35 minutes agoWed 10 Dec 2025 at 6:43pm

Former financial planner Gavin Fineff is currently serving a nine-year sentence for defrauding his clients of millions of dollars to feed his gambling habit. (Four Corners, file photo)

In short:

Former financial planner Gavin Fineff is suing three betting agencies, seeking to recover millions of dollars he stole from clients and gambled away with the companies.

Fineff, who is in prison, is also suing two former VIP customer managers, alleging they helped facilitate his reckless gambling while ignoring "red flag" behaviours.

If the case succeeds, it would be Fineff’s victims, rather than himself, who would benefit financially.

A landmark legal case against three of Australia’s biggest online betting agencies has been filed in the Federal Court, aimed at recovering millions of dollars’ worth of stolen money that was gambled away and kept by corporate bookmakers.

Former financial planner Gavin Fineff is suing Sportsbet, Tabcorp and Entain (owner of Ladbrokes), alleging the bookmakers encouraged him to keep betting large amounts of money without carrying out proper checks on the source of his funds, and whether he could be engaging in illegal behaviour to fund his multimillion-dollar gambling habit.

In a move that will send tremors through the industry, Fineff is also suing two former VIP customer managers, George Khoury and Steven Bedwell, alleging they incentivised him to open new betting accounts after he had stopped gambling and then helped facilitate his reckless punting while ignoring "red flag" behaviours.

Prominent Sydney barrister Geoffrey Watson SC, who has advised Fineff’s legal team, says the case could lead to reform of what he believes is a predatory industry.

"This is a landmark case. If this is successful, it will change the gambling industry in Australia a great deal," he told ABC Investigations.

Geoffrey Watson has advised Fineff’s legal team and says the case has the potential to change how the gambling industry operates in Australia. (ABC News: Sissy Reyes)

"The argument will be that the betting companies were well and truly aware of Mr Fineff’s weakness, his vulnerability, and yet they continued to prey upon that same weakness, getting him to gamble more and more and lose more and more and that it was their knowing action in facilitating that which has made them liable to pay damages," he said.

Fineff recently spoke to Four Corners from inside prison to urge the Albanese government to act on gambling reform.

In 2023, he was sentenced to nine years in jail for defrauding 12 victims of over $3 million to fund his gambling addiction. The earliest he will be eligible for parole is February 2028.

If the case is successful, it would be the victims of Fineff’s crimes, not himself, who would financially benefit.

"He won’t get a penny from it, but those who he has hurt, a fact he acknowledges freely, they’ll get their money back, or at least part of it," Mr Watson said.

"For the industry, if Fineff is successful, it’s going to be a very challenging day because it will bring home to them the economic consequences of disobeying their own internal checks and balances."

Even if victims ultimately benefit from this legal action, anger remains at the crimes Fineff committed and the devastation he caused.

Sharon Williams says that even if the case succeeds, her mother won’t be around to see her stolen money returned.

"Gavin suing the betting companies is blatantly the pot calling the kettle black. His actions are not going to bring my mother Joy Williams back, who died destitute at 87 years of age, because of Gavin’s actions," she said.

"Gavin preyed on the elderly. His actions were calculated and well thought through. Most of his victims were in their later years and their lives have been changed irrevocably because they are unable to earn back what Gavin stole."

Sharon Williams (right) says her mother Joy (left) died destitute because of Gavin Fineff’s actions. (Supplied)

Ms Williams says she is disgusted with the role played by the online betting agencies.

’It’s a very sorry industry, and to bonus employees, to get people to gamble more is particularly shattering. The effects on families of those who gamble is devastating and long-reaching," she said.

Betting agencies should have asked where money was coming from

Fineff started as a moderate punter but developed what was later diagnosed as a severe gambling disorder.

The more he lost, the more he was offered in inducements to keep gambling, and the more he misappropriated funds from his clients as he tried to claw back his losses.

"I needed to repay a lot of people, a lot of people that I cared about and loved, family and friends," he told Four Corners earlier this year.

"You compound that into the chasing, and you believe that you can do it. Otherwise, why would I keep doing it?" he said.

Part of Fineff’s legal case will focus on how his betting was allowed to skyrocket without the online bookmakers intervening.

Under "know your customer" provisions of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws, betting agencies are meant to check the source of funds of someone who is suddenly gambling large amounts of money.

In the years when he was placing bets worth tens of millions of dollars, Fineff was earning around $130,000 per annum, yet his out-of-control gambling was allowed to continue without appropriate questions being asked about his salary.

He says in 17 months, he lost over $3.6 million with BetEasy (which merged with Sportsbet in 2020) after placing around $50 million in bets. He says he lost over $750,000 with Ladbrokes in 21 months. He claims neither company asked him for proof of income.

Fineff says Tabcorp did ask him for proof of income, but only after he had lost $3.9 million.

Both BetEasy and Ladbrokes were found to have breached their licenses by the NT Racing Commission for failing to identify that Fineff was "displaying problem gambling red flag behaviours".

BetEasy was fined $79,390 for three breaches of its licence over its dealings with Fineff, while Ladbrokes’s parent company Entain was fined $78,540 for three licence breaches.

Action could shed light on VIP programs

This latest legal action is likely to examine the role that VIP customer relations managers play in Australia’s online betting industry and how they are remunerated.

VIP account managers are assigned to high-value gamblers to keep them betting. They build relationships with the punters, calling them regularly and offering inducements such as free bonus bets and deposit matches, as well as tickets to sporting events and corporate hospitality.

