Sim­ply The Bets boss Michael Pryde was grilled in bank­rupt­cy hear­ing over pri­ori­tised’ pay­ments. The bank­rupt fraud­ster behind one of Sydney’s most high-pro­file bet­ting scams has been accused of using mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed funds to repay hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars owed to fam­i­ly and friends instead of jilt­ed clients, a court has heard.

Court doc­u­ments reveal he repaid the pair a com­bined $600,000 dur­ing the same time peri­od — mon­ey Michael Hayter, lawyer for the bank­rupt­cy trustee, sug­gest­ed should have been used to pay Sim­ply The Bets cred­i­tors instead.

Mean­while, Pryde revealed he was sub­ject to threats and harass­ment when he was ini­tial­ly arrest­ed and charged in March 2023. When asked to detail the threats and who made them, Pryde said he couldn’t remem­ber. It mustn’t have been that bad if you can’t remem­ber them,” Mr Hayter said.

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