Bill Jordanou Sentenced to 9 Years in Prison over Scam
A decent punishment has been handed down to Australia's notorious ex poker player, Bill Jordanou, who is sentenced to jail for 9 years for engaging in a scam that saw a variety of people cleaned out of $53 million.
Not The Individual Action
The act itself did not take long to put up but it undoubtedly included friends. Jordanou had to focus on Robert Zaia who helped him find a way through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) to empty bank accounts and kept a special $20 million account for him. The question persists, however, whether any of the guilty parties have been taken to justice, and the most possible response is that someone still eludes the law.
The pair may have had in-house support according to the official decision, but no such individual has been identified. And then, as early as 2007, the bank reportedly knew of the activities but refused to step up its defense and initiate audits.
Jordanou pled guilty on all charges of conspiracy to commit theft, as much of a con artist as he is. He made a tidy chest out of it by claiming he'd forged papers so he could withdraw loans. With the newly purchased proceedings, Jordanou used the bulk to build a property while another sum was transferred to a Zaia-controlled private bank account.
Impressively, how the pair could borrow money from undisclosed individual bank accounts. However, Jordanou did not stop at CBA as he managed to play his cards well and swindled money from Queensland Bank, Westpac, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services and others. He also had a penchant for Las Vegas, Macau, and other casino hotbeds that he frequented as well as becoming a professional con artist. His spending habits even got thrifty, purchasing products and cars of high quality.
Heartfelt Acknowledgment Does Not Always Cause Leniency
Jordanou was not handled kindly even when he eventually agreed to plead guilty. At a recent cross-examination session, the presiding judge publicly lambasted him for wasting the court's resources.
Glossing over the legal aspects of what he'd done, the judge sentenced the ex-professional to 12 years behind bars, 9 of which are mandatory. Jordanou has now served 200 days in jail pending his hearing, so his sentence will be subtracted. In the meantime, Zaia awaits a sentence of his own.
Jordanou's case wasn't the first poker player to end up with the law or cross a line at loggerheads. More recently, another ex-con and professional poker player was stripped of his winnings after the British Government claimed he had refused to repay the victims of a bribery scam he had been conducting before going to jail.
Does that suggest poker draws people who are predisposed to crime? Unlikely, but maybe being too fantastic at figures and statistics often drives people out to draw the boundaries.
