Boatie's story of loss exposes his rorting of flood appeal Lex Adams rorted a flood appeal by claiming his boat had been swept away, when in fact it had been destroyed five months earlier. A QUEENSLAND boat owner rorted almost $60,000 from the 2011 flood appeal by claiming that his boat had been swept away, but came unstuck after he told the true story of what happened in a national magazine. Lex Adams, 62, was sentenced today to three-and-a-half years' prison, suspended after 12 months, for fraud and making false declarations. The Brisbane District Court was told that he falsely claimed $58,455 from the Queensland Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal and the National Disaster Relief and Recovery scheme in 2011. The former machine operator and truck driver told recovery centre workers that his small catamaran - which was also his home - had washed away in severe floods that devastated Brisbane in January 2011. But the vessel had actually been destroyed five months earlier when Adams grounded it on a sandbar in bad weather in far north Queensland. An investigation into the boating accident found inexperience and insufficient planning were mostly to blame. Adams, whom the court was told was unable to work because of a back injury, told the story of how he'd lost everything in the boating mishap to Cruising Helmsman magazine in October 2010. The yarn was published in the magazine's March 2011 edition under the front-page headline "Battler loses everything to sandbar" - the same month Adams applied for round two of the Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal. His fraud was discovered when the Department of Communities received an anonymous tip-off from a member of the public. Adams was eventually arrested in Darwin in June 2013, after he'd bought a new boat and called it "Travesty." "It was a fraud ... that was made up of donations from people whose hearts were moved to assist persons in true need," Crown prosecutor Sal Vasta told the court. Defence barrister Steve Crofton said it had seemed unfair to Adams that people were compensated for flood damage when he'd received nothing after his boating accident. However, Judge Terry Martin said Adams had "blatantly rorted" donations to which he had no entitlement. "You took advantage of the suffering of others to advance your own position," he said. You seem to have a sense of entitlement from taxpayers and other people who generously donate to relief funds to fund your own existence.