Australian Net porn king Greg Lasrado stands to lose his clifftop land in the city if Australia's tax man has his way.
Under apparent order from the Australian Taxation Office, Commonwealth Bank is reported to have appointed receiver managers to Lasrado's company, GDL Investments, through which Lasrado bought the 1,179 square meter Kangaroo Point land in 1999 for an estimated $2.88 million. Lasrado reportedly had hoped to develop that land, which he's said to have called the most expensive barbeque spot in Australia.
Lasrado has been plagued by financial troubles over the past several months, from a bouncing check to a tree surgeon to the reported theft of $300,000 in cash from his bedroom and back to another court battle which exposed his penchant for credit card shopping sprees at high-ticket shops and the Crown Casino.
He was also embroiled in a legal battle with a former business partner, "over various Internet billing operations which saw Mr. Lasrado's lavish credit card spending being detailed in court documents," said one Australian newspaper.
Then, in August, Lasrado got hit for hundreds of thousands in unpaid back taxes by the Australian Taxation Office. Lasrado confirmed to the Australian press in early August that he got an ATO bill for over $800,000 in unpaid group and income tax, though he did say the ATO's judgment was based on wrongful information about the number of employees working for him, according to one Australian media report.
That didn't stop the tax man from assigning liquidators to Lasrado's companies, Netbill Pty. Ltd. and Pacific Networks Australia, in June.
Lasrado is not exactly unfamiliar to American law enforcement – in 2001, he agreed to settle with the Federal Trade Commission over a scheme that hijacked Web surfers by copying existing sites, inserting coded instructions into the copycats, and thus redirected the surfers to various adult Websites while disabling the surfers' "back" and "exit" commands – forcing them to endure a flood of windows showing porn images and advertisements.
