Last Updated on May 20, 2025 by
He owns 40 supercars.
His business has 75% EBITDA margins.
And he’s only 34 years old.
Who is he?
No, it’s not Laurence Escalante — although his business is equally questionable.
It’s Adrian Portelli.
At 18, Portelli was working in his dad’s car repair business.
By 2023, his net worth was touted at $1.2bn, making the AFR’s Young Rich List.
But how did he make all the money?
A quasi-legal lottery Ponzi scheme — giving away cars in exchange for access to ‘discounts’.
Let’s break down the story of LMCT+ and the business of ‘trade promotions’.
How does LMCT+ work?
Portelli runs LMCT+ — “Licensed Motor Car Trader Plus”.
Similar to the ‘sweepstakes’ model of Laurence Escalante’s VGW and Ed Craven’s Stake, Portelli’s business exploits a legal loophole in order to operate raffles as a for-profit entity.
Basically, if you see billionaires on the Forbes 30 under 30, good chance they made their money via unsavoury legal loopholes.
LMCT+ customers pay a subscription fee every month for access to ‘discounts and other benefits’.
In return, customers can enter the draw to win cash prizes, luxury cars, houses, and other expensive items.
Currently, LMCT+ is auctioning off a Holden Monaro GTS, as well as $1m in cash, with customers receiving 1 new entry ticket to a raffle every month.
The technicality here is that whilst it is illegal for businesses to conduct lotteries in exchange for cash directly, it is legal to offer “trade promotions”, where items are given away to customers for free, or in exchange for other goods and services.
By providing customers with ‘discounts’ on products for other Australian businesses through their SaaS tool, Portelli’s company can qualify their customer raffle entries as a ‘trade promotion’ and not a lottery.
In his words, “It’s a legal way to give away a car.”
To his defence, there do seem to be a number of discounts that the services offer, partnering with UltraTune, Elite Supps, Autobarn, and a range of other discounts on 1500 other Australian businesses.
This veil of providing services is what allows the business to operate, with the Victorian Gambling Commission having investigated the business several times, finding nothing illegal, according to the SMH.
But in reality, customers sign up wanting to win the prizes on offer.
In addition, a significant proportion of the spend is on packages directly related to the goods being bartered — which would constitute a lottery.
LMCT+ is skating on thin ice.
I’m not exactly sure how purchasing more of these tickets directly wouldn’t constitute an ‘entry fee’. The business feels like it is one legislation change away from being banned.
Built for Virality
In many ways, the business was built for virality.
In Portelli’s words, “When I started working with cars, it felt like I unlocked the code”.
Similar to the Mr Beast model of spending to drive virality, Portelli’s car raffles have a beautiful viral loop.
Portelli shows off the cars to a combined ~960k Instagram followers across his personal and LMCT+ accounts.
This drives new subscriptions to LMCT+.
This, in turn, allows him to purchase more exclusive vehicles, spend more on Facebook ads, and acquire new customers and followers.
Interestingly, most of the operating expenses for the business are not in the prizes themselves, but in Sales and Marketing expenses.
In Portelli’s words, “If we spend $100k on a car, we’ll spend $700k – $1M on ads”.
Portelli still runs all of his ads himself – and has personally spent over $25m on Facebook.
In addition to an incredible Facebook ads program, LMCT+ has an extensive partner program, working with influencers like Willem Powerfish to drive subscribers.
Ultimately, there are many similar businesses following Portelli’s quasi-legal lottery business model. But Portelli has out-executed them all.
That being said, it is still early days.
The business was only founded in 2018. If there isn’t more regulatory scrutiny, I think we will see more competitors come after this space.
The LMCT+ Financial Engine
Let’s address the elephant in the room.
The rumours are that this business is printing money.
In 2023, the AFR quoted “close to 75%” EBITDA margins and ~$50m in earnings when Portelli was thinking about a sale process.
This is insane.
Even crazier is that Portelli claims that he has 0 employees in the business and exclusively uses contractors to perform work.
In his words “Why would I employ people… you pay them all these rates, nup, employees are just crap. Do it yourself.”
“I’ll be the content creator, I’ll be the editor, I’ll be the developer… keep the fat low.”
But not only are the margins incredible, but the business is also growing.
In 2023, LMCT+ had ~100k subscribers. Today, the business has over 300k subscribers.
From a pure social marketing standpoint, the numbers feel incredibly large, with ~1% of the Australian population as members.
The business makes money in two ways — membership fees and ‘one-off purchases’ for additional entries to win prizes.
Membership starts off at $20 a month, although there is a range, with tiers as high as $99 a month.
Assuming all 300k members are on the minimum $20 per month tier, that implies ~$72m in ARR, excluding any additional revenue from one-off purchases.
And I suspect the one-off packages would be significant.
For the 5 houses auctioned off from reality TV show The Block, these one-off packages ranged from as little as $10 for two entries to win to as much as $500 for 1000 entries.
Sale Process
There are rumours that LMCT+ is up for sale, with Macquarie Capital looking to sell the asset.
If you have a business pumping out $50m+ of cash flow every year, why on earth would you sell it?
One reason could be litigation.
Portelli is currently engaged in an ongoing legal battle with the South Australian Consumer and Business Commission over 9 counts of unlawful lottery, with his company Xclusive Tech Pty Ltd facing another 10.
LMCT+ has denied the charges, stating they have done no wrongdoing.
The punishment itself is relatively petty in the face of the success of the business, with a maximum penalty of $10,000 per lottery — but it underlines the issue over the durability of the business.
And not only that, but there are huge question marks around whether or not LMCT+ could operate without Portelli as an owner, given his influence.
Portelli himself has more Instagram followers than the LMCT+ brand itself (500k versus 460k) and is the face of the brand, so their ability to drive growth without him is questionable.
Then there are the big red flags with customers.
Their business is littered with 1-star reviews, with customers all complaining of the same problem: that it’s extremely difficult to unsubscribe…
But Portelli seems unfazed.
In response to the allegations, he said “It’s okay, SA we still love you. Your gambling commissioner won’t allow you to win major life-changing prizes, so I’ve decided to run exclusive, DAILY $1000 cash giveaways to you guys instead”.
Portelli’s Broader Portfolio
As questionable as Portelli’s business is, I have to give him credit.
His team appears to be running a relatively sophisticated financial operation.
Amid all this media attention, he has been ploughing the risky cash flows from the LMCT+ business into a range of other endeavours.
To date, he has accumulated ~20 homes, stakes in media companies, childcare centres, hospitals, and NDIS businesses.
Having a look at ASIC, he appears to operate a number of different business entities, likely to accommodate his broad investing mandate, and to provide legal protections.
Even if Portelli is forced to shut down LMCT+, he will likely do incredibly well from his other investments.
In the words of Adrian himself, “Find your passion. Create a steady cash flow. Diversify that cash flow. You’ll be a billionaire”
