Chris Brown: Unrepentant so-called betting ‘whiz kid’ who ripped off grandparents dodges jail
A betting scheme promoter who ripped off his grandparents and claimed to have been a multi-millionaire who could pay back his victims has been spared jail and refused to apologise to them.
Christopher Michael Brown was sentenced in the Perth Magistrates Court on Thursday for the Federal offence of intentionally making a false statement related to his bankruptcy.
Brown was due to stand trial but changed his plea to guilty last month.
It came after five charges of obtaining credit by fraud were dropped in February, with Chief Judge Julie Wager only told the discontinuance was due to a policy decision.
Brown, 30, was forced into bankruptcy by the Federal Court in May 2021 amid claims he owed creditors more than $174 million, a figure based on promised profits.
Among those he owed money to were his grandparents, who instigated the bankruptcy action against him after he failed to repay them $82,000.
The University of WA commerce graduate had taken cash from school, social, racing, sporting and business contacts since 2015 with claims he had low-risk, high-return ways of betting and investing in shares.
Camera IconBrown had no apologies and replied “life’s not fair” when asked if him walking free was fair to his victims. Credit: Iain Gillespie/The West Australian
The Magistrates Court was told on Thursday that Brown had claimed he had more than $172 million in his bank account but in fact, had a balance of zero.
Commonwealth prosecutors submitted that the only reasonable sentence for the lie was imprisonment or release on a recognisance order — the Federal equivalent of a suspended sentence.
Defence barrister and former attorney-general Christian Porter said that his client’s offending was right in the middle of similar cases the Commonwealth had submitted to the court as sentencing examples.
With Judge Wager absent due to illness, Magistrate Thomas Hall handed down Brown’s sentence, saying his offending was very serious.
However, he could walk free if he entered into a $5000 recognisance, pledging he would be of good behaviour for six months.
Magistrate Hall said Brown would have copped a 10-month order but got a discount for his guilty plea and the fact he had no prior record.
Outside court, an unrepentant Brown was happy with the result, describing it as a “fair outcome”.
When asked if it was fair to his victims, he replied “life’s not really fair, is it?”.
Asked if he planned to pay back his grandparents, Brown replied: “That’s not up to me at this stage”.
“With the bankruptcy and the discharge, we’re just going to let everything else play out,” he told Seven West Media.
Apologies were “Not necessary at this stage”.
Brown said he would now “Just move on to try rectify things”.
“And yeah, all positivity moving forwards.”
In August 2020, The West Australian exclusively reported KPMG as saying it appeared Brown had raised $12m from investors and handed over $11.7m to betting agencies.
KPMG identified $53.62m of winnings and $63.73 million of losses, for a net loss of $10.11m in his betting agency accounts.
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