibility in dealing with them.
There will also be changes affecting the building industry.
The Government will enforce tighter controls over the labelling of rainwater tanks that supply water to plumbing fixtures, to ensure they are clearly identified.
A new code for maintaining fire safety installations will be introduced, specifying the maintenance records required.
In tax changes from today, home transfer and home mortgage duty concessions will not be lost if the home is being disposed of due to an event such as a natural disaster, death or incapacity.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Crime News Media
Monday, December 22, 2008
Dikshit deal elicits response from RGA, by Sarah Polson - 18th December 2008
Anurag Dikshit, one of PartyGaming's founders, may have cut a deal with the U.S. government over online gambling, but that doesn't mean the rest of the industry is willing to roll over on the matter.
The Remote Gambling Association issued a press release on Wednesday in response to Dikshit's deal urging the European Commission to take steps to protect European Union interests from the "retroactive and discriminatory" enforcement by U.S. authorities in online gambling.
Dikshit pleaded guilty to illegal online gambling charges on Tuesday and agreed to pay $300 million to the U.S. government for PartyGaming's online poker and gambling business in the United States prior to the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.
PartyGaming never offered sports betting, and ceased to accept U.S. customers for its poker and casino games when the UIGEA was passed.
"These events show that the outgoing U.S. administration and the Department of Justice have shown a total disrespect for the legal rights of European online gaming companies and those associated with them and a complete disregard for U.S. international commitments under GATS," said Clive Hawkswood, RGA chief executive.
In June, EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson wrote to the U.S. government requesting a freeze on all enforcement actions by U.S. authorities against European online gambling companies. Mandelson's reasoning was that the actions violate international trade rules set by the World Trade Organization.
Mandelson asked that prosecutions stop until a proper dialogue can take place, thereby avoiding unnecessary escalation of the dispute.
The EU had already launched an enquiry into U.S. actions following an RGA complaint made under EU Trade Barrier Regulations.
"Not only has that request remained unanswered, but now the U.S. authorities, it seems, have succeeded in pressuring a major shareholder into making a deal. A major line has been crossed, and it could set a very worrying precedent," Hawkswood said.
PartyGaming Plc., which operates PartyPoker, and its shareholders are not obvious targets for illegal online gambling enforcement action, according to the RGA.
The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange, is fully licensed in an EU jurisdiction, was among the first to cease accepting U.S. customers once the UIGEA was passed, and has never offered sports betting in order to avoid violating the Wire Act. It does offer online poker and online casino games.
"It's amazing really that a company which has just been voted by the leading industry publication as 'responsible operator of the year' is the one that has been most targeted for this sort of enforcement activity while other businesses that are still active in the U.S. market, including notably U.S. operators, do not appear to be targeted in the same way," Hawkswood said.
He points out that while this is going on, the U.S. Internet gambling market continues to grow and is free to develop its businesses in Europe.
"In the circumstances it is not unreasonable for us once again to seek the support and protection of the European Commission," Hawkswood said. "We hope and believe that these continuing breaches of international law by the U.S. will serve to strengthen the Commission's resolve."
The EC started an investigation into the unfair prosecution of EU-based online gambling companies in March after the RGA brought the issue to the EU's attention.
"The U.S. has been given ample opportunity to respond to the legal and factual arguments presented in our complaint," said Lode Van Den Hende of Herbert Smith, the RGA's law firm in Brussels.
"However, we understand the U.S.' defense has been flimsy and that the Commission will, therefore, have to confirm the RGA's assessment of WTO unlawful, retroactive and discriminatory enforcement. The next question is what will be done about it, given the acceleration of events causing this dispute."
Professor Joseph Weiler, who directs the Jean Monnet Centre for International and European Economic Law and Justice at NYU School of Law, offered his comments as well.
"In this area, the U.S. has lost all its cases and appeals before the WTO's highest judicial authorities. And yet in what can only be described as puzzling and haughty contempt for the rule of law, it is acting as if it won those cases," Weiler said.
"The U.S. is pursuing European nationals and corporations and threatening them with lengthy jail time and punitive fines based on U.S. laws which have already been unequivocally held to be in violation of American WTO obligations. This is without precedent."
Weiler also pointed out that the issue deals a blow to the multilateral trade system at the "worst possible moment" for the world economy and to the Western economies which rely on services for their prosperity.
"It serves no discernable American national interest, and this is a bad day for the reputation of the U.S. in the area of international law," Weiler said.
Media Man Australia Profiles
PartyGaming
The Remote Gambling Association issued a press release on Wednesday in response to Dikshit's deal urging the European Commission to take steps to protect European Union interests from the "retroactive and discriminatory" enforcement by U.S. authorities in online gambling.
Dikshit pleaded guilty to illegal online gambling charges on Tuesday and agreed to pay $300 million to the U.S. government for PartyGaming's online poker and gambling business in the United States prior to the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.
PartyGaming never offered sports betting, and ceased to accept U.S. customers for its poker and casino games when the UIGEA was passed.
"These events show that the outgoing U.S. administration and the Department of Justice have shown a total disrespect for the legal rights of European online gaming companies and those associated with them and a complete disregard for U.S. international commitments under GATS," said Clive Hawkswood, RGA chief executive.
In June, EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson wrote to the U.S. government requesting a freeze on all enforcement actions by U.S. authorities against European online gambling companies. Mandelson's reasoning was that the actions violate international trade rules set by the World Trade Organization.
Mandelson asked that prosecutions stop until a proper dialogue can take place, thereby avoiding unnecessary escalation of the dispute.
The EU had already launched an enquiry into U.S. actions following an RGA complaint made under EU Trade Barrier Regulations.
"Not only has that request remained unanswered, but now the U.S. authorities, it seems, have succeeded in pressuring a major shareholder into making a deal. A major line has been crossed, and it could set a very worrying precedent," Hawkswood said.
PartyGaming Plc., which operates PartyPoker, and its shareholders are not obvious targets for illegal online gambling enforcement action, according to the RGA.
The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange, is fully licensed in an EU jurisdiction, was among the first to cease accepting U.S. customers once the UIGEA was passed, and has never offered sports betting in order to avoid violating the Wire Act. It does offer online poker and online casino games.
"It's amazing really that a company which has just been voted by the leading industry publication as 'responsible operator of the year' is the one that has been most targeted for this sort of enforcement activity while other businesses that are still active in the U.S. market, including notably U.S. operators, do not appear to be targeted in the same way," Hawkswood said.
He points out that while this is going on, the U.S. Internet gambling market continues to grow and is free to develop its businesses in Europe.
"In the circumstances it is not unreasonable for us once again to seek the support and protection of the European Commission," Hawkswood said. "We hope and believe that these continuing breaches of international law by the U.S. will serve to strengthen the Commission's resolve."
The EC started an investigation into the unfair prosecution of EU-based online gambling companies in March after the RGA brought the issue to the EU's attention.
"The U.S. has been given ample opportunity to respond to the legal and factual arguments presented in our complaint," said Lode Van Den Hende of Herbert Smith, the RGA's law firm in Brussels.
"However, we understand the U.S.' defense has been flimsy and that the Commission will, therefore, have to confirm the RGA's assessment of WTO unlawful, retroactive and discriminatory enforcement. The next question is what will be done about it, given the acceleration of events causing this dispute."
Professor Joseph Weiler, who directs the Jean Monnet Centre for International and European Economic Law and Justice at NYU School of Law, offered his comments as well.
"In this area, the U.S. has lost all its cases and appeals before the WTO's highest judicial authorities. And yet in what can only be described as puzzling and haughty contempt for the rule of law, it is acting as if it won those cases," Weiler said.
"The U.S. is pursuing European nationals and corporations and threatening them with lengthy jail time and punitive fines based on U.S. laws which have already been unequivocally held to be in violation of American WTO obligations. This is without precedent."
Weiler also pointed out that the issue deals a blow to the multilateral trade system at the "worst possible moment" for the world economy and to the Western economies which rely on services for their prosperity.
"It serves no discernable American national interest, and this is a bad day for the reputation of the U.S. in the area of international law," Weiler said.
Media Man Australia Profiles
PartyGaming
Sunday, December 07, 2008
O.J. Simpson sentence: at least 9 years, by Melissa Arseniuk - Las Vegas Sun - 5th December 2008
NFL Hall of Famer could be in prison until age 94, if parole is denied
O.J. Simpson will spend at least nine years in a Nevada prison.
District Court Judge Jackie Glass handed the former NFL star his punishment, 33 years in prison without the possibility of parole for nine years, just after 10 a.m. this morning.
“The evidence in this case was overwhelming,” Glass said. “Overwhelming.”
Dressed in navy blue inmate attire, Simpson addressed the court before receiving his sentence.
“I stand before you today, sorry, somewhat confused,” he said, his voice unsteady as he spoke.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anybody and I didn’t mean to steal from anybody,“ he said. “I didn’t know I was doing anything illegal. I thought I was confronting friends and retrieving my property.”
The All-Star running back was facing a possible life sentence following a run-in with two memorabilia dealers in a Palace Station hotel room last year.
Though Glass declined to impose a life term, her sentence means the former football star could remain incarcerated until he is 94 years old if denied parole.
Simpson and his co-accused, Clarence “C.J.” Stewart, were found guilty on Oct. 3 of allegedly robbing the collectibles dealers at gunpoint on Sept 13, 2007.
Simpson, 61, maintained that no guns were involved and that he and his five-man entourage were simply recovering personal items that had been stolen from him.
A secret audio recording of the six-minute altercation captured by the middleman who arranged the meeting, Thomas Ricco, was used as evidence against the accused during the trial.
Simpson and Stewart were convicted on all 12 counts they faced, including two counts of first-degree kidnapping, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.
The state had requested Simpson get at least 18 years behind bars while his attorneys asked he serve the minimum, six years.
Simpson’s attorney, Gabriel Grasso, said the defense was disappointed with Glass’s sentence.
“We were expecting less than that,” he said.
Grasso and Simpson’s other lawyer, Yale Galanter, will appeal the decision.
“We’ll file the notice of appeal as soon as we can,” Galanter said yesterday. He said he expected to file the necessary documents this afternoon or first thing Monday morning.
Simpson’s attorneys will ask their client serve his sentence at either the High Desert State Prison or Southern Desert Correctional Center, in Indian Springs.
Stewart was also sentenced today and will serve a lighter prison term than Simpson. Glass sentenced him to 27 years in jail with the possibility of parole until 2016.
His lawyers will also appeal the decision.
District Attorney David Roger offered plea bargains in return for the testimony of the five others who accompanied Simpson and Stewart during the raid.
The accomplices, Charles Cashmore, Charles “Charlie” Ehrlich, and the two who said Simpson asked them to bring guns that fateful day, Michael McClinton and Walter Alexander, testified against Simpson and Stewart. They will be sentenced Tuesday.
(Editor's Note: This story is developing and will be updated. An earlier story is below.)
----
O.J. Simpson’s lawyer, Yale Galanter, is hoping his client will receive the minimum sentence when District Court Judge Jackie Glass decides the former NFL star’s fate this morning – but the attorney isn’t kidding himself.
He said he doesn’t know what kind of prison term Simpson will receive.
“I can’t predict,” Galanter said Thursday afternoon.
Simpson, 61, is facing a possible sentence of six years to life behind bars following a confrontation with two memorabilia dealers in a Palace Station hotel room in the fall of 2007.
Regardless of the sentence, Galanter said he will begin the appeal process immediately following Friday’s proceedings. Stewart’s lawyers have also indicated that they will appeal.
“We’ll file the notice of appeal as soon as we can,” Galanter said, adding that he expected to file the necessary documents either Friday afternoon or first thing Monday morning.
The appeal would likely be heard within a year, if accepted.
