Punters club brings out sad tales big and small
ANDREW RULE HERALD SUN DECEMBER 10, 2013 9:35AM

Police investigate after the attack on Bill Vlahos's car. Source: News Limited
THE "punters club" promoted by Bill Vlahos has brought back memories in racing circles of the rapid rise and fatal fall of supposed share market "guru" Mike Bastion in the late 1990s.

Bastion fell - or was pushed - from a sixth-floor ledge in Hong Kong in 2000, just as he was to be exposed for running a $35 million "Ponzi" scheme that had drawn most of its money from big names on and off the track.

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Among his victims were leading trainers and, it is said, a former national political leader. But it also included relatively little people - those who put in $20,000 they couldn't afford, alongside those who put in a hundred times that amount.

No one is publicly calling the Vlahos betting scheme a Ponzi, but one similarity it has with Bastion's disastrous ******** is that it has attracted everyone from pensioners to the penthouse.

Horse racing identity Mike Bastion, who died in Hong Kong.
"Ian" contacted this reporter yesterday with a sad story of being persuaded over several months to invest the only money he had -- $10,000 - in the scheme.

At first he was sceptical, he says, but two work colleagues boasted to him how much they had supposedly made, so he fell in. One was a betting scheme "group leader" he calls "Ray".

Now, he says, he's angry with himself and with those who promoted the scheme to him and others.

"I valued their judgment and was impressed by the longevity of the club and of the type of people involved from the first instance," he wrote.

Cracks started to appear on July 13, he says. Since then he has grown increasingly disturbed by the string of evasive and barely credible messages received from the scheme's

"My investment of $10,000 … is a very large amount of money to me and will have a long-term impact. I sourced the money by cashing in my long service leave. Now I have neither.

"The timing is also devastating, being so close to Christmas.

It's not all about big-time investors; there are many working class people involved including me and my two colleagues."

"I have no savings (now), I have no investments, I have a modest house with a mortgage at aged 58 - I have 40 continuous years of honest work and sadly not a lot to show for it."

Then there is "Col", who approached a respected bloodstock expert in a city restaurant two weeks ago to ask his opinion about the scheme.

He showed the racing man a string of emails from Vlahos making excuses about why he could not pay back any of the $100,000 he had "invested".

He admitted that he had been pleased to "win" $25,000 which was sent to him that he left his money in the scheme - and actively recruited two more people to join it.

As the bloodstock man said later: "They target blokes who spread the word, turn them into a 'honeycomb' by paying them some money to keep them sweet."

As for BC3 Thoroughbreds? "There's no real income," says the bloodstock man, a former manager at a leading stable. "They have hardly sold a horse for any money - and they have a cast of thousands working for it on good salaries. People have been asking for years 'Where does the money come from?' I guess now we know."