Five years ago Greg Lasrado drove a $500,000 black Lamborghini Diablo, rubbed shoulders with high-powered people such as US president Bill Clinton, lived between multimillion-dollar penthouses and bought racehorses for fun. Today his sole asset is a rusty ute, he lives in his parents' spare bedroom and spends most weekends helping his mum with the housework.
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During the 1990s, Lasrado went from being a university student drop-out to Australia's No.1 internet porn tycoon, accumulating a $60million fortune along the way. But an extravagant lifestyle and poor business management sent him on a downward spiral to a broken marriage, heroin addiction and, finally, bankruptcy.
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Lasrado was born in Horsham, Victoria, in 1970 - a year after his parents migrated from India in search of a better life. He grew up in Moree, in country NSW, and has fond memories of his school holidays "driving tractors and working on the local farms".
In 1988, he moved to Brisbane and, wanting to make his "parents proud", enrolled at university, working in ice-cream parlours and pubs to make ends meet. After dropping out of university, he then started a business buying and selling computers from a basement beneath his house. Through "computer contacts" and "a random sequence of events", he suddenly found himself becoming a major player in the rapidly emerging world of online pornography.
The self-described "naive youngster" launched more than 200 individual adult websites, one by one. "It was a crazy time," he says. "I was still this country boy at heart, finding my feet in the world. I remember saying to my business partner at the time, if this makes us $100,000 for the year, we'll be laughing. We ended up making that in our first month."
Lasrado acknowledges there was "no secret" behind his success: "There were people worldwide who had never felt comfortable entering a newsagent's and buying an adult magazine. Then along came the internet and all of a sudden, in the privacy of their own home, they could access it all, including specific fetishes like bondage, big boobs or whatever."
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As Lasrado's business affairs imploded, so did his personal life. In 2001, his growing celebrity profile in Queensland led to an extortion attempt at the hands of a notorious criminal identity. "I was contacted by a supposed businessman about a money-making idea. When I turned up for the meeting, a shotgun was pointed at my head. They demanded money and said my family would be harmed if I went to police. But, to be honest, I didn't know what else to do."
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While he is being pursued for unpaid taxes, it is a 2005 road accident which causes him to live in a "permanent state of limbo". In tendered court documents, Brisbane mother-of-three Vairari Inglis alleged she was a passenger in a car driven by her husband when Lasrado's Lamborghini clipped their car, "causing it to spin and flip on its roof".
Medical reports said Mrs Inglis suffered a "significant crush injury and loss of function in her fingers." A psychiatric report states: "She [Mrs Inglis] described being able to see a trail of hair and blood [as] she desperately attempted to pull herself inside the car."
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So what really goes through the mind of a man who lost $60million and now lives at home with his parents? "Look, it took losing everything for me to sit down and realise there are far more important things in life," he says....
by daba
