Nine-year-old boy sees Net dreams go down plughole

Updated A story of Internet woe for you. Nine-year-old Joseph Allen had a grand Net idea while in the bath three years ago. He wanted to place a bet on the Grand National over the Internet - presumably because it would be illegal for him to do so in a betting office (even a false moustache couldn't hide the fact that he was 4ft tall).

And so Betachance.com was born and he was due to make a small fortune. Only in September, the lad's company was supposed to raise some money on OFEX( Eight-year old floats his gambling dotcom)That was until it got into a legal wrangle with rival Bowmans, which was attempting to stop Betachance from operating out of Mauritius. Bowmans said Betachance was infringing the telephone-betting licence granted to Bowmans by the Ministry of Finance. So Betachance failed to raise the £250,000 it was after and titsup.com it became.

It went under on Monday owing punters £30,000. MD Richard Ryan has pledged full payment within two weeks. Ryan told Sporting Life that putting young Joseph forward as the business brain behind the site, had been a flawed strategy.

Ryan had a prior involvement with another failed bookmaker, Top Form Racing.

Poor Joseph is upset about it all - he wanted to buy a motorbike with the money. Even though that would be illegal for him as well. Kids grow up fast these days. ®