Breeders Cup/ FIX SIX SCAM

[Horny Harry]

TAKE CHARGE LADY
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (Oct. 22, 2002) - A victory by the filly Take Charge Lady in Saturday's $2 millon Breeders' Cup Distaff won't guarantee that Kenny McPeek will win his first Eclipse Award as Trainer of the Year, but it certainly could make him Take Charge Kenny in the minds of Eclipse Award voters.
Only a year after his wife, Sue, underwent cancer surgery after delivering their first child, Jennifer, McPeek had a break-through campaign that proved his ability to handle big-race pressure and develop all kinds of horses. He won with colts and fillies, favorites and longshots, early developers and late bloomers, bluebloods and bargain purchases, and front-runners and stretch-closers.
His stable, based mostly at Churchill Downs, cracked the nation's top 10 in earnings, and posted victories in such prestigious stakes races as the Louisiana Derby, the Florida Derby, the Ashland, the Blue Grass Stakes, the Belmont Stakes, and the Spinster.
FORBIDDEN APPLE
Forbidden Apple - The 7yo son of Pleasant Colony galloped at Belmont Park Monday. "Both [Forbidden Apple and stablemate, Filly & Mare Turf entrant Voodoo Dancer] galloped well and are doing well," said trainer Christophe Clement. Corey Nakatani will ride Saturday.
WAR EMBLEM LINES UP AGAIN
War Emblem lines up as favorite for Breeders Cup
War Embelm, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner, is the 3-1 morning line favorite for Saturday's $4 million Breeders' Cup Classic. Post positions were drawn Wednesday morning at Arlington Park, site of the eight races
that comprise the Breeders' Cup world Thoroubred Championships.
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The 3-year-old Private Emblem colt, owned by The Thoroughbred Corp. and trained by Bob Baffert, is looking to clinch Horse of the Year honors in his final start before retiring to stud.
The top three morning line choices for the Classic are all
3-year-olds familiar to those who followed this year's Triple Crown. Second choice in the Classic went to Travers Stakes winner Medaglio d'Oro (7-2), followed by Pacific Classic and Santa Anita Derby winner Came Home (4-1).
Wednesday's post position draw also answered the burning questions regarding which races Irish trainer Aidan O'Brien would enter his European stars in. Rock of Gibraltar, winner of seven consecutive Group I races overseas, was entered in the Mile, leaving Hawk Wing, who finished first
or second in several of Europe's most prestigious Group I races this year, to represent the stable in the Classic. It will be the Woodman colt's first try on dirt for the connections that just missed with Giant's Causeway under similar circumstances two years ago.
The 19th Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships, consisting of eight Grade I races with purses and awards totaling a minimum of $13 million, will be held at Arlington Park in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Ill. It will mark the first time that the Championships have been held at Arlington and in the Midwest.
WAR EMBLEM & ROCK OF GIBRALTAR LEAD INTERNATIONAL CAST IN BREEDERS’ CUP WORLD THOROUGHBRED CHAMPIONSHIPS SATURDAY
Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner War Emblem and champion miler Rock of Gibraltar (IRE) lead the imposing list of 92 horses from North America and Europe set to clash in Saturday’s 19th Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships at Arlington Park in Chicago.
War Emblem faces the toughest test of his career as a lukewarm favorite in a wide-open field of 12 3-year-olds and up set to go to the post for the $4 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, the climax of the eight races for all divisions racing for total purses of $13,980,000.
Horse of the Year and Eclipse Awards for all divisions will be on the line during that outstanding afternoon of sport that will be broadcast live during a five-hour telecast on NBC Sports from 1:00-6:00 p.m. ET.
Flying in to ride the world’s best horses are the world’s leading jockeys, including Jerry Bailey, Michael Kinane, Pat Day, Kieren Fallon, Gary Stevens, Pat Valenzuela, Edgar Prado, Mike Smith, John R. Velazquez and others.
War Emblem, trained by Bob Baffert and to be ridden by Victor Espinoza from post position 3, makes his first start since his disappointing sixth-place finish as the favorite behind Came Home in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar on Aug. 25.
War Emblem, Came Home and Travers Stakes hero Medaglia d’Oro are the most accomplished of the 3-year-olds challenging such older handicap stars as Evening Attire, winner of The Jockey Club Gold Cup, Suburban Handicap victor E Dubai and Macho Uno.
Came Home was 10-to-1 in the Pacific Classic despite his remarkably consistent record of eight victories from just 10 career starts for trainer Paco Gonzalez. Unfortunately, the homebred son of Gone West had his two worst days when seventh in the Bessemer Trust Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last fall and sixth in the Kentucky Derby this spring.
Medaglia d’Oro leads a major assault on the day’s races by trainer Bobby Frankel, who will have starters in four events. A son of El Prado, Medaglia d’Oro was beaten only a half-length by longshot Sarava in the Belmont Stakes and makes his first start since capturing the Travers Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 24. Frankel also will send out 4-year-old Santa Anita Handicap winner Milwaukee Brew in the Classic.
In the race prior to the Classic, English and Irish Derby winner High Chaparral (IRE) is the 8-to-5 morning line favorite in a field of eight 3-year-olds and up drawn for the $2,420,000 million John Deere Breeders’ Cup Turf at 1 ½ miles.
The son of Sadler’s Wells is trained by Aidan O’Brien, who has brought a powerful Coolmore team of eight runners from Ireland that also includes Rock of Gibraltar, odds-on favorite in the $1 million NetJets Breeders’ Cup Mile earlier on the card.
High Chaparral (IRE) finished third last out as the favorite in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp on Oct. 6, his first start sine the Irish Derby at the Curragh on June 30.
His most formidable rival will likely be 4-year-old Golan (IRE), winner of the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot in late July, his first start this year. Trained by Sir Michael Stoute, Golan (IRE) lost a tough decision in the Juddmonte International at York in August in his only other start of the season.
The best hopes for an American-trained runner in the Turf appear to be 7-year-old With Anticipation, winner of three straight Grade I events this summer, and 4-year-old Denon, winner of the Turf Classic at Belmont Park for Frankel.
Leading off the World Thoroughbred Championships races will be the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Distaff for fillies and mares at 1 1/8 miles. Azeri is the 6-to-5 morning-line favorite to win for the 10th time in 11 career starts for trainer Laura de Seroux.
A 4-year-old homebred daughter of Jade Hunter, Azeri has swept her last six starts, suffering her lone defeat when second behind East Coast invader Summer Colony in the La Canada Stakes at Santa Anita in early February.
Summer Colony will meet Azeri again in the Distaff as the two 4-year-old fillies may find their most formidable opposition from Kentucky Oaks and Alabama Stakes winner Farda Amiga and Beldame Stakes heroine Imperial Gesture in the field of eight.
Rock of Gibraltar (IRE) is being acclaimed Europe’s best milers in decades and was made the even-money favorite in the full field of 14 3-year-olds and up entered in the Breeders’ Cup Mile.
Rock of Gibraltar has been making headlines all season as the son of Danehill has rolled to impressive victories in the English and Irish 2000 Guineas against rival 3-year-olds and has been equally dominant defeating older horses in the Sussex Stakes in England and Prix du Moulin de Longchamp, the division’s definite test for milers in France.
Rock of Gibraltar (IRE) has won 10 of 12 career starts and, the last seven consecutively in Group I races to break a record set by the legendary Mill Reef in the early 1970s. Post position 10 shouldn’t compromise his chances Saturday, although the very best needs a reasonably good trip in this race historically.
Trainer Aidan O’Brien also sends out Coolmore stablemate Landseer (GB), winner of the French 2000 Guineas in the spring and defeated many of America’s best hopes in the Mile last out when invading Kentucky to win the Shadwell Turf Mile at Keeneland on Oct. 6.
The Frankel-trained 5-year-old Beat Hollow was the odds-on favorite in the Shadwell but had to settle for third, although beaten less than a length by Landseer (GB) after taking command in mid-stretch.
In addition to Beat Hollow, the best chance for an American-trained runner in the Mile appears to be 6-year-old Good Journey, who has run only 13 times, but has hit his best stride winning all three of his starts this year for trainer Wally Dollase. The son of Nureyev won the Firecracker Breeders’ Cup at Churchill Downs in July and the Atto Mile at Woodbine last out on Sept. 8.
Trainer D. Wayne Lukas leads virtually every statistical category in Breeders’ Cup history and sends out 4-year-old Orientate as the 5-to-2 morning line favorite in a field of 13 3-year-olds and up entered in the $1,140,000 NAPA Breeders’ Cup Sprint at six furlongs.
The son of Mt. Livermore has reeled off four straight stakes victories, including rather easy scores in the A.G. Vanderbilt Handicap and Forego Handicap at Saratoga, his last start coming on Sept. 1.
