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the description of this episode. It turns out that Troy Penell lasts another season or two after that, and at some point either he decided to retire from the top level of the game or he was moved on one or the other. The other interest that he had, apart from women other than his wife, was racing and race horses. They basically said that he had favored the Bulldogs and that had the free Kicks account been reversed, that they might well have won the game. I'm Andrew Rule. This
is Life and Crimes. As we go to air with this story, it's already been out there for quite a while that a former AFL umpire, quite a distinguished and
experienced umpire, called Troy Panell had gone missing. Troy Penell was a Western suburban umpire as a youngster, and in two thousand and five, against the advice of those people who knew him best out in the Western suburbs at the old Footscray District League, as it was against their advice, the AFL recruited him as an AFL umpire and he went on to umpire for thirteen years until twenty eighteen, and in that time he was regarded, I think in
many ways a pretty good umpire, pretty quick and experience seasoned, all that good stuff. But he did have a few falls. From Grayson is one spectacular one which is perhaps interesting
in the context of what happened later. In twenty sixteen, Troy Penell umpired a game at Docklands between the team that he actually supports, that would be the Western Bulldogs and the Adelaide Crows, who come from another state and have very little to do with Melbourne and don't have a lot of followers in Melbourne, but they do have a lot of followers in Adelaide where they're from. And in this game, of course we have you know, two umpires in this game. Troy Penell awarded seventeen free kicks
to the Western Bulldogs and one to the Adelaide Crows. Now, this was a very tight game and in fact, at one point towards the full time siren just minutes out, the Bulldogs I think were only two points ahead. Adelaide were within one kick of winning the game. And then along came a magic free for the Bulldogs and bang bang couple of quick goals and ultimately the Bulldogs won
by fifteen points. Now, that win which was back in May of twenty sixteen, but that win was a crucial one for the Bulldogs because it pushed them up the table towards the top, which meant that they would get a run at the finals and then get into the finals.
And indeed, as any football follower knows, they came home with a wet sale and they won an historic premiership flag, the first one I think since nineteen fifty four, so it was basically the first flag in a lifetime and only the second footscray flag as we used to say foots Gray or Bulldogs flag in history in our AFL or formerly VFL. Now this greatly incensed the Crows supporters. As the season war on and the Crows were obviously
not going to get to the Grand Final. Crow's supporters formed a deep and abiding hatred of Troy Panell and blamed him for their problems. They basically said that he had favored the Bulldogs and that had the free kicks account been reversed, that they might well have won the game and gone on to greater things. And meanwhile, the
Bulldogs would not have. Now, that is a supposition that's there to be made, and they may well be right, but to some extent, most people would think of that as just the partisan barracking by highly partisan supporters in Adelaide against highly partisan supporters of the Bulldogs here in western Melbourne. Let's jump forward a couple of years. It turns out that Troy Panell lasts another season or two
after that exhibition of umpiring. I think there was widespread criticis and perhaps some of that criticism permeated the AFL, and at some point either he decided to retire from the top level of the game or he was moved on one or the other, and he I think umpired at a lesser level and he became I think a coach of other umpires, a junior league umpires.
Or whatever that sort of stuff.
He lived in the Outer West. I think he had grown up around Werribee. He bought a nice new house on a big block, a big new house on a big new block with a swimming pool at Gisban sixty days after that big game, the Docklands game. Interestingly, that was on the seventh of May and sixty days later on the seventh of July, which might be a total coincidence,
and probably is. He bought a big new house at Gisman for just north of eight hundred thousand dollars, which was a fair amount at the time in twenty sixteen. It's now eight years ago.
That house these days.
Is probably in the low one point something's one point two one point three.
Quite a bit. That house is not out of the way.
I guess a guy who was just turning forty mid career. He's got a pretty reasonable job at a place called Sea Roads Shipping, I think it's called. They're based in Port Melbourne and they run container traffic, a lot of container traffic across Bass Strait and I think across the Tasment of New Zealand. Thousands of containers a year in goods being shipped back and forth. Troy Pannell's day job was as a sort of a managerial role inside that
sea road shipping business. That job, it wasn't terribly highly paid, but it was quite responsible. He'd been there some years and he was trusted with organizing payments around the office, and he was authorized to pay bills of up to
five thousand dollars, et cetera, et cetera. And it turns out that he might have seen this as an opportunity because at some point Troy Perenell became the sole director proprietor of a small and obscure company which had a name something like Containers Surveying and Maintenance Proprietary EMITTED or similar a name like that, and it was a name that suggested that what that company did was to maintain
shipping containers. That if you had containers that had a problem or loose rivets or hinges that were broken or whatever, it might be that this company could take your container on the back of a truck and you weld it up or fix things and make sure it was fit for purpose.
