Pickering is commonly known as a cartoonist, but he's also an inveterate liar, a bankrupt conman with a seedy history of fleecing the gullible of millions of dollars while not paying his own bills.

With various failed business ventures and numerous personal relationships of equal standard, for decades he has plied a grubby trade behind sundry stooges and partners, assisted by the odd sharp lawyer and hapless corporate and consumer regulators. He is not a nice man.

Hiding behind other people, Pickering ran a high-pressure cold-call racket that promised mug punters computer software that would pick winners on the race track for them. Yes, you would have to be a fool to fall for such a thing, but as shysters like Pickering know, there are actually a lot more than one born every minute.

Pickering used his creativity to refine the fraud, an early adopter of mailing out glossy video presentations of the good life to be had from the magic of computer power applied to hayburners. His first effort featured himself, but he quickly retired from the front line, hiring an actor for the role, a familiar face from a well-loved soap. It became a very big business with glossy offices in a prime Gold Coast site, the home of so many scams.

All of this must seem a long way from the business pages, but Pickering decided he could apply the same formula to the stock market. Substitute picking stocks for picking horses, hire an unfortunate newsreader who thought it was legitimate software, and the scam was taken to market under the name of National Futrax.




http://www.smh.com.au/business/larry-pickering--the-conman-stalking-gillard-2012...