Simpson was convicted on Oct. 3 of all 12 charges he faced related to the incident, including 11 felonies — two counts each of first degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon; robbery with use of a deadly weapon; assault with a deadly weapon; and coercion with use of a deadly weapon, and one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping; conspiracy to commit burglary; and burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon — and one gross misdemeanor, conspiracy to commit a crime.
The State Parole and Probation Division has asked Glass to send the Heisman Trophy winner away for no less than 18 years but Galanter is hoping the judge will consider a lighter sentence.
Simpson will be transferred to a state penitentiary after receiving his sentence today. Galanter said he did not know which jail his client will be sent to but said the defense will request Simpson go to either the High Desert State Prison or Southern Desert Correctional Center in Indian Springs. Both are medium-security institutions located about 45 minutes from where he’s currently being held and are approximately 25 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Galanter hopes his client’s stay at the prison will be as short as possible.
“Obviously we think that the facts and the circumstances of this case really do call for the minimum sentence,” he said.
“We want (Judge Glass) to (assign the minimum sentence based) on the fact that a, he’s a first time offender … and b, that he did not have any … criminal intent,” Galanter said.
Criminal intent relates to whether or not Simpson knowingly intended to commit a crime. The defense maintained throughout the three-week long trial that Simpson was not simply trying to retrieve items that belonged to him.
“Everything that came into that room had the name O.J. Simpson on it,” Galanter said, referring to the range of Simpson memorabilia the two victims, collectibles dealers Bruce Fromong and Alfred Beardsley, had with them that day.
There were, however, items unrelated to Simpson in Palace Station hotel room 1203 on Sept. 13, 2007, including boxes of Joe Montana lithographs and two dozen baseballs autographed by MLB legends Pete Rose and Duke Snider. Still, the vast majority of memorabilia Fromong and Beardsley were hoping to sell that day was Simpson-related, including NFL game presentation footballs, his 1969 All-Star plaque, and numerous personal and family photos, including one of him with former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
Galanter and Simpson’s other lawyer, Gabriel Grasso, also said, repeatedly, during the trial that their client had no knowledge that any weapons were either planned to be or actually used during the six-minute confrontation.
Ganater suggested the predominantly white, predominantly female jury delivered the unanimous guilty verdict to punish his client over ill-feelings related to Simpson’s 1995 acquittal in the double murder trial of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
The nine-women and three-man jury delivered their guilty verdict in Simpson’s latest case 13 years to the day after the another, predominantly black jury exonerated him of the murders.
The two complaining witnesses and victims, Fromong and Beardsley, will be called as witnesses during tomorrow’s sentencing hearing.
They are the only two witnesses that Glass has agreed to allow take the stand.
“We want to ask them their feelings on this and whether or not they feel crimes were committed,” Galanter said.
Beardsley made it clear when he testified during the trial that he did not want to see Simpson do any jail time. He initially refused to testify and only appeared before the court after being subpoenaed.
Fromong was also sympathetic to the accused and told the court that he felt "angry and hurt” after the incident.
"I was angry and hurt that my best friend had just robbed me at gunpoint," he told the court, noting that neither Simpson nor his co-accused, Clarence “C.J.” Stewart, wielded weapons during the alleged robbery.
Simpson did not testify in his defense and has not talked to reporters since the verdict was delivered.
He and Stewart have been held at the Clark County Detention Center without bail for the past 62 days. (Stewart was also convicted on all 12 charges.)
Galanter visited Simpson at the Detention Center Thursday.
He said Simpson has adjusted well since having to trade his 4,200-square-foot Florida home for a 12 by 14-foot jail cell.
“He’s OK,” Galanter said. “Not great, but he’s OK.”
Galanter said Simpson has passed the last two months by doing the same sort of things others do while incarcerated: reading books and playing board games.
"He’s been reading books, playing checkers, playing chess," Galanter said.
Simpson is allowed two books or magazines in his cell at a time, and up to five religious books or articles.
Metro Police public information officer, Ramon Denby, said Simpson is classified as a "protective custody – isolation" inmate, meaning he is kept in strict solitary confinement.
His cell is closed off from the rest of the detention center’s 3,000 inmates and he spends most of his time within the four cinderblock walls of his cell with the door locked shut.
Simpson is allowed outside once a week for 60 minutes.
Denby described the outdoor recreation area as “basically four concrete walls with a mesh cage on top.”
After being sentenced and transferred to a state prison, Simpson will likely remain in protected custody because of his high profile.
(Credit: Las Vegas Sun)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Las Vegas
Crime News Media
O.J. Simpson will spend at least nine years in a Nevada prison.
District Court Judge Jackie Glass handed the former NFL star his punishment, 33 years in prison without the possibility of parole for nine years, just after 10 a.m. this morning.
“The evidence in this case was overwhelming,” Glass said. “Overwhelming.”
Dressed in navy blue inmate attire, Simpson addressed the court before receiving his sentence.
“I stand before you today, sorry, somewhat confused,” he said, his voice unsteady as he spoke.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anybody and I didn’t mean to steal from anybody,“ he said. “I didn’t know I was doing anything illegal. I thought I was confronting friends and retrieving my property.”
The All-Star running back was facing a possible life sentence following a run-in with two memorabilia dealers in a Palace Station hotel room last year.
Though Glass declined to impose a life term, her sentence means the former football star could remain incarcerated until he is 94 years old if denied parole.
Simpson and his co-accused, Clarence “C.J.” Stewart, were found guilty on Oct. 3 of allegedly robbing the collectibles dealers at gunpoint on Sept 13, 2007.
Simpson, 61, maintained that no guns were involved and that he and his five-man entourage were simply recovering personal items that had been stolen from him.
A secret audio recording of the six-minute altercation captured by the middleman who arranged the meeting, Thomas Ricco, was used as evidence against the accused during the trial.
Simpson and Stewart were convicted on all 12 counts they faced, including two counts of first-degree kidnapping, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.
The state had requested Simpson get at least 18 years behind bars while his attorneys asked he serve the minimum, six years.
Simpson’s attorney, Gabriel Grasso, said the defense was disappointed with Glass’s sentence.
“We were expecting less than that,” he said.
Grasso and Simpson’s other lawyer, Yale Galanter, will appeal the decision.
“We’ll file the notice of appeal as soon as we can,” Galanter said yesterday. He said he expected to file the necessary documents this afternoon or first thing Monday morning.
Simpson’s attorneys will ask their client serve his sentence at either the High Desert State Prison or Southern Desert Correctional Center, in Indian Springs.
Stewart was also sentenced today and will serve a lighter prison term than Simpson. Glass sentenced him to 27 years in jail with the possibility of parole until 2016.
His lawyers will also appeal the decision.
District Attorney David Roger offered plea bargains in return for the testimony of the five others who accompanied Simpson and Stewart during the raid.
The accomplices, Charles Cashmore, Charles “Charlie” Ehrlich, and the two who said Simpson asked them to bring guns that fateful day, Michael McClinton and Walter Alexander, testified against Simpson and Stewart. They will be sentenced Tuesday.
(Editor's Note: This story is developing and will be updated. An earlier story is below.)
----
O.J. Simpson’s lawyer, Yale Galanter, is hoping his client will receive the minimum sentence when District Court Judge Jackie Glass decides the former NFL star’s fate this morning – but the attorney isn’t kidding himself.
He said he doesn’t know what kind of prison term Simpson will receive.
“I can’t predict,” Galanter said Thursday afternoon.
Simpson, 61, is facing a possible sentence of six years to life behind bars following a confrontation with two memorabilia dealers in a Palace Station hotel room in the fall of 2007.
Regardless of the sentence, Galanter said he will begin the appeal process immediately following Friday’s proceedings. Stewart’s lawyers have also indicated that they will appeal.
“We’ll file the notice of appeal as soon as we can,” Galanter said, adding that he expected to file the necessary documents either Friday afternoon or first thing Monday morning.
The appeal would likely be heard within a year, if accepted.
Simpson was convicted on Oct. 3 of all 12 charges he faced related to the incident, including 11 felonies — two counts each of first degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon; robbery with use of a deadly weapon; assault with a deadly weapon; and coercion with use of a deadly weapon, and one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping; conspiracy to commit burglary; and burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon — and one gross misdemeanor, conspiracy to commit a crime.
The State Parole and Probation Division has asked Glass to send the Heisman Trophy winner away for no less than 18 years but Galanter is hoping the judge will consider a lighter sentence.
Simpson will be transferred to a state penitentiary after receiving his sentence today. Galanter said he did not know which jail his client will be sent to but said the defense will request Simpson go to either the High Desert State Prison or Southern Desert Correctional Center in Indian Springs. Both are medium-security institutions located about 45 minutes from where he’s currently being held and are approximately 25 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Galanter hopes his client’s stay at the prison will be as short as possible.
“Obviously we think that the facts and the circumstances of this case really do call for the minimum sentence,” he said.
“We want (Judge Glass) to (assign the minimum sentence based) on the fact that a, he’s a first time offender … and b, that he did not have any … criminal intent,” Galanter said.
Criminal intent relates to whether or not Simpson knowingly intended to commit a crime. The defense maintained throughout the three-week long trial that Simpson was not simply trying to retrieve items that belonged to him.
“Everything that came into that room had the name O.J. Simpson on it,” Galanter said, referring to the range of Simpson memorabilia the two victims, collectibles dealers Bruce Fromong and Alfred Beardsley, had with them that day.
There were, however, items unrelated to Simpson in Palace Station hotel room 1203 on Sept. 13, 2007, including boxes of Joe Montana lithographs and two dozen baseballs autographed by MLB legends Pete Rose and Duke Snider. Still, the vast majority of memorabilia Fromong and Beardsley were hoping to sell that day was Simpson-related, including NFL game presentation footballs, his 1969 All-Star plaque, and numerous personal and family photos, including one of him with former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
Galanter and Simpson’s other lawyer, Gabriel Grasso, also said, repeatedly, during the trial that their client had no knowledge that any weapons were either planned to be or actually used during the six-minute confrontation.
Ganater suggested the predominantly white, predominantly female jury delivered the unanimous guilty verdict to punish his client over ill-feelings related to Simpson’s 1995 acquittal in the double murder trial of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
The nine-women and three-man jury delivered their guilty verdict in Simpson’s latest case 13 years to the day after the another, predominantly black jury exonerated him of the murders.
The two complaining witnesses and victims, Fromong and Beardsley, will be called as witnesses during tomorrow’s sentencing hearing.
They are the only two witnesses that Glass has agreed to allow take the stand.
“We want to ask them their feelings on this and whether or not they feel crimes were committed,” Galanter said.
Beardsley made it clear when he testified during the trial that he did not want to see Simpson do any jail time. He initially refused to testify and only appeared before the court after being subpoenaed.
Fromong was also sympathetic to the accused and told the court that he felt "angry and hurt” after the incident.
"I was angry and hurt that my best friend had just robbed me at gunpoint," he told the court, noting that neither Simpson nor his co-accused, Clarence “C.J.” Stewart, wielded weapons during the alleged robbery.
Simpson did not testify in his defense and has not talked to reporters since the verdict was delivered.
He and Stewart have been held at the Clark County Detention Center without bail for the past 62 days. (Stewart was also convicted on all 12 charges.)
Galanter visited Simpson at the Detention Center Thursday.
He said Simpson has adjusted well since having to trade his 4,200-square-foot Florida home for a 12 by 14-foot jail cell.
“He’s OK,” Galanter said. “Not great, but he’s OK.”
Galanter said Simpson has passed the last two months by doing the same sort of things others do while incarcerated: reading books and playing board games.
"He’s been reading books, playing checkers, playing chess," Galanter said.
Simpson is allowed two books or magazines in his cell at a time, and up to five religious books or articles.
Metro Police public information officer, Ramon Denby, said Simpson is classified as a "protective custody – isolation" inmate, meaning he is kept in strict solitary confinement.
