Is Adrian Portelli & LMCT Plus legit or a scam?

mrvaluepack on 02/01/2024 - 14:25

Been seeing Adrian Portelli on news.com.au a lot recently. Usually about giveaways related to his company LMCT Plus. Did a little bit of investigation and there are claims that the company's worth $350m??

So I went to the website and it seems like their business model comes from paid membership discounts similar to Entertainment Rewards? But the list of businesses that he has on there is predominantly automotive and very niche. And you can't see details or any info on the discounts you would be able to get before you sign up.

My questions are:

  • How the hell is a company like that 'worth' $350m when there are other cashback and bargain websites for free?
  • Is anyone here a paid member and would be able to share some details on the discounts the members actually receive?
  • Or is this whole thing just a front for a lottery company because of the giveaways?
General Discussion

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Comments

  • greencomet on 02/01/2024 - 14:44
    -1

    I've heard his company is being watched very closely by police due to claims of links to organised crime and money laundering. People seem to love the guy and his business online, but it all screams dodgy imo and I wouldn't be surprised at all if those claims were true.

    • mrvaluepack on 02/01/2024 - 15:57

      I've read that certain commissions are investigating and paying close attentions to the giveaway side of things but what about the discount business side?

    • Muzeeb on 02/01/2024 - 14:57
      +17

      Adrian Portelli has entered the chat.

      • DashCam AKA Rolts on 02/01/2024 - 17:44

        Clearly. Cheers

      • JafferMoney on 03/01/2024 - 10:08

        There's clearly some ppl on this forum who have NO IDEA when it comes to general knowledge/common sense.

        • Muzeeb on 03/01/2024 - 10:55
          +1

          That makes common sense. Cheers

  • wab on 02/01/2024 - 14:48
    +3

    I’m a member and have been for over two years, It’s really just a front for the weekly prize draws. Most of the promocodes (ie Adore Beauty as an example) can be found online anyway. I went to buy wipers from uniwipers and the code listed on lmct was worse than one i found on ozbargain.

    Some of the better discounts are:
    15% beaurepairs
    $50 credit for every $500 spend at Total Tools

    • mrvaluepack on 02/01/2024 - 16:00

      Ok thanks for the info haha. Thats what i deduced after looking at his website. How are credits tracked, from promocodes as well or click throughs?

      • wab on 02/01/2024 - 16:51
        +2

        not tracked at all, no affiliates or any redirections. lmct charge businesses a one off fee to list them on their site/app. the app just shows all the offers and instructions to redeem. majority are promo codes entered at checkout. some of the smaller businesses (mechanics and car washers) you’ll need to mention a special code in person/when booking

  • randomusername2017 on 02/01/2024 - 14:49

    60million in revenue @ 75%

    350m valuation would be on the low end.

  • brendanm on 02/01/2024 - 15:19
    +10

    Never trust anyone who looks like they'd drive a vl turbo.

  • 2jzzzz on 02/01/2024 - 16:08
    +1

    I'm a member and it's really only to enter to chance to win the member draw to win cars or houses (or take cash).

    It's unknown how many "entries" are entered for each draw, so who knows what the chances really are. I don't know how he's skirting the lotto rules as people can but entries into draws, not just a strictly member only draw. But I'd love to win a Gold Coast home

    • mrvaluepack on 02/01/2024 - 16:10

      So you've never even bothered looking at any of the 'mates rates' discounts?

  • Euphemistic on 02/01/2024 - 18:07
    +4

    Just smells like scam or pyramid scheme. Pay a membership and maybe win a prize he’s paid cents in the dollar for because ‘publicity’.

    It has no worth, it doesn’t make or do anything other than shift money around. I don’t see why anyone would take up the membership just to support his lavish lifestyle.

    • brendanm on 02/01/2024 - 18:15
      +6

      Look at the comments on Facebook posts of people that buy the memberships, you'll quickly ascertain the average IQ of the group.

      • Euphemistic on 02/01/2024 - 19:19
        +4

        They’re just the same as the poor parishioners giving $20 to the church that owns a private jet and 17 rolls Royce’s.

      • ScepticalD2024 on 16/01/2024 - 12:32

        I came here just to read a comment like this 😆
        💯

  • dbz88 on 02/01/2024 - 20:19
    +5

    Legal scam. E.g. lottery off a car worth $150k, sell $1M worth of tickets, give some to charity, pocket the rest.
    I couldn't see the current lottery on the website but very easy to see how much they swindle if they disclose the amount of tickets available in the draw.

