KT,
Can one or more of the thread's racing/betting experts analyze this?
boston.com
Huge payoff breeds suspicion
$3m Pick 6 win by Baltimore man to be investigated
By Ron Indrisano, Globe Staff, 10/30/2002
Did somebody pull a betting scam during the Breeders' Cup?
Alarm bells went off when it was learned that the six winning $2 tickets for the Pick 6 wager on Saturday's card at Arlington Park - each worth $428,392 - were purchased from the same location, the Catskill OTB in New York State. The alarm got louder when it was discovered that a single individual had placed the bets, and the Breeders' Cup and National Thoroughbred Racing Association requested Monday that an investigation be made by the New York Racing and Wagering Board. The Breeders' Cup and Arlington Park have withheld the winnings, a total of $3,067,821.60 counting the multiple Pick 5 consolation bets the wagerer also won, until the inquiry is completed.
The winner, a 29-year-old Baltimore man who owns a computer service, did not want to be identified. However, he spoke to the Thoroughbred Times about the wager and said his first name is Derrick.
''The bet was supposed to be $2, and I kind of screwed up with their phone system,'' he told the Thoroughbred Times. ''It was a $12 ticket that was the winning one. I was too late to cancel. I couldn't get back to them.
''This is kind of ridiculous. I'm still in a state of shock. The fact that there's an investigation going on, what am I going to do? I didn't do anything wrong. I don't want any attention.''
To win the Pick 6 wager, a bettor must correctly pick the winners of six straight races. In the case of the Breeders' Cup, the races were the Mile, the Sprint, the Filly and Mare Turf, the Juvenile, the Turf, and the Classic. A minimum Pick 6 bet is $2, giving a bettor one horse in each race. A bettor could bet more than $2, adding in more money on one combination or extra horses. A total of $4,569,515 was bet into the Pick 6 pool Saturday.
The chairman of the Catskill OTB operation, Donald Groth, said he knows the winner, who has a phone account, and the bets were legitimate.
''I know why you're suspicious, but that's not my job,'' said Groth. ''I'm familiar enough with the customer that I believe this is legitimate. I personally checked the time stamps for the telephone calls, and the bets were all placed before the first leg of the Pick 6 [the Mile, which went off at 2:37 p.m. EDT]. There is nothing to indicate that this was anything but a very good day for our customer.
''In talking to the person, it would surprise me if he were part of anything other than a lucky day. This was an everyday punter who struck it rich.''
Brooks Pierce, president of Autotote, which runs the gambling equipment at Catskill, backed up Groth, saying the bets were recorded at 2:14 p.m.
''From a systems perspective, we're 100 percent certain that the pools were closed and that the gentleman made his bets 20 minutes before post time of the first leg,'' he said.
The winner indicated he made a mistake, but the bet was an odd one, to be sure. He made a $12 bet on each of 96 combinations, a bet that cost $1,152. That alone is strange, since Pick 6 bets are almost always made for the minimum of $2.
He selected a single horse in each of the first four races, then took all of the horses in the last two, also an unorthodox form of wagering. That's what led Breeders' Cup and NTRA officials to wonder if the bet had been ''rigged'' - i.e. made after the fourth of the six races, which would require the help of someone on the inside.
The bettor, in his interview with the Thoroughbred Times, said he meant to place the bet in $2 increments on those 96 combinations and that he placed the bet on an Internet site, Interbets.com, a service provided to gamblers who have betting accounts with Catskill OTB. He said he was unable to correct his mistake before wagering was halted.
(Wagering on horse racing via phone and Internet is an expanding aspect of gambling in the United States. It isn't allowed in all states and only recently was approved in Massachusetts.)
The bettor took Domedriver ($54) alone in the Mile, Orientate ($7.40) alone in the Sprint, Starine ($28.40) alone in the Filly and Mare Turf, and Vindication ($10.20) alone in the Juvenile. Since he had taken an ''all'' - meaning every starter in the Turf and Classic - he could not lose after that. High Chapparal won the Turf as the 4-5 ($3.80) favorite, but Volponi, the longest shot in the Classic, exploded the toteboard with a victory at $89.
A winning Pick 6 ticket also qualifies for the consolation Pick 5. The ticket the bettor purchased also contained 108 consolation combinations, each worth $4,606.20.
''Vindication I thought was pretty much a lock,'' the bettor told Thoroughbred Times. ''Orientate was a favorite. Domedriver and Starine were the only two long shots I had. I liked Domedriver. I did a lot of research. I liked Starine. I was trying to play it a couple of different ways.''
The winner also made a second bet, a $2 wager costing a total of $364, that used all runners in the first two legs plus a single runner in each of the last four legs (a total of 182 combinations). That bet was a loser.
If fraud is discovered, the Breeders' Cup might consider refiguring the Pick 5 payoff using the money in question. There were 78 other winning tickets on the Pick 5, and they would each be worth $33,000 should the Catskill wagers be nullified. The people who cashed those tickets could be found because they must identify themselves at the IRS window in order to collect.
Material from The Daily Racing Form and from The Blood-Horse was used in this report.
This story ran on page F3 of the Boston Globe on 10/30/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. |