VIP gamblers are incredibly lucrative to the industry. The money laundering regulator AUSTRAC has previously estimated that 65 per cent of the revenue generated by Entain comes from just 2 per cent of its customers.

The federal parliamentary inquiry into online gambling, chaired by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, identified the harms VIP programs cause to gamblers and recommended banning all inducements and the commissions paid to customer relations managers.

ABC Investigations has seen VIP managers’ contracts with commissions as high as 20 per cent on net losses.

These commissions are seen as a financial disincentive for staff to intervene with gamblers who are losing big.

Sportsbet and Tabcorp no longer pay commissions to VIP managers.

Ladbrokes did not respond to questions on the matter.

Sportsbet says it "strongly advocates for an industry-wide ban on the payment of commissions to staff and affiliates based on customer losses".

Fineff will argue that two of his former VIP managers — Steven Bedwell, who recruited him to Ladbrokes, and George Khoury, who signed him up to BetEasy — directly profited from his losses through commissions and that they helped facilitate his extraordinary losses.

When Tabcorp finally asked Fineff for proof of income in 2018, he says his account was frozen and he stopped gambling. Out of the blue, he was called by Mr Bedwell, then a few months later by Mr Khoury.

"I didn’t know these two guys," Fineff previously told the ABC.

"I was approached and offered quite a bit of money to try them out."

Gavin Fineff first told his story to the ABC in 2020. (ABC News: David Maguire)

Mr Khoury had previously worked at Tabcorp, while Mr Bedwell had worked with one of the company’s subsidiaries. Both men were aware of Fineff’s history of large losses with Tabcorp and offered him significant inducements to open new accounts with Ladbrokes and BetEasy.

An email obtained by the NT Racing Commission when it was investigating Ladbrokes showed that at the time Mr Bedwell was opening Fineff’s account (under a false name), he was emailing colleagues outlining the scale of his previous losses at Tabcorp.

"FY this year had T/O (turnover) 15.1M and lost 2.4m — Last year was 8.8 T/O losing 1.1m," the email said.

When the NT Racing Commission investigated BetEasy over its dealings with Fineff, it found that the former financial planner was "actively targeted by a BetEasy VIP betting account manager, being Mr K [Mr Khoury], due to his knowledge through his former employment that the Gambler [Fineff] had engaged in high volume betting activity with another bookmaker."

Fineff says Mr Khoury provided him with inducements such as bonus bets with BetEasy worth around $3.3 million and that Mr Bedwell provided inducements worth over $500,000 from Ladbrokes.

Mr Bedwell no longer works with Ladbrokes. The ABC attempted to contact him, but he did not respond.

Mr Khoury has left the betting industry. On LinkedIn, he describes himself as an "Authentic People Leader" and boasts of increasing gross revenue by 297 per cent at BetEasy from 2018-19 — the same year he had signed up Fineff.

Mr Khoury declined to comment when contacted by the ABC.

If Fineff’s legal team can obtain internal documents from the betting agencies as part of the discovery process of this legal action, it could expose the inner workings of the VIP programs in some of the largest betting agencies in Australia in a way that has never been done before.

Former betting industry insiders have previously told ABC Investigations they have been incentivised to prey on high-value gamblers such as Fineff.

The ABC has been told of betting agencies sending weekly emails to their VIP managers urging them to target certain customers with bonus bets, with graphs and spreadsheets displaying which punters were up and which punters were down.

Getting access to such documents as part of the legal process could expose exactly how these schemes work and the senior management who are approving the targeting of such customers, many of whom have gambling disorders.

Gambling companies should not keep stolen money, MP says

If federal independent MP Andrew Wilkie had his way, Fineff would not have to take legal action to retrieve the money he misappropriated from his clients and gambled away.

"People like Gavin should not have to sue gambling companies in order to return stolen money to victims," Mr Wilkie said.

On three separate occasions, the member for Clark has tried to bring legislation before federal parliament that would force betting agencies to hand back the proceeds of crime.

"Sadly, that bill has received zero support from the Labor Party, from the Liberal Party and from the National Party, meaning we could draw no other conclusion that they are continuing to run a protection racket for the parasites in the gambling industry," Mr Wilkie said.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie has tried to introduce legislation to force betting companies to return the proceeds of crime. (ABC News: Jordan Young)

Similar proceeds of crime bills, which would force gambling companies to hand back stolen money, have been pushed by independents in NSW and Tasmania but have yet to get through those state legislatures.

Mr Wilkie consulted with Fineff when he was drafting his bill.

"I’ve met Gavin a number of times. I’ve been quite impressed by his efforts to make amends. He did a terrible thing. He stole millions of dollars, and he knows that and he’s deeply sorry for it."

Mr Wilkie believes that this legal action will put the behaviour of the betting agencies in the spotlight and force them to make decisions about how it would look to fight a case that could see stolen money they have profited from returned to victims of crime.

"It beggars belief that the gambling companies believe they have a moral right to keep stolen money, instead of returning that money to victims," he says.

Tabcorp, Entain and Sportsbet, as well as the solicitors acting for Gavin Fineff, all declined to comment as the matter was before the courts.

Sportsbet noted that "This claim relates to Mr Fineff’s time as a customer of BetEasy".

If successful, the case could see as much as $4.3 million returned to the victims of Fineff.