Notorious fraudster ‘Blind Joey’ jailed at Risdon Prison for ripping off three Tasmanians of $235,000
An infamous fraudster who has been chased by the likes of A Current Affair and Today Tonight is locked up at Risdon Prison for scamming three Tasmanians with a bogus “Texas Oil” scheme.
Police & Courts
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An infamous serial fraudster who has ripped off more than $1 million from his victims is now behind bars at Risdon Prison for scamming three Tasmanians with a bogus “Texas Oil” scheme.
The vision-impaired Joseph Anthony Russell had already served a number of prison stints interstate for his “very extensive” history as a conman before moving to Hobart in February 2021.
Russell has even been the subject of A Current Affair and Today Tonight episodes – which outed him as “Blind Joey”, a swindler who “duped some of Australia’s best-known celebrities and sporting stars”.
While sentencing him for his more recent crimes in the Supreme Court of Tasmania, Acting Justice David Porter said Russell – who has used a number of fake aliases – met a Hobart woman using a dating app and formed a relationship with her.
Russell told the woman he worked as a stockbroker for the Macquarie Bank, had previously lived and worked in New York, and had graduated school early “because he was a genius”.
He also said he’d been mugged while living in Sydney and lost vision in one eye, so moved to Hobart to avoid large crowds.
During March 2021, he duped the woman into giving him $60,000, and her father $50,000.
He falsely told them he was investing the money into a “Texas Oil Tech Laboratories” share offer – and that they’d received ten times their investment in return.
In fact, Russell transferred the money into his own account, which he’d opened just days earlier.
A third Hobart person then became involved in Russell’s scheme – a man he met while he and the woman were putting an offer on a house.
That man “invested” a total of $125,000 into the same bogus “Texas oil” scheme.
But the following month, Russell returned to New South Wales and used the money from his three Tasmanian victims to “fund a lavish lifestyle”.
Acting Justice Porter said over the course of a few days, Russell used the cash to spend $2000 at a Sydney restaurant, $1000 for a night’s accommodation at the Hilton, and hired a corporate suite at a Melbourne AFL match.
He also wasted the money on other top restaurants and “exclusive hotels”, expensive clothing, gambling at various casinos, and withdrew $15,400 in cash.
In August 2022, Russell was located in New South Wales, arrested, and extradited to Tasmania.
The woman and her father were not repaid any of their money, but MyState bank gave the third man back the $84,000 left in Russell’s account.
Russell’s history as a fraudster dates back to 2009, and has committed similar crimes across New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria – netting almost $1 million from these crimes to apparently spend on luxury items and items that “gave others an impression of wealth”.
Acting Justice Porter said his “clear impression” is Russell would reoffend almost immediately after being released from each stint in prison.
The judge said Russell had a congenital eye problem and had been legally blind in both eyes, but had since become effectively totally blind while in custody last year in Tasmania.
“This followed complications from bouts of surgery in relation to bowel difficulties, which in turn, followed the administration in prison of anti-inflammatory medication for his eye condition,” Acting Justice Porter said.
Because of his blindness, Russell is housed in Risdon’s maximum security area, despite being cleared for minimum security, “because of the nature of the construction of the various units”.
Russell is “generally immobile and vulnerable” in jail, suffering bullying and taunting, and spends his days listening to audio books and listening to the radio.
He pleaded guilty to 10 counts of fraud, with Acting Justice Porter jailing him for three-and-a-half years.
Russell will become eligible to apply for parole in September this year, after serving a minimum of 25 months.
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