Good idea.
The only problem with it was that this company was apparently false front was a bogus company. It was a company, but it didn't actually have a workshop, and it didn't actually allegedly do any work. It didn't take containers anywhere, and it didn't work on them wherever they were. No
work was being done. The only transaction to do with that little company between Sea Roads Shipping Troy Penel's employer and this little company set up, the only transaction was that every month or so he would invoice Sea Road
Shipping for the maintenance of X number of containers. And the reality of this is that over a ten year period, can you believe this a ten year period, he had charged the company he worked for around eight hundred dollars a throw, eight hundred dollars a time for each container that they were using. Over ten years, that added up to something like a hundred thousand containers. In a year they'd use, you know, ten thousand containers or whatever, and
over ten years it's ten hundred thousand. And the result of that, if you're multiplied by eight hundred, is eight point seven million dollars. That this company that he had set up allegedly stripped eight point seven million dollars out of his employer's cash accounts.
Clearly, it was quite a.
Successful business sea roads shipping, because no one actually noticed that this might be a problem. No one was actually having a close look at the containers to see what was being done or not being done to them. And it came to light only because of an alert accountant who said, oh, there's a problem here with GST and bas this company, you know, container surveying whatever it's called.
They're not paying. Yes, now we better ask Troy here, who handles all that transactions with the containers maintenance, what's going on there? And they asked him, and he duck, shoved and duck the question, and it wasn't long before they worked out that the money had been paid out into basically a void. And indeed, when you looked up this company, its sole director was one Troy Panell, their
own shipping manager or whatever his title was now. His title sounded good, but he was on a salary of only about one hundred and ten thousand for most of that time. Not a big salary, but probably okay. Given that probably wasn't a lot of hard work, and clearly he wasn't being supervised very strictly. He could pretty well do what he liked, and indeed he did do what
he liked. So the balloon went up last year in twenty twenty four, and ultimately he was summoned to court it They started a civil action against him and against his his company, I suppose, and it was all heading in that direction. He obviously could no longer work for them, and he was going to turn up to court and eventually the system would have extracted large amounts of money from him and his assets in order to pay back his employer part of least of what he'd allegedly stripped
from them. Now what were his assets? Now this is interesting. Troy Panell had bought at the House of Gissement, Yes, that was twenty sixteen. Troy Panell and his then wife, who claims no knowledge of any of these things, and I have no reason to disbelieve her. I'm told by a lawyer that I trust that she has been sort of broadsided by this, that she's been lied to consistently, and we'll come to that. And he has apparently betrayed
those closest to him quite a bit. He and his then wife they had premises in Kinton called Duck Duck Goose the Larder I think it was called. It was a sort of a food shop I think did pizzas and it did food and it might have done gift wear and stuff as well.
Sort of quite a big, stylish.
Premises in the main street of Canton. It was the sort of place that people driving through tourist traffic, that sort of thing they'd pull up, maybe buy something from Memento and buy some food or whatever.
Coffee.
And another one down in Sedn Now that of course is the upmarket piece of Footscray sed and he had one there with a quite a fashionable name. I think it was called something Galaxia. It was a small and fashionable cafe of the sort that people refer to as instagrammable. It would produce beautifully served dishes of meals that people would take photographs of before they consumed them, as some people do so. Troy perenew until the manure hit the fan seemed to be going okay. He was involved in
the businesses. He had the house at Gisbon where he and his then wife lived with their children, I think two children. But Troy had a few worries. He had
a few other responsibilities. One of them was forgot where he actually lived, and he formed an attachment for a woman other than his wife, and she was ensconced in a property in ascert Vale and he had a long term relationship with her while still living at home with his wife, and he managed to father a baby girl with that woman, and that led to some disharmony in his domestic arrangements, as it might. In fact, their wife is married to called him a liar and a cheat,
which a lot of people would probably agree with. And the other interest that he had, apart from women other than his wife, was racing and race horses, and Troy Panell he used to go to New Zealand, I think.