One of several highly accomplished rivals Orientate will face is 4-year-old filly Xtra Heat, runner-up to Squirtle Squirt in the Sprint last year and later voted Eclipse champion 3-year-old filly. Trained by co-owner John E. Salzman Jr., the $5,000 2-year-old sales purchase has won 24 of 31 career starts and earned more than $2.2 million.
Another tough foe if he has a good day will be 8-year-old gelding Kona Gold, Eclipse champion sprinter of 2000 after capturing the Sprint at Churchill Downs in track record time. Trained by Bruce Headley, the venerable son of Java Gold will be making a record fifth start in the Breeders’ Cup.
Orientate will break from post 10 while Xtra Heat comes out of gate 6 as the 5-to-1 co-second choice. Kona Gold is a 6-to-1 chance from post 9 and co-second choice Swept Overboard, winner of the Metropolitan Handicap and close-up fourth in the Sprint last year drew post 12.
Frankel sends out 4-year-old filly Banks Hill (GB) as the 3-to-1 second choice in the $1,280,000 Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf at 1 ¼ miles on turf, a race she won at Belmont Park last year and was voted an Eclipse champion.
The 4-year-old daughter of Danehill was developed and trained by French champion trainer Andre Fabre through her last start when third as the even-money favorite in the Yellow Ribbon Invitational at Santa Anita on Oct. 5.
Prior to that race she had won the Prix Jacques le Marois at Deauville and finished a very good second to Rock of Gibraltar (IRE) in the Moulin. Banks Hill (GB) was originally shipped to the U.S. this year for the Flower Bowl Handicap at Belmont a week before the Yellow Ribbon, but soft course conditions caused Fabre to send her on to California for firmer ground.
Winning the Yellow Ribbon was 4-year-old filly Golden Apples (IRE), who had captured the Beverly D Stakes over the Arlington course in September for trainer Ben Cecil. The daughter of Pivotal was installed as the 5-to-2 favorite for the Filly & Mare Turf, which drew a field of 12.
Drawing the far outside post was Kazzia (GER), who won the Flower Bowl for trainer Saeed bin Suroor in her American debut. The victory was her fifth in just six career starts, including the English 1000 Guineas and Oaks.
A very wide-open, full field of 14 2-year-olds will go in the $1,070,000 Bessemer Trust Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at 1 1/8 miles, a distance a sixteenth longer than usual because of the configuration of the Arlington main track.
Trainer John Ward saddles undefeated Sky Mesa as the moderate morning line choice at 3-to-1, breaking from post 9. A $750,000 yearling purchase, the son of Pulpit won the Hopeful at Saratoga and the Lane’s End Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland impressively.
Baffert and O’Brien each send out three colts in the race with little to choose between their respective chances. Baffert’s Vindication, winner of the Kentucky Cup Juvenile at Turfway Park to remain undefeated in three starts, is the 4-to-1 second choice.
Champagne Stakes winner Toccet drew the far outside post 14 for trainer John Scanlan and was made co-third choice at 6-to-1 with Patrick Biancone-trained Whywhywhy, winner of The Futurity at Belmont Park, who will break from the rail.
Another heavy favorite on the program line will be Storm Flag Flying at even-money as the undefeated daughter of Storm Cat breaks from post 4 in a field of 11 entered for the $1 million Long John Silver’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at 1 1/8 miles.
Trained by Shug McGaughey, Storm Flag Flying won the Matron and Frizette at Belmont in her last two starts. She is out of 1995 Juvenile Fillies winner My Flag and her second dam is the immortal, undefeated Personal Ensign, winner of the memorable 1988 renewal of the Distaff over Winning Colors at Churchill Downs.
LONE STAR SKY
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Walter L. New's Lone Star Sky, shown winning the Grade III Bashford Manor Stakes at Churchill Downs on July 7, breezed an easy half-mile in :50.20 over a "fast" strip at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. on Oct. 22 under regular rider Mark Guidry in preparation for an engagement in the Bessemer Trust Breeders' Cup Juvenile (GI) this Saturday at Arlington Park. A bay son of Conquistador Cielo and the Deputy Minister mare Ministrada, Lone Star Sky has never been worse than second from five lifetime starts and sports career earnings of $338,235.
TRACKWORK NOTES
Voodoo Dancer was withdrawn from the Filly & Mare Turf shortly before the draw for post positions. Trainer Christophe Clement told Breeders’ Cup officials she had a cough and runny nose and didn’t scope clean. That left the race with 12 starters.
Falcon FlightThe 6yo horse worked 4f around the dogs Wednesday at Santa Anita in 49 4/5 handily under Patrick Valenzuela, who has the call Saturday.
"In deference to you and your readers, Falcon Flight will do the talking Saturday," said trainer Donald Burke II, who expressed delight at drawing post 3.
Falcon Flight shares the Arlington course record of 2:27 4/5 for 1 ½ miles on turf and has won here twice in three outings over it.
Owned by Gary Tanaka, Falcon Flight will be flown from Los Angeles to Chicago Thursday on a Federal Express flight and arrive at the track around 8 p.m.
Good Journey – Trainer Wallace Dollase expressed pleasure with a half-mile workout over the Arlington Park turf Wednesday morning for his Atto Mile victor as he finished his final serious tuneup for Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Mile.
The Arlington Park clockers caught Good Journey in 54 4/5 for the 4f.
"I really wanted the work to get him acclimated to the turf course and to see what Rene Douglas had to say about how he handled the course,"” Dollase said. “"I didn’t want him to go fast, but I wanted him to kick in down the stretch. From my observation, it looked like he did it perfect. It wasn’t a fast workout, I’m sure, but it was way out around the dogs.
“"He came back without turning a hair and his nostrils weren’t even quivering. That made me feel good. Rene said he went smooth as glass over the course. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”"
Dollase said he would walk the 6yo son of Nureyev on Thursday and gallop him up to the race.
Kazzia – Godolphin Racing’s Kazzia galloped a mile and a quarter on the main track at Belmont Park on Wednesday after having missed the previous three days of training because of an abscess on her left front foot.
Kazzia, who will be ridden by Jorge Chavez in the Filly & Mare Turf, is scheduled to leave Thursday morning from New York to ship to Arlington Park.
Perfect Soul – Lightly raced Perfect Soul completed serious Turf preparations Wednesday at Woodbine Race Course with a maintenance 5f breeze in 1:02 1/5 with his regular exercise rider Paul O’Sullivan in the saddle. Inclement weather forced the workout to be staged on the far outside of the Canadian oval’s grass course.
“I didn’t really clock him because the dogs were so far outside, the time wouldn’t have meant anything,” trainer Roger Attfield said. “We just wanted to make sure he was doing well and he is; he’s fresh.
“They were very kind to let us go on the far, far side of the turf course,” Attfield said. “The turf course was quite good out there actually. The work went very, very nicely and he was moving quite well. We are now making plans to van him here (Wednesday) evening.
Thunderello – Charles Mady’s Thunderello worked 3f in 39 at Philadelphia Park with exercise rider Carl Keegan up Wednesday morning.
“It was a nice easy work,” said trainer Scott Lake, whose colt is scheduled for a 10 a.m. (ET) flight Thursday to Arlington.
With Anticipation – It didn’t go according to plan, but With Anticipation completed his serious Breeders’ Cup preparation with a 6f workout Wednesday in 1:14 2/5 and left trainer Jonathan Sheppard excited about Saturday’s Turf. The workout took place on a “soggy” turf course at Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York with exercise rider Kate Fitzpatrick in the saddle.
“We were very happy with it,” Sheppard said. “It was an excellent work.
“I was a bit alarmed when I drove up here (to Saratoga) Tuesday evening. The local weather forecast called for rain, mixed with wet snow and possible accumulation of up to an inch. I said, ‘We’re in trouble now.’ And that’s what it was like this morning.
“They (officials at Saratoga Race Course) opened the turf course like they promised they would. We went out there with a lead horse like we had planned; we always put him behind another horse in his last work so he can run ’em down in the stretch.
“The lead horse went out in front a little faster than I anticipated; he went off about two seconds faster than I would have liked. With Anticipation got off slow a little bit, so he was about 10 lengths behind after the first eighth of a mile. But he gradually made up his ground, ran down the lead horse inside the last eighth of a mile, beat him by a couple of lengths and galloped out strongly.
“The plan was to go five-eighths with a two-minute lick running up to it, but it ended up being a six-furlong work. But it was fine. One good thing about it is that he had a good piece of work on soft ground in case it comes up that way Saturday.”
Sheppard reported that With Anticipation cooled out well and he will be transported on a private van to Arlington on Thursday.
[ November 01, 2002, 12:58 AM: Message edited by: hobbes ]