His cell is closed off from the rest of the detention center’s 3,000 inmates and he spends most of his time within the four cinderblock walls of his cell with the door locked shut.
Simpson is allowed outside once a week for 60 minutes.
Denby described the outdoor recreation area as “basically four concrete walls with a mesh cage on top.”
After being sentenced and transferred to a state prison, Simpson will likely remain in protected custody because of his high profile.
(Credit: Las Vegas Sun)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Las Vegas
Crime News Media
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Mug shots featured in new Japanese game - AP - 14th November 2008
TOKYO: A Japanese software maker says it's doing its part to help fight crime — by launching an online game featuring mug shots of Japan's most-wanted fugitives.
However, the country's police aren't so crazy about the game "Slot Detective," which has already been played by more than 100,000 people.
Software designer Famista Inc. said Friday that it introduced the free, slot-machine-style game to publicize photographs of suspects in high-profile murder cases, hoping to tap into Japan's obsession with games to help police catch killers.
The game is like a typical slot machine but with mug shots instead of cherries or lemons. When three of the same mug shot line up, the player wins. The jackpots bring details of the suspect and the crime, as well as how to give tips to police and the amount of any reward offered, company official Takashi Saito said.
"We thought this could be a way to contribute to society. If you play the game, you'll remember their faces," Saito said.
Players can access the online game via computers or mobile phones. Saito said an estimated 100,000 people had accessed the game site within hours of its launch, briefly stalling a server.
The National Police Agency said Friday that while authorities appreciate the sentiment, the game inappropriately uses police property for entertainment and could distress victims.
"The mug shots of the suspects should be used in a more socially acceptable manner," the agency said in a statement.
However, police stopped short of outlawing the game and Saito said he thought it might still help — and would also be a hit.
The only problem so far, he said, is that some users said they were "scared by the fierce look of the murder suspects."
"Pachinko" pinball games and a slot-machine-like variation called "pachi-slot" machines are popular in Japan and are played at tens of thousands of brightly lit and noisy parlors across the country.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Crime News Media
New Games
Casino News
However, the country's police aren't so crazy about the game "Slot Detective," which has already been played by more than 100,000 people.
Software designer Famista Inc. said Friday that it introduced the free, slot-machine-style game to publicize photographs of suspects in high-profile murder cases, hoping to tap into Japan's obsession with games to help police catch killers.
The game is like a typical slot machine but with mug shots instead of cherries or lemons. When three of the same mug shot line up, the player wins. The jackpots bring details of the suspect and the crime, as well as how to give tips to police and the amount of any reward offered, company official Takashi Saito said.
"We thought this could be a way to contribute to society. If you play the game, you'll remember their faces," Saito said.
Players can access the online game via computers or mobile phones. Saito said an estimated 100,000 people had accessed the game site within hours of its launch, briefly stalling a server.
The National Police Agency said Friday that while authorities appreciate the sentiment, the game inappropriately uses police property for entertainment and could distress victims.
"The mug shots of the suspects should be used in a more socially acceptable manner," the agency said in a statement.
However, police stopped short of outlawing the game and Saito said he thought it might still help — and would also be a hit.
The only problem so far, he said, is that some users said they were "scared by the fierce look of the murder suspects."
"Pachinko" pinball games and a slot-machine-like variation called "pachi-slot" machines are popular in Japan and are played at tens of thousands of brightly lit and noisy parlors across the country.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Crime News Media
New Games
Casino News
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Vegas bids to cash in with plan for $50m Mob museum, by Kevin Mitchell - The Guardian - 23rd November 2008
Defiant mayor hopes to rejuvenate his ailing city by celebrating the Mafia's role in its creation
Las Vegas, the desert city with an insatiable thirst for reinvention, is turning to some old friends to reboot its faltering economy: the Mob.
Building projects have stalled up and down the Strip, unheard of in a town where the sound of explosions on worn-out casino sites was as commonplace as gunfire, when the old constantly made way for the new. Now, as credit and the gambling nerve of the hotel bosses dry up simultaneously, the town invented by Bugsy Siegel in the Forties is going back to its dubious past for inspiration.
Work has started on a $50m museum that will open in the spring of 2010 celebrating the Mafia's links with the gambling capital of the world. It is an initiative that excites the mayor, Oscar Goodman, but dismays others weary of the city's historical association with organised crime.
Goodman is more than a mayor. He is a celebrity in a city that lives and dies on fame. He knew Frank Sinatra. He knew John F Kennedy. He knew Marilyn Monroe. This is a town and a civic administration that was as comfortable with the Mob and its attendant guest list as it was with the certainty of another sunny day.
Goodman told The Observer the project was 'as cool as it gets', dismissing suggestions that it might not be universally popular, given the nature of the Mob's activities.
The museum has been the subject of controversy since it was announced in October. 'The Mob museum and media try to romanticise these monsters for money,' wrote a blogger on the Las Vegas Review Journal's website. 'These romantic characters are really just lunatics and degenerates who preyed off society. If Las Vegas wants a museum, build one to commemorate the victims, not the criminals.' There is no denying, though, that exploiting the fascination with gangsters here is a profitable exercise. On a two-and-half-hour, $70 'Mob Tour of Las Vegas' last week, Vinny the guide said that even real-life hoodlums come to have a look.
'Three weeks ago,' he said, 'we had Henry Hill, who is in and out of witness protection, and was played by Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. He was pretty stewed. But he loved it.'
Goodman said: 'Nobody's given me an opinion other than they like it. You want a watercolour museum? You want a porcelain museum?' A robust populist who mines his colourful past as a prop in his political shtick, Goodman is in his third and final term, a Democrat approved by eight out of 10 voters in a city that is an unashamed cathedral to capitalism.
Goodman is no ordinary civic leader. As he is occasionally reminded, over three decades he acted as counsel for some of the country's most notorious mobsters, men who built and ran Las Vegas. His clients included Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal and Anthony 'Tony the Ant' Spilotro, whose barely disguised doppelgangers were portrayed by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in the eerily accurate 1995 movie Casino (in which Goodman had a walk-on part).
And, no, he did not find his own 'Mob history' an embarrassment. 'What? To defend people, and protect their constitutional rights, and make sure that the government doesn't take advantage of them? You find that offensive? That's the reason we left England. OK?
'I don't care whether it is or it isn't [popular]. I care that there are people going in there and spending a lot of money and the city of Las Vegas is getting the fees and the concession money and making a fortune. It's going to be phenomenal. It's going to bring hundreds of thousands of people into our downtown.'
It might be stretching it to say Goodman 'knows where the bodies are buried' in anything other than a metaphorical sense, but he does know how to generate money. And the city that has been his home since he moved to Nevada from Philadelphia in the Sixties as a public defender has rarely needed his entrepreneurial instincts more than now.
Statistics released last week make grim reading: visitor numbers are down 10 per cent, year on year, to 2.9 million in September; room rates have been slashed by 21 per cent as tou6rist numbers dwindle; hotel occupancy is 84.3 per cent, down 7 per cent; across Nevada, gambling revenue dropped 5.4 per cent to just over $1bn; and on the Strip the take was a mere $525.5m for the month, down 5.17 per cent.
Those are numbers of dollars lost by Mr and Mrs Wisconsin at the slot machines, as well as the high-rollers at the baccarat tables. Las Vegas wins because it is full of losers. 'Life is a risk,' said Goodman. 'When I have my drink tonight, I'm risking it may be my last.'
The Mob Museum has been his pet project since he was elected in 1999. He got the idea from an unusual source: the old Post Office down the street from City Hall. It was in that building in 1950 that Senator Estes Kefauver conducted the Nevada leg of his famous inquiry into organised crime, butting up against the intransigence of witnesses unbothered by official scrutiny.
'We hired the folks who are doing the Spy Museum in Washington DC,' Goodman said. 'When you go in there you're going to be mugged, you're going to be booked, you're going to have your Miranda rights [the 'right to remain silent' legislation] given to you. And who knows if you'll ever get out? Because we're going to have machine-guns there, which will be provided by the FBI.'
(Credit: The Guardian)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Las Vegas
Casino Travel and Tourism
Casino
Casino News
Las Vegas, the desert city with an insatiable thirst for reinvention, is turning to some old friends to reboot its faltering economy: the Mob.
Building projects have stalled up and down the Strip, unheard of in a town where the sound of explosions on worn-out casino sites was as commonplace as gunfire, when the old constantly made way for the new. Now, as credit and the gambling nerve of the hotel bosses dry up simultaneously, the town invented by Bugsy Siegel in the Forties is going back to its dubious past for inspiration.
Work has started on a $50m museum that will open in the spring of 2010 celebrating the Mafia's links with the gambling capital of the world. It is an initiative that excites the mayor, Oscar Goodman, but dismays others weary of the city's historical association with organised crime.
Goodman is more than a mayor. He is a celebrity in a city that lives and dies on fame. He knew Frank Sinatra. He knew John F Kennedy. He knew Marilyn Monroe. This is a town and a civic administration that was as comfortable with the Mob and its attendant guest list as it was with the certainty of another sunny day.
Goodman told The Observer the project was 'as cool as it gets', dismissing suggestions that it might not be universally popular, given the nature of the Mob's activities.
The museum has been the subject of controversy since it was announced in October. 'The Mob museum and media try to romanticise these monsters for money,' wrote a blogger on the Las Vegas Review Journal's website. 'These romantic characters are really just lunatics and degenerates who preyed off society. If Las Vegas wants a museum, build one to commemorate the victims, not the criminals.' There is no denying, though, that exploiting the fascination with gangsters here is a profitable exercise. On a two-and-half-hour, $70 'Mob Tour of Las Vegas' last week, Vinny the guide said that even real-life hoodlums come to have a look.
'Three weeks ago,' he said, 'we had Henry Hill, who is in and out of witness protection, and was played by Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. He was pretty stewed. But he loved it.'
Goodman said: 'Nobody's given me an opinion other than they like it. You want a watercolour museum? You want a porcelain museum?' A robust populist who mines his colourful past as a prop in his political shtick, Goodman is in his third and final term, a Democrat approved by eight out of 10 voters in a city that is an unashamed cathedral to capitalism.
Goodman is no ordinary civic leader. As he is occasionally reminded, over three decades he acted as counsel for some of the country's most notorious mobsters, men who built and ran Las Vegas. His clients included Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal and Anthony 'Tony the Ant' Spilotro, whose barely disguised doppelgangers were portrayed by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in the eerily accurate 1995 movie Casino (in which Goodman had a walk-on part).
And, no, he did not find his own 'Mob history' an embarrassment. 'What? To defend people, and protect their constitutional rights, and make sure that the government doesn't take advantage of them? You find that offensive? That's the reason we left England. OK?
'I don't care whether it is or it isn't [popular]. I care that there are people going in there and spending a lot of money and the city of Las Vegas is getting the fees and the concession money and making a fortune. It's going to be phenomenal. It's going to bring hundreds of thousands of people into our downtown.'
It might be stretching it to say Goodman 'knows where the bodies are buried' in anything other than a metaphorical sense, but he does know how to generate money. And the city that has been his home since he moved to Nevada from Philadelphia in the Sixties as a public defender has rarely needed his entrepreneurial instincts more than now.
Statistics released last week make grim reading: visitor numbers are down 10 per cent, year on year, to 2.9 million in September; room rates have been slashed by 21 per cent as tou6rist numbers dwindle; hotel occupancy is 84.3 per cent, down 7 per cent; across Nevada, gambling revenue dropped 5.4 per cent to just over $1bn; and on the Strip the take was a mere $525.5m for the month, down 5.17 per cent.
Those are numbers of dollars lost by Mr and Mrs Wisconsin at the slot machines, as well as the high-rollers at the baccarat tables. Las Vegas wins because it is full of losers. 'Life is a risk,' said Goodman. 'When I have my drink tonight, I'm risking it may be my last.'
