A scammer whose company claimed it had a secret method to predict future Powerball draws was today found by the Federal Court to have engaged in false or misleading conduct following Australian Competition and Consumer Commission action.
The scammer, Constantine 'Con' Barris, and his company, Powerballwin.com.au Pty Ltd, set up a website and distributed 163,000 leaflets to households around Australia claiming "...an amazing discovery that disputes the theory of random probability and has totally shocked the experts".
The scheme asked consumers to pay a $59 subscription fee in order to receive a series of predicted numbers to help win all divisions of Powerball. The predicted numbers failed to produce any dividend for subscribers.
Justice Tracey was told that attempts to predict future draws based on previous draws would fail because each Powerball draw was independent of previous draws.
Associate Professor Ian Gordon, of the Statistical Consulting Centre of the University of Melbourne, told the court that the chaotic nature of the Powerball machine meant that a draw of the Powerball lottery cannot be predicted in advance, using any method whatsoever.
Labelling Powerballwin a "bogus scheme", Justice Tracey said: "All too often unscrupulous individuals seek to enrich themselves by devising schemes under which unsuspecting victims are induced to part with their money and other property."
Justice Tracey found that there "…could be no '100% guarantee' that a number provided by the company would be the Powerball number in any given draw. Nor could any other information, supplied by the company, assist anybody to choose the five remaining numbers. They [the subscribers] would have been in no better position than if they had relied on their own intuition."
Justice Tracey restrained the further promotion of the scheme and ordered that Mr Barris and Powerballwin pay $48,163 compensation to subscribers and leaflet distributors and to pay the ACCC's costs. The ACCC had previously moved to freeze the bank accounts of various parties.
ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel said the decision was a compelling reminder for consumers to be wary of schemes which claimed to predict accurately and reliably the outcomes of any form of gambling.
"Whether the schemes claim to be able to predict the outcome of lotteries, horse-racing or other sporting betting schemes the golden rule is – if it seems too good to be true, it probably is."
The ACCC continues to seek three other persons alleged to have been involved in the scheme: David Walker, Michael Duggan and Mark Adams. Any person with knowledge of their whereabouts is asked to contact the ACCC on 1300 302 502.