[Horny Harry]

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War Emblem at Arlington Park
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Sea Jewel at Arlington Park
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Islington and Golan on Arlington Park turf
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Larry Damore on Atlantic Ocean
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Ballingarry at Arlington Park

[Horny Harry]

Classic: Final chapter of racing's biggest story
Jay Privman | Daily Racing Form
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. - The odyssey has come full circle, and what a long, strange trip it's been. War Emblem began his career exactly 55 weeks ago at Arlington Park, winning a one-mile maiden race. Saturday, he closes his meteoric career by attempting to secure the title of Horse of the Year in the $4 million Breeders' Cup Classic, highlight of the 19th World Thoroughbred Championships.
In the interim, War Emblem was sold by his original owner three weeks before the Kentucky Derby. He subsequently won the Derby; was mired in controversy over a $1 million bonus tied to the Illinois Derby and Kentucky Derby; won the Preakness Stakes; missed a bid for the Triple Crown by stumbling in the Belmont Stakes; had his owner, a Saudi Arabian prince, die, apparently of a heart attack; and then was sold for breeding interests to the leading farm in Japan, where he will go following the Breeders' Cup.
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Win or lose Saturday, he has been the biggest story in racing in 2002.
"Controversy seems to follow him, but he doesn't know it," Bob Baffert, War Emblem's trainer, said at Arlington Park. "We've had some high times, and we've had some low times. I wish we could run him next year. He's become part of the family. I've become attached to the horse."
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Richard Mulhall, the president of The Thoroughbred Corporation, under which the late Prince Ahmed Salman raced, acknowledged the Classic would be bittersweet. "It is because the prince isn't here," Mulhall said. Mulhall said he did not believe anyone from the prince's immediate family would attend the race.
War Emblem is one of several Classic runners who could secure Horse of the Year with a victory. Came Home, Evening Attire, and Medaglia d'Oro also could lay claim to the title should they win. But there are other horses - most notably Distaff favorite Azeri - competing in the day's eight rich races who also have a shot at Horse of the Year.
The Classic is the eighth and final Breeders' Cup race. The Breeders' Cup comprises races 3 through 10 on an 11-race Arlington card that begins at 11:05 a.m. Central time. The Distaff, the first Breeders' Cup race, is scheduled for 12:20 p.m. The races will be televised live by NBC in a five-hour program beginning at noon Central time.
The event is a sellout. There is no walk-up admission for this Breeders' Cup. All fans have assigned seats, and more than 45,000 tickets have been sold.
Those fans better bundle up. It was cloudy and cold with a light, steady rain on Thursday, and the National Weather Service forecast calls for showers continuing through Saturday with a high in the low-50's.
The track was rated good for training Thursday morning. "If the track stays like this, they'll never beat him," said Frank "Bobby" Springer, the Arlington-based trainer who trained War Emblem for the first seven starts of his career before his sale to Prince Ahmed.
Springer accompanied Baffert Thursday morning when War Emblem was taken to the starting gate for a schooling session, which was requested by Arlington starter Bill Knott. War Emblem, who has a history of gate problems, stood perfectly in the gate with exercise rider Larry Damore, then had a spirited gallop.
This is the first Breeders' Cup held at Arlington, the palatial racetrack a half-hour's drive from downtown Chicago. The main track is 1 1/8 miles in circumference. Because of that, this year's races for 2-year-olds, the Juvenile and Juvenile Fillies, will be run at 1 1/8 miles - instead of 1 1/16 miles - for the first time. The turf course, praised by jockeys as the best in the country, is one mile in circumference.
There are some new challenges for bettors, too. There will be head-to-head wagers offered in all eight races; in the Classic, for instance, the bet matches War Emblem with European invader Hawk Wing. There is a 10 percent takeout on the bet, which has a $2 minimum. It is designed to appeal to gamblers more familiar with sports betting. More popular with sophisticated race fans figures to be the Breeders' Cup Ultra Pick Six, which begins with the Mile and ends with the Classic. There are rolling pick threes, as well as trifectas and superfectas, encompassing all Breeders' Cup races.
An outstanding day of racing, featuring $14.1 million in purses, is in the offing. Trainer Aidan O'Brien has brought several top-class runners from his base in Ireland, including internationally ranked turf runners High Chaparral and Rock of Gibraltar, the early favorites in the Turf and Mile, respectively. The fields in the Distaff and Sprint are chock-a-block with outstanding runners. Three horses - Kona Gold in the Sprint, Banks Hill in the Filly and Mare Turf, and Macho Uno in the Classic - are seeking to become two-time Breeders' Cup winners. Kona Gold will become the first horse to compete in five Breeders' Cups.
The Classic, at 1 1/4 miles, has an intriguing mix of older horses, 3-year-olds, and a turf specialist based in Europe. The one they all will have to catch is War Emblem. His best races, Baffert concedes, are when he makes the lead. In his final start, there will be no turning back.
"He needs to break. The two times he didn't break," Baffert said, referring to the Belmont and Del Mar's Pacific Classic, "we tried to rate him, and that didn't work."
War Emblem's pace rival could be E Dubai, who drew the rail. He has not raced in 3 1/2 months, but he is the only other horse in the race who has the kind of innate, wicked speed possessed by War Emblem.
Medaglia d'Oro, the winner of the Travers Stakes, could get an ideal, stalking trip. His trainer, Bobby Frankel, brought Medaglia d'Oro into this race off a layoff because he ran so well fresh in this summer's Jim Dandy Stakes at Saratoga.
"He's got his own cruising speed. All my horses are training well," said Frankel, who has seven Breeders' Cup runners. "I've done my job. Every work came out the way I wanted it."
Frankel also has late-running Milwaukee Brew in the Classic.
Came Home, like War Emblem, is a 3-year-old who will be making his final start before going to stud. He has an outstanding record of nine wins in 11 starts, has won at 1 1/4 miles, and beat older rivals in the Pacific Classic. He ran poorly in last year's Breeders' Cup Juvenile when his training was interrupted by a minor ankle injury. He has had no setbacks this fall. His trainer, the usually reticent Paco Gonzalez, has been outspokenly confident preceding this race.
"Last year, we lost time with the horse. This is our time," Gonzalez said.
Evening Attire has come to the fore this fall with a victory in the Jockey Club Gold Cup. He has the best current form of the older horses in this field. Evening Attire and Macho Uno are the only two Classic runners who arrived here before this week. Patrick Kelly, the trainer of Evening Attire, believes the extra training time at Arlington will be an advantage.
Hawk Wing, never worse than second in nine starts in Europe and a two-time Group 1 winner, will be making his first start on dirt. He is bred for the surface, however, being a son of Woodman.
"He's trained at home on wood chips. It's not as demanding as dirt, but it is an artificial surface," said O'Brien, Hawk Wing's trainer.
Hawk Wing's jockey, John Velazquez, is the only rider with a mount in all eight Breeders' Cup races.
Hawk Wing is adding Lasix, meaning all Classic runners will race on that medication. Volponi, second in the Meadowlands Cup in his last start, is the only runner making a change in equipment. He is adding blinkers.

[Horny Harry]