The Mob Museum has been his pet project since he was elected in 1999. He got the idea from an unusual source: the old Post Office down the street from City Hall. It was in that building in 1950 that Senator Estes Kefauver conducted the Nevada leg of his famous inquiry into organised crime, butting up against the intransigence of witnesses unbothered by official scrutiny.
'We hired the folks who are doing the Spy Museum in Washington DC,' Goodman said. 'When you go in there you're going to be mugged, you're going to be booked, you're going to have your Miranda rights [the 'right to remain silent' legislation] given to you. And who knows if you'll ever get out? Because we're going to have machine-guns there, which will be provided by the FBI.'
(Credit: The Guardian)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Las Vegas
Casino Travel and Tourism
Casino
Casino News
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Bond lads dine for a song, by Emily Dunn and Kelsey Munro - The Sydney Morning Herald - 18th November 2008
In what is unlikely to shake the confidence of Daniel Craig, branded the "best Bond ever" by some critics, Sydney is hosting another legendary James Bond this week.
With tough-guy Craig in town to promote the new Bond flick Quantum Of Solace, Sir Roger Moore, who followed Sean Connery as the suave British spy in seven films from 1973's Live And Let Die to 1985's A View To A Kill, arrived yesterday to spruik his autobiography My Word Is My Bond. Knighted in 2003 for his work as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the urbane Sir Roger was booked to have dinner at ARIA tonight, 24 hours after Craig dined there with 007 producer Barbara Broccoli. Now there's a missed photo opportunity.
Perhaps it's for the best: Moore, now 81, made headlines last week when he told reporters he was "sad" that the new Bond movies were so violent. He, of course, preferred to play up to Bond's womanising ways.
Stay in Touch's mole at ARIA confirmed, disappointingly, that no martinis were ordered by the current Bond's table.
SURPRISE ROLE
The filmmaker Marc Forster admitted yesterday he was surprised when the producers of the James Bond franchise invited him to direct Quantum Of Solace.
"I was a little surprised, I was not so sure I wanted to do a Bond movie," said Forster, best known for films with the "critically acclaimed" tag, included the Academy Award-winning Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland and last year's adaptation of the Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner. Forster's interpretation of the superspy is grittier than most. Following on from where Casino Royale left off, Bond is still heartbroken after and looking to avenge the death of his love interest Vesper and, in the meantime, destroy a crime syndicate seeking to control the water supply of Bolivia.
Forster said some of the crew were none too happy when he chose to film a large part of the production in the streets of Panama City, along with desertscape sequences in Mexico. "I don't think it was as glamorous as what they had in mind," Forster told SiT.
ALL HARD WORK
One cast member who wasn't expecting cocktails in the Caribbean on the set of Bond was the star of the film, Daniel Craig. "That's not really what a Bond film is about," the shoot-'em-up Craig told SiT yesterday.
He said making Quantum of Solace was a natural progression. Casino Royale "felt like the beginning of a story rather than the ending of a story", he said.
And while in Casino Royale he broke the rules by falling in love, this time Craig again snubbed Bond conventions by not going to bed with the leading lady, Camille, played by the Ukrainian-born actress Olga Kurylenko. "It would have been wrong if he had jumped into bed with her … he tends to fall in love a lot in the books, where he meets somebody and there is a passionate connection."
Craig, who is signed for a third Bond film, also denied reports he hoped the next Bond would be played by a black actor. "I never said that … James Bond is a white Etonian … [but] whoever does take it on, however, you want to say to them to have the best time they can because it is an extraordinary thing to do."
(Credit: Fairfax)
Media Man Australia Profiles
James Bond
With tough-guy Craig in town to promote the new Bond flick Quantum Of Solace, Sir Roger Moore, who followed Sean Connery as the suave British spy in seven films from 1973's Live And Let Die to 1985's A View To A Kill, arrived yesterday to spruik his autobiography My Word Is My Bond. Knighted in 2003 for his work as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the urbane Sir Roger was booked to have dinner at ARIA tonight, 24 hours after Craig dined there with 007 producer Barbara Broccoli. Now there's a missed photo opportunity.
Perhaps it's for the best: Moore, now 81, made headlines last week when he told reporters he was "sad" that the new Bond movies were so violent. He, of course, preferred to play up to Bond's womanising ways.
Stay in Touch's mole at ARIA confirmed, disappointingly, that no martinis were ordered by the current Bond's table.
SURPRISE ROLE
The filmmaker Marc Forster admitted yesterday he was surprised when the producers of the James Bond franchise invited him to direct Quantum Of Solace.
"I was a little surprised, I was not so sure I wanted to do a Bond movie," said Forster, best known for films with the "critically acclaimed" tag, included the Academy Award-winning Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland and last year's adaptation of the Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner. Forster's interpretation of the superspy is grittier than most. Following on from where Casino Royale left off, Bond is still heartbroken after and looking to avenge the death of his love interest Vesper and, in the meantime, destroy a crime syndicate seeking to control the water supply of Bolivia.
Forster said some of the crew were none too happy when he chose to film a large part of the production in the streets of Panama City, along with desertscape sequences in Mexico. "I don't think it was as glamorous as what they had in mind," Forster told SiT.
ALL HARD WORK
One cast member who wasn't expecting cocktails in the Caribbean on the set of Bond was the star of the film, Daniel Craig. "That's not really what a Bond film is about," the shoot-'em-up Craig told SiT yesterday.
He said making Quantum of Solace was a natural progression. Casino Royale "felt like the beginning of a story rather than the ending of a story", he said.
And while in Casino Royale he broke the rules by falling in love, this time Craig again snubbed Bond conventions by not going to bed with the leading lady, Camille, played by the Ukrainian-born actress Olga Kurylenko. "It would have been wrong if he had jumped into bed with her … he tends to fall in love a lot in the books, where he meets somebody and there is a passionate connection."
Craig, who is signed for a third Bond film, also denied reports he hoped the next Bond would be played by a black actor. "I never said that … James Bond is a white Etonian … [but] whoever does take it on, however, you want to say to them to have the best time they can because it is an extraordinary thing to do."
(Credit: Fairfax)
Media Man Australia Profiles
James Bond
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Gatto, Williams hit with casino, racetrack ban, by Michael Warner - Herald Sun - 27th June 2008
* Gangsters, thugs, dealers banned from casino
* They've also been blacklisted from racetracks
* Gatto and Williams among those banned
A ROGUES' gallery of gangsters, thugs, drug dealers and loan sharks is among a secret group of Victorians banned from Crown casino and 67 racetracks.
The Herald Sun can reveal 33 "undesirables" have been slapped with lifetime bans by police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon.
But in a challenge to her powers, at least two have vowed to fight the bans in the Supreme Court.
Those banned include underworld identity Mick Gatto, alleged Carlton Crew associate Steve Kaya and gangland figure Michael "Eyes" Pastras.
Jailed gangland figure Carl Williams is also blacklisted along with his father George.
Others include convicted money launderer Fadi Sarkis, high-roller Rob Karam and Leanne Allmark, a pathological gambler who stole $1 million to feed a casino pokies addiction.
Photographs have been circulated to police, casino surveillance officers and racing stewards.
Those banned cannot set foot within Melbourne's Southbank casino complex, including restaurants, or any Victorian racetrack.
But the Herald Sun cannot reveal the identity of all 33 individuals because of court proceedings.
The group includes notorious bikies, members of powerful Asian crime gangs and loan sharks caught preying on desperate punters.
Eight of the 33 are women.
The oldest on the list is a grandfather in his 80s.
Section 74 of the Casino Control Act (1991) allows Ms Nixon to "prohibit a person from entering or remaining in a casino".
Most of the bans extend to Victoria's 67 thoroughbred, harness and greyhound tracks, including Flemington, Caulfield and Moonee Valley.
Crown has been a favourite haunt of some of Melbourne's most notorious underworld figures.
Slain Carlton Crew figure Mario Condello was one of the first to be banned. He once pulled a 30cm knife on a fellow gambler in the Mahogany Room toilets, demanding he hand over cash. (Credit: News.com.au)
* They've also been blacklisted from racetracks
* Gatto and Williams among those banned
A ROGUES' gallery of gangsters, thugs, drug dealers and loan sharks is among a secret group of Victorians banned from Crown casino and 67 racetracks.
The Herald Sun can reveal 33 "undesirables" have been slapped with lifetime bans by police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon.
But in a challenge to her powers, at least two have vowed to fight the bans in the Supreme Court.
Those banned include underworld identity Mick Gatto, alleged Carlton Crew associate Steve Kaya and gangland figure Michael "Eyes" Pastras.
Jailed gangland figure Carl Williams is also blacklisted along with his father George.
Others include convicted money launderer Fadi Sarkis, high-roller Rob Karam and Leanne Allmark, a pathological gambler who stole $1 million to feed a casino pokies addiction.
Photographs have been circulated to police, casino surveillance officers and racing stewards.
Those banned cannot set foot within Melbourne's Southbank casino complex, including restaurants, or any Victorian racetrack.
But the Herald Sun cannot reveal the identity of all 33 individuals because of court proceedings.
The group includes notorious bikies, members of powerful Asian crime gangs and loan sharks caught preying on desperate punters.
Eight of the 33 are women.
The oldest on the list is a grandfather in his 80s.
Section 74 of the Casino Control Act (1991) allows Ms Nixon to "prohibit a person from entering or remaining in a casino".
Most of the bans extend to Victoria's 67 thoroughbred, harness and greyhound tracks, including Flemington, Caulfield and Moonee Valley.
Crown has been a favourite haunt of some of Melbourne's most notorious underworld figures.
Slain Carlton Crew figure Mario Condello was one of the first to be banned. He once pulled a 30cm knife on a fellow gambler in the Mahogany Room toilets, demanding he hand over cash. (Credit: News.com.au)
Friday, October 31, 2008
Gangland war survivor Wrout faces jail term, by Steve Butcher - The Age - 31st October 2008
One of the few and very lucky survivors of Melbourne's gangland war is fighting a new battle - for his liberty.
With most of the war's players dead or in jail or still looking over their shoulders, Bert Wrout now stares down the barrel of an immediate prison sentence.
Wrout, 66, was shot and seriously wounded when two gunmen burst into the Brunswick club in March 2004.
He was blasted by a man who cannot be named while Wrout's friend and drinking companion, crime figure Lewis Moran, was shot and killed.
Evangelous Goussis, who pleaded not guilty, was convicted earlier this year of the murder and of causing Wrout serious injury.
Wrout lost his spleen, suffered damage to his liver and kidney and has pulmonary tract problems.
Wrout was excused from giving evidence at Goussis' trial, and today in Melbourne Magistrates Court, claimed he was unfit to answer a series of serious driving charges.
If the charges are heard and Wrout is convicted, he faces an immediate four-month term from a suspended sentence in March, which has allegedly been breached by further offending.
His lawyer, Jim Buchecker, said Wrout had been found unfit to plead by a pyschologist in September.
He tendered a series of medical reports including one that found Wrout could not give meaningful legal instructions.
Wrout was found to be mentally fragile, confused, incoherent, anxious and stressed.
But police prosecutor, Senior Constable Clive Dutton, argued that Wrout's fears of being murdered, as expressed by psychologist Bernard Healy, have now passed and were irrelevant to the driving charges.
Magistrate Simon Garnett said Wrout's application to be declared mentally unfit to plead required a full, proper and independent investigation.
He adjourned the hearing until February for Wrout to be assessed by a forensic psychologist.
(Credit: The Age)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Underbelly
With most of the war's players dead or in jail or still looking over their shoulders, Bert Wrout now stares down the barrel of an immediate prison sentence.
Wrout, 66, was shot and seriously wounded when two gunmen burst into the Brunswick club in March 2004.
He was blasted by a man who cannot be named while Wrout's friend and drinking companion, crime figure Lewis Moran, was shot and killed.
