Greek Poker Pro Charged With £61 Million Commercial Mortgage Fraud

Billionaire Property tycoon Achilleas Kallakis was charged yesterday with defrauding the Allied Irish Bank (AIB) and Bank of Scotland out of £61 million.
Kallakis, formerly known as Stefanos Kollakis, was able to build up a sizable property empire helped by loans secured by him from the banks, but which eventually resulted in AIB suffering a huge £56 million loss and a £5 million loss for the Bank of Scotland.
At the heart of the investigation were allegations that Mr Kallakis and his business partner Alexander Williams, originally known as Martin Lewis, managed to secure over £700m in loans from AIB over 5 years by providing fraudulent guaranteed lease payments. By forging documents to show property tenants had longer term lease contracts and were paying higher rents than was actually the reality, the pair managed to secure an impressive property portfolio that included buildings which housed the ‘Daily Telegraph’, parts of the Metropolitan Police, the UK Home Office’s asylum processing centre and Orion House.
By 2008, AIB decided to take control and sell off Kallakis’ property empire after they became suspicious about the Greek tycoon’s guarentees, and in the meantime they reported him to the Serious Fraud Office.
Mr Achilleas Kallakis was ”a member of some of Britain’s most exclusive social clubs and as recently as two years ago he was developing the world’s most expensive penthouse apartment in St James’s Square.” However, he is now out on bail until May 4th when he will be sentenced for charges related to conspiracy to defraud, forgery, fraud by false representation, money laundering, and deception.
Achilleas Kallakis is a well known celebrity on the poker circuit and earned around $350,000 from live tournament cashes since 2004, including a 3rd place finish at the 888.com Pacific Poker Open 2005 for $100,000. However, he is perhaps best remembered for a famous televised poker moment when he was eliminated from the Party Poker European Open III after a freak cold deck saw five of the players all holding pocket pairs, including AA, KK, QQ. Kallakis eventually lost the hand with his pocket rockets after his opponent spiked a Q on the river.

Other news:   Multi-state online poker compact bill introduced in Pennsylvania

Poker News
01 May 2018
Last Tuesday, US-facing poker site Americas Cardroom (ACR) was targeted by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack which crippled the site’s traffic, ultimately leading to a cancellation of the tournaments it was running at the time. After working to resolve the issue, another cyber attack was then launched against ACR on Sunday, meaning that
29 Mar 2018
Last week, Francisco Vallejo Pons, a Spanish chess Grandmaster, pulled out of the European Individual Championship in Batumi, Georgia having made it through to the competition’s fifth round. Vallejo had previously won the event in 2013, and was this year’s fourth placed seed, with the tournament acting as an important qualifier for the 2019 Chess
21 Mar 2018
Earlier this week, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security (MoPS), headed by General Tran Dai Quang (photo), decided to clarify details about its crackdown on illegal online gambling and money laundering in the country. The move was apparently made because of what was described as “inaccurate reports” circulating about its operation in the northern province of
06 Mar 2018
The Crown Casino in Melbourne is facing disciplinary action that could lead to the suspension of its gaming license following evidence tabled by MP Andrew Wilkie in the federal parliament related to illicit practices in Australia’s slot machine market. As a spokeswoman for the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation (VCGLR) stated on March