There will be no shortage of Australian interest on Breeders Cup Day, to be held in the early hours of Sunday morning (Sydney time). Past or present shuttle stallions have at least one representative in every race on the card with the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, in particular, dominated by the progeny of shuttle stallions.
The following is the complete Breeders Cup card with horses that have some direct Australian interest highlighted.
The great Danehill has a
strong representation at Arlington
Breeders' Cup Distaff (GI), $2 million, 1 1/8 miles
1. Two Item Limit (Twining--Spa Warning by Caveat) Rene Douglas
A daughter of Vinery Stud’s Twining (Forty Niner) Two Item Limit has won 7 of her 24 starts for earnings of over $1 million. Best Performances 1st--Demoiselle S. (G2) Black-Eyed Susan S. (G2), Comely S. (G3) 2nd Gazelle H. (G1), Las Virgenes S. (G1), 3rd Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1), Ogden Phipps H. (G1)
2. Summer Colony, John Velazquez
3. Farda Amiga, Pat Day
4. Azeri (Jade Hunter--Zodiac Miss (Aus) by Ahonoora), Mike Smith
Nine wins and a second from just 10 starts for earnings of 1.1 million by the daughter of the Australian-bred stakes winner Zodiac Miss. Jade Hunter stood a Woodlands Stud with limited success. Best Performances 1st--Apple Blossom H. (G1), Santa Margarita Invitational H. (G1), Vanity H. (G1), Milady Breeders' Cup H. (G1), Clement L. Hirsch H. (G2), Lady's Secret Breeders' Cup Handicap (G2)
5. Imperial Gesture (Langfuhr--Honor an Offer by Hoist the Flag), Jerry Bailey
A daughter of Vinery Stud’s Langfuhr, Imperial Gesture has won 6 of her 10 starts with 2 seconds for earnings of $1.1 million. Best Performances. 1st--Beldame S. (G1), Gazelle H. (G1), 2nd Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies (G1), Oak Leaf S. (G1)
6. Mandy's Gold (Gilded Time--Manduria by Aloma's Ruler) Jose Santos
The third Vinery stallion to have a runner in the race. A daughter of Gilded Time, Mandy’s Gold has won 9 of her 16 starts with 4 seconds and 3 thirds for earnings of $789,000. Best Performances: 1st--Ruffian H. (G1), Chicago Breeders' Cup H. (G3), Honorable Miss H. (G3) 2nd Ballerina H. (G1), Beldame S. (G1).
7. Starrer, Pat Valenzuela
8. Take Charge Lady (Dehere--Felicita by Rubiano), Edgar Prado
A daughter of Arrowfield Stud’s Dehere, Take Charge Lady has won 8 of her 13 starts and second 3 times for earnings of $1.5 million. Best Performances 1st--Ashland S. (G1), Overbrook Spinster S. (G1), Fair Grounds Oaks (G2), Silverbulletday S. (G3), Dogwood S. (G3) 2nd Kentucky Oaks (G1), Gazelle H. (G1).
Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies (GI), $1 million, 1 1/8 miles
1. Santa Catarina, Jerry Bailey
2. Ivanavinalot, Manoel Cruz
3. Composure, Mike Smith
4. Storm Flag Flying, John Velazquez
5. Humorous Lady (Distorted Humor--My Glamorous One by It's the One), Alex Solis
Distorted Humor spent just two seasons at stud in Victoria but the son of Forty Niner has made a dramatic impact in the U.S. with his first crop. Humorous Lady has won 4 of her 5 starts and finished third in the other for earnings of $211,000. Best Performances 1st-Astarita S. (G2), California Thoroughbred Breeders' Association S.
6. Ruby's Reception, Terry Thompson
7. Sea Jewel, Pat Valenzuela
8. Buffythecenterfold, Matt Garcia
9. Atlantic Ocean, Victor Espinoza
10. Westerly Breeze, Robby Albarado
11. Appleby Gardens, Richard Migliore
Breeders' Cup Mile (GIT), $1 million, one mile turf
1. Forbidden Apple, Corey Nakatani
2. Beat Hollow, Jerry Bailey
3. Medecis, Alex Solis
4. Good Journey (Nureyev--Chimes of Freedom by Private Account) Pat Day
The winner of 6 of 13 starts Good Journey has earned $1.2 million. He is a three-quarter brother to Coolmore Stud’s Spinning World. Best Performances: 1st--Atto Mile S. (G1), Firecracker Breeders' Cup Handicap (G2), Citation H. (G2)
5. Domedriver, Thierry Thulliez
6. Green Fee, John Velazquez
7. Aldebaran (Mr. Prospector-Chimes of Freedom by Private Account) Jorge Chavez
A half brother to Good Journey so naturally enough closely related to Spinning World. Aldebaran has won 3 of his 15 starts fore earnings of $558,000. Best Performances: 1st-Nassau H. 2nd--Metropolitan H. (G1), Vosburgh S. (G1), Forego H. (G1), Commonwealth Breeders' Cup S. (G2)
8. Del Mar Show, Pat Valenzuela
9. Boston Common, Rene Douglas
10. Rock Of Gibraltar (Danehill--Offshore Boom by Be My Guest) Mick Kinane
A son of Coolmore ‘s Danehill, Rock Of Gibraltar has won 10 of his 12 starts for earnings of $1.6 million. Best Performances: 1st--Darley Dewhurst S. (G1), Grand Criterium (G1), Two Thousand Guineas (G1), St. James's Palace S. (G1), Sussex S. (G1), Prix du Moulin de Longchamp (G1), Irish Two Thousand Guineas (G1).
11. Touch of the Blues, Kent Desormeaux
12. Dress to Thrill (Danehill--Trusted Partner by Affirmed) Patrick Smullen
A daughter of Coolmore Stud’s Danehill, Dress To Thrill has won 5 of her 7 starts for earnings of $289,000. Best Performances: 1st--Sun Chariot S. (G2), Desmond S. (G3), Matron S. (G3).
13. Landseer (Danehill-Sabria by Miswaki) Edgar Prado
Another son of Danehill, Landseer has won 4 of his 12 starts for earnings of $993,000. Best Performances: 1st-Shadwell Keeneland Mile Turf Stakes (G1), Poule d'Essai des Poulains (G1)
2nd St. James's Palace S. (G1)
14. Nuclear Debate (Geiger Counter--I'm an Issue by Cox's Ridge) Gary Stevens
A son of the royally bred, deceased stallion Geiger Counter, Nuclear Debate has won 11 of 45 starts for earnings of $1.1 million. Best performances: 1st-Nunthorpe S. (G1), Spring Cup (G1), King's Stand S. (G2), Prix du Gros-Chene (G2) 2nd Nunthorpe S. (G1)
Breeders' Cup Sprint (GI), $1 million, six furlongs
1. Thunderello, Edgar Prado
2. Kalookan Queen, Mike Smith
3. Disturbingthepeace, Victor Espinoza
4. Carson Hollow, John Velazquez
5. Touch Tone, Jorge Chavez
6. Xtra Heat, Harry Vega
7. Wake At Noon, Emile Ramsammy
8. Bonapaw, Gerald Melancon
9. Kona Gold, Alex Solis
10. Orientate, Jerry Bailey
11. Crafty C.T., Pat Valenzuela
12. Swept Overboard (End Sweep--Sheer Ice by Cutlass), Corey Nakatani
A son of Arrowfield Stud’s ill-fated End Sweep, Swept Overboard has won 8 of his 19 starts for earnings of $1.1 million. Best Performances: 1st--Ancient Title Breeders' Cup H. (G1), Metropolitan H. (G1) 2nd Pat O'Brien H. (G2).
13. Day Trader, Pat Day
Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf (G1T), $1 million, 1 ¼ miles turf
1. Riskaverse, Mark Guidry
2. Islington, Kieran Fallon
3. Turtle Bow, Christophe Soumillon
4. Dublino, Kent Desormeaux
5. Banks Hill (Danehill--Hasili by Kahyasi) Jerry Bailey
Yet another of all conquering Danehill breed, Banks Hill will be looking to defend her crown. The winner of 5 of her 13 starts Banks Hill has earned $1.5 million. Best performances: 1st--Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf (G1), Coronation S. (G1), Prix du Haras de Fresnay-le-Buffard Jacques le Marois (G1)
2nd--Prix du Moulin de Longchamp (G1), Poule d'Essai des Pouliches (G1), Prix du Haras de Fresnay-le Buffard-Jacques le Marois (G1).
6. Golden Apples, Pat Valenzuela
7. Gossamer (Sadler's Wells-Brocade by Habitat) Jamie Spencer
A full sister to former Breeders Cup Mile winner Barathea, Gossamer has won 4 of her 7 starts for earnings of $454,000. Best Performances: 1st--Meon Valley Stud Fillies' Miles (G1), Irish One Thousand Guineas (G1) 3rd Prix du Moulin de Longchamp (G1)
8. Zenda, Richard Hughes
9. Chopinina, Emile Ramsammy
10. Owsley, Edgar Prado
11. Starine, John Velazquez
12. Kazzia, Jorge Chavez
Vinery Stud's Langfuhr has
two live Breeders Cup chances
Breeders' Cup Juvenile (GI), $1 million, 1 1/8 miles
1. Whywhywhy (Mr. Greeley-Thorough Fair by Quiet American) Pat Day
A son of one season shuttler Mr. Greeley, WhyWhyWhy has won 3 of his 4 starts for earnings of $284,000. Best Performances: 1st-Futurity S. (G1), Sanford S. (G2), Flash S. (G3)
2. Kafwain, Victor Espinoza, 12-1
3. Hold That Tiger, Kieran Fallon
4. Listen Indy, Alex Solis
5. Bull Market, Jerry Bailey
6. Vindication, Mike Smith
7. Van Nistelrooy, John Velazquez
8. Lone Star Sky, Mark Guidry
9. Sky Mesa, Edgar Prado
10. Zavata, Gary Stevens
11. Tomahawk, Mick Kinane
12. Most Feared, Pat Valenzuela
13. Wando (Langfuhr--Kathie's Colleen by Woodman) Richard Migliore
A son of Vinery Stud’s Langfuhr, Wando has won 3 of his 4 starts for earnings of $362,000. Best Performances: 1st--Grey Breeders' Cup S. (G2), Vandal S.
2nd Summer S. (G2)
14. Toccet, Jorge Chavez
Breeders' Cup Turf (G1T), $2 million, 1 ½ miles turf
1. Denon (Pleasant Colony-Aviance by Northfields)
Edgar Prado
Denon is a half brother of Imperfect Circle dam of Coolmore Stud’s Spinning World. Denon has won 5 of his 13 starts for $1.1 million. Best Performances: 1st-Hollywood Derby (G1), Turf Classic Invitational S. (G1), Charles Whittingham H. (G1)2nd United Nations H. (G1), Sword Dancer Invitational H. (G1)
2. Ballingarry (Sadler's Wells--Flamenco Wave by Desert Wine), Kent Desormeaux
Ballingarry (Ire) is a full brother to Lynden Park Stud’s Aristotle. Winner of 4 of his 10 starts for earnings of $1.4 million. Best Performances: 1st--Criterium de Saint-Cloud (G1) , Canadian International S. (G1), Prix Noailles (G2).
3. Falcon Flight, Pat Valenzuela
4. Golan (Spectrum--Highland Gift by Generous), Kieran Fallon
A son of Yarraman Park Stud’s Spectrum, Golan has won 4 of his 9 starts for earnings of $1.6 million. Best Performances1st-Two Thousand Guineas (G1), King George VI and Queen Elizabeth S. (G1) 2nd Epsom Derby (G1), Juddmonte International S. (G1)
5. High Chaparral, Mick Kinane
6. Perfect Soul, John Velazquez
7. With Anticipation, Pat Day
8. The Tin Man, Mike Smith
Breeders' Cup Classic (GI), $4 million, 1 ¼ miles
1. E Dubai, Jorge Chavez
2. Volponi, Jose Santos
3. War Emblem, Victor Espinoza
4. Dollar Bill, Pat Day
5. Perfect Drift, Robby Albarado
6. Macho Uno, Gary Stevens
7. Medaglia d'Oro, Jerry Bailey
8. Evening Attire, Shaun Bridgmohan
9. Harlan's Holiday, John Velazquez
10. Hawk Wing (Woodman--La Lorgnette by Val de l'Orne) , Mick Kinane
Winner of four and runner-up 5 times in his 13 start career Hawk Wind has earned $1.4 million. He is a son of Coolmore Stud’s Woodman. Best Performances: 1st-Aga Khan Studs National S. (G1), Eclipse S. (G1) 2nd-Epsom Derby (G1), Two Thousand Guineas (G1), Queen Elizabeth II S. (G1), Irish Champion S. (G1).
11. Came Home, Mike Smith
12. Milwaukee Brew, Edgar Prado

[Horny Harry]

