An Australian couple claim that winning an AU $4.2 million mansion has turned into a ‘nightmare’ for them after the house was allegedly stripped of a number of important items, despite being advertised as ‘fully furnished’.
Now, the Griffin family have accused a man called Adrian ‘Lambo Guy’ Portelli of taking around AU $100,000 worth of stuff from the house before handing over the keys to them.
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The property investor says that he purchased the home in Gisborne, north of Melbourne, at auction before offering it as the main prize in a lottery, run by his company LMCT+.
The Griffins, from Ballarat in Victoria, won that lottery, and therefore were excited to move into the house.
However, they claim to have unearthed CCTV footage that shows Mr Portelli removing luxury goods such as a robotic lawnmower, a treadmill, Smeg appliances, and a BBQ smoker from the property.
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So, they’ve issued him with a bill for AU $102,000 listing all of the items that they claim are missing from their ‘fully furnished’ home.
They also claim to have a website called ‘Our LMCT Nightmare’ ready to go live if Portelli doesn’t hand over the money.
Kevin and Andrea Griffin have said that they believed they were entitled to all of the things that were shown in a video of the house when they won it, although Portelli contends that the items were put there for the purposes of the promotional video and weren’t part of the win, under the lottery terms and conditions.
He has said that the couple are ungrateful, and found cameras left behind by Channel Nine following a reality TV video, before they ‘hacked into them’.
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Upon doing so, they found footage of Portelli removing the items, which sparked their list of demands for the things to be returned.
Speaking to the Herald Sun, Andrea Griffin said: “We were just like ‘what the hell?’
“Why has he done this?”
Since then, Mr Portelli has released outtakes from the handover video in which the family complain about the state of the home as they were given the keys.
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Portelli has since announced that he’ll run a giveaway of the ‘mystery home goods’ through LMCT+.
On social media, he said: “On a positive note, I’m going to give AU $100,000 to homeless people all across Australia.
“Also we are going to give away all the Block stuff that we ‘took’ – for AU $1 dollar. And all that money, 100 percent, is going to homeless people as well.
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“I’m sure there’s a ton of homeless people at the moment that would die for a A$4.25 million house and a roof over their heads.
“Let’s try help out as many people as possible.”
In another video, he branded the couple ‘ungrateful’, adding: “I’ve lived in the US, I’ve been to other countries. It’s not like this at all.
"People support successful people. Here it’s just like, they want to shred bits off ya.
“It’s sad because it discourages people from wanting to be successful.”
LADbible has contacted LMCT+ for further comment.
Tom Wood