Should You Gamble On Big Fat Lotteries?

By Author: Ned Shaffer
Total Articles: 332
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BY ANDREW PENMAN ON APRIL 6, 2011 11:00 PM IN ONLINE ISSUES
UPDATE on our story last week about the compulsory liquidation of Information Technology Systems and Virtual World Direct.
They were branded fraudulent in the High Court after promising lottery syndicate subscribers a better chance of winning in return for £5 a week.

Virtual World Direct was part of what the court heard was a "shadowy network of offshore companies behind the UK front".
It claimed a head office in Panama but the website was registered in the Virgin Islands and syndicate members were given a contact address in Douglas, Isle of Man.

Which brings us to another online lotto syndicate firm, bigfatlotteries.com, which also wants £5 weekly.
Big Fat Lotteries is a trading name of uVme Ltd, which uses the very same Isle of Man and Virgin Islands addresses once used by Virtual World Direct.

The website's details of the owners of bigfatlotteries.com are now hidden behind a privacy wall but it was previously registered to Thomas Brodie, 40, a director of the two liquidated companies.

We've ...
... asked him why anyone should trust Big Fat Lottos, given his track record, but have yet to have a reply from Big Fat Lottos.
Andrew Penman and Nick Sommerlad form the Daily Mirror's Investigations team. They write a weekly column in the Mirror every Thursday and they're here to help uncover the scams, and expose the people behind them. They won the Cudlipp Award for campaigning popular journalism at the 2010 British Press Awards.

JARED SAID:
I still don't understand your story last week To me, that seems really odd. You could apply that logic to a lot of "legitimate" businesses, eg. house cleaning, gardening services, but these companies don't get wound up in "the public interest".
April 7, 2011 9:57 AM

JOHN SAID:
Presumably they had those addresses to limit business taxes? Just like lots of wealthy UK people do.
I suspect that's the real reason they were closed 'in the public interest'. Though I doubt anyone on the Government side will be admitting that any time soon :-)

Big Fat Lotto