Outsider rolls the favorites in Breeders Classic
The rank outsider has upset a field that included the likes of War Emblem and Hawk Wing in the Breeders' Cup Classic - 1m 2f dirt (USD$4m) in Arlington Chicgao.
Volponi (40/1), ridden by Jose Santos, scored an emphatic win over Medaglia D'Oro (Jerry Bailey) and Milwaukee Brew.
http://www.drf.com/images/volponi_200_102602.jpg
Volponi is all alone coming down the Arlington Park stretch Saturday enroute to a 6 1/2-length upset win in the Breeders' Cup Classic at odds of 43-1.
Having his final race start, the favorite War Emblem, bowed out a loser and he will now head to Japan for a stud career after failing in three of his last four starts.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. - The unsettled nature of this year's dirt horse division had an appropriate final act on Saturday, when the longshot Volponi crushed Horse of the Year candidates Came Home, Medaglia d'Oro, and War Emblem in the $4 million Breeders' Cup Classic at Arlington Park.
Volponi, at 43-1 the longest shot in the 12-horse field, blew open the race with a quick turn of foot at the top of the stretch and went on to score an emphatic 6 1/2-length victory over favored Medaglia d'Oro, leaving the crowd of 46,118 stunned. It was the largest margin of victory in Classic history.
Medaglia d'Oro held on for second by a neck over Milwaukee Brew, who rallied from 11th to finish third. Evening Attire was fourth, and was followed, in order, by Macho Uno, Dollar Bill, Hawk Wing, War Emblem, Harlan's Holiday, Came Home, E Dubai, and Perfect Drift.
Volponi ($89), ridden by Jose Santos, was timed in 2:01.39 for 1 1/4 miles on the fast main track. He justified the faith of his Hall of Fame trainer and co-owner, P.G. Johnson, who decided to run Volponi in the Classic rather the Mile, in which Volponi also was pre-entered.
"I think he's a natural mile-and-a-quarter horse," Johnson said, explaining the reasons the Classic was chosen, "and he runs as well on the dirt as on the turf, and this was $4 million, and that was $1 million."
Volponi's shocking upset against more highly regarded rivals could increase the chances that Azeri, the brilliant winner of the Breeders' Cup Distaff, will be named Horse of the Year in a season when no horse dominated.
The Classic completed a day that featured a little bit of everything - punctual favorites, improbable longshots, thrilling photo finishes, and runaway victories. Horses based in Europe won two of the eight races. Jockeys Mike Smith and John Velazquez were the day's riding stars, with two victories each.
It was cloudy and cool all afternoon at Arlington, but the sun peaked through the clouds just as the horses came on the track for the Classic. Medaglia d'Oro, who had won the Travers Stakes in his last start, was sent off the 5-2 favorite. War Emblem was 4-1, with Came Home 6-1. Volponi was ignored by the bettors. He was winless in his last four starts, though he had finished in the money each time. He most recently had finished second in the Meadowlands Cup to Burning Roma, who was not entered in the Classic.
E Dubai, starting from the rail, came away quickest and took the track from War Emblem, who squeezed between E Dubai and Medaglia d'Oro in order to be second as the field hit the first turn. Medaglia d'Oro was third, to the outside of the leaders, with Perfect Drift close up while saving ground along the rail. Volponi was right behind Perfect Drift. Came Home, who started from post 11, raced wide on the first turn.
As the field advanced down the backstretch, E Dubai continued to lead narrowly over War Emblem. E Dubai set fractions of 23.07 seconds for the opening quarter-mile, 46.63 for the half, and 1:10.20 for six furlongs.
War Emblem was asked aggressively by jockey Victor Espinoza to go after E Dubai on the far turn, and Medaglia d'Oro joined them. Volponi was right behind those horses, though, and as they passed the quarter pole in 1:35.59, Volponi rocketed along the rail to engage Medaglia d'Oro, then roared right past him.
War Emblem, meanwhile, faded badly in the final quarter-mile.
"I'm really disappointed," said his trainer, Bob Baffert. "I thought he'd run a big race today. When he came out of the gate and I saw that Victor had to nudge on him to get him going, I said that's not the War Emblem we know."
Volponi was adding blinkers for the Classic. He also switched back to Santos, who had ridden him twice previously. The mount became open because Shaun Bridgmohan, who had ridden Volponi in the Meadowlands Cup, chose to ride Evening Attire, the Jockey Club Gold Cup winner, in the Classic.
Johnson said he added blinkers because Volponi dropped too far back in the Meadowlands Cup, despite being asked aggressively by Bridgmohan. "I saw he was riding, and wasn't getting any response," Johnson said.
Johnson bred Volponi in the name of his Amherst Stable, which also includes his wife, Mary Kay, and daughters Kathy and Karen, the latter a Daily Racing Form reporter. Johnson and his wife were to celebrate their 57th anniversary on Sunday. The colt is co-owned by Edward Baier's Spruce Pond Stable.
Volponi, a 4-year-old by Cryptoclearance out of Prom Knight, by Sir Harry Lewis, has now won seven times in 23 starts. He earned $2.08 million Saturday, dwarfing the $668,976 he had made in his 22 previous starts combined. His biggest previous victory came in last year's Pegasus Handicap at the Meadowlands. He also won the Poker Handicap on the turf at Belmont Park this summer.
- additional reporting by David Grening
By: Jo Adams - Sunday, 27 October 2002
[ October 27, 2002, 03:28 PM: Message edited by: Horny Harry ]

[Homer J.]

Stories and results....
http://breederscup.com/

[Horny Harry]

BREEDERS' CUP DISTAFF (G1) US$2,000,000 3YO/UP F/M 1 1/8M
1 AZERI 4f by Jade Hunter—Zodiac Miss (Aus), by Ahonoora
2 FARDA AMIGA 3f, by Broad Brush—Fly North, by Pleasant Colony
3 IMPERIAL GESTURE 3f by Langfuhr—Honor An Offer, by Hoist the Flag
5l x head
BREEDERS' CUP FILLY & MARE TURF (G1) US$1,000,000, 3YO/UP, F/M, 1 1/4MT
1 STARINE (FR) 5m by Mendocino—Grisonnante, by Kaldoun
2 BANKS HILL (GB) 4f by Danehill—Hasili, by Kahyasi
3 ISLINGTON (IRE) 3f by Sadler's Wells—Hellenic, by Darshaan
1 1/2L x nck
BREEDERS' CUP MILE (G1) US$1,000,000, 3YO/UP, 1MT
1 DOMEDRIVER (IRE) 4c by Indian Ridge—Napoli, by Baillamont
2 ROCK OF GIBRALTAR (IRE) 3c by Danehill—Offshore Boom, by Be My Guest
3 GOOD JOURNEY 6h by Nureyev—Chimes of Freedom, by Private Account
3/4L x nose
BREEDERS' CUP SPRINT (G1) US$1,000,000, 3YO/UP, 6F
1 ORIENTATE 4 c by Mt. Livermore—Dream Team, by Cox's Ridge
2 THUNDERELLO 3c by Montbrook—On the Square, by In Reality
3 CRAFTY C. T. 4c by Crafty Prospector—Andriana B., by Far North
1/2L x 1/2L
BREEDERS' CUP JUVENILE (G1) US$1,000,000, 2YO, C/G, 1 1/8M
1 VINDICATION 2c by Seattle Slew—Strawberry Reason, by Strawberry Road (Aus)
2 KAFWAIN 2c by Cherokee Run—Swazi's Moment, by Moment of Hope
3 HOLD THAT TIGER 2c by Storm Cat—Beware of the Cat, by Caveat
2 3/4L x 2 1 /4L
BREEDERS' CUP JUVENILE FILLIES (G1) US$1,000,000, 2YO, F, 1 1/8M
1 STORM FLAG FLYING 2f by Storm Cat—My Flag, by Easy Goer
2 COMPOSURE 2f by Touch Gold—Party Cited, by Alleged
3 SANTA CATARINA 2f by Unbridled—Purrfectly, by Storm Cat
1/2L x 9 ¾L
BREEDERS' CUP TURF (G1) US$2,000,000, 3YO/UP, 1 1/2MT
1 HIGH CHAPARRAL (IRE) 3c by Sadler's Wells—Kasora, by Darshaan
2 WITH ANTICIPATION 7G by Relaunch—Fran's Valentine, by Saros (GB)
3 FALCON FLIGHT (FR) 6h by Persian Bold—Flying Circus, by Gay Mecene
1 3/4L x 1/4L
BREEDERS' CUP CLASSIC (G1) $4,000,000, 3YO/UP, 1 1/4M
1 VOLPONI 4c by Cryptoclearance—Prom Knight, by Sir Harry Lewis
2 MEDAGLIA D'ORO 3c, by El Prado (Ire)—Cappucino Bay, by Bailjumper
3 MILWAUKEE BREW 5h by Wild Again—Ask Anita, by Wolf Power (SAf)
6 ½L x nck
By: Mark Smith - Sunday, 27 October 2002
Chicago all agog over the horse that came in second
Greg Wood
Monday October 28, 2002
The Guardian
In the bars, restaurants and taxis of Chicago's urban sprawl, one phrase spilled from a hundred thousand mouths on Saturday night. The United States is a country obsessed by winning, where they would rather play baseball into the middle of the night than agree to call it a draw, but now they wanted to talk about a runner-up. Again and again, people were insisting that "I have never seen a horse do that in my life ".
http://ca.yimg.com/i/ca/reuters/20020618/i/3758964744.jpg
The horse, of course, was Rock Of Gibraltar, who fell out of the stalls for the Breeders' Cup Mile, was still sitting last at halfway, and then passed eight opponents on the 300-yard strip of turf that Arlington likes to call the home stretch. It was an extraordinary effort, but he could not pass the ninth. Domedriver won the Mile, and Rock Of Gibraltar, winner of seven straight Group One races in Europe, went into retirement as a beaten horse.
The 19th Breeders' Cup produced several deeply impressive performances, but the finishing speed and iron will which carried Rock Of Gibraltar to within a length and a quarter of Domedriver were the abiding memories as 46,000 race-goers left Arlington Park. That, and the image of Landseer, Aidan O'Brien's other runner in the race, frozen in the instant when he snapped a fore cannonbone on the home turn.
Any analysis of the Mile should start with that moment, when a Classic winner stumbled to a halt to wait for the vet's injection. Rock Of Gibraltar did at least come home alive, and his first crop at stud will be on the track in 3 years' time.
Finishing second in a horse race is never a cause for despair. But at the same time, there was so much at stake. Thirty seconds before Rock Of Gibraltar went into the stalls, the six-figure display next to his number on the Tote board, which counts the bets on every runner, "clocked" back to zero. It meant that a million dollars was riding on his back at the racetrack alone. Thirty-two seconds later, it was all as good as lost.
It was always possible that Rock Of Gibraltar would miss the break from his wide draw in stall 10. He lost at least three lengths in those opening strides, but it is what happened next that will start arguments for months to come. His jockey Mick Kinane seemed to want to drop in behind, but instead went wide around the turn. Then, in the back stretch, he sat in last place until the run out of the first bend turned into the run to the second one.
"He was a bit fractious in the gate and I missed the break," Kinane said later. "I just had to bide my time after that. The horse who broke down came over when I wanted to make my move, and I lost my momentum."
In fact, the replays showed that there was never any danger of contact between Rock Of Gibraltar and Landseer. If he lost any ground, it was far less than Domedriver's winning margin. American tracks - and the tight turf circuits in particular - give horses relatively little chance to make up ground. To have any hope, Kinane needed to pass a few horses early on the far side. It was, according to one local journalist, the ride of a "pinhead".
Theirry Thulliez, by contrast, rode a beautifully judged race on Domedriver, saving ground on the inside and then bravely grabbing a gap when it appeared a furlong out. "On this course, if you can save the maximum amount of ground it is a tremendous advantage," Pascal Bary, his trainer, said.
Thulliez's smart steering probably earned his employers an extra $300,000 on Saturday, the difference between first and second prize. Since Rock Of Gibraltar should soon be making roughly as much every week at stud, though, his connections, including part-owner Sir Alex Ferguson, will soon get over it.
Indeed, far from diminishing his stud value, the grit and brilliance of Rock Of Gibraltar's rally can only recommend him to breeders. The irony is that a horse that had not lost in seven previous Group Ones over the course of more than a year produced by far the most impressive performance of his career in defeat.
For Ferguson, in particular, the sums are an invitation to join the racing elite (always assuming that, as rumour insists, he owns 50 % of the stud rights to Rock Of Gibraltar in addition to those from the racing).
In his first season as a sire, Rock Of Gibraltar might cover 50 mares, for a fee of perhaps £30,000 each. In fact, 50 is a conservative estimate, given the aggression with which Coolmore Stud, the world's pre-eminent breeding operation, likes to market its first-season sires.
If he heads south for the Australian covering season, too, the money will just keep rolling in, albeit perhaps for at a slightly smaller fee. Ferguson could match David Beckham in the earnings game without lifting a finger, which begs the obvious question of how much motivation there will be to continue in his day job.
Less than four years after his colours first appeared on a British track, Ferguson is living the dream, the one that pulls so many thousands of people towards the turf across the globe.
Saturday's defeat was not the sound of the alarm clock ringing, but an invitation to roll over, get comfortable and dream a whole lot more.
[ October 28, 2002, 01:37 PM: Message edited by: Horny Harry ]

