From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm christinaming it. It's Friday, March twenty one, twenty twenty five. Someone's doing very well out of the NDIS and it's not people with disability. Billions of dollars per year are being sunk into middlemen and coordinators while established service providers are struggling. The Australian is revealing today the boss of Mitsubishi Motors in Australia says car yards around the country are packed
with electric vehicles nobody wants to buy. Sean Westcott is urging the government to pump the brakes on its renewable projects if it wants to avoid a price jump on petrol cars. Those exclusive stories alive right now at the Australian dot com dot au. He's the former Burger flipper who made his billions in online gambling. Lawrence Escalante is one of the new faces of wealth in Australia, featured in the list Australia's Richest two hundred and fifty. That's
today's episode. In the year fifty a d SO says the Bible, the apostle Paul founded the Church of Corinth. It was a bold play. Paul had written letters to the Corinthians, giving them some frank feedback about their way of life. Write. There Beside him in those early days of the Catholic Church was Timothy, a disciple who became one of Paul's most trusted friends, the guy Paul sent out on his trickiest missions. Also along for the ride
was the Greek apostle Titus, a gentile from Antioch. All three would be canonized as saints, but only the latter two, Timothy and Titus, would reach a new generation of Christians in video game form. A devout Catholic and avid gamer, Lawrence Escalante, sensed an opportunity. There was Christian music, Christian movies,
Christian TV shows, but video games. Inspired by the Almighty Nothing, Escalante, who was in the early two thousands a twenty three year old financial planner living in Perth, bought and re mortgaged his parents' home to raise the quarter of a million dollars necessary to develop the game. Timothy and Titus Saints Martyr's Heroes. Our tale begins as Saint Timothy and Saint Titus are going to Rome to collect their letters from Saint Paul and to hear news from their beloved
friend and father in christ. I'm looking forwards with my friend. I've made this journey with him before. There's the shortcut through the mountains. Follow me. But the dream of a Christian gaming franchise died with the game's publisher, whose financial troubles landed Escalante in a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar hole of his own friend. What are you doing? You must get out of here, not that you'd know it.
While he worked off the debt, Escalante gained his way to a more than four billion dollar fortune and the front cover of the list Australia's Richest two hundred and fifty.
Lawrence Escalante is a forty three year old Perth billionaire who loves loves his fast cars, loves his jets and loves living the high life. But he is a man. He's made a lot of money out of essentially a gaming.
John Stenzelt is the editor of the list, which is out in full today.
So it's a business that he calls virtual gaming worlds combined together, so gaming being the sort of gambling or casino games that people play online and the virtual world where people go gamify. These experiences he's put them together used a sweepstakes model. On top of that, I made a lot of money, mostly in America. It's actually something that's banned here in Australia, but Virtual Gaming WALS has actually turned into one of Australia's biggest private companies.
Laurence Escalante got his start flipping burgers for five dollars sixty five an hour at Hungry Jack's and later did a stint in retail in Sydney, working at the Reject Shop while he studied at mcquarie University. Now older and a whole lot wiser, he flauns his considerable wealth on Instagram, where he posts highly produced videos of his luxury cars, boats and private jets. Looking after your family as the
friends first and foremost. But now that I've ad it was like enjoying the toys and really a lot of other people like enjoying them as as a proxy into my life and through the windows of that might have having fun of them. Really, the wealth that Lawrence Escalante has accumulated is essentially a product of online gambling. As we've just said, that's a pretty big swing for a guy who hoped to bring his Christian values to a new generation of people through video games not too long ago.
How does he reconcile his wealth and his wealth from gambling with those values? Is he still religious?
He insists that behind all that there's a quite a pious family. His parents in the Philippines, very Christian family, grew up with those sort of values. I suppose in terms of gambling. What he said to me when I asked him that question is several problem gamblers in the family. I know what it's like. And it doesn't mean that he's not cognizant of the fact that what he's doing. You know, people have a choice whether they're going to play these games or spend their money on it and
things like that. So look, you could argue that it maybe he's being a little bit cute about it. He exists what he's doing is legal, and he's reconciled that with himself and seems to be going pretty well with it.
He also talks about the checks and balances that they've put in place online in order to hopefully prevent people from going down that route. What does he say about their effectiveness.
See, what he's done is raise the age of eighteen to twenty one to try and deal with any issues. He claims that they're doing quite well with artificial intelligence and other sort of parameters where they will cut people off if they're spending too much money. He has a background in financial planning, one of the things he did before getting into this business. With power planning, it sounds pretty boring going through people's financial plans or investment plans
and giving them advice. So he claims that with that sort of mindset, he can tell when people are spending too much or too much money is coming out of their budget. People should be allowed to have an entertainment budget. He says. Part of that entertainment is gambling. If you want to do that now, he reckons it's pretty good with keeping those checks and balances in place. He's got
the technology overlay with that. Of course, there is always going to be critics, always is with any sort of gambling company, whether it's crypto or horse racing or the sweepsakes model that Lawrence employs. I think he's not hiding to nothing with that. No matter what he says, really depends on what side of the fence you are, whether you're pro gambling or anti gambling, or even just agnostic about it as to what you think about.
Him coming up. What Lawrence Escalante's rise says about wealth in Australia today. John Stanzeltz says Lawrence Escalante represents a new kind of billionaire, young, driven and loving every minute of it. He appears on this year's Rich's two hundred and fifty list alongside youngster Ed Craven and Tim Heath, both crypto gambling mavens, as well as colorful Melbourne figure
Adrian Putta. Here's the billionaire who's been splashing his cash around for years, and today Adrian Patelli handed some of it out, no strings attached, a drink. Chris Samsworth doesn't work this hard mate, let's going on.
It's the least we can do.
May you do you think we'll see more people from that industry or from that sector appear on the list in coming years.
I think there's two separate elements to that. With Craven and also Tim Heath, they've gone global, so they've taken the Australian sort of I suppose acumen. You know, we're a nation of gamblers. It is an element of our society. Whether you're like it or not, that's there. They've taken that Australian acumen and gone global with it with the new technologies that we have. So they've benefited from the role out of it acround the world, not necessarily just
here in Australia. I think they will keep going. There's several other young Australian entrepreneurs that want to follow in their footsteps. I think that's here to stay. Quite frankly, as long as people still want to put money on a sporting event or on a horse playing casino, these guys are going to make it pretty easier for them to do that.
And just lastly, you've written in your editor's letter that this new crop of billionaires represent the changing nature of wealth in Australia. Generally, tell me a bit about that. How has the list changed in your time as the editor.
Yeah, I think you've gone from a lot of people that took decades to make their money, whether it was in bricks and mortar, in real estate or manufacturing, the slow accumulation of wealth, whereas these days, with technology, you can create a gambling company, you can create a software company. Here in Australia. Your market's the world and that what that means is you make your money a lot quicker
because your market's a lot bigger. So if you overlay that with the young generations upon sean, if you want to call it that, for social media sharing, what they're doing online, their lifestyle seems to be splashed all over their social media and that's I think that's what really encapsulates the modern billionaire.
Yeah, they are their own brand indeed. John Stenzel is the editor of the list Australia's Richest two hundred and fifty. It's out right now so you can get stuck into all the articles, analysis and videos at the Australian dot com dot au