Evangelous Goussis, who pleaded not guilty, was convicted earlier this year of the murder and of causing Wrout serious injury.
Wrout lost his spleen, suffered damage to his liver and kidney and has pulmonary tract problems.
Wrout was excused from giving evidence at Goussis' trial, and today in Melbourne Magistrates Court, claimed he was unfit to answer a series of serious driving charges.
If the charges are heard and Wrout is convicted, he faces an immediate four-month term from a suspended sentence in March, which has allegedly been breached by further offending.
His lawyer, Jim Buchecker, said Wrout had been found unfit to plead by a pyschologist in September.
He tendered a series of medical reports including one that found Wrout could not give meaningful legal instructions.
Wrout was found to be mentally fragile, confused, incoherent, anxious and stressed.
But police prosecutor, Senior Constable Clive Dutton, argued that Wrout's fears of being murdered, as expressed by psychologist Bernard Healy, have now passed and were irrelevant to the driving charges.
Magistrate Simon Garnett said Wrout's application to be declared mentally unfit to plead required a full, proper and independent investigation.
He adjourned the hearing until February for Wrout to be assessed by a forensic psychologist.
(Credit: The Age)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Underbelly
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Film Review: Quantum of Solace , by Ray Bennett - The Hollywood Reporter - 24th October 2008
Bottom Line: All-out thriller with few Bond touches but plenty of high-octane action.
Opens: Friday, Oct. 31 (U.K.); Friday, Nov. 14 (U.S.)
LONDON -- The meanest and leanest James Bond film yet, "Quantum of Solace" is a breathless splash of high-speed action that hurtles from one reckless chase to another.
There's not much solace and few words as the British secret agent exercises his license to kill in dispatching one bad guy after another in the attempt to avenge the death of the lover who died in "Casino Royale."
Fans of that boxoffice smash and the earlier films might be disappointed that the new picture allows hardly any flourishes of style and character in the 007 tradition, but moviegoers seeking an adrenaline rush will be well pleased. Running almost 40 minutes shorter than the bloated "Casino Royale," the film should do bristling business around the world.
So much of the movie comprises furious pursuits in boats, planes and racing automobiles that director Marc Forster owes huge thanks to his talented technical crew. Second unit director Dan Bradley and stunt coordinator Gary Powell, both "Bourne" veterans, must take a large chunk of the credit for all the thrilling encounters that leave credibility in the dust.
Forster's regular cinematographer Robert Schaefer and Oscar-winning production designer Dennis Gassner ("Bugsy") contribute fine work and the intricate assembly by editors Matt Chesse and Richard Pearson is staggeringly effective. A gunfight cut against a lavish performance of "Tosca" is an action triumph.
Jack White's title song passes without notice, but composer David Arnold provides a top-flight action score, keeping the familiar themes to a minimum as they hardly suit Daniel Craig's Bond.
Craig looks incredibly fit, and his manner suggests someone capable of surviving everything that's thrown at him. This Bond is more invincible than ever and shares with Jason Bourne and the kite runner the unerring ability to know exactly where the object of his chase will end up.
Judi Dench has a few good scenes tearing a strip off her favorite agent, and Olga Kurylenko has some serious action of her own, which she renders in high style. Gemma Arterton, however, is a mere bedroom dalliance, and Mathieu Amalric ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly") tends to let his character's madness show too much with bulging eyes, one of which threatens to start blinking at any moment.
There are the usual lavish locales, and the film is as efficient as its supercomputers and high-powered weaponry and as sleek as the glamorous settings where Bond catches his breath. There is a danger in this version of Ian Fleming's hero, however. A killer in the movies needs something redeeming about him. Bourne had presumed innocence, and Sean Connery's Bond, while nasty, had ironic wit. Craig's humorless Bond is in danger of becoming simply a very well-dressed but murderous thug.
Production companies: Danjaq, United Artists, Columbia Pictures.
Cast: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini, Gemma Arterton, Jeffrey Wright; Director: Marc Forster; Screenwriters: Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis & Robert Wade; Producers: Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson; Executive producers: Callum McDougall, Anthony Waye; Director of photography: Roberto Schaefer; Production designer: Dennis Gassner; Music: David Arnold; Costume designer: Louise Frogley; Editors: Matt Chesse, Richard Pearson.
Rated PG-13, running time 106 minutes.
Media Man Australia Profiles
James Bond
Opens: Friday, Oct. 31 (U.K.); Friday, Nov. 14 (U.S.)
LONDON -- The meanest and leanest James Bond film yet, "Quantum of Solace" is a breathless splash of high-speed action that hurtles from one reckless chase to another.
There's not much solace and few words as the British secret agent exercises his license to kill in dispatching one bad guy after another in the attempt to avenge the death of the lover who died in "Casino Royale."
Fans of that boxoffice smash and the earlier films might be disappointed that the new picture allows hardly any flourishes of style and character in the 007 tradition, but moviegoers seeking an adrenaline rush will be well pleased. Running almost 40 minutes shorter than the bloated "Casino Royale," the film should do bristling business around the world.
So much of the movie comprises furious pursuits in boats, planes and racing automobiles that director Marc Forster owes huge thanks to his talented technical crew. Second unit director Dan Bradley and stunt coordinator Gary Powell, both "Bourne" veterans, must take a large chunk of the credit for all the thrilling encounters that leave credibility in the dust.
Forster's regular cinematographer Robert Schaefer and Oscar-winning production designer Dennis Gassner ("Bugsy") contribute fine work and the intricate assembly by editors Matt Chesse and Richard Pearson is staggeringly effective. A gunfight cut against a lavish performance of "Tosca" is an action triumph.
Jack White's title song passes without notice, but composer David Arnold provides a top-flight action score, keeping the familiar themes to a minimum as they hardly suit Daniel Craig's Bond.
Craig looks incredibly fit, and his manner suggests someone capable of surviving everything that's thrown at him. This Bond is more invincible than ever and shares with Jason Bourne and the kite runner the unerring ability to know exactly where the object of his chase will end up.
Judi Dench has a few good scenes tearing a strip off her favorite agent, and Olga Kurylenko has some serious action of her own, which she renders in high style. Gemma Arterton, however, is a mere bedroom dalliance, and Mathieu Amalric ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly") tends to let his character's madness show too much with bulging eyes, one of which threatens to start blinking at any moment.
There are the usual lavish locales, and the film is as efficient as its supercomputers and high-powered weaponry and as sleek as the glamorous settings where Bond catches his breath. There is a danger in this version of Ian Fleming's hero, however. A killer in the movies needs something redeeming about him. Bourne had presumed innocence, and Sean Connery's Bond, while nasty, had ironic wit. Craig's humorless Bond is in danger of becoming simply a very well-dressed but murderous thug.
Production companies: Danjaq, United Artists, Columbia Pictures.
Cast: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini, Gemma Arterton, Jeffrey Wright; Director: Marc Forster; Screenwriters: Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis & Robert Wade; Producers: Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson; Executive producers: Callum McDougall, Anthony Waye; Director of photography: Roberto Schaefer; Production designer: Dennis Gassner; Music: David Arnold; Costume designer: Louise Frogley; Editors: Matt Chesse, Richard Pearson.
Rated PG-13, running time 106 minutes.
Media Man Australia Profiles
James Bond
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
CBS "60 Minutes" Segment On Online Poker Cheating Scandals To Air Soon!
In addition to the buzz around the seizure of 141 internet gambling domains by the Governor of Kentucky, an upcoming story by CBS’ “60 Minutes” has also been the center of discussion at the CAP Euro Barcelona event. Poker News Daily has learned that the story by “60 Minutes” should air on Sunday, October 26th, just days before the general elections in the United States. The program will likely cover the user scandals at Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, which have made headlines across the poker world in recent months.
The story by the longstanding news magazine will focus on the scandals that have rocked Ultimate Bet and may include the POTRIPPER issues at its sister site, Absolute Poker. In addition, the rumor around the industry is that “60 Minutes” is teaming up with a major newspaper for the story, which may be just weeks from airing. In its last update on the NioNio scandal that rocked the online poker site, Ultimate Bet listed additional user names that were involved: Crackcorn55, WhakMe, GrabBag123, gravitation, Bgroup, H_Curtis, Twenty 1, WacoManiac, Broke_In_L_A, ShaqTack, BlueBerry101, HolyMucker, 55WasHere, Xnomas, dannyboy55, Indy05, and SlimPikins2.
The cheating on Ultimate Bet began back in 2005, one year before its current ownership group, Tokwiro, purchased the site. Also in June, Ultimate Bet was scheduled to begin the refund process for players who were affected by the abuse. The transgressions surrounded the exploitation of an auditing tool which enabled its users to view the hole cards of every player at an online poker table.
In May, Ultimate Bet’s parent company released a statement that included the following: “We would like to thank our customers for their patience, loyalty, and support, as well as for their understanding that we are doing everything we can to correct this situation. The staff and management of Ultimate Bet are fully committed to providing a safe and secure environment for our players and we want to assure customers of our unwavering resolve to monitor site security with every resource at our disposal.”
Since then, one of the accounts in question was linked to a Las Vegas owned home of Russ Hamilton, one of the former owners of the site. However, no admission has been given publicly by Hamilton. Over the summer, Team PokerStars Pro member Barry Greenstein and Joe Sebok traveled to Hamilton’s residence. Greenstein came away from the interview feeling as if, by the time the truth was known, Hamilton would not be one of those indicted.
A $75 million claim filed against a software manufacturer was the subject of an article by MSNBC with the title “Poker site cheating plot a high-stakes whodunit.” The article, which was published last week, seemed to trump any momentum “60 Minutes” would have had, although the television station’s program is likely to be more visible.
The latest move in the Ultimate Bet investigation was the Kahnawake Gaming Commission naming Frank Catania, a former gaming regulator in the state of New Jersey, to lead a formal inquiry into the matter. His website, CataniaConsulting.com, states that he “serves as one of three independent directors of eCOGRA. He served as the first president of the International Masters of Gaming Law, a non-profit association dedicated to the education and advancement of gaming law, vice chair and chair, respectively, of the International Association of Gaming Regulators and past chairman of the Forum of American Casino Regulators.”
Media Man Australia Profiles
Casino News
60 Minutes
Poker and Casino News
The story by the longstanding news magazine will focus on the scandals that have rocked Ultimate Bet and may include the POTRIPPER issues at its sister site, Absolute Poker. In addition, the rumor around the industry is that “60 Minutes” is teaming up with a major newspaper for the story, which may be just weeks from airing. In its last update on the NioNio scandal that rocked the online poker site, Ultimate Bet listed additional user names that were involved: Crackcorn55, WhakMe, GrabBag123, gravitation, Bgroup, H_Curtis, Twenty 1, WacoManiac, Broke_In_L_A, ShaqTack, BlueBerry101, HolyMucker, 55WasHere, Xnomas, dannyboy55, Indy05, and SlimPikins2.
The cheating on Ultimate Bet began back in 2005, one year before its current ownership group, Tokwiro, purchased the site. Also in June, Ultimate Bet was scheduled to begin the refund process for players who were affected by the abuse. The transgressions surrounded the exploitation of an auditing tool which enabled its users to view the hole cards of every player at an online poker table.
In May, Ultimate Bet’s parent company released a statement that included the following: “We would like to thank our customers for their patience, loyalty, and support, as well as for their understanding that we are doing everything we can to correct this situation. The staff and management of Ultimate Bet are fully committed to providing a safe and secure environment for our players and we want to assure customers of our unwavering resolve to monitor site security with every resource at our disposal.”
Since then, one of the accounts in question was linked to a Las Vegas owned home of Russ Hamilton, one of the former owners of the site. However, no admission has been given publicly by Hamilton. Over the summer, Team PokerStars Pro member Barry Greenstein and Joe Sebok traveled to Hamilton’s residence. Greenstein came away from the interview feeling as if, by the time the truth was known, Hamilton would not be one of those indicted.