[Horny Harry]

WATCH THE RACES
http://www.msnbc.com/news/826368.asp
VIDEOS OF THE BREEDERS CUP MEETING (http://www.msnbc.com/news/826368.asp)
please click on above link to watch all the races.
Breeders’ Cup wagers investigated
NY board looks into six winning tickets worth $2.5 million
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ALBANY, N.Y., Oct. 28 — The New York State Racing and Wagering Board has begun investigating six winning Breeders’ Cup wagers worth a total of $2.5 million, all made Saturday by one person at an upstate Off-Track Betting parlor.
more... BET INVESTIGATIONS (http://www.msnbc.com/news/827344.asp#BODY)
“WE STARTED LOOKING into this yesterday, so we froze those tickets pending a review of the situation,” Stacy Clifford, spokeswoman for the racing board, said Monday. “There could be something here or there could be nothing here. Obviously it’s a very important investigation and we want to make sure it’s a thorough one.”
The six winning bets — each worth $428,392 — were apparently made through a telephone account with Catskill OTB, Clifford said. The Ultra Pick Six tickets were for Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships at Arlington Park in Illinois.
The investigation came at the request of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and the Breeders’ Cup Ltd. “It was a lucky day for a lucky fan,” Don Groth, president of Catskill OTB, told the Thoroughbred Times. “We believe that’s what it was. We hope that’s what it was.” Clifford said she didn’t know how long the investigation would take. She declined to name the bettor.
© 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
[ October 30, 2002, 12:20 AM: Message edited by: hobbes ]

[hobbes]

BC pick 6 inquiry launched
By MATT HEGARTY
The New York State Racing and Wagering Board has launched a formal inquiry into winning Breeders' Cup Pick 6 bets placed through Catskill Off-Track Betting Corporation, board officials said Monday.
One bettor, making telephone wagers through Catskill OTB's account wagering service, bought all six winning tickets on the Breeders' Cup pick 6, according to board officials. Each winning ticket was worth $428,392 plus consolation payoffs for selecting five winners. The total value of the tickets is well more than $2.5 million. It was not immediately clear whether any of the tickets have been cashed.
According to several officials, the winning wagers were included on one ticket that picked only one horse in each of the first four races of the Pick 6 sequence at Arlington Park on Saturday, including two longshots, and then used the entire fields in the last two races.
"It is an unusual circumstance that you would want to look at no matter where it happened," said Stacy Clifford, a spokeswoman for the New York Racing and Wagering Board. "We're looking at the entire situation."
Tim Smith, the commissioner of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, and D.G. Van Clief, the president of Breeders' Cup, co-signed a letter sent to the New York State Racing and Wagering Board on Monday requesting an investigation into the wager.
The two groups jointly operate the Breeders' Cup program, including all wagering.
"We request your immediate attention in this matter and offer our full assistance in the investigation," the letter said.
According to officials, the investigation will focus on whether the bettor was able to past post his wagers, or submit his wagers after the running of one or more Breeders' Cup races.
Donald Groth, the chairman of Catskill OTB, which is in upstate New York, said that the winning bettor is a 29-year-old Maryland resident who placed the wagers by phone. The bettor has requested anonymity, Groth said. He said that "there is nothing to indicate that this was anything but a very good day for our customer."
"I know why you're suspicious, but that's not my job," Groth said. "I'm familiar enough with the customer that I believe this is legitimate."
Groth said that he has personally checked the time stamps for the telephone calls in which the pick six wagers were placed. "They were all placed beforehand," he said.
Investigators, however, said they believed the tickets were not submitted until after the Juvenile was run at 3:25 p.m. Central time. Pick 6 wagers were required to be placed before the fifth race, which went off at 1:37 p.m. Central time.
The winner of the first leg of the pick six, the Mile, was Domedriver, who paid $54. The second leg, the Sprint, was won by the favorite, Orientate ($7.40), and the third leg, the Filly and Mare Turf, was won by Starine, who paid $28.40. The winner of the fourth leg, the Juvenile, was Vindication, who paid $10.20.
The pick six was filled out by High Chapparal, the 9-10 favorite in the Turf, and longshot Volponi, who paid $89 as the longest shot on the board and highest priced winner of the day.

[hobbes]

http://forums.prospero.com/dr-general/messages/?start=Start+Reading+%3E%3E
INQUIRY SIGN UP ON THE PICK 6!
[ October 30, 2002, 01:10 AM: Message edited by: hobbes ]

[hobbes]

October 29, 2002
Good Pick-Six Bets, or Too Good to Be True?
By JOE DRAPE
was it a betting scam or just extraordinary horse picking? This is what Breeders' Cup officials have asked the New York State Racing and Wagering Board to determine in the case of a Maryland man who holds all six winning tickets worth more than $2.5 million from the lucrative Ultra Pick Six wager that was offered on Saturday's World Thoroughbred Championships day.
The pick six, one of many "exotic" wagers available at racetracks daily, challenges bettors to pick six winning horses in consecutive races. A horseplayer can select more than one horse per race, but adding contenders increases the amount of the bet. For $2, a bettor can choose one horse in each race, for example, but if a bettor chooses two contenders per race, the wager increases to $128.
The Breeders' Cup Ltd. and the National Thoroughbred Racing Association took the unusual step of asking the state's regulatory and enforcement arm to investigate after they discovered the six winning tickets were made through the Catskill Off-Track Betting Corp. by a single bettor, identified only as a 29-year-old Baltimore resident. The bettor opened the account within the past two weeks, Catskill OTB officials said.
Industry officials involved in the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified the bettor as Derrick Davis, who could not be reached for comment.
In a statement released yesterday, those organizations cited the "unusual nature of the winning wagers" and concern about the possibility that the wagering data may have been manipulated electronically. The racing board has held up payment on the winning tickets and has launched an inquiry.
"It could be as simple as someone getting lucky or there were some shenanigans involved," said Ed Martin, executive director of the racing and wagering board, the state's regulatory and enforcement arm for horse racing. "We'll see what happens as the review continues."
In a sport long associated with dreamers and schemers, the suspicion of a score too good to be true comes on the heels of the Breeders' Cup races held Saturday at Arlington Park near Chicago, where a record of $115 million was bet on track and at off-track facilities.
Hitting the pick six is never easy, and on a day when eight races worth a combined $13 million in purses attract full fields of the worlds' finest thoroughbreds, it becomes even more difficult. Still, highly skilled handicappers form syndicates that can build a ticket with multiple contenders and run the cost of a pick-six ticket well into the thousands; casual horse enthusiasts can plunk $2 to $200 down on a series of hunches.
In all, $4,646,289 was bet on the pick six in hopes of a lottery-like payoff.
What attracted the attention of industry officials and investigators was the configuration of the winning tickets and the fact that they belonged to a single bettor who called it in by phone to the Catskill OTB hub, one of five regional corporations in New York that along with New York City OTB handle off-track bets.
The winning tickets featured "singles," or races with only one horse selected, in the first four legs of the ticket and then "all," or the entire field selections, in the final two races. Those first four legs of the Breeders' Cup were won by the 26-1 long shot Domedriver the Mile, the 2.70-1 favorite Orientate in the Sprint, the 13.20-1 long shot Starine in the Filly and Mare Turf, and the 4.10-1 Vindication in the Juvenile.
Since the ticket had every horse in the field in the final two races, the Maryland man was guaranteed to win six of six. He did, indeed, as the heavily favored High Chaparral captured the Turf and the 44-1 Volponi, the longest price on the board, pulled a shocking upset in the Classic.
On a $2 ticket, those combinations and strategy cost $192. What raised suspicions, according to sources close to the investigation, was that the Maryland man bet a $12 pick-six ticket or played that exact combination six separate times for $1,152. The six winning bets were each worth $428,392.
In addition, by including every horse in the last two races, the bettor collected 108 of the 186 consolation payoffs for hitting five of six winners each worth $4,606.20.
"It raises the possibility that he already knew the outcome of one or more of the races and, either by computer or accomplice, got a bet in late that he was sure to win," said one industry executive who has seen the raw data from the computer that tracks wagering activity.
Brooks Pierce, president of Autotote, which processes 65 percent of all horse racing wagers in North America, confirmed that the Maryland man won more than $3 million on his $1,152 bet. He also said that his company's records show the man made two bets at 2:13 p.m. and 2:14 p.m. on Saturday, well before pool was closed at 2:37 p.m.
Pierce said the bettor made a pick-six wager on a $2 ticket that did not win using a similar strategy — he bet the entire field in the first two legs and then picked one horse in the remaining four. He said he had not yet been asked for the data by state investigators, but he intended to provide it.
"We've done the autopsy and do not have any question about the veracity of the bets," Pierce said. "I can understand how a skeptic can look at a pool of this size and only one winner — especially with those four singles — and have concerns.
"But I also would like to think we have a pretty good story about a guy who didn't bet much and made a lot of money. I believe that is good for racing as well."
Late yesterday, investigators had not spoken to the bettor, but a Maryland man identified only as Derrick was quoted on the Thoroughbred Times Web site as being the holder of the winning tickets and said he was unaware that his big hit was under scrutiny. He offered this explanation for the $12 pick six ticket:
"The bet was supposed to be $2," he said, adding that he made a mistake "with their phone system." He continued: "It was a $12 ticket that was the winning one. It was too late to cancel. I couldn't get back to them."
Donald Groth, president of Catskill OTB, also believes that the bettor had a career day betting. He said phone bets are recorded and monitored.
"Everything we have points to the legitimacy of this bet," Groth said. "If some technological event happened as it left here, I don't know what it would be. I hope that the investigation is concluded swiftly, so our customer can go out and buy a Mercedes or two. Isn't that what you would do?"
No money will be paid out until the matter is resolved, according to state officials. Martin, of the state racing and wagering board, said that if evidence of wrongdoing is discovered, the case will be turned over to criminal authorities.
For those 78 bettors who were paid more than $4,000 for picking five of the six Breeders' Cup races correctly, there may be further future rewards in months or years.
If wrongdoing is proven, the money will be returned to the betting pool and redistributed, which according to Breeders' Cup officials estimate, could mean up to an additional $35,000 per bettor.
Copyright The New York Times Company

