I was sued by the ACCC and had 53 complaints against me, we won 51 in the main case and the other 2 were won by other parties in the appeal process, but it never made the papers. Here is what happened.

The ACCC had a complaint from a client after the media hit and then took us to court. This particlular client was an Architect, who had been involved in property development for 20+ years, his wife worked for an accountant.

They viewed the property, spoke to the local real estate agents, spoke to the on site manager, faxed the figures to their accountant who OK'ed them (the figures were actuall lower than what was actually acheived), sent their Brother In Law around to inspect the propert he was a building Inspector, they used their own bank and lawyer and yet according to them we robbed them.

They got a valuer, not Mr Herriot as his valuation was considered way to low and he would have not been a creditable witness for the ACCC. He valued the property at $135,000 (herriot's Valuation was $90,000) which we had sold for $159,900 under cross examination it became apparent that the valuer had used inferior properties as comparisons to value the property, old run down or urgent sale comparisons. He had also left out more than 250 new property sales, when asked why he had left out all of these comparable new sales he said that "if I had included those new sales the valuation would have come in above the purchase price". He also said "I had been instructed by the ACCC to leave out the new property sales so as to get a low valuation" as well as "I did not know the mental state of the purchasers".

That lost the ACCC case. Although I was front page news when the ACCC was sueing me and the other 13 defendents, there was no mention anywhere when we won the case, I beleive it cost the ACCC $10,000,000 to run this case with the costs order against them.

As a follow up to these poor purchasers who we ripped off they sold the property after the court case and they also got the Drunk and Jailed Minister for Fair Trading Merri Rose to give them a cheques for $125,000 because of the OFT matter, that is covered in the OFT section.

Summary                                                                Bought    $159,900

                             Gift from Qld OFT and Qld Taxpayers   $125,000

                                                                                   Sold  for $175,000.