A $75 million claim filed against a software manufacturer was the subject of an article by MSNBC with the title “Poker site cheating plot a high-stakes whodunit.” The article, which was published last week, seemed to trump any momentum “60 Minutes” would have had, although the television station’s program is likely to be more visible.
The latest move in the Ultimate Bet investigation was the Kahnawake Gaming Commission naming Frank Catania, a former gaming regulator in the state of New Jersey, to lead a formal inquiry into the matter. His website, CataniaConsulting.com, states that he “serves as one of three independent directors of eCOGRA. He served as the first president of the International Masters of Gaming Law, a non-profit association dedicated to the education and advancement of gaming law, vice chair and chair, respectively, of the International Association of Gaming Regulators and past chairman of the Forum of American Casino Regulators.”
Media Man Australia Profiles
Casino News
60 Minutes
Poker and Casino News
Monday, October 20, 2008
Shooting starts for second Underbelly series - The Australian - 17th October 2008
A second series of the acclaimed Underbelly TV drama went into production today dogged by the question of whether it would it be as good as the original. Underbelly - A Tale of Two Cities will focus on the illegal drug trade in the 1970s, a long way from the more recent Melbourne drug wars portrayed in the hit series which aired on Nine this year. Instead of Carl and Roberta Williams the villains will be Aussie “Bob” Trimbole and Terry “Mr Asia” Clark.
Announcing the start of start of production in Sydney and Melbourne, the head of drama for the Nine Network Jo Horsburgh said “the series is proving to be as rich and exciting as the first series”. Nine is desperate to make Underbelly 2 the hit it was the first time around. Other Nine dramas this year, including Canal Road and The Strip have not fared so well. It wasn’t screened in Victoria until recently because it may have influenced the outcome of a trial.
Comparisons between Underbelly 1 and 2 are inevitable. Producers Screentime have been under pressure to come up with a prequel or a sequel ever since Nine attracted big audiences for Underbelly earlier this year. Should it be a prequel looking at the same Melbourne criminals when they were younger or a sequel now they’re all dead or in jail?
Eventually, producers decided to go right back to another rich period in Australia’s criminal history between 1976 and 1986 - but many younger viewers were not alive when anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay was a household name.
Screentime’s executive producer Des Monaghan emphasised the series would be an improvement and not a disappointment: “We are very excited about Underbelly - A Tale of Two Cities - which promises to be even bigger and better than the first series”.
Actors Roy Billing (Trimbole), Andrew McFarlane (anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay) Matthew Newton (Terry Clark) and Peter O’Brien (George Freeman) have already been cast.
(Credit: The Australian)
Greg Tingle comment
I think the second series is likely to be as good, but not quite as popular as the original. There’s only even one first and the massive media and public buzz, fueled by then current criminal proceedings, backed up by frequent reference to Network Nine in the courts and the papers, all point to that equation. David Gyngell at the team at Nine have hit the jackpot with Underbelly, and let’s hope it doesn’t get prostituted to Crocodile Dundee III depths, where it makes money (again) at expense to its legacy and overall high production standards. Great to see Matthew Newton cast this time around (as everyone knows its going to be a winner, as opposed to an unknown quantity last time the cattle call was done), and it would be something to see Newton right there in the mix with Reb, Gyton Grantly (Carl), Westaway (Gatto) and the crew. I wonder if there’s going to do much with the storyline on my old mate Bert Wrout, who teases that he knows where a number of the bodies are buried! Sometimes the real news doesn’t make the news, as in some matters revolving around Wrout, however Australia eagerly awaits the next installments of prime time gangsters and mobsters Aussie style down under. Not sure what its going to do for Australia’s image on the tourism front, but that’s another story. I don’t foresee Baz getting dragged into advertising or PR scenarios for this portray of some of Australia’s society happenings. Maybe we can expect to see a dash of product placement re Packer’s Crown Casino, or maybe they don’t want to get quite that real to the true story of Melbourne’s underworld? If this show doesn’t fire up James’ passion for Australian television, nothing will. It’s all good fodder for the papers and should keep Nine out of the doldrums it was in a few years ago.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Underbelly
Announcing the start of start of production in Sydney and Melbourne, the head of drama for the Nine Network Jo Horsburgh said “the series is proving to be as rich and exciting as the first series”. Nine is desperate to make Underbelly 2 the hit it was the first time around. Other Nine dramas this year, including Canal Road and The Strip have not fared so well. It wasn’t screened in Victoria until recently because it may have influenced the outcome of a trial.
Comparisons between Underbelly 1 and 2 are inevitable. Producers Screentime have been under pressure to come up with a prequel or a sequel ever since Nine attracted big audiences for Underbelly earlier this year. Should it be a prequel looking at the same Melbourne criminals when they were younger or a sequel now they’re all dead or in jail?
Eventually, producers decided to go right back to another rich period in Australia’s criminal history between 1976 and 1986 - but many younger viewers were not alive when anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay was a household name.
Screentime’s executive producer Des Monaghan emphasised the series would be an improvement and not a disappointment: “We are very excited about Underbelly - A Tale of Two Cities - which promises to be even bigger and better than the first series”.
Actors Roy Billing (Trimbole), Andrew McFarlane (anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay) Matthew Newton (Terry Clark) and Peter O’Brien (George Freeman) have already been cast.
(Credit: The Australian)
Greg Tingle comment
I think the second series is likely to be as good, but not quite as popular as the original. There’s only even one first and the massive media and public buzz, fueled by then current criminal proceedings, backed up by frequent reference to Network Nine in the courts and the papers, all point to that equation. David Gyngell at the team at Nine have hit the jackpot with Underbelly, and let’s hope it doesn’t get prostituted to Crocodile Dundee III depths, where it makes money (again) at expense to its legacy and overall high production standards. Great to see Matthew Newton cast this time around (as everyone knows its going to be a winner, as opposed to an unknown quantity last time the cattle call was done), and it would be something to see Newton right there in the mix with Reb, Gyton Grantly (Carl), Westaway (Gatto) and the crew. I wonder if there’s going to do much with the storyline on my old mate Bert Wrout, who teases that he knows where a number of the bodies are buried! Sometimes the real news doesn’t make the news, as in some matters revolving around Wrout, however Australia eagerly awaits the next installments of prime time gangsters and mobsters Aussie style down under. Not sure what its going to do for Australia’s image on the tourism front, but that’s another story. I don’t foresee Baz getting dragged into advertising or PR scenarios for this portray of some of Australia’s society happenings. Maybe we can expect to see a dash of product placement re Packer’s Crown Casino, or maybe they don’t want to get quite that real to the true story of Melbourne’s underworld? If this show doesn’t fire up James’ passion for Australian television, nothing will. It’s all good fodder for the papers and should keep Nine out of the doldrums it was in a few years ago.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Underbelly
Saturday, October 04, 2008
O. J. Simpson Found Guilty in Robbery Trial, By Steve Friess - The New York Times - 4th October 2008
LAS VEGAS — A jury here Friday night found O. J. Simpson guilty on all counts in his robbery and kidnapping trial, a verdict that came 13 years to the day after Mr. Simpson was acquitted in the highly publicized murders of his ex-wife and her friend.
The 12 charges that Mr. Simpson faced stemmed from a September 2007 confrontation in a casino hotel room in which he and five cohorts departed with hundreds of items of sports memorabilia.
In the courtroom as the verdict was read, Mr. Simpson showed no emotions. He was led away in handcuffs and taken into custody. His sister, Carmelita, who was sitting in the front row, broke down in tears.
The items were in the possession of two memorabilia dealers, Bruce L. Fromong and Alfred Beardsley, who were led to believe a prospective buyer was coming to browse the goods. Instead, Mr. Simpson and his group burst into the room and, according to several witnesses, at least one gun was brandished.
The jury of nine women and three men, who deliberated for 13 hours, mulled weeks of testimony as well as hours of surreptitious audio recordings of the planning and execution of the event by Thomas Riccio, a memorabilia auctioneer who arranged the confrontation.
Mr. Simpson, 61, and a co-defendant, Clarence Stewart, 54, are facing 15 years to life on the kidnapping charge.
Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 5.
Mr. Simpson has said he was seeking to retrieve only personal keepsakes like ceremonial footballs from his Hall of Fame N.F.L. career and photos of his family that years ago were taken from his home; the prosecutors said he should have filed a civil lawsuit to regain the items if they were, in fact, stolen from him.
“We don’t want people going into rooms to take property,” said David Roger, the Clark County district attorney who led the prosecution. “That is robbery. You don’t go in and get a gun and demand property from people.”
Four of the 24 witnesses who testified were the other men who accompanied with Mr. Simpson and Mr. Stewart, all of whom have accepted plea deals from prosecutors in exchange for testimony. Two of those men, Walter Alexander and Michael McClinton, carried guns in the incident and one, Mr. McClinton, testified that he did so at Mr. Simpson’s request.
Mr. Simpson said he did not know the two would carry weapons and never saw any guns displayed during the incident.
The proceedings failed to capture the intense public interest that turned Mr. Simpson’s 1995 trial into the so-called Trial of the Century. That spectacle became a racial touchstone and turned a list of legal analysts including Greta Van Sustern, Jeffrey Toobin and Star Jones into television stars. Few of the news media stars involved in that case flocked to this one, although Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair was a notable exception. Marcia Clark, the former prosecutor who failed to convict Mr. Simpson in 1995 did not appear despite securing media credentials to report for Entertainment Tonight.
The case played out against the backdrop of a nation more interested in the presidential election campaign and the nation’s economic crisis. It also featured victims who were far less sympathetic: two middle-aged memorabilia dealers who tried to profit from their roles in this case by trying to sell their stories to the tabloid media.
The defense focused much of its efforts on discrediting Mr. Fromong, Mr. Beardsley and the four men who assisted Mr. Simpson and Mr. Stewart in the alleged robbery. On several occasions, Simpson attorneys Yale Galanter and Gabriel Grasso caught those witnesses in apparent contradictions, as when Mr. Fromong insisted he did not try to sell his story despite audio recordings immediately after the incident in which Mr. Fromong is heard saying: “I’ll have ‘Inside Edition’ down here tomorrow. I told them I want big money.”
A measure of the limited public interest in the case may be that Frederic Goldman, the father of Ronald Goldman, admitted he followed the proceedings “only generally” from his home in Phoenix. Still, with a verdict coming he sharpened his focus.
“At the absolute least, I’d like to see him in jail,” Mr. Goldman said Friday of Mr. Simpson. “He’s not going to get the punishment for Ron’s murder that he deserved, but at least he should be in jail for as long as they can put him there.”
While Mr. Simpson’s acquittal in the 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, was never discussed during the trial, it hung over the proceedings. Jurors were quizzed extensively before their selection about their views of that trial, and references were made in some of the audio recordings to the fact that Mr. Simpson owes the estate of Ms. Simpson and Mr. Goldman $33.5 million because in 1997 he was held liable in a civil lawsuit for the deaths.
Mr. Galanter attacked that issue in his closing, noting that Mr. Riccio’s recorder picked up police officers at the crime scene seeming to exult in their chance to prosecute Mr. Simpson. He also noted that Mr. Riccio testified he had made more than $200,000 in fees from the news media in exchange for interviews and rights to his recordings.
“This case has never been about a search for the true facts,” Mr. Galanter said. “This case has taken on a life of its own because Mr. Simpson’s involved. You know that, I know that, every cooperator, every person with a gun, every person who signed a book deal, every person who got paid money, the police, the district attorney’s office, was only interested in one thing: Mr. Simpson.”
Media Man Australia Profiles
Sports News
Casino News Media
The 12 charges that Mr. Simpson faced stemmed from a September 2007 confrontation in a casino hotel room in which he and five cohorts departed with hundreds of items of sports memorabilia.