Regularly because of his work.
I think perhaps Sea road shipping had a bit to do with shipping across the Tasmans to New Zealand, and he used to.
Go there fairly regularly.
And at some point he decided that he would get more involved in racing. He's clearly always been a bit keen on it, and he started to buy the odd horse.
In New Zealand.
But this is where the story gets interesting. You'd expect Troy Panell he suspect number one for draining eight point seven million out of a company. You'd expect, probably if you were guessing you'd think that he was somebody who would buy expensive race horses and bet like the Watsons, just bet in five thousand dollar lots, ten thousand dollar lots and bet like hell. But he didn't. He bought
cheap horses in New Zealand. The best one he bought, the best race horse that he bought, actually cost ten thousand dollars as a yealing, which is less than.
The cost of production. It's a bargain. That's a sort of hack price.
That's what people pay for a good kid's pony, really, And he bought this Philly for ten thousand dollars. In twenty and eighteen, he did a deal with a husband and wife training team over there, that is Vaughn and Trudy Keegan, who are sort of boutique trainers, people who trained twenty or thirty horses, sort of small stable, and he said, can you get this one broken in and train it for me?
Whatever?
And they did, and then he bought another horse and another horse, and I think eventually around that time eighteen nineteen, the beginning of COVID, he had up to nine horses over there. Now, even in New Zealand where prices are lower and I think racecources can be trained a bit cheaper. In New Zealand, he was running up bills of around
ten thousand dollars a month. Now, that is quite a bit for the average person, but if you are as it is alleged stripping out somewhere between half a million and one million dollars a year from an embezzment scheme. And this is the allegation about Troy Penell. He would have plenty of money to pay ten thousand dollars a month in training fees, because that would work out about one hundred and twenty grand a year, and yet it is alleged that he was getting anything up to eight hundred thousand.
Dollars a year out of his alleged scheme.
And so really, even though it's a big expense ten thousand dollars a month for the average working wage person, in the context of this, it's not. The other thing is this, you would expect him to be a big punter, you'd expect him to be a degenerate punter. But again this is a bit surprising.
Now.
I set out on this story to find out who Troy Perenell really was, and I thought no worries he will be another one of these embezzlers, like the classic bank manager of the classic bank teller. These people that can get their hands on money, they start gambling, they have a loss, they think they can borrow something out
of the till. Go to the races, put it on the favorite, win it all back, go back, restore it to the till, go to the casino, put it on black or red, etc. It's the slippery slope, and it happens a lot, and it is always happened, and there are always gambling addicts who will end up embezzling cash to cover their losses, and they become more and more desperate because you know, they're two million in the hole. They've got to try and bet their way out. There's
no other way, and they become increasingly desperate. I thought this would be that case. But I put out some feelers with a couple of sources in the corporate gaming and betting industry as they call it. And one of those sources knows a lot of people across certain corporate bookmakers, and the other one knows other people in other corporate book makers. So we're looking here. You know, Ladbrooks Sports Bet, the tab tap Corp bet three six five better, all
the usual suspects. And the message I got back from both those contacts was we've never heard of this guy, and if he's betting, we doubt his better big and clearly, if he's betting, he's betting using somebody else's accounts, not his own, not certainly not his own name. He doesn't seem to exist, And I thought, well, that's not that surprising. As a former afl umpire, he will have been flagged
as a person who shouldn't bet on sporting contests or whatever. Okay, So I then talk to two live bookies, bookies the old fashioned bookies who go to the races and put up the odds on a board and say give it a name, punters and all that stuff. And the two I spoke to are two of the most well known, experienced and biggest bookies left in this state. There aren't that many of them left, but these two guys are
right up there, and they are very wise people. They have seen a lot of punters come and go, and it's fair to say that if there was someone betting in telephone numbers, these guys would know about it. If the guy was not betting, through them, they would have heard who he was betting through same result. Neither of them had heard anything about this Troy Panell, or indeed about anybody that sort of fits the profile. Bookies call
Lisa to Guy's a gold brick. A gold brick is someone with access to a lot of money who feels an urge to bet with it. Bookies love them because ultimately they will lose, and bookies will benefit from those losses. They had never heard of anyone matching that description. No gold brick, regardless of the name. They just hadn't heard of one. My four contacts across the entire betting gaming industry in Victoria are telling me that this bloke isn't
