Former sports powerbroker John Adams at centre of scandal involving bookies being ripped off

The Victorian Bookmakers Association has been ripped off close to $2m in funds invested with an Ivanhoe law firm – but it’s feared the loss is only a fraction of a much bigger scam.

The fund is a mutual protection arrangement to guarantee payment to punters if a member of the Victorian Bookmakers Association can’t honour wagering debts.

Victorian bookmakers have confirmed they have been ripped off close to $2m in funds invested with a trusted suburban law firm — but there are rising fears that the loss is only a fraction of a massive scam spanning more than 20 years.

Insiders in racing and sport claim that the Victorian Bookmakers Association’s potential loss of about $1.8m is peanuts compared with losses faced by investors who entrusted funds to two-man suburban law firm AMS Ivanhoe.

At the centre of the scandal is lawyer and former sports powerbroker John Adams, who died recently.

Adams was a potent backroom figure at North Melbourne during its rebuilding phase and extremely well connected at Carlton and West Coast Eagles.

Sports journalist Gary Linnell wrote a book about the business of football in which he describes Adams as a slightly mysterious figure who operated “in the shadows”.

He was one of the unknown architects of the national Australian Rules competition, at one point approaching South Australian clubs with proposals that they join a national competition.

He was close to well-known Carlton Football Club identity Ian Collins and to North Melbourne’s Ron Josephs, among others.

Former sports powerbroker John Adams was close to former Carlton president Ian Collins (above).

It wasn’t until Adams died late this month that his legal practice partner Shane Maguire raised concerns about the whereabouts of tens of millions of dollars entrusted to the firm by a wide range of sports and business identities over decades.

Victims and potential victims include not just the Victorian Bookmakers Association members but big bookies outside the association, football club figures, players and others.

Adams’ law firm, which he founded in 1966, had a solid reputation for investing money conservatively in first mortgage loans that paid a steady interest rate.

The AMS firm had none of the flamboyance of operators who engineered other financial scandals and scams in racing and sport — most notably the Mike Bastion scandal of 1999-2000 and the “Dollar Bill” Vlahos scam that cost victims at least $17.5m in the last decade.

Bastion was a flashy party boy, horse trader and punter who preyed on horse trainers, bookmakers, jockeys and owners, pulling a $35m fraud of which $25m was never recovered.

Bastion, 38, plunged to his death from the roof of a Hong Kong hotel in 2000 while leading trainer David Hayes waited downstairs for him for a dinner appointment.

Hayes was high on a long list of racing identities fleeced by Bastion, who persuaded otherwise astute racing people that he had an unbeatable method of making money on the stock market. Because he kept paying extremely high interest payments, they believed him — until the house of cards came crashing down.

In fact, he was a cocaine-addicted fantasist and thief running a Ponzi scheme, taking money from one client to pay another in a round robin that was doomed to crash.

No one yet knows if the latest scam is a Ponzi scheme but if it is, it wouldn’t be the first time an apparently conservative lawyer has misled those who trusted him.

In 2012 quiet St Kilda lawyer Philip Linacre handed himself in to authorities after embezzling a total of some $12m, mostly from clients trust funds.

But Linacre had also solicited “investments” and loans from family members and friends, including $500,000 from well-known singer Joe Camilleri. He was sentenced to 12 years prison and served eight before parole.