Mark Read

Mark Read may refer to:

See also

Mark Read (bookmaker)

Mark Read is an Australian businessman and former bookmaker, founder of International All Sports.

Read was a leading bookmaker at a time when racing, particularly in Queensland was beset with corruption, and avoided accepting bets from Queensland races. Read was one of the first bookmakers to sniff out the Fine Cotton substitution scam. At the height of his success in 1982 Read bought the mansion Boomerang, Elizabeth Bay, but then retired.Sportsbet.com.au acquired International All Sports in 2009.

References

Mark "Chopper" Read

Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (17 November 1954 – 9 October 2013) was an Australian criminal and author. Read wrote a series of semi-autobiographical and fictional crime novels. The 2000 film Chopper is based on his life.

Early life

Read was born on 17 November 1954 to a former army father and a mother who was a devout Seventh-day Adventist. He was placed in a children's home for the first five years of his life. He grew up in the Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood, Thomastown, Fitzroy and Preston. He was bullied at school, claiming that by the age of 15 he had been on the "losing end of several hundred fights" and that his father, usually on his mother's recommendation, beat him often as a child. In an interview with 60 Minutes, it was revealed that Read had been molested as a child. Read was made a ward of the state by the age of 14 and was placed in several mental institutions as a teenager, where, he later claimed, he was subjected to electroshock therapy.

Criminal activity