  • shaybisc on 03/01/2024 - 08:04

    Lotteries are a bad bet compared to other forms of gambling. Return to player (RTP) is about 60%, compared to 85-90% for pokies and 84% for TAB, 75% for Keno, about 87% for casinos. I wonder what the RTP is for this?

    • Muzeeb on 03/01/2024 - 08:49
      +14

      RTP

      More like Return To Portelli on this occasion

  • TheBilly on 04/01/2024 - 16:00

    I thought it was illegal to do your own lottery

    • mrvaluepack on 04/01/2024 - 17:54

      Its not lottery, its called a "giveaway" instead lol

      • godofpizza on 11/01/2024 - 17:01

        if it's not a lottery. How are giveaways determined?

        • mrvaluepack on 11/01/2024 - 18:26

          apparently you can watch the live draws on facebook live every time.

  • Brick Tamland on 04/01/2024 - 22:44
    +1

    Sort of fits into a grey area. The main attraction is their giveaways but this type of business is not allowed. So the business is a shopping rewards business which happens to run to trade raffles for its members. Arguably, members are there for the raffles not the shopping deals.

    I used to be a member until I realised the odds of winning are much worse than what it seems. In a way it operates like a pyramid scheme. Members accumulate entries each month for $19.99 per month. So the earlier you became a member (the bottom of the pyramid) the more entries you have to win for your $19.99 per month. People who join later are at a severe disadvantage because their entries are lower but still pay the same monthly fee.

    Theres heaps of these raffles around now but LMCT has got some real good PR with the charity, the dude that blew up his AMG doing a burnout and the HSV W1 that got media attention and of course the block houses.

    • Kassa on 08/01/2024 - 08:01

      also doing negative marketing to get the word out - kind of genius i gues

  • Kassa on 08/01/2024 - 08:00
    +1

    Looks like Raffle saints is another brand of them, https://rafflesaints.com.au/privacy-policy/ - they have listed a email address on their privacy page - [email protected] which goes to LMCT…

    I went through to their FB page, and my feed on FB is full with these ads now…. anyway, i thought the same, that these lotteries are illegal, but looks like there is a loophole

  • Dejy on 08/01/2024 - 15:10

    His business is in a grey area, he found a loophole in the system to profit off running a lottery/raffle while pretending it's a subscription based rewards program.

    They got a lot of publicity so they are being investigated now cause it's a clear workaround of the laws. It's the same as tax loopholes though, technically they are (mostly) legal.

  • whitepuma on 24/01/2024 - 21:05
    +3

    I know that when he started, or at least when my facebook started getting plastered with his LMCT+ stuff i remember looking up on it a bit and found it very dodge. At the time it was bad enough that i saw people making pages flagging that LMCT+ was a scam or at least deceiving.

    Here were some of my findings from back then, i can't say if these findings are still accurate to how it operates today as i haven't researched it in a while:
    - LMCT+ use to position itself as a subscription business that gives you access to exclusive discounts, car auctions, and services, When in actual fact these services didn't exist or never got updated. It was used as a front to sell "tickets" to the lottery's. They danced around it being a legit lottery by saying you aren't buying the tickets directly, you are buying the LMCT+ service….weird thing is, whether you put $10 in or $1000 in you got the same "service" from LMCT+ but you would get a different amount of tickets for their lottery.
    - For lotteries over a certain value you need to register it with relevant gov bodies, they weren't doing that originally, and they didn't have any lottery license numbers. When some people asked them for lottery license numbers people would look them up and see they didn't marry up with what the lottery is actually offering, when that was brought to their attention their comments were removed and banned from the LMCT+ pages on facebook.
    - They wouldn't disclose what your chances of winning were (which is a big nono for lotteries), This is because they didn't have a cap on how many tickets can be sold (again, a big nono for lotteries)
    - They use to say they paired up with charity's etc (like starlight childrens foundation), and they would position their marketing to make it seem like money from every ticket sale would go to said charity….however that wasn't the case, it was just a 1 off donation (in the ealry days it would be like a couple of grand). So they would encourage people to buy more tickets on the basis that every ticket sale will lead to more money to said charity.
    - I know that when people would ask questions about things like this they would comment filter and block them from the LMCT+ pages, which is a bit of the reason why i think i saw the scam pages calling them out pop up.

    I'm not a lawyer, but i don't believe what they are doing is legal, at the very minimum they are dancing in the grey area. I'm sure if government gambling bodies put them to the same regulations as other big lotteries (like RSL art union etc) then LMCT+ would fail miserably.

