BJJ Blue belt steals £1.1m ‘to fund expensive competition habit’

Top Executive of Australian super firm – Coles and blue belt for BJJ Academy – Debeen 100% Jiu-Jitsu, Aaron Baslangic – has stolen close to $2,000,000 (Equiv. to just over £1,100,000) has been arrested on Friday 16th August 2019, after allegations of fraud, following faked invoices. It is alleged that Baslangic stole and used deception to defraud Coles after receiving the faked invoice money. 

It is known that Baslangic was using the money to fund an expensive lifestyle, including paying for rent, luxury cars and BJJ competitions. Travelling the world to compete comes at a price, especially considering flights/hotels/Food/insurance and entering the competition itself comes at quite a hefty price. Australia’s closest island – New Zealand is still a 4 hour flight – so it isn’t cheap! 

Baslangic was getting ready to compete at the IBJJF World Masters in Las Vegas – before his arrest. 

The Company has told the court it had uncovered 13 ‘Questionable’ payments Mr Baslangic made, ranging from $48,000 to $413,139.
According to court documents lodged in the case, Coles discovered the suspicious transactions in the lead up to migrating a new payments platform. 
Some of the payments were accompanied by invoices sent from Mr Baslangic’s personal email while others had no supporting invoices at all.

Afr.com reports:

Mr Baslangic who previously worked in Coles’ finance team for its online division, was also accused of sending falsified emails to Coles’ accounts departments to show that Coles Online general Manager Karen Donaldson approved the Payments.

Adam Phillips

BJJ 1 tag blue belt under Trevor Birmingham (T.Birmingham Academy) and Japanese Jujitsu 2nd Dan Blackbelt under Alexei Roberts and Michael McGarry, Adam haswon the AMA Nationals 3 times and is a 3 time Silver Medallist for Team GB in BJJ and Sports Jujitsu. He has also got tons of medals from regional comps. Trains at Kyouken MMA & Jujitsu, based in Andover and trains with MMA Stars, Mike 'Gip' Cutting and Alexei 'Boom' Roberts. Adam joined Grappling Insider following a request on UK BJJ Underground and has proven to have a real passion for all sorts of MMA, inc. BJJ, in particular. Adam is a huge fan of Mike Bidwell (BJJ over 40 legend) and says that he's very privileged to be able to contact huge sports stars and interview them!

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