Angry tradies on Daniel’s trail

Daniel Clarke is a 37-year-old former bankrupt with a long history of failing to pay his debts.

The one-time plumber’s latest project is a bar that is under construction in the heart of Surfers Paradise.

The bar is called Somewhere Good but right now it is a half-finished messy job site left behind by fed-up tradies whose payments are somewhere else.

Brandon Cunningham is the builder who was brought in to lead the project at the last minute.

“We’re out here to do work in good faith and get people’s job done for them the best we can,” Cunningham said.

“And it hurts, it does hurt.

“Some nights we were knocking off at midnight trying to get this thing, race this thing in for his deadline, get it open, up and running for him.”

The business was going to be a self-serve bar.

Clarke is director and secretary of the company behind it, Omnia Hospitality Group, along with influencer and lingerie model Lili Eastwood.

Eastwood has become the public face of the project.

Cunningham and his fellow tradies were in some of the Instagram videos promoting the under-construction business, no doubt expecting to get paid for their hard work.

“At the start, we were quite nice about it. I just wanted to work with him, I wanted to get this thing done for him,” he said.

Cunningham sent two separate invoices to Clarke for work that began almost two months ago.

He is still waiting for $41,000 to be paid, a loss which he describes as “massive”.

“It encompasses our total revenue, it pays our boys, it gets people up in the morning to come work for us, it’s our reputation,” he said.

Cunningham isn’t the only tradie still waiting.

Dylan Saliba did the air conditioning work and said he was chasing $10,000.

“The guy is full of promises, bit of a delusional character and it hurts,” Saliba said.

“Just promising, ‘Yeah, yeah you’ll have $5k, you’ll have $5k’, and just getting nothing and then he just goes quiet.”

Kyle Hely says he is still chasing $6000 for painting work.

“One day he actually looked us in the eyes and said he’s paid us and here we are a month later and it still hasn’t appeared,” Hely said.

“I’m the only guy in my business, so you know there’s no one working on other jobs to cover the costs.

“You drop a bunch of work to get here and help someone out who you think is a mate and this is how they treat you in return.”

Trying to catch up with Clarke isn’t easy, but A Current Affair eventually spotted him down the road from his bar.

He claims his legal team is disputing the unpaid debts.

“We have professionals working on this right now and this is like entirely unprofessional to name and shame against this,” Clarke said.

The professionals he claims are disputing the debt is architecture firm DBI, which has a Gold Coast office located right above where the bar is being constructed.

It is also where his father works as an architect.

“We’re disputing it, you can go up and you can talk to DBI about it,” Clarke said.

A DBI spokesperson says the company has nothing to do with Clarke’s mess.

“DBI has never undertaken any business activity or provided any advice to Daniel Clarke or the associated Omnia Hospitality Group, and neither Daniel Clarke nor the company has ever been a client,” a spokesperson said.

“Any such suggestion otherwise would be spurious to say the least.

“The only link between DBI and this company is the father of the director happens to be an architect employed by us.”

In 2019, Clarke was exposed as the plumber on a pushbike, masquerading as a fundraiser, ripping off veterans charity Redsix run by former soldier Mike Handley.

On that day, Clarke ducked for cover inside a garage, refusing to answer any questions, before re-emerging a few years later spruiking a new alcohol drink called Easy Seltzer.

Trent Collett was employed by him there.

“I’d go sometimes nearly two weeks without any pay,” Collett said.

“I’d be borrowing money off other people, my parents, to put petrol in my car to be able to go and do my job.”

The father-of-two had an employment contract in place with Clarke but claims he was constantly chasing his pay, placing enormous stress on his home life.

“I never thought I had to go and Google my boss to do a background check on him to find out if he was a decent bloke or not, but I wish I did,” he said.

“I’d been living a lie with this guy for six months, I had no idea.”

He claims he’s still owed $10,000 as well as tax withheld from his pay that wasn’t paid to the Australian Taxation Office.

Only after Collett left Clarke’s employment did he learn about his past.

“When I saw that article from six, seven years ago and we’re still going through this and there’s still people out there popping up that have been done over, I can’t let that happen in another seven years,” Collett said.

“I can’t let that happen in another seven days where he screws anyone else over.”

Cunningham took his pursuit for payment to social media, outing Clarke and his previous appearance on A Current Affair.

Only after that post went public were any of his invoices disputed.

“Nothing was questioned, everything was brilliant and great and awesome and good job guys and, you know, until payment was an issue,” Cunningham said.

When A Current Affair asked Clarke why he paid $3000 if he was disputing it, he said it was a part payment.

“We can still dispute the markups and ask for a receipt of all the pricing that needs to come through from the material list,” he said.

Cunningham has been providing a live spreadsheet to Clarke containing all those receipts.

It seems Clarke hasn’t shared them with his business partner Eastwood, who wanted to meet with A Current Affair and tell her side of the story.

“He’s sent this invoice that we just want answers for as to what we’re being charged for,” Clarke said.

A Current Affair showed Eastwood Cunningham’s three separate emails sent to Clarke with a link to the live spreadsheet.

“I can see that now. I never knew that information before,” she said.

Eastwood also hasn’t seen a series of text messages sent from Clarke’s phone, encouraging the tradies to “go after Lilli”.

“You and your mates should go legally hard against omnia group. Really try (to) destroy the company!” the text message said.

Eastwood said she felt “completely blindsided” by the messages.

“My head is in scrambles right now,” she said.

Collet described it as “the lowest of low”.

“How you can carry yourself and just walk around your neighborhood knowing that you’ve done things like this?”