NYRA workers admit to tax fraud
Two pari-mutuel clerks admitted Monday to operating a tax-evasion scheme at racetracks operated by the New York Racing Association.
No determinate sentences were set in return for the guilty pleas, but the clerks agreed to cooperate with the ongoing investigation of NYRA, said Paul Larrabee, a spokesman for the state attorney general.
James Boggiano and John Wiesener were indicted earlier this year on charges they helped winners avoid taxes on winnings at the Saratoga, Belmont and Aqueduct thoroughbred tracks.
Boggiano pleaded guilty to 12 felony counts of forgery, and Wiesener to five misdemeanor counts of offering a false instrument for filing, Larrabee said. Both are free on bail.
Ukbetting completes purchase of Oddschecker
Ukbetting, the online betting and content business expanded its portfolio by completing the purchase of Oddschecker, the free-to-use Internet odds comparison service. In addition to the purchase, Ukbetting is raising £11 million from new shares that will be used to cover this and the cost of other planned acquisitions.
Oddschecker, which claims more than 100,000 betting and gaming users, made £400,000 profit on turnover of £1.3 million for the year, which ended in June.
Ukbetting has agreed to pay an initial £2.75 million in cash and loan notes. Payment of a maximum of £2 million is dependent on Oddschecker's financial performance for the year to next June 30.
Since gaining a listing on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) two years ago, Ukbetting has swept up three major content businesses - Sportinglife.com, TEAMtalk and Sportal - and integrated them through a mixture of cost-cutting and organic growth.
The acquisitions enabled Ukbetting, which recently recruited ex-Coral Eurobet managing director Trevor Beaumont as head of its betting division, to lift its first half-year revenues from the content business from £402,000 in 2002 to £3.5 million this year.
Tote turns to Rothschild for funding
The Tote, the pool-betting monopoly in the UK, has appointed the investment bank NM Rothschild to advise it on a fund raising before it is sold to a racing trust. The sale of the Tote, a Labour manifesto pledge, is expected to be included in next week's Queen's Speech.
The Tote and the trust that will own it expect to hold detailed talks with the Treasury in coming months over how much it must pay to buy itself out from state control. The Tote's estimate of its value is about £150 million, although rival bookmakers such as Ladbrokes and Coral, which want to be allowed to bid for the Tote, reckon it is worth several times that. The Tote's estimate is based on the organization's so-called enterprise value, which includes £40 million of debt on its balance sheet.
Rothschild has been appointed to examine the Tote's options for a fund raising. It is expected that the Government will allow the Tote a discount of 50 percent of its value.
Race sponsorship in Britain down
Yet another key sponsor to British racing is calling it quits.
Martell announced this month that April's Grand National meeting would be its last as sponsor. The news is just the latest in a growing list of sponsors pulling out of racing, especially jump racing.
Aintree should have little difficulty in replacing Martell, which is pulling out after owner Pernod Ricard decided on a change of marketing strategy. But the loss of the third largest sponsor in horseracing sent a shudder through a sport already recoiling from a series of recent blows. Jumps tracks in particular have been worried by the possible free-for-all for meetings following moves by the Office of Fair Trading to inject greater competition between racecourses.
Sandown Park is looking for a new sponsor for their April 'Gold Cup' meeting next year after attheraces decided not to renew their backing. The broadcasting and betting company, which wants to spread its sponsorship support more widely, pulled out after just two years.
They sponsored a high-quality mixed program of racing on the last Saturday of April that included the attheraces Gold Cup, formerly known as the Whitbread Gold Cup, the oldest-established commercially sponsored race in Britain.
AmTote inks deal with Secure Computing
Secure Computing Corporation last week announced that American Totalisator Company (AmTote(R) has implemented Secure Computing SafeWord PremierAccess authentication software to ensure the integrity of their corporate network and wagering systems.
AmTote's wagering systems scale to handle over 12,000 transactions per minute on a single system, as was demonstrated on Preakness day 2003. With Secure Computing PremierAccess, AmTote is able to positively identify programming, networking and field support staff that require remote access to its wagering systems, global network and processing centers.
With the system in place AmTote will be able to produce real-time replication to multiple servers, assuring high throughput and absolute reliability and uptime.
LegalPlay gets horse handicapping system
LegalPlay Entertainment Inc. announced earlier this month it acquired the source code, software application, databases and all other assets in relation to a system of horse handicapping, result prediction and race data management from Richmedia Technology Inc.
The Company intends to market the software on a subscription basis from its horse racing portal online. In consideration for the acquired assets, the Company paid Richmedia Technology $20,000 in total. No further consideration was paid for the assets, therefore LegalPlay Entertainment Inc. is the sole owner of the proprietary technology and will not be required to pay any ongoing royalties to any parties.
DailyHorse.com will operate as a horse racing portal in addition to providing a subscription based service for managing horse race information, predicting results based on historical performance and current conditions using a proprietary algorithm.
Youbet.com hits record high for Breeders' Cup
Youbet.com, Inc. a leading online wagering company and the largest provider of horse racing content in the United States, announced record handle for the Breeders' Cup on October 25.
Youbet said its handle from the 20th Breeders' Cup, run at Santa Anita race track in California, rose 56 percent from the prior year's handle, and was 46 percent greater than Youbet's handle from the Kentucky Derby earlier this year.
"The evidence continues to grow that our superior content and flawless execution are a powerful combination for bettors," said Chuck Champion, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Youbet. "This year's Breeders' Cup was also the first major test of our new platform, which handled the day's record transactions with ease."
Bank manger become bank robber at track
Kim David Faithful, an Australian bank manager, was sentenced to five years jail for stealing $13.11 million to feed his Internet gambling addiction.
Faithful managed to siphon the money from his small-town branch of the Commonwealth Bank in Western Australia over five years without detection until he turned himself in during a fit of suicidal depression. He had wagered up to $500,000 dollars a week.
Handing down his sentence, West Australian judge Kevin Hammond said it was "curious" the Commonwealth Bank never noticed discrepancies in the accounts of Faithful's branch at Karratha, on the state's sparsely populated north coast.
The judge also asked why IASBet.com, Faithfull's online bookmaker, continued to accept his bets even though it knew what he did for a living.
The court was told during the trial that Faithfull was IASBet.com's largest customer, betting ten times more than others, and the bookmaker encouraged his wagers by offering him tickets to the races and sending bottles of expensive wine to his bank.
IASBet.com has denied any wrongdoing, saying over the weekend that it had been "in compliance of its legal and corporate responsibilities".
Faithfull gave himself up in August, leaving a note at his branch telling staff he was going to hang himself. "I wasn't thinking rationally and the dollar figure was way out of control," he said in a newspaper interview last week. "I was never going to get that back."