Firepower - Too Big For Fraud, Extortion and Kidnapping

In 2008 in Australia we read that Firepower International associated with Stephen Moss, son of a former Macquarie bank senior executive, Bill Moss, had offered the fuel consumption reduction pill franchise by tender. It was to be a $100M scam that blew out across many countries and caught up great numbers of respected, but gullible, government and business officials and sporting identities. 

How many bought into a FirePower Franchise is unknown but there would have been few conventional franchisees if any. In saying that; from time to time you would stumble across point of sale material in the very odd automotive outlet for a product that never existed. This is one where investors would just have to walk away from one of Australia’s largest frauds without even a second thought of compensation.

Hunted and haunted, Tim Johnston suddenly turned. Under privileged protection in the Federal Court, he began to air the lingering ghosts of arguably the biggest fraud in Australian corporate history.  Kidnap, Extortion and Money Long Gone

This is an amazing tale where the lowly mechanic sniffed just another fuel additive scam that in truth never targeted small fry franchisees.  The targets were those who considered themselves 'sophisticated' investors and those who handled government funding. And truckloads of suckers arrived with bags of money and greed in hand.

In any case, nobody seemed to care as long as the money flowed. And flow it did.

What was considered a too-good-to-be-true scam by what-would-they-know front line industry players evolved into what was then considered to be a conspiracy but no one was listening.  

The question is; when will Real Big not also suggest Real Big due diligence?