Zeljko Ranogajec

Zeljko Ranogajec

Zeljko Ranogajec was born in Hobart Australia on the 22 May 1961 to Croatian immigrants. He is a professional gambler and Entrepreneur, also known as John Wilson. He studied finance, tax and banking at the University of Tasmania before becoming a professional gambler. It was at this University that his interest in gambling and more specifically, card counting started.

He tested out his newly learnt skills at the Wrest Point Casino, and this is where he met his future wife Shelley Wilson, who subsequently became his business partner.

Zeljko and his wife then moved to New South Wales where he initially continued his studies, but then dropped out to concentrate on gambling fulltime.

Gambling at Australian Casinos

Zeljko initially started gambling at the well-known casinos in Australia like Wrestpoint Casino and Jupiters Casino on the Gold Coast.

He was subsequently banned from all of the Australian casinos, so started visiting the Las Vegas Casinos.

However, He had problems getting his winnings back to Australia, so he had to hide his winnings and duck and dive the authorities. He was soon banned from the casinos in Las Vegas as well.

Advantage Play

Zeljko was always looking at different advantage play in other areas and branched out into Keno and Horse Racing where he continued to rack up the winnings.
On average, he earned $1billion per annum.

In 2011 Zeljko was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame alongside many other well-known gamblers like Bill Benter, Don Johnson and Stanford Wong.

Conclusion

Zeljko Ranogajev still gambles at sites like Betfair but keeps a low profile and leads a reclusive lifestyle. In 2019 and 2020 he appeared in the Australian Financial Review rich list with an estimated fortune of 600 million Australian Dollars.

He currently lives in Hyde Park, Knightsbridge, London.