Embattled gaming giant Star Entertainment is facing a fresh scandal, with leaked files revealing it has gutted its problem gambling programs, canvassed misleading casino financiers with an inflated financial forecast, and had to fire a senior executive 10 days after his hiring over contested allegations that he made grossly inappropriate comments.
The internal correspondence detailing Star’s recent operations in NSW and Queensland lays bare serious internal concerns about underfunding of its problem gambling programs, while allowing low-income punters and other high-risk patrons to chalk up burgeoning losses.
The files also expose a plot to mislead the troubled gaming giant’s lenders, and systemic failures that undermined its financial crime prevention responsibilities.
The damning leak comes as eight Star insiders describe an unfolding collapse in culture and governance since last year’s takeover by pokies empire scion Bruce Mathieson jnr and American casino operator Bally’s Corporation.
One Star source said that part of the casino business was at risk of being run like “a pokies venue on steroids”, while another casino source described the firm’s problem gambling approach as “appalling”.
The investigation by this masthead can reveal that top executive Dave Whimpey was sacked 10 days after he was headhunted by his friend Mathieson to run Australia’s newest casino, after two female employees alleged he had used inappropriate language at work.
But Whimpey has told this masthead that the investigation into him was a baseless “witch-hunt” and used to force him out because he held concerns about the company’s operations.
“The fact of the matter is, I raised governance issues in my first 10 days. They’re serious governance issues,” he said of his brief stint at the helm of Star Brisbane.
The confidential sources who also described poor governance at Star spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to talk publicly. But many of their concerns are backed up by the leaked internal correspondence and cast doubt over the efforts by the ASX-listed firm to shake off its scandal-ridden recent history and regain its gaming licences in NSW and Queensland.
Mathieson jnr was appointed Star chief executive in December, and his family’s investment arm has poured more than $200 million into the business since its savaging in multiple inquiries led to the loss of its licences as well as purges of its board and management.
Bally’s entered the picture six months earlier, offering Star a complex $300 million bailout package alongside the Mathieson family.
The fresh revelations come at a highly sensitive time for the group, with its annual results due this week. Bally’s separately warned its own investors this week that it may not be able to meet debts unless it sells assets or finds new financing.
Next month, a special monitor appointed by the NSW and Queensland regulators in 2022, former NRL executive Nick Weeks, will rule if Star can have its gaming licences returned – a decision that will not get any easier amid the new revelations.
New dog, old tricks
Ever since it was plunged into scandal following a 2021 investigation by this masthead, Star has been under financial strain. It peaked most recently in April, when Star’s burgeoning debt forced the sale of its 50 per cent stake in the Destination Brisbane Consortium, or DBC – the entity that controls the sprawling Brisbane riverside casino.
The buyers were Star’s existing shareholder partners, Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook Enterprises and Far East Consortium. The Mathieson jnr-led Star was retained in Brisbane as DBC’s casino operator, while also keeping its ownership and operating rights at its Sydney and Gold Coast gaming and hotel venues.
The ownership shake-up sparked intense pressure inside Star to retain the support of DBC’s new owners and its bankers.
The leaked files document discussion about the potential gross overstatement of the Star’s financial forecasts for its Brisbane casino. According to the leak, these April 2026 discussions laid out a strategy to create two budgets.
One set of budget figures for the 2027 financial year were based on a forecast that “that is achievable” if ambitious. But a second budget was drawn up for discussion among Star’s managers. This budget, according to the documents, was “being communicated to the banks” lending to DBC.
In a response to potential use of the two sets of numbers, a senior manager warned that the second budget was pure fantasy, with figures so unrealistic that they could never be realised.
“The DBC [Destination Brisbane Consortium] Budget that is going to the banks shows an increase so large that everyone is certain we will go nowhere near achieving it,” the email states.
According to the documents, Star’s inflated second budget involved the Brisbane property increasing its total revenue by 25 per cent in this financial year and growing EBITDA by 236 per cent.
This would require Star to post a $596.5 million in revenue for the new financial year and an EBITDA of $168.8 million. In comparison, its proposed budget for internal circulation – which was still ambitious – required an uplift of 12 per cent revenue for the year and 165 per cent uplift in EBITDA.
The floating of the dual budget plan sparked concern among some Star insiders who were worried that it mirrored the misconduct exposed during the 2024 NSW Bell Inquiry.
In that probe, Star’s former chief financial officer alleged that she was asked to alter the books to make the company’s finances appear healthier.
Asked about the creation of the two budgets, Star Brisbane’s chief financial officer Richard Chan said this week that the alternate budget was created for internal discussion rather than for any external party.
“It’s just a high-level model that we would have put together,” Chan said.