In the courtroom as the verdict was read, Mr. Simpson showed no emotions. He was led away in handcuffs and taken into custody. His sister, Carmelita, who was sitting in the front row, broke down in tears.
The items were in the possession of two memorabilia dealers, Bruce L. Fromong and Alfred Beardsley, who were led to believe a prospective buyer was coming to browse the goods. Instead, Mr. Simpson and his group burst into the room and, according to several witnesses, at least one gun was brandished.
The jury of nine women and three men, who deliberated for 13 hours, mulled weeks of testimony as well as hours of surreptitious audio recordings of the planning and execution of the event by Thomas Riccio, a memorabilia auctioneer who arranged the confrontation.
Mr. Simpson, 61, and a co-defendant, Clarence Stewart, 54, are facing 15 years to life on the kidnapping charge.
Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 5.
Mr. Simpson has said he was seeking to retrieve only personal keepsakes like ceremonial footballs from his Hall of Fame N.F.L. career and photos of his family that years ago were taken from his home; the prosecutors said he should have filed a civil lawsuit to regain the items if they were, in fact, stolen from him.
“We don’t want people going into rooms to take property,” said David Roger, the Clark County district attorney who led the prosecution. “That is robbery. You don’t go in and get a gun and demand property from people.”
Four of the 24 witnesses who testified were the other men who accompanied with Mr. Simpson and Mr. Stewart, all of whom have accepted plea deals from prosecutors in exchange for testimony. Two of those men, Walter Alexander and Michael McClinton, carried guns in the incident and one, Mr. McClinton, testified that he did so at Mr. Simpson’s request.
Mr. Simpson said he did not know the two would carry weapons and never saw any guns displayed during the incident.
The proceedings failed to capture the intense public interest that turned Mr. Simpson’s 1995 trial into the so-called Trial of the Century. That spectacle became a racial touchstone and turned a list of legal analysts including Greta Van Sustern, Jeffrey Toobin and Star Jones into television stars. Few of the news media stars involved in that case flocked to this one, although Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair was a notable exception. Marcia Clark, the former prosecutor who failed to convict Mr. Simpson in 1995 did not appear despite securing media credentials to report for Entertainment Tonight.
The case played out against the backdrop of a nation more interested in the presidential election campaign and the nation’s economic crisis. It also featured victims who were far less sympathetic: two middle-aged memorabilia dealers who tried to profit from their roles in this case by trying to sell their stories to the tabloid media.
The defense focused much of its efforts on discrediting Mr. Fromong, Mr. Beardsley and the four men who assisted Mr. Simpson and Mr. Stewart in the alleged robbery. On several occasions, Simpson attorneys Yale Galanter and Gabriel Grasso caught those witnesses in apparent contradictions, as when Mr. Fromong insisted he did not try to sell his story despite audio recordings immediately after the incident in which Mr. Fromong is heard saying: “I’ll have ‘Inside Edition’ down here tomorrow. I told them I want big money.”
A measure of the limited public interest in the case may be that Frederic Goldman, the father of Ronald Goldman, admitted he followed the proceedings “only generally” from his home in Phoenix. Still, with a verdict coming he sharpened his focus.
“At the absolute least, I’d like to see him in jail,” Mr. Goldman said Friday of Mr. Simpson. “He’s not going to get the punishment for Ron’s murder that he deserved, but at least he should be in jail for as long as they can put him there.”
While Mr. Simpson’s acquittal in the 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, was never discussed during the trial, it hung over the proceedings. Jurors were quizzed extensively before their selection about their views of that trial, and references were made in some of the audio recordings to the fact that Mr. Simpson owes the estate of Ms. Simpson and Mr. Goldman $33.5 million because in 1997 he was held liable in a civil lawsuit for the deaths.
Mr. Galanter attacked that issue in his closing, noting that Mr. Riccio’s recorder picked up police officers at the crime scene seeming to exult in their chance to prosecute Mr. Simpson. He also noted that Mr. Riccio testified he had made more than $200,000 in fees from the news media in exchange for interviews and rights to his recordings.
“This case has never been about a search for the true facts,” Mr. Galanter said. “This case has taken on a life of its own because Mr. Simpson’s involved. You know that, I know that, every cooperator, every person with a gun, every person who signed a book deal, every person who got paid money, the police, the district attorney’s office, was only interested in one thing: Mr. Simpson.”
Media Man Australia Profiles
Sports News
Casino News Media
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Bana rejects Underbelly role - The Age - 12th September 2008
Eric Bana has rejected an offer to appear in the second series of the hit TV gangland crime drama Underbelly.
The A-list Australian actor, who is a fan of the TV show, has been approached by the Nine Network for the upcoming prequel but is unavailable, his manager said today.
Bana is currently filming for the comedy Funny People with Adam Sandler, while Underbelly 2 is due to start shooting in Sydney next month.
"Eric was grateful to be approached but is focusing on various film commitments," his manager Lauren Bergman said today.
Earlier in the year, the Chopper actor said he was disappointed he hadn't been approached for the first series.
While casting for the much anticipated show has not been finalised, a number of well-known actors had been approached, a Nine Network spokeswoman said.
Nine is keeping secret many of the details but the spokeswoman said the cast and content would be vastly different from the first hit series. It centred on Victoria's infamous underworld wars, which raged from 1995 to 2004, leaving 27 people dead.
The prequel will be set in the '70s and '80s and based mainly in Sydney, in King's Cross, and partly in Melbourne.
"It's going to be a whole new set of characters based on real life people," the spokeswoman said.
She also confirmed that actors from the first series like Les Hill, who played Jason Moran, Callan Mulvey, who starred as Mark Moran, and Damian Walshe-Howling, who played Andrew 'Benji' Veniamin, would not be in the production.
"Due to the era, those characters would've been teenagers, hence why the actors can't play them," the spokeswoman said.
The network could not confirm rumours that the show will focus on the background of Vince Colosimo's character Alphonse Gangitano - known as the Black Prince Of Lygon Street.
Nine chief executive David Gyngell previously said he expected the show to air from February next year.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Underbelly
Network Nine Australia
The A-list Australian actor, who is a fan of the TV show, has been approached by the Nine Network for the upcoming prequel but is unavailable, his manager said today.
Bana is currently filming for the comedy Funny People with Adam Sandler, while Underbelly 2 is due to start shooting in Sydney next month.
"Eric was grateful to be approached but is focusing on various film commitments," his manager Lauren Bergman said today.
Earlier in the year, the Chopper actor said he was disappointed he hadn't been approached for the first series.
While casting for the much anticipated show has not been finalised, a number of well-known actors had been approached, a Nine Network spokeswoman said.
Nine is keeping secret many of the details but the spokeswoman said the cast and content would be vastly different from the first hit series. It centred on Victoria's infamous underworld wars, which raged from 1995 to 2004, leaving 27 people dead.
The prequel will be set in the '70s and '80s and based mainly in Sydney, in King's Cross, and partly in Melbourne.
"It's going to be a whole new set of characters based on real life people," the spokeswoman said.
She also confirmed that actors from the first series like Les Hill, who played Jason Moran, Callan Mulvey, who starred as Mark Moran, and Damian Walshe-Howling, who played Andrew 'Benji' Veniamin, would not be in the production.
"Due to the era, those characters would've been teenagers, hence why the actors can't play them," the spokeswoman said.
The network could not confirm rumours that the show will focus on the background of Vince Colosimo's character Alphonse Gangitano - known as the Black Prince Of Lygon Street.
Nine chief executive David Gyngell previously said he expected the show to air from February next year.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Underbelly
Network Nine Australia
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Underwhelming Underbelly, by Debi Enker - The Age - 25th September 2008
The gripping dramatised account of Melbourne's gangland wars made a delayed debut on its home turf last week, following a seven-month legal ban on its screening. The Nine Network's crime series Underbelly launched with a double episode on Sunday, followed by a Tuesday night screening against Seven's thriving local drama, Packed to the Rafters.
Underbelly's Victorian launch was halted at the last minute in February when Supreme Court Justice Betty King ruled that its airing could affect cases still before the courts. It screened in the other mainland capitals, drawing solid audiences of about 1.25 million viewers.
At the time, it was estimated that Melbourne, arguably the 13-part drama's major market, would have added about 800,000 viewers to that tally. If the series had screened then and those estimates had proved accurate, Underbelly would be vying with Packed to the Rafters for the title of Australia's most popular drama series in 2008.
Earlier this month, Supreme Court judge Peter Vickery ruled that Nine could screen edited versions of the first five episodes in Melbourne. Some dialogue was altered, a few scenes trimmed and one actor's face pixelated.
It's fair to assume that at least some of those who would've been sitting eagerly in front of their tellys in February might have managed to see the drama before it made its debut here. Although not for sale in Victoria, 265,000 copies of the DVD set of the series have sold elsewhere since May and it's reasonable to assume that some of them have made their away over the border. It's also impossible to estimate how many people had already seen pirated episodes or those downloaded from the internet, although anecdotal evidence suggests it might be a fair few.
Those factors affected the numbers that Nine did achieve. Averaging a healthy 593,000 viewers for its second hour and 578,000 for the first, it was the top-rating show in Melbourne on Sunday night and a drawcard for Nine. But the figures were much lower than those anticipated earlier in the year and Tuesday night's episode (429,000) was soundly beaten by Packed to the Rafters (589,000).
There's been no word yet on when, or if, the remaining episodes will screen here. However, Nine has commissioned Underbelly2, to be shot in Sydney and Melbourne later this year and expected on air early in 2009.
In addition to Underbelly, Sunday night was interesting for a number of reasons.
Nine's new home show, Battlefronts, hosted by Gian Rooney, made a solid debut, attracting 1.28 million viewers, although it wasn't quite as strong in that slot as its predecessor, Domestic Blitz.
60 Minutes presented its much-touted interview between former federal treasurer and recent author, Peter Costello, and Ray Martin, who was inducted back into the show for the occasion. With 1.68 million viewers, it was the top-rating program of the night nationally, trouncing the ailing Dancing with the Stars.
Attracting 1.16 million viewers (No.31 nationally), the dance contest is a pale shadow of its once-robust self in ratings terms. Yes, it's continuing to perform for Seven by drawing more than a million people to a key timeslot. But in its heyday, Dancing was a Top5 performer and could be counted on to attract around 1.8 million viewers.
Seven did, though, have the top six programs nationally, a tally headed for the third consecutive week by Packed to the Rafters. In Melbourne, Seven won the week with a 29.2% audience share, ahead of Nine (26.7%), Ten(22.7%), ABC1 (16.6%) and SBS (4.8%).
Media Man Australia Profiles
Underbelly
Underbelly's Victorian launch was halted at the last minute in February when Supreme Court Justice Betty King ruled that its airing could affect cases still before the courts. It screened in the other mainland capitals, drawing solid audiences of about 1.25 million viewers.
At the time, it was estimated that Melbourne, arguably the 13-part drama's major market, would have added about 800,000 viewers to that tally. If the series had screened then and those estimates had proved accurate, Underbelly would be vying with Packed to the Rafters for the title of Australia's most popular drama series in 2008.
Earlier this month, Supreme Court judge Peter Vickery ruled that Nine could screen edited versions of the first five episodes in Melbourne. Some dialogue was altered, a few scenes trimmed and one actor's face pixelated.
It's fair to assume that at least some of those who would've been sitting eagerly in front of their tellys in February might have managed to see the drama before it made its debut here. Although not for sale in Victoria, 265,000 copies of the DVD set of the series have sold elsewhere since May and it's reasonable to assume that some of them have made their away over the border. It's also impossible to estimate how many people had already seen pirated episodes or those downloaded from the internet, although anecdotal evidence suggests it might be a fair few.