an active large punter. Now, the two lots of trainers that have trained for him, that is the husband and wife team in New Zealand, the Kegans, and quite a respected small trainer here at Kinon called Charles Cassa. Nice guy, looks like Frank Zappa, the musician, and in fact Charles Cassa before he was a horse trainer. At one point he used to sing and play guitar in rock and roll bands. So there you go a bit of Frank
Zappa about him. Charles is a horseman first, racial trainer. Second, he trains a few horses and goes okay that Kenton lives a nice life with the family on the farm and trains away. He told me he had a conversation with me. He said he met Troy Panell at the races at Geelong Day. Used to both be around Gelong at one time, and he said it was one of those casual relationships you fall into it the races. You see somebody see me regularly and you get to nod
to them and say hello mate, Hello mate. And he said I only knew him as mate for quite a while before I knew what his name was. I had no idea what he did. I didn't know he's an umpire. I just seen him at the races occasionally, and at some point point he's approached me and said, I've got a horse. It's a barrier rogue or a float. Rogue won't load and a float and I need somebody as a good horseman to try and train it, handle it,
educate it. And I think the story was that he cass undertook to try and re educate the horse or whatever. It doesn't matter, but that's how he started off training the odd horse for Troy Penell. What's his summary of Troy Perenew, Well, his summary of him is nice enough. Bloke didn't see that much of him. He said, he didn't visit the stables, you know, all the time. He
didn't hang around all the time. Now again, he visited the stables, but he said he didn't give the vibe of the wealthy owner, the owner with cash to burn. He didn't give the vibe of the guy that's pulling eight hundred thousand a year out of a business and spending it on racing or on anything else. He said, he's cars. His cars were sort of working class cars.
He said.
At one point he had a fairly secondhand subar route and another time he had a fairly secondhand rav four. That's the small Toyota issue, a reasonably humble vehicle. He said, that was the sort of vehicle he was driving. I was aware that he had the businesses in Canton, but nothing about him shouted spare money or money to burn. And he said, I doubt he ever had a really big bet. He said, a lot of owners talk as
if they bet bigger than they do. He said, quite a lot talking thousands or talk about having five hundred each way on a horse or whatever, and he said, the reality usually is it's half that. If they say they're having five hundred each way, it's probably two hundred each way. And he said, I can only remember one time where I think he act one heavily enough to push it down from nine dollars a nine dollar quit that he's eight to one in the old into three
point fifty. And that was an Arra rat. Now Arrarat races, God bless it is a reasonably small meeting, reasonably small event where the betting pools are small, and if someone had a solid bet, you know, a thousand dollar bet, it may well push a horse into much shorter odds, at least temperarily. And he said that would be the only time I can think of when Troy Penell had a decent bet, And he said he never seemed to put enough on to want to sling a jockey for winning.
He said, if we want a race, he said, I'd drink bourbon. He never bought me a bottle of bourbon, which you'd expect an owner to do occasionally if you win a race for them by a present.
Just sort of.
The Manners never did any of that. He said he wasn't a big notor he didn't spend up. I didn't see any sign of spare cash. Now back in New Zealand, you know, we've got horses being trained in two countries. Back in New Zealand, we have the Philly that he paid ten thousand dollars for In New Zealand. She proved to be a very handy animal. And the trainers over there, the Kegans, told Troy Pernell, this is around twenty nineteen, I think in there they said this Philly's got ability,
and they waited for her to grow out. She's a great big thing, big and tall and long. They had to wait for it to sort of keep growing, and eventually, as a three year old, they gave her her first start. Now, she started in what we would call sort of a semi city start. It was at Awapuni, which is the Palmerston North Racetrack. It's a pretty serious racetrack on the North Island and maybe like Geelong here or something like that, or maybe you know, pretty serious track. And she won easily,
she won by five lengths. Interestingly, she paid eight dollars fifty starting price was eight dollars fifty, which would suggest that no one had a fortune on it. Clearly no one had, you know, twenty grand on it. But they think, they think if Troy Panell is telling the truth, which we're not sure, they think Troy Perell hooked that filly up in multis multi bets, so with her to win, with another one to run a placing, with another one to do something else. They put together these multi bets.