“As far as I’m aware, Star did not share anything with the banks because these budgets were only prepared for internal purposes, and we did discuss them with DBC, but it was meant to be internal.”
The DBC consortium did not respond to questions about whether the information was ever forwarded to the banks.
Casino duties: Keeping the right people from gambling
The initial inquiry by Adam Bell, SC, into Star described the casino’s operations as a “case study of unethical conduct and cultural” failure that involved possible tax evasion and $900 million of banned gambling transactions.
The 2022 inquiry came after The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes exposed widespread criminal infiltration and regulatory avoidance inside the casino group. Star, among other things, hid criminal gang-linked junket operator Suncity’s illegal cash cage and allowed it to operate a secret gambling room.
The findings led to separate court actions by the corporate watchdog against the leadership team and another by the anti-money-laundering regulator, sparking a management clean-out.
Star’s arduous remediation under new leadership was interrupted by a second inquiry by Bell that focused on issues including the falsification of welfare checks on customers and bulk approval of source-of-wealth checks for high-risk customers.
To regain the confidence of NSW and Queensland regulators, Mathieson jnr had to show that his company would stop vulnerable problem gamblers from blowing their savings, as well as ban punters with suspicious income sources.
Running a casino was always going to be a challenge for Mathieson jnr, whose executive experience was tied to the family pub and pokies business, ALH Hotels. The leaked files suggest Mathieson jnr approached his new role boldly.
In the week between Christmas and New Year, shortly after the change in ownership, Mathieson jnr fired off a staff missive signalling plans to close the company’s corporate office and shift management to a localised approach. It would result in hundreds of job losses.
One of Mathieson jnr’s first appointments was his friend Dave Whimpey, who joined Star as chief operating officer and interim chief executive of The Star Brisbane in early March. Whimpey was a former chief executive of Surf Lifesaving Queensland and had run his Brisbane Racing Club for almost six years.
Mathieson jnr said in a March ASX statement that Whimpey, along with two other new executives, would enhance “the stability and capability” of senior leadership. Instead, his appointment was a disaster.
Within days, law firm Allens was hired to investigate whether Whimpey had “engaged in inappropriate behaviour in the workplace”, according to an internal document
Two sources with direct knowledge of the situation, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said Allens was told that Whimpey allegedly made grossly inappropriate references that offended his female colleagues.
Mathieson jnr terminated his star recruit for “misconduct” within a month, advising his management team in an email that “after careful consideration, I can confirm that Dave Whimpey is no longer with the business”. The sacking, though, was never disclosed to the ASX.
Whimpey has his own version of events, claiming that the complaint was baseless and that Allens never gave him a chance to explain himself. He said the complaint arose after he sought to explain the behaviour of gamblers by referencing what Whimpey said was the academically cited “urinal theory”.
“All it says is people … don’t want to sit next to each other when they’re playing gaming machines. It’s exactly the same as the way men go into urinals,” Whimpey said.
Whimpey said that “even Bruce couldn’t understand” why his comments were alleged to have offended one of his female colleagues.
“He [Bruce] rolled his eyes, and I said, ‘mate, there’s nothing to this’.”
Whimpey said he suspected the real reason he was sacked was because he had begun calling out “serious” governance issues at Star. Pressed on what they were, Whimpey said he was “not prepared to talk about what they are”.
“I just need to let this roll and let my lawyers handle it,” he said.
As well as hiring and firing, Mathieson jnr has taken a hands-on approach deciding who can punt in Star’s casinos, according to the leaked records.
In late January, David Chiu, the chairman of one of Star’s major shareholders, tried to enter the Sovereign Room, an exclusive area of the Brisbane casino for high-spending members.
Chiu’s Far East part-owns Star Brisbane’s licence holder, Destination Brisbane Consortium, making him a close associate of the casino which, in Queensland, does not prohibit him from gambling, though it means he must meet strict suitability requirements from the government.
If Chiu had a casino key employee licence – which is usually given to a senior manager, director or executive that oversees a property – he would typically not be allowed to gamble inside the precinct.
Internal records reveal that in early 2026, Chiu wanted to gamble at “his discretion” in high-roller rooms, a move that governance staff believed was “highly inappropriate”.
Mathieson jnr personally intervened to press Chiu’s case. According to notes sighted by this masthead, he said that concern about Chiu gambling was “ridiculous” and those opposed to it needed “to work in the grey”.
In an attempt to resolve the matter, the casino considered offering Chiu a special card that enabled him to move more freely through the casino precinct. The consortium did not respond to questions about how this was resolved.
Mathieson jnr’s support of Chiu’s desire to gamble was indicative of the chief executive’s broader hope of getting more punters through Star’s doors and re-evaluating integrity measures.
