There’s a simple rule in matters financial: if it sounds too good to be true, it bloody-well isn’t true. It’s self-evident that a magic pill claiming to increase petrol economy by 20-25 per cent complies with this obvious rule.

Yet various Australian “watchdogs”, Austrade, the NBL, NRL, ARU and Western Force seemed either too stupid or wilfully ignorant to notice. And the same can be said for the majority of Australia’s media that had a hot story bubbling under their collective noses and didn’t touch it. You might wonder why.

The dubious Firepower operation finally appears to be on its last legs, at least in its current incarnation – dodgy operators have a habit of resurfacing with a different name but playing the same game. The SMH’s Gerard Ryle and Jacquelin Magnay report the Perth head office is deserted, overseas offices have been scaled back or closed, the company is not answering questions and various sporting bodies are suddenly looking sick as the questionable money they were receiving dries up.

It’s particularly difficult for the NBL as the Firepower-owned Sydney Kings are in crisis at the same time as the Eddie Groves-owned Brisbane Bullets. Jessica Halloran suggests the NBL itself could collapse.

And that would serve the NBL right. Ditto the Western Force which has relied on millions of perhaps ill-gotten Firepower dollars to buy and keep its star players – players who now don’t seem to be getting their Firepower money.

If a company stinks and you willingly take their money and wear their logo, you stink too. That apparently didn’t concern the Western Force administration or, for that matter, the ARU, NBL, NRL and the many other recipients of the extraordinary amounts of sponsorship money being splashed around by Firepower boss Tim Johnston.

(One outfit to emerge with at least a little dignity is Rusty and Pete’s troubled Souths Rugby League Club which severed Firepower sponsorship after one year.)

Gerard Ryle was very unlucky not to win the Walkley business journalism award for his pursuit of Firepower. Maybe he was a finalist instead of the winner because Firepower didn’t fold prior to judging – it was still a target, rather than a scalp. Maybe it was because the members of the Walkley Advisory Board who made the final decision didn’t realise it was such a good story, well pursued against significant hurdles, because there was negligible reporting of it beyond the SMH and Crikey.

The media pack is a strange and unpredictable thing. One dog barking achieves nothing – it’s only when the whole pack bays in support that anything is accomplished e.g. Media Watch’s first expose of “cash for comment” went nowhere; it was only Fairfax following a second and much later instalment involving banks that saw the story take off.

In an industry of thinning resources, the curse of the “not invented here” kybosh becomes very expensive.