A man charged with stealing a winning $10,000 TAB ticket from a former NRL star is asking the court to throw out the charge after a two year legal battle.
Jake Linardos appeared in Sydney Downing Centre on Thursday where he is yet to enter a plea on an allegation of larceny related to the lucrative winnings.
The 25-year-old, who was acquitted of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception last year, is asking for the new charge to be dropped.
The punter claims he found a betting slip on the ground in the gaming area of the Doncaster Hotel in Kensington on August 10, 2020.
He checked the value of the ticket and discovered it had an eye-popping $9787 payout.
The court hear instead of handing the ticket in, he kept it and collected the winnings.
The prosecution alleges it wasn’t a lucky find on the pub floor, but that Mr Linardos instead stole the ticket from its rightful owner, former NRL great Beau Champion.
When the former South Sydney Rabbitohs player realised his winning ticket was missing, he contacted police.
Officers used CCTV footage from the Doncaster Hotel and the QR code from the Covid check-in to track Mr Linardos down.
The court heard the Director of Public Prosecutions decided to prosecute a fresh charge of larceny after he was acquitted of dishonesty charges in September last year.
Mr Linardos’ lawyer Thomas Wood told the court he would be making an application to permanently dismiss the charge.
“The crown is pursuing a back up charge, which I submit is an abuse of process,” he declared.
However, Deputy Chief Magistrate Theo Tsavdaridis explained there was no time to hear the application on Thursday.
He adjourned the matter until February 21, when the parties will spend an hour arguing over whether the charge will proceed.
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