In an email to staff in May, Mathieson jnr stressed his desire to shift Star’s focus from banning problem gamblers and excluding high-risk customers (through a process known as Withdrawal of Licences or WOLs) and instead to a concerted effort to stop punters leaving Star’s casinos.
“Thank you all for your attention and action in regards to working on saving each and every customer we have!” he wrote.
“No doubt this is challenging how we have done things in safer gaming (exclusions and time play), security (conduct WOL’s), and fin[ancial] crime management. This requires support and input from EVERY person involved in this process, for EVERY customer.
“I am happy to hear of any further suggestions/opinions as we work to save every customer and this business!”
As Star has ramped up its marketing efforts, Mathieson jnr has presided over a significant decline in the numbers of risk and compliance staff responsible for managing problem punters and high-risk gamblers.
According to internal records, the number of staff in group compliance this year fell from 17 to four, while group risk headcount fell from five to two.
One source said the investigations team had almost halved in the first six months of 2026, and the financial crime team, which is in charge overseeing anti-money-laundering and due diligence policies, is severely under-resourced.
Improvements and a planned expansion of the company’s dedicated government, risk and compliance system, which tracks incidents, breaches and regulatory obligations, were put on hold. The company also loosened rules around “source of wealth” checks, making it far easier for people to gamble under multiple identities.
The cuts had an almost immediate impact. Insufficient staffing became a repeated issue, and guest support officers – those in charge of identifying potentially problem gamblers for possible exclusion – complained of being so overworked that they were unable to perform to standard. These concerns were raised verbally and over email to Mathieson jnr repeatedly, according to correspondence.
In one early 2026 memo, a manager warned that entrenched insufficient staffing to detect and deter problem gambling was exposing Star to a “significant and escalating” regulatory risk as well as its staff and patrons to “health and safety” gaps.
This memo also warned the failure to act on repeated warnings about the effect of understaffing on regulatory functions meant Star was jeopardising the reclaiming of its gaming licences.
Another internal memo set out a similar warning that Star “no longer has the capacity to sustain the commitments we have made to” Queensland and NSW regulators.
After this masthead emailed Mathieson jnr questions, Star said in a statement that it had “recently made submissions to the Queensland and NSW government regarding the suitability to hold casino licences in those jurisdictions, and we await the outcome of those processes”.
“The management continue to work constructively with regulators and key stakeholders across NSW and Queensland throughout this period of significant transformation.”
Mathieson jnr did not respond to specific questions about alleged problems occurring on his watch, but the leaked internal emails suggest he has prioritised efficiency and growing Star’s patron count.
In one January 18 message, Mathieson jnr urged the division in charge of identifying and reducing problem gambling to do its job faster and with less staff, writing that “we have to find a way for this to be efficient!”
When Star received a notice from Queensland regulators in April 2026 questioning the lawfulness of a promotional giveaway given the risk it could leave unwitting everyday punters exposed to marketing encouraging them to gamble, Mathieson told colleagues in an email that he would personally respond.
In an email, he said he planned to tell a senior regulator that the company needed to run without unnecessary intervention.
“This is just creating noise,” Mathieson jnr wrote of the regulator’s concerns. “I will let them know. We must stand our ground and be able to operate our business. We can convey this politely.”
When a marketing campaign to attract gamblers known as March Madness began ahead of schedule in February, senior staff issued further warnings.
Internal memos detailed how Star’s guest service managers – who check gamblers’ source of wealth to ensure they are not money laundering or problem gamblers – could not keep up with the volume of reviews, which climbed from 15 in January to 102 in a matter of weeks.
As of December 31, there was a backlog of 1456 enhanced customer due diligence checks. There were also 1057 delays to withdrawal of licences for problematic patrons. A withdrawal of licence revokes permission for a person to step foot inside a venue.
The leaked files, along with briefings from sources, suggest other systems are also failing at Star.
One internal file from mid-2026 describes how “approximately” 270,000 reports provided by Factiva had gone “unactioned”. The Factiva service is meant to enable Star to check its patrons’ names against news and other public source reports of crime and corruption to ensure the casino isn’t unwittingly hosting an international fugitive or corruption suspect. Star was working through this “backlog” for 699 days.
The same file described how Star’s “transaction monitoring alert investigations of telegraphic transfers of $25,000 or more” had failed to provide instructions about how to identify “risk indicators” that could be indicative of financial crime.
Other files detail more problems. Star requires customers who want to gamble to sign up for a mandatory card that effectively allows the casino to track spend and ensure safer gambling compliance. But the internal records reveal a system gap that makes it harder to detect people using multiple accounts in order to avoid scrutiny.
The files also reveal that Mathieson jnr received correspondence from NSW, where the casino industry is overseen by Philip Crawford.