[hobbes]

Posted: 10/28/2002 12:41:00 PM ET
Breeders’ Cup Ultra Pick Six betting probed
At the request of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and Breeders’ Cup Ltd., the New York State Racing Wagering and Board is investigating the fact that one bettor had all six winning Ultra Pick Six tickets from the Breeders’ Cup on October 26 at Arlington Park.
The six winning bets were each worth $428,392 and were made through a telephone account held with Catskill Off-Track Betting in New York. The winning bettor additionally cashed numerous consolation payoffs for having five of the six winners, each wager worth $4,606.20.
“We do not think there’s anything suspect, so we welcome those who have greater knowledge to explore it to ensure the integrity of the races,” said Don Groth, president of Catskill OTB. “It was a lucky day for a lucky fan. We believe that’s what it was. We hope that’s what it was.”
The fan, who identified himself only as Derrick, is a 29-year-old resident of Baltimore, Maryland, who said he had actually wanted to bet a $2 pick six, but he instead bet $12 and then found out it was too late to cancel the wager.
“The bet was supposed to be $2 and I kind of screwed up with their phone system,” said the fan, who owns a computer service business. “It was a $12 ticket that was the winning one. It was too late to cancel. I couldn’t get back to them.”
The fan said he was not aware of the investigation. No money has been paid out and it might not until the investigation is complete.
“This is kind of ridiculous,” he said. “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.”
“I can tell you that they have held up the transfer of the money, and I don’t know if that’s Arlington Park, the Breeders’ Cup, or the NTRA,” Groth said. “Chicago won’t give us the money.”
Groth said “Derrick” made two bets. For his winning bet, he picked one horse in each of the first four legs of the pick six and then used all of the horses in the last two legs, the Turf (G1) won by heavily favored High Chaparral and longshot Volponi, who paid $89 in the Classic (G1). The first four legs of the Breeders’ Cup were won by 26-to-1 Domedriver (Ire) in the Mile (G1), 2.70-to-1 favorite Orientate in the Sprint (G1), 13.20-to-1 Starine (Fr) in the Filly and Mare Turf (G1), and 4.10-to-1 Vindication in the Juvenile (G1).
“Vindication I thought was pretty much a lock,” Derrick said. “Orientate was a favorite. Domedriver and Starine were the only two longshots I had. I liked Domedriver. I did a lot of research. I liked Starine. I was trying to play it a couple different ways.”
He said he had recently moved to a new home in Baltimore and that he set up the phone account with Catskill OTB a week ago so he wouldn’t have to go to the track to wager. He watched the Breeders’ Cup on TV and knew he had the Pick Six after the first four legs since he used all horses in the final two.
“I got divorced at the beginning of the year,” he said. “It’s been a crappy year up to now.”
—Bill Heller

[Horny Harry]

Pick six: A hacker's paradise?
By MATT HEGARTY
NEW YORK - If someone wanted to manipulate the parimutuel pools in Thoroughbred racing, the bet of choice would be the pick six and it would be structured just like the Breeders' Cup ticket now under investigation by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board, racing and wagering experts said Tuesday.
The ticket, purchased for $1,152 through a phone account with Catskill Off-Track Betting on Saturday, used a single horse in each of the first four races in the pick six sequence. In the final two races, the ticket included every horse in the field. The bet was made in a $12 denomination, accounting for all six winning tickets, 108 of the 186 consolation tickets, and a $3 million payday that has been delayed pending the outcome of the investigation.
Although no hard evidence of wrongdoing has been uncovered, the incident has clearly struck a chord with many bettors whose confidence in the parimutuel system has been shaken. As a result, many racing officials are quietly urging the New York Racing and Wagering Board to call in experts in computer fraud from federal and state law-enforcement authorities to assist in the investigation, saying the reputation of the industry is at stake.
According to racing officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the New York Racing Association, which operates Aqueduct, Belmont, and Saratoga, has requested that the board also investigate two other pick six wagers that produced large payoffs to lone bettors, on Aug. 4 and Aug. 17 at Saratoga Race Course. The winning bets, which paid $330,389 and $421,988, respectively, were all placed through New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation, the officials said.
Stacy Clifford, a spokeswoman for the board, declined to comment on specifics of the investigation on Tuesday, but she said the board planned to contact "whoever can be of assistance."
Pick six data is routinely delayed.
The pick six appears particularly vulnerable to computer manipulation because of the way data is transmitted from many different sources into commingled parimutuel pools. According to mutuel managers at prominent tracks, the information regarding the amounts of pick six wagers is transmitted the instant a wager is placed, but the actual structure of the bet, including the specific horses that are being used, is not transmitted until after the fourth race is run in the pick six sequence.
The data is not transmitted all at once because pick six wagers include so many potential combinations that the size of the computer files could create traffic problems in the sophisticated totalisator network that links tracks across the country and continually updates wagering information.
Instead, only the complete information from tickets still "live" after four races is transmitted into the commingled pools before the fifth race.
Window of opportunity for fraud
According to some officials, the difference creates a window of opportunity - sometimes lasting up to 2 1/2 hours - in which data is being stored and when a computer expert or someone with access to the pools could manipulate specific bets. Since the actual numbers of the horses used in each bet do not have to be communicated to other sites until after the fourth race, the ideal way for a computer expert to rig a pick six bet at minimum cost would be to use the single-single-single-single-all-all ticket structure.
So when the winning Breeders' Cup pick six ticket came back too light, it instantly set off alarms.
"According to all the scam theorists I've talked to," said one official close to the investigation, "the money would go in at the right time, but the horses would not get selected until after the fourth leg has been run. That's exactly what we saw here."
Many racing officials doubt that the security of the pools are in danger, even if they acknowledge that the delay in transmitting pick six data represents a weakness in the system.
"It's not a weakness, per se, of the system if you can't hack into it, and there's no proof yet that the system has been hacked into," said Chris Scherf, the executive vice president of Thoroughbred Racing Associations, whose subsidiary, the Thoroughbred Racing and Protective Bureau, is assisting in the investigation. "But if you do have an instance in which the system has been hacked into, then you have a very, very big issue."
Donald Groth, the chairman of Catskill OTB, said on Monday that he believed the bets were legitimate. He said that the bets were placed by a 29-year-old man who lives in Baltimore. Groth, who confirmed that the bettor had opened the account just weeks before the Breeders' Cup and had placed no other bets through the account, would not divulge the bettor's name but agreed on Monday and Tuesday to pass a message to the bettor asking for comment. The bettor did not respond.
How secure are tote companies' systems?
Groth said on Tuesday that he still believed the bets were legitimate, but he joined a chorus of racing officials who called for an audit of totalizator providers.
"The tote companies are going to have to satisfy people that their systems are secure," Groth said.
Groth said Tuesday that investigators had not asked any questions yet concerning the possibility that the bettor was provided with inside assistance. He said that no one other than investigators for the New York wagering board have participated so far in the investigation.
One racing official who is assisting in the investigation said that it would be logical to take a closer look at the security of the totalizator system. The official cited concerns stretching back two years that some bettors were placing large wagers after races had started, leading to drops in odds after the gates had opened. Officials from the tote companies have denied that any past-post betting has occurred, attributing late odds changes to time-sensitive data being transmitted from far-flung sites.
"This has to be done now," said the racing official, referring to a review of the security for the tote system. "[The investigators] have to go in there and run the forensic tests and determine once and for all that someone is or isn't able to manipulate the data. They have no choice now."
[ October 30, 2002, 09:54 AM: Message edited by: hobbes ]

[Horny Harry]

Data indicates bets placed early
Groth said that he has personally checked the time stamps for the telephone calls in
which the pick six wagers were placed. "They were placed beforehand," he said.
Pick six wagers were required to be placed before the fifth race on the card, the Mile,
which was the first race in the pick six and which went off at 1:37 p.m. Central time.
Louis Skelton, the director of technical services for Autotote, said on Monday that
technicians had reviewed all pertinent data related to the wagers. He said the data
indicated that two bets - the $12 base wager that cost $1,152 and a second $2 base
wager, which cost $364 and used the entire field in the first two races and one horse in
the final four legs - were placed 20 minutes before post time.
"From a systems perspective, we're 100 percent certain that the pools were closed and
that this gentlemen made his bets 20 minutes before post time of the [first leg]," said
Brooks Pierce, Autotote's president.

