Adrian Portelli hits back at wild accusations amid $4.25m house saga

Adrian Portelli has hit back at the “wild accusations” that have been thrown at him by the winners of the $4.25 million The Block house.

The Melbourne business man offered up the fully furnished Gisborne home – 45 minutes from Melbourne’s CBD – in a recent giveaway through his company LMCT+.

However, the winners, Kevin and Andrea Griffin, have since claimed they are living a “nightmare” after accusing Mr Portelli of removing $100,000 worth of items from the home before handing over the keys.

The 34-year-old – who earned the nickname ‘Lambo guy’ and has a love for luxury vehicles – has consistently rubbished these accusations, insisting the items that were removed from the house were not included in the terms and conditions of the prize.

Speaking to the Australian Financial Review, Mr Portelli said this isn’t the first time he has experienced backlash, but that he was just “here to do my own thing”.

“No matter what you do, someone’s going to say something negative,” he said, adding that people claimed he “couldn’t afford” The Block house when he put in an offer for the home last year.

“Now it’s other wild accusations. I’m just here to do my thing, live my own life, and I don’t project on anyone else’s life,” he said.

The Block house saga isn’t the only difficulty Mr Portelli has had to face, with his LMCT+ under investigation from the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission (VGCCC) over “multiple complaints” from the public.

A spokesperson for the 34-year-old told the AFR the investigation is “routine information gathering of the type we have welcomed for the past five years”.

Despite all the attention he has been receiving, along with being the face of his company LMCT+, Mr Portelli insists he is actually a “very shy person”.

His company reportedly rakes in more than $70m in revenue a year, but Mr Portelli said it “wasn’t always easy” and would wake up every day with the thought of being successful, which he would use to motivate himself.

Winners claim they’re living a ‘nightmare’

Last week the winners of the $4.25m home hit back at claims they were “ungrateful” for the win after Mr Portelli released a video of them walking through the home in which they appeared to complain the state of the property.

“We are anything but ungrateful and we’ve said that all along. We even pull up at the gate now and look up and go, ‘Wow, that’s our house’. Like, we own that house. We are just so thankful that the dice rolled our way,” Ms Griffin told Daily Mail.

The couple claim that after moving in that the home had a number of issues which would be expensive to fix.

Mr Griffin, a plasterer, had recently been forced to sell his business and the couple are reliant on cash from the sale of their old home and Ms Griffin’s part time job.

“It’s just been an absolute nightmare,” Ms Griffin said.

The couple claim they were unfairly represented in Portelli’s video of them as they allege he asked them to take notes of anything that needed fixing.

Prior to releasing the video of the walk-through of the house, the Griffins shared CCTV footage of Mr Portelli and a group of men appearing to remove a number of items from the property.

Some of the bigger ticket items allegedly removed from the house included wine, a wine fridge, kitchen appliances, a toolbox, a meat smoker and a treadmill.

Mr Portelli claimed the couple also sent him an itemised list of dozens of items the Griffins believe were removed from the property.

Along with the bigger ticket items already mentioned, the list also includes things like candles, books, towels, lotion, wooden spoons, gumboots, dog bed and dog food.

‘Where did my wine fridge go?’

After the Griffins accused Mr Portelli of wrongly removing $100,000 worth of items from the home, he released a video of the couple’s very unimpressed reaction when touring the multimillion-dollar, mortgage-free home they had just won.

It was in this video that the Griffins claim they were wrongly represented as they were allegedly asked to point out any issues with the house.

The video starts with Ms Griffin asking, “Is that heated?” to which Mr Portelli responds that he doesn’t know.

“It would want to be,” Mr Griffin adds.

It is not immediately clear what the couple are referring to, though the home does feature a pool as part of a landscaped outdoor area.

Mr Portelli said that he wasn’t “too sure” but noted there were multiple bathtubs in the home, before offering to show the couple the rest of the house.

“Where did my wine fridge go? There was a wine fridge there,” Ms Griffin said upon entering one of the living areas.

“There’s a couple of lamps in there. We can sell those on eBay,” she is heard saying in another clip.

While looking into one of the rooms, Mr Griffin notes that they “forgot to give that ceiling its final coat”.

“I am going to pick the s**t out of this,” he said, adding that “someone is in for a hell of a lot of trouble”.

In another clip, the Victorian man is seen holding an extension cord and shaking his head, claiming: “They didn’t rectify that problem”.

“I have got all this time now to be an a**hole to whoever built this joint,” Mr Griffin noted.

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The footage sparked immediate outrage from social media users, with many slamming the couple’s reaction as “embarrassing” and branding them “ungrateful” and “petty” after winning a prize the majority of Aussies could only dream of.

“I’m actually gobsmacked watching the handover video …. that was enough for me,” one person wrote.

Another person slammed their reaction as “un-Australian”, noting there were so many people “doing it tough” who can’t even get their hands on a rental property, let alone afford a home loan.

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