Crawford, who has commissioned the two inquiries into Star, acknowledged progress towards remediation and suitability, but stated he had concerns about Star’s ongoing noncompliance with financial crime-related obligations and vacancies of key management roles.
“It was disappointing, however, that less than 30 per cent of the priority remediation matters set out in the NICC’s [NSW Independent Casino Commission’s] letter of November 14, 2025 were reported by the Star as completed or on track for completion by March 2026,” he said.
Tip of the iceberg
The problems may have gone deeper than Crawford realised. In May, a senior Star executive wrote a memo outlining their concerns of “a broader pattern” within Star “where accountability is redistributed with limited clarity on ownership, capability or sustainability”.
The executive believed that the efforts to remediate Star after the two Bell inquiries were facing a “real risk” of being eroded under the Mathieson jnr regime and corresponding shift away from governance and risk management.
“The risk, in my view, is that the substantial uplift delivered through the remediation plan will not be sustained, and that accountability for critical risk activities becomes fragmented or diluted across the group and properties.”
Some of the eight sources who briefed this masthead have also variously provided case studies they say illustrate the problems under Mathieson jnr’s regime.
One source* said an indicator of surveillance and security failures was the continued detection of those aged under 18 on Star’s gaming floors or licensed premises. In the past year, Star Brisbane has detected at least 10 minors who breezed past security, the source said. In August, NSW casino officials fined Star $500,000 after a minor entered the casino three times using fake ID.
Other cases detailed in internal records provided by a former casino source show Star has been allowing punters with potentially serious gaming issues to keep gambling.
The records show a Brisbane pensioner, receiving a $550 weekly welfare payment and with estimated “net wealth between $0 to $49,000”, was allowed to keep punting despite gambling almost 400 hours over 14 months and losing more than $65,000.
Another gambler was allowed to keep punting in Star’s Sydney, Gold Coast and Brisbane casinos despite his “significant year-on-year increase in gaming activity and losses”. Information held by Star also suggested he was financing his gambling and living expenses by using payday lenders in a cycle of “borrowing, repaying, then borrowing again”.
This punter’s losses were also vastly outstripped his estimated income of $55,000 a year. His losses amounted to $110,000 over 210 hours of gambling between March 2023 and February 2025, and then almost doubled: he lost a further $100,000 between March 2025 and June 2026.
Despite his surge in apparent problem gambling, Star agreed to remove him from their watch list and allow him to keep punting, subject to a “welfare” check.
Meanwhile, a Star manager also flagged their concern in an email that Star’s Gold Coast venue was allowing “unemployed customers on government benefits” into gaming rooms.
“I don’t believe this aligns with community expectations or the regulator’s standards. In relation to students, we continue to see international students funded by their families spending money intended for accommodation and tuition.”
Star’s financial crime committee also repeatedly removed potentially high-risk patrons from its watch lists, meaning they would be subject to less scrutiny as they gambled.
Leaked records show it removed from its watch list a Chinese businessman financing his “significant losses” via extensive assets in the corruption-prone PNG and Philippines, citing that he had “clarified” that a “previously recorded annual income of $250,000 was incorrect and should have been $25 million”.
Meanwhile, a Japanese punter was removed from Star’s watch list despite being the subject of two reports of “suspicious transactions” for gambling with large sums of cash, “behavioural concern” around his other punting activity and the need to keep him “closely monitored”.
Another ongoing source of tension between Star’s commercial ambitions and its governance standards has involved its interactions with music promoter turned criminal Andrew McManus, whose company is running US crooner Don McLean’s coming Star Gold Coast concerts.
McManus was arrested in 2015 for allegedly money laundering $700,000 for a drug syndicate and, in 2017, pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and received a suspended jail sentence.
Former Star insiders told this masthead of conflict between still-serving managers eager to host McManus’ business, and others who believed he was bad news for a casino company with its own skeletons.
The sources said Star was suffering due to high levels of attrition among experienced senior managers.
Four Brisbane general managers resigned under new management, leaving leadership holes across food and beverage, strategy, marketing and risk and compliance.
There have also been three chief risk officers since new management took over – Rowena Craze, David Schollenberger and now Charles Diao. Chief financial officer Frank Krile, chief operating officer Jeannie Mok and a number of senior executives in the risk and compliance division have also left the business.
Diao’s role as both chief financial officer and acting chief risk officer is almost certain to attract Weeks’ attention, given the potential for conflict between the two roles at a casino company whose integrity divisions are often battling their marketing and sales colleagues.
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Nick McKenzie is an Age investigative journalist who has three times been named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year. A winner of 20 Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, he investigates politics, business, foreign affairs and criminal justice.Connect via email.
Zoe Samios was a media and telecommunications reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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