And they said that he told them that he'd invested six and a half thousand dollars and he ended up winning more than eighty that day, and maybe he had some other bets as well, and claimed that ultimately that day he won more than one hundred. But anyway, they saw no actual proof of it. But he did on that give them a gift. He gave them a sling, as it's known in the trade, and I suspect that that sling was much smaller than the bills that he
didn't pay. Subsequently, because that Philly, he brought her across to Australia. He took her up to his other trainer, Charles Casser at Canton, and as soon as she started working at Canton, the first thing that the local trainers and jockeys and workwriders notice was.
That the Philly was a roarer.
She had a throat obstruction is the way to put it, which meant that as she galloped with any sort of speed and breathed heavily, she had a very raspy, loud, raspby breath, which is an indicator of a throat problem. And it's something that when it's that serious, it has to be remedied. If it can be remedied at all, it has to be remedied with quite serious surgery, throat surgery.
And indeed what happened was they operated on that Philly and she had a long spell I think nine months, and they brought her back in the best she could do here in Australia in Melbourne was to run third. She want third, rest of the time, she mean basically mostly last. So she went completely wrong. So Troy Pernell's big throw at the stumps, the ten thousand dollars Philly that won three good races in New Zealand and won
him some money. When he gets here, she goes wrong, as happens with horses, and eventually, when his problems started, he sold her for fifty thousand dollars as a broodman. The people that bought her sold her for one hundred and seventy thousand dollars as a brood may which was interesting turnaround. And in the meantime someone sold a fole out of her for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now that fole was not sold by Troy Pernell, not
officially anyway. It was sold in the name of a particular stud, and studs sometimes do that on behalf of clients.
They prepare yealings for sales. And you know, Joe Smith might have a yeling to sell, so he takes it to Shady Trees Stud, and Shady Tree Stud say, we'll look after your yeling for fifty five dollars a day, and we'll lead it around and groom it and rug it and feed it and make it beautiful and shiny, and providing you pay the bills, we'll organize all that and sell it for you at the sales and after
we take out our cut, you'll get the balance. Now, it might be that that yealing that was sold for one hundred and fifty thousand to the top trainer Kiaran Mar. It's quite possible that you know, a large percentage of that money went to Troy Panell. I don't know, and in a sense that probably doesn't matter. What matters is that when the horsemen.
You were hit the fan.
Late last year Troy Perennell was on notice that he was in diabolical trouble. First of all, he was going to be sued to return the money that was missing, and clearly that would mean that any assets that he owned would be liable, you know.
Shops, houses, whatever, horses or whatever it might be.
He was due to front at the Supreme Court in Melbourne on the ninth of May this year. That's only a few weeks ago. He didn't front, and about thirty five minutes after he was due in court, so this is, you know, ten thirty five or whatever, the lawyers for the other side get an email from him saying, Oh, I'm sorry, I can't make it to court today. I've hit a kangaroo in my car and I have no functioning indicator and my windscreen is cracked and I'm sitting
by the side of the road. He didn't say where. I don't think. I'm sitting by the side of the road waiting for roadside assist or a tow truck or whatever, and that more or less was the last that anybody had heard or seen of Troypenel. Subsequently, a warrant was issued for his arrest, and by mid May he had
vanished into smoke. He hit the toe as they say, and had gone everyone thinks into state or somewhere, and he wasn't really heard of apart from one email suggesting that he was in Queensland, which is possibly untrue that he was there. He may well have been closer to home. None of us knew where he was. I suspect no
one knew where he was. But it would appear that the authorities, despite the arrest warrant, were happy to leave him out there somewhere, providing he got a chance to turn up to court for his latest hearing on the sixth of June. He didn't front and in fact, on that day he was spotted by a police car in central Victoria, not that far from Dalsford, and apparently at some point he's crashed his car, a lone vehicle crash, as if he's run off the road and hit a
tree or whatever it was. Now he was apparently injured badly enough, or it appeared that he was injured badly enough that he was flown to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne.
To be treated.
It appeared that he was seriously injured, and there was a lot of sympathy for his situation, but it would appear that he wasn't terribly seriously injured, and that at some point in the near future he will front court to face the original proceedings and also at some point to face charges, and that.
Is where that story sits.
So we looked at a man that is an umpire who fancied a life of wine, women and race horses, not necessarily in that or Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcast's sold. And if you want further
information about this episode, links are in the description. Four