    I can't bring myself to support LMCT+ or Adrian Portelli, everything their doing in my opinion is a scam that feeds off the people that don't have the intuition to research and understand these businesses. However i'll give the guy credit where credit is due, he's done amazingly in the PR space and so many people think he's the best thing since slice bread. I don't eat slice bread anymore either.

  • Blondy on 07/02/2024 - 01:44

    I have been a $100 and, after that, decreased to a $20 member in LMCT When… I noticed something was not quite right with my account and ENTRIES. I have been a member for 14 months. and
    That made me think - HOW DO I KNOW THAT MY ENTRIES ARE IN THE DRAW??

    I really can not check it as I don't have any tickets with numbers.
    Can anybody explain it to me. How does the Entry system work? Pros and Cons??
    Regards

  • bargaino on 09/02/2024 - 11:36

    The guy screams "colourful Melbourne identity".
    You'd think it was all money-laundering from the drug trade. But it seems he made most of his money from running a legal-ish gambling scheme. Does make me wonder how he has influenced authorities not to close the loophole.
    But he seems smart enough to pay taxes on all his gains, so I guess it as legit as Crown and James Packer.
    If we become a republic, this guy has President of Australia written all over him.

  • capslock janitor on 14/02/2024 - 14:00

    Don't understand why his social accounts are full of infantile posts

  • crashloaded on 16/02/2024 - 18:28

    I swear you can buy single tickets to some of the giveaways so how is it a rewards membership?

  • MrSader on 21/02/2024 - 09:41
    -4

    I dont get the hate? Powerball is a 1/130,000,000 chance. Oz lotto is a 1/45,000,000 chance. LMCT is offering $2 million for a much much lower cost to chance ratio and you can buy single tickets. No one uses it for the discounts. You become a member because every month that you're a member adds 20 free entries into all of their giveaways, and you get an extra free one for every month you're a member, which stacks. So if you're a memebr for 2 months you get 21 in each giveaway, 3 months 22, etc and theres multiple give aways a month. If it was dodgy the cops wouldve got him by now its too high profile for them not to have looked into it.

    • mrvaluepack on 21/02/2024 - 10:37
      +4

      Member since 60 minutes ago and this is your first comment? Nice try Mr. Portelli.

    • whitepuma on 22/02/2024 - 12:14
      +1

      Powerball is a 1/130,000,000 chance. Oz lotto is a 1/45,000,000 chance. LMCT is offering $2 million for a much much lower cost to chance ratio

      Except LMCT+ doesn't disclose what the chance ratio is, so this may not be true. You need to remember that things like powerball & oz lotto need to follow strict laws and are under constant scrutiny by relevant government bodies to make sure everything their doing is above board and "fair". LMCT+ doesn't categorize itself as a lotto (despite it appearing to the public just like one), it puts its prize draws as "giveaways" with their "Service" they provide, accordingly they don't need to and don't follow the same scrutiny as things like the powerball and oz lotto, surprisingly a lot of that scrutiny that powerball and oz lotto are under is to ensure they are fair by it's customers. You will find that if LMCT+ applied for the same lotto license as oz lotto & powerball in it's current state it will fail miserably and will be shut down.

      If it was dodgy the cops wouldve got him by now

      That's not how the legal system works. Many things that are dodgy take a lot of time before the legal system catches on, and even then once the legal system catches on they find its usually not clear black and white, so they need to weigh up if it's worth going after the individual (cost to investigate/take them down vs what they will get back from it. All weighed in with what the chance of success is), and VERY generally speaking the more money & fame the individual accrues the longer and harder it is to go after the person.

  • Greg hops on 13/03/2024 - 15:47
    +3

    It's a Ponzi scheme rewarding early investors eg friends and family this video will.clear it up https://youtu.be/pObG_WB4b5Y?si=hZ54tNqnPhWKMcwq

  • LouLouBcoo on 15/04/2024 - 16:35

    The SCAM is NOT the odds. Everyone knows the odds are never stacked in the punters favour.

    The LMCT Scam is that the winners, or at least some of the winners are insiders to Adrian. Sure people win shitty cars and small prizes… but you can bet the $550k went straight to an LMCT insider and Adrian keeps the cash.

    Why would anyone pay this clown a monthly fee… the ONLY winner here is Adrian.

    • mrvaluepack on 15/04/2024 - 17:32

      Or one of his extended family members lol..

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