In a $210,000 Betting Frenzy a Gladstone Man Loses on Online Gambling

Popular theory is that if you bet big you are likely to win big. But sometimes things don't go according to theory, Wesley Filewood found to his cost he bet big and lost.

It took only six hours of a gambling frenzy one Thursday night when the 35-year-old Gladstone man lost an incredible $210,000 through the online bookmaker Ladbrokes.

Over the 6 hour period he transferred various amounts of money, between $2000 and $50,000, estimating that he did more than 30 transactions taking it from his bank account and transferring it to his Ladbrokes account.

Over this period he was betting on everything, even placing bets of up to $20,000 on a horse for it to come first.

Mr Filewood said he now needed to look for a job, however, he wanted to warn other people not fall into the same trap.

He was made redundant from his job at the Rio Tinto's Yarwun plant in June, he received a payout of $96,000.

He did the responsible thing when that money came into his account by paying off approximately $30,000 in bills and mortgage repayments.

The balance of the $60,000 left he started gambling, and that's when things began to fall apart.

Over a three day period he won $150,000 betting on "horses, dogs and trots".

He said when he got that money transferred to his normal bank account he was feeling pretty good.

He continued to gamble thinking he could get some back of the money he had given to the bookies.

But something came over him and he started transferring money to his Ladbrokes account putting $50,000 and then another $50,000 and in no time he was down to his last $20,000."

Mr Filewood did win big again, and he hit over $200,000 and stated that Ladbrokes should have stepped in and helped him to stop.

Mr Filewood doesn't blame the betting agency for his own mistakes

However he feels that given the scale of his betting, there should have been some kind of restriction or temporary suspension or maybe even a phone call from Ladbrokes that could have prevented him from losing it all.

He said that he did make the choice to gamble but felt that they should have stopped you because betting like this destroys your life, he continued that it was quick and that he wasn't messing around and that they should have stopped.

Queensland Law

The president of the Queensland Law Society, Bill Potts said that Mr Filewood might have a case in court but history has not been very successful.

Mr Potts continued that with many of these cases it depended on who knew what and when.