Those factors affected the numbers that Nine did achieve. Averaging a healthy 593,000 viewers for its second hour and 578,000 for the first, it was the top-rating show in Melbourne on Sunday night and a drawcard for Nine. But the figures were much lower than those anticipated earlier in the year and Tuesday night's episode (429,000) was soundly beaten by Packed to the Rafters (589,000).
There's been no word yet on when, or if, the remaining episodes will screen here. However, Nine has commissioned Underbelly2, to be shot in Sydney and Melbourne later this year and expected on air early in 2009.
In addition to Underbelly, Sunday night was interesting for a number of reasons.
Nine's new home show, Battlefronts, hosted by Gian Rooney, made a solid debut, attracting 1.28 million viewers, although it wasn't quite as strong in that slot as its predecessor, Domestic Blitz.
60 Minutes presented its much-touted interview between former federal treasurer and recent author, Peter Costello, and Ray Martin, who was inducted back into the show for the occasion. With 1.68 million viewers, it was the top-rating program of the night nationally, trouncing the ailing Dancing with the Stars.
Attracting 1.16 million viewers (No.31 nationally), the dance contest is a pale shadow of its once-robust self in ratings terms. Yes, it's continuing to perform for Seven by drawing more than a million people to a key timeslot. But in its heyday, Dancing was a Top5 performer and could be counted on to attract around 1.8 million viewers.
Seven did, though, have the top six programs nationally, a tally headed for the third consecutive week by Packed to the Rafters. In Melbourne, Seven won the week with a 29.2% audience share, ahead of Nine (26.7%), Ten(22.7%), ABC1 (16.6%) and SBS (4.8%).
Media Man Australia Profiles
Underbelly
Saturday, September 13, 2008
The company he keeps, by Adele Ferguson and Gary Hughes - The Australian - 13th September 2008
Tom Karas has come a long way from the days when he was chased down the street on Nine's A Current Affair in 1995 over allegations he had cheated customers in a $3 million basketball cards vending machine scam.
And he has moved on considerably from financial problems that saw him declared bankrupt in 1997. Perched in his ninth floor office overlooking Melbourne's old police complex, he talks about his humble beginnings in inner Melbourne as the son of Greek migrants and his battle to start again and build his own successful finance and mortgage business, State Securities Group.
In fact Karas, 44, could pass for just another self-made success story were it not for his colourful clients and associates, which has seen him accused in court of money laundering for a notorious Melbourne crime family.
Denying such allegations, he readily admits to having among his customers, associates and friends the likes of Mick Gatto, the head of the Carlton Crew who was acquitted of murdering underworld hit man Andrew "Benji" Veniamin on the grounds of self-defence; members of a prominent Melbourne crime family; and John Khoury, a Gatto business associate who police alleged in court was also part of a money-laundering ring.
"I have a business relationship with Mick Gatto. I have lent him money as well as members of his family, and he refers a lot of business my way," Karas says.
Khoury, explains Karas, is also a friend and leases office space from State Securities to run a business involved in hotels.
The pair turned a quick profit after buying and quickly reselling Melbourne's Metro nightclub, although Karas denies he was acting as a front for Gatto in the deal. He says that is just one of many damaging rumours spread about him by his enemies.
He and Khoury often go on trips together to casinos in places such as Macau, although Karas insists he's just along for the ride. "I'm not a gambler, but John is a higher roller so you get comp everything," he explains.
When Gatto flew to Singapore in April with Khoury chasing the missing millions from the collapse of stockbroker Opes Prime earlier this year, he gave out the telephone number of Karas's State Securities on radio for people wanting to contact him to help recover their money. Gatto and Khoury were close enough for Karas to invite them to the christenings of both his children, one in 2006 and the second in May this year. On the second occasion Karas took guests on a cruise down the Yarra River while singer Vanessa Amorosi kept them entertained.
Karas also mixes with some of Melbourne's highest flyers. In 2005 he joined a group of others, including one of Australia's richest men, Bruno Grollo, on a visit to China to undergo stem cell treatment that promised to make them live longer. The treatment reportedly cost up to $40,000 a session and involved a series of injections with secret stem-cell activation material.
Then there is multimillionaire day share trader and car enthusiast Leo Khouri, claimed to be one of Opes Prime's biggest accounts, with shares worth $50 million tied up in the crash. Karas and Khouri were friends until reportedly falling out in December over a controversial deal over a Melbourne quarry and waste tip last year that is being investigated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
Karas says there is no magic formula to his financial success but hard work.
"It is hard work and a lot of luck," he says. "It's a family business."
His biggest break, he explains, came about because his parents were too poor to join the exodus out of the inner working class suburb Fitzroy in the 1960s and '70s, when many migrant families moved to new housing developments on Melbourne's outskirts.
Instead the family stayed put and later Karas began buying Fitzroy properties while they were still cheap.
The gentrification of Fitzroy and spiralling property prices meant he could then borrow against those assets to add to his property holdings and later build his State Securities loans business. "I managed to buy three houses cheap and they went up with the property boom. I then used that as equity to buy other properties," he says.
He now owns houses, a retail complex and nightclub in the inner Melbourne suburb of Thornbury, and the floor of the LaTrobe Street office building where he runs State Securities.
His business acumen -- he boasts of having pulled his money out of Opes Prime just a week before it collapsed after a tip-off -- has earned Karas a regular seat at Gatto's table at Bourke Street restaurant Society, where the colourful identity can be found on most days.
Karas also admits he has done well on the share market, often investing in the same small resources companies as Khouri. He also owns a stake in the broking company Findlay & Co, which operated at one time out of State Securities' office and was coincidentally involved in many of the companies in which Karas and Khouri traded shares.
The charming and fast-talking Karas enjoyed relative anonymity until October last year, when Purana gangland taskforce detectives went to Victoria's Supreme Court to seize control of an up-and-coming racehorse under proceeds of crime laws, alleging the animal was really owned by a member of a Melbourne crime family.
The horse was three-quarters owned by Karas's wife, Irene Meletsis, despite Karas telling detectives neither he nor his wife had ever been to a racetrack.
In an affidavit filed with the court, detectives said they believed the horse and a number of loans organised through Karas's State Securities Group for the crime family member and his wife were "part of a large-scale money laundering operation" involving profits from alleged drug trafficking.
Records seized by the police in a raid on Karas's office showed one of the loans to the crime family for $100,000 supposedly came from a company called United Hotel Group Ltd, of which the sole director and shareholder is Khoury. The ownership of the horse was frozen, although a judge later allowed it to be auctioned for $1.8 million, with Karas's share of the money being held by the court.
Karas says he does not know when he will return to court to fight the legal battle to get the money. He strenuously denies the racehorse or the loans to the crime family were part of any money-laundering scheme. The horse came into his ownership, says Karas, simply because a borrower defaulted on a loan.
Karas says he can do without the publicity and attention he gets, in particular from Purana, ASIC and the Australian Taxation Office, which are all investigating his business deals. "I just want to be left alone," he pleads. (Credit: The Australian).
And he has moved on considerably from financial problems that saw him declared bankrupt in 1997. Perched in his ninth floor office overlooking Melbourne's old police complex, he talks about his humble beginnings in inner Melbourne as the son of Greek migrants and his battle to start again and build his own successful finance and mortgage business, State Securities Group.
In fact Karas, 44, could pass for just another self-made success story were it not for his colourful clients and associates, which has seen him accused in court of money laundering for a notorious Melbourne crime family.
Denying such allegations, he readily admits to having among his customers, associates and friends the likes of Mick Gatto, the head of the Carlton Crew who was acquitted of murdering underworld hit man Andrew "Benji" Veniamin on the grounds of self-defence; members of a prominent Melbourne crime family; and John Khoury, a Gatto business associate who police alleged in court was also part of a money-laundering ring.
"I have a business relationship with Mick Gatto. I have lent him money as well as members of his family, and he refers a lot of business my way," Karas says.
Khoury, explains Karas, is also a friend and leases office space from State Securities to run a business involved in hotels.
The pair turned a quick profit after buying and quickly reselling Melbourne's Metro nightclub, although Karas denies he was acting as a front for Gatto in the deal. He says that is just one of many damaging rumours spread about him by his enemies.
He and Khoury often go on trips together to casinos in places such as Macau, although Karas insists he's just along for the ride. "I'm not a gambler, but John is a higher roller so you get comp everything," he explains.
When Gatto flew to Singapore in April with Khoury chasing the missing millions from the collapse of stockbroker Opes Prime earlier this year, he gave out the telephone number of Karas's State Securities on radio for people wanting to contact him to help recover their money. Gatto and Khoury were close enough for Karas to invite them to the christenings of both his children, one in 2006 and the second in May this year. On the second occasion Karas took guests on a cruise down the Yarra River while singer Vanessa Amorosi kept them entertained.
Karas also mixes with some of Melbourne's highest flyers. In 2005 he joined a group of others, including one of Australia's richest men, Bruno Grollo, on a visit to China to undergo stem cell treatment that promised to make them live longer. The treatment reportedly cost up to $40,000 a session and involved a series of injections with secret stem-cell activation material.
Then there is multimillionaire day share trader and car enthusiast Leo Khouri, claimed to be one of Opes Prime's biggest accounts, with shares worth $50 million tied up in the crash. Karas and Khouri were friends until reportedly falling out in December over a controversial deal over a Melbourne quarry and waste tip last year that is being investigated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
Karas says there is no magic formula to his financial success but hard work.
"It is hard work and a lot of luck," he says. "It's a family business."
His biggest break, he explains, came about because his parents were too poor to join the exodus out of the inner working class suburb Fitzroy in the 1960s and '70s, when many migrant families moved to new housing developments on Melbourne's outskirts.
Instead the family stayed put and later Karas began buying Fitzroy properties while they were still cheap.
The gentrification of Fitzroy and spiralling property prices meant he could then borrow against those assets to add to his property holdings and later build his State Securities loans business. "I managed to buy three houses cheap and they went up with the property boom. I then used that as equity to buy other properties," he says.
He now owns houses, a retail complex and nightclub in the inner Melbourne suburb of Thornbury, and the floor of the LaTrobe Street office building where he runs State Securities.
His business acumen -- he boasts of having pulled his money out of Opes Prime just a week before it collapsed after a tip-off -- has earned Karas a regular seat at Gatto's table at Bourke Street restaurant Society, where the colourful identity can be found on most days.
Karas also admits he has done well on the share market, often investing in the same small resources companies as Khouri. He also owns a stake in the broking company Findlay & Co, which operated at one time out of State Securities' office and was coincidentally involved in many of the companies in which Karas and Khouri traded shares.
The charming and fast-talking Karas enjoyed relative anonymity until October last year, when Purana gangland taskforce detectives went to Victoria's Supreme Court to seize control of an up-and-coming racehorse under proceeds of crime laws, alleging the animal was really owned by a member of a Melbourne crime family.
The horse was three-quarters owned by Karas's wife, Irene Meletsis, despite Karas telling detectives neither he nor his wife had ever been to a racetrack.
In an affidavit filed with the court, detectives said they believed the horse and a number of loans organised through Karas's State Securities Group for the crime family member and his wife were "part of a large-scale money laundering operation" involving profits from alleged drug trafficking.
Records seized by the police in a raid on Karas's office showed one of the loans to the crime family for $100,000 supposedly came from a company called United Hotel Group Ltd, of which the sole director and shareholder is Khoury. The ownership of the horse was frozen, although a judge later allowed it to be auctioned for $1.8 million, with Karas's share of the money being held by the court.
Karas says he does not know when he will return to court to fight the legal battle to get the money. He strenuously denies the racehorse or the loans to the crime family were part of any money-laundering scheme. The horse came into his ownership, says Karas, simply because a borrower defaulted on a loan.
Karas says he can do without the publicity and attention he gets, in particular from Purana, ASIC and the Australian Taxation Office, which are all investigating his business deals. "I just want to be left alone," he pleads. (Credit: The Australian).
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