Quoteworthy -- "I am personally convinced (by what I have read and listened to) that at least a race a day, if not more, are now being corrupted by the availability of laying horses to lose on betting exchanges."
-- Chris Bell, CEO of Ladbrokes, in an interview with BBC 2's The Money Program, for an episode that will air on BBC2 June 2 at 7:30 p.m.
The executive director of the Jockey Club, Christopher Foster, contests Bell's bold assertion and told the Racing Post, "Without seeing the program, we do not know the context in which the reported remarks were made. It could be that it was a throw-away comment, because we know of no basis on which he could make such a claim. . . . Since January this year, the Jockey Club has had a memorandum of understanding with Ladbrokes and other bookmakers under which bookmakers report to our security department unusual betting patterns or any event which infers suspicious behavior. Consequently, if Ladbrokes had any evidence of a pattern of so-called 'fixed races', they should have shared it with the Jockey Club. They have not done so."
Still, spokespersons for Ladbrokes defend Bell's statements by referring to evidence given by Clive Reams (boss of Racefax, a company that monitors betting exchanges) to the Jockey Club, alleging that there were 171 suspicious races in a one-year period.
Paul Scotney, director of security for the Jockey Club, is also reported to have told the Money Program, "If you’re an owner of a horse and you know that your horse is not working very well, it is therefore not right that you can bet on that horse to lose because what you're doing is you're taking money from other people knowing in fact that that horse is not going to win - which is cheating."
Summer Upgrade -- Anticipating growing traffic due to new customers and more wagers during a summer that will feature both the Euro 2004 soccer championships and the Summer Olympics in Athens, Ladbrokes has contracted Sun Microsystems to install new server systems to manage the impending influx. Ladbrokes is also receiving 24 servers to support its Web site application layer, 10 servers to support is Web layer and a more sophisticated disaster recovery facility.
Spammer Sentenced -- Howard McCarmack, a U.S. resident who used 343 false e-mail accounts to send 850 million spam e-mail messages, today received a sentence of three-and-a-half to seven years for being convicted of forgery, identity theft and falsifying business records. Last May, Internet service provider Earthlink was successful in winning a $16.4 million civil judgment against McCarmack, who had stolen identities to set up e-mail accounts under false names from which he would send e-mail ads for get-rich-quick schemes and sexual enhancement products.
US Casino Stats -- The 2004 "State of the States" survey of casino entertainment in the United States, released today by the American Gaming Association, reveals that 2 million more Americans visited a casino in 2003 than in 2002. According to data compiled by Harrah's Entertainment, Inc./NFO WorldGroup, 53.4 million adult Americans went to casinos last year, accounting got 310 million trips to casinos, or 5.8 trips per person. The stats show that the 443 commercial casinos in 11 states nationwide generated more than $27 billion in gross gaming revenue, an increase of nearly 2 percent, last year. $4.32 billion from that revenue was given to state and local governments in direct gaming taxes. The report also includes statistics on public opinion polling.
Fraud in Australia -- A recent Ernst & Young survey estimates that fraud, motivated primarily by gambling, revenge and personal debt, costs Australian companies $5.8 billion per year. Nearly three-quarters of the companies to respond reported experiencing fraud in the last year, with over half of it being committed by management and employees.