[Horny Harry]

According to information released yesterday by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and the Breeders' Cup, the successful bettor (who has not been identified) made a single selection in each of the first four races, and then used all the starters in each of the last two. Although the minimum betting unit is $2, he played for $12, giving him six tickets on each combination. The total investment was $1,152.
Even bettors who invest tens of thousands of dollars in the Pick Six typically play the minimum unit of $2. It seems almost unimaginable that a bettor would use a single horse in each of four highly competitive races and play the ticket for $12. Moreover, the odds against picking these four difficult winners were more than 7,000 to 1.
The winning bettor not only held all six of the $428,392 payoffs but also 108 consolation Pick Fives worth $4,606.20 each -- a total return of $3,067,821. If the wager is proved to be fraudulent, the Breeders' Cup will be able to compensate defrauded bettors. The people who cashed Pick Fives had to sign federal tax identification forms to collect their winnings, so their identity is known. They would be entitled to proportionate shares coming from the money now earmarked for six $428,392 payoffs.
The Pick Six scandal has ramifications far beyond a single wager. Ever since the proliferation of off-track betting and full-card simulcasting, many horseplayers have suspected that wagers are being made after races have begun. When odds plummet on a horse in mid-race and he goes on to win, bettors regularly cry foul. Yet the leaders of the racing industry have always insisted that so-called "past-posting" is impossible, for computer systems are locked as soon as a race begins. That assertion will be subjected to intense scrutiny in the wake of the Breeders' Cup.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32381-2002Oct28.html
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
[ October 30, 2002, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: hobbes ]

[masun]

Although the minimum betting unit is $2, he played for $12, giving him six tickets on each combination. The total investment was $1,152.
So the guy made $1,152/$2 = 576 separate bets. Seems there were 24 starters (24 x 24 = 576)in each of the last two races. How many starters were there in each of the first 4 legs? Were there also around 24 starters in each race? If so, it's extraordinary that the guy was so confident in the first four races and so cluesless in the last two. OTOH, if like typical US races there were only between 6 to 8 runners in each the four legs, then the betting strategy was quite understandable.

[cheesebeast]

There were 14 starters in the first race, 13 in the second, 12 in the third, 13 in the 4th, 8 in the fifth leg and twelve in the final leg.
http://www.equibase.com/
Fields and results at the above link.

[masun]

Oops I made a mistake in my calculations: should have been 576/12 rather than 576/2. Anyway, looking at the number of starters in each leg, the bet was indeed strange. The last two legs had the smallest fields, yet the guy chose to play all the horses. The earlier races had bigger fields, yet he chose to play singles. Rather unusual indeed.

[hobbes]

not rather unusual masun but rather obviously an outright scam !!
From: TRACKGOD Oct-28 5:20 pm DRF INTERACT
This pick six thing is atrocious........guy singled first 4,then went all-all?.......FUNNY THING IS,if D,oro holds on in the classic,the guy definitely gets away with it!.
for the last 4 years,simulcasting everywhere is besieged with horses who mysteriously go down 2 or 3 pts.during a race......I have friends who can hack into government programs,and you think some computer guy cant get into auto tote late??yea,and I got a bridge to sell you....
Case in point:racing fans,if you havent seen it yet,do yourself a favor and get a copy of the Kentucky Cup Juvenile!!!.....for all 20 min. before race,Vindication was 1/1,and the Byrne-trained Day horse was 8/5....the odds never fluxed once...there was 250,000 in win pool.....at the start, a horse near Vindication reared,threw the jock,and bumped Vind. soundly....as a result,Vind. was dead last, and Day's horse made an easy lead........
going into the far turn a strange thing happened:Days horse went to EVEN-MONEY!!!!!!!!He was never lower than 8/5 all along,but because Vindication got knocked out of the race early,someone who possibly could be betting during the race,bet thousands on the loose on the lead Day horse.......Vindication makes herculean run and wins race anyhow(justice is served)...Noone can now make me believe that someone is not betting late....just watch that race!!!!!!!
despite many postings on late money coming onto horses after the start, going back months or years, i had always believed it was the very late pre post bets going into the pools. beyer would have sat with a tote official and watched this prior to writing about same.
if the software for the american totes is so antiquated it allows the selections to enter the system up to 4 races AFTER the first leg i am now not so sure. that the software would allow this is close to unbelieveable !!!

[Horny Harry]

RECORD ALL SOURCES HANDLE FOR BREEDERS' CUP WORLD THOROUGHBRED CHAMPIONSHIPS AT ARLINGTON PARK
October 26, 2002
Contact: Breeders' Cup Notes Team (847) 385-7472
Arlington Heights, Ill. (October 26, 2002) - Preliminary wagering totals from all sources on the 11-race card of the Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships held Saturday at Arlington Park established a new event record of $115,523,156. The new Breeders' Cup record breaks the old mark of $108,603,040 set in 2000 at Churchill Downs. Saturday's total handle was also more than $11.5 million higher than last year's Breeders' Cup Day wagering of $104,145,186 at Belmont Park.
A total of $13,568,233 was wagered by the crowd of 46,118 at Arlington Park on the 11-race card. A total of $101,954,923 was wagered at off-track facilities in North America and overseas. These figures do not include a limited number of international wagering outlets, which will be reported on Sunday.
A total of $4,646,289 was wagered on the Breeders' Cup Ultra Pick 6. There were six winning tickets, all purchased at Catskill OTB in upstate New York, with a payout of
$428,392. The consolation payoff for 5 correct was $4,606.20.
Total handle for the new Head to Head wager was $768,894 for seven Breeders' Cup races. There was no Head to Head wager on the Bessemer Trust Breeders' Cup Juvenile due to the scratch of Sky Mesa.
# # #

[Horny Harry]

$3 million prize is legit, OTB insists
NYRA investigation into Pick Six Breeders’ Cup bets to go on
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ALBANY, N.Y., Oct. 30 — The head of the off-track telephone betting center where Pick Six tickets worth more than $3 million for the Breeders’ Cup races were purchased said records at his office indicate the tickets are legitimate and the jackpot should be doled out.
Donald Groth, president of the Catskill Regional Off-Track Betting Corp., based in Pomona, N.Y., said a Maryland man made the bets 23 minutes before the first race in the Pick Six went off Saturday.
“Our records indicate he placed the bet at 2:14 p.m. and the race went off at 2:37 p.m.,” Groth said Tuesday. “I certainly don’t want to second-guess the investigation or the state, but all they should discover is that he was a lucky guy who had a lucky day.”
“I didn’t past-post anything,” bettor Derrick Davis, 29, of Baltimore, told the Thoroughbred Times. “I don’t know how I’d do it.”
Breeders’ Cup president D.G. Van Clief said he would not comment on the alleged irregularities.
“Our sole motivation would be to carry out whatever is necessary to ensure the integrity of the process and maintain the confidence of our customers,” Van Clief said.
GEAR CHANGES
Standing by adage proves costly in Classic
Signs pointed to Volponi victory,
for those who looked hard enough
Oct. 29 — A wise old handicapper once warned me about playing horses after equipment changes. “It must be construed as a negative sign,” he reasoned. “If trainers were satisfied with how their horses are running, why would they change something? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
OVER THE YEARS, I have heeded his advice. When horses show up with blinkers, a shadow roll, earmuffs, or front bandages for the first time, I look elsewhere. It is a strategy that has stood up to the test of time, give or take the occasional exception.
One of those exceptions just happened to be in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Since speed figures are my strongest handicapping tool, I considered Volponi to be a contender worthy of consideration. The four-year-old had a remarkably consistent string of competitive numbers both on the turf and on dirt. When trainer P.G. Johnson entered Volponi in the Classic and the Mile, I felt certain he would choose the turf option.
Wrong.
The affable veteran conditioner opted for the 1¼ mile on dirt in the richest race.
“I think he’s a distance horse who runs as well on the dirt as on the turf,” said Johnson. “The Classic is $4 million; the Mile is $1 million. Do the numbers.”
Johnson wasn’t thrilled with Volponi’s most recent race, the Meadowlands Cup. So he opted to try blinkers in the Classic for the first time to “sharpen him up”. That change forced me to draw a red line through Volponi on the program.
Oops.
That the horse jogged by six lengths at 43.50-1 was proof positive that the veteran Johnson made two shrewd decisions — to run in the big one and add the blinkers. Is he some genius?
Who knows, but he has the money, doesn’t he?
Volponi made that whopping price simply because he slipped through the betting cracks. Hype makes the favorites. The media was fascinated by the War Emblem-Came Home-Medaglia d’Oro rivalry in the weeks and days before the event. They were the marquee horses.
Evening Attire had just won two straight in New York so he was bound to attract attention at the windows. Hawk Wing was used because he came from the powerful Coolmore Stud in Ireland. 6-1. Why?
Three of the other longshots — Harlan’s Holiday, Macho Uno and Dollar Bill were familiar names to followers of the Triple Crown. Even Perfect Drift had cache as a decent three-year-old.
They simply overlooked Volponi.
Meadowlands Cup? Who cares?
Cross-entered? Trainer’s confused.
Blinkers on? A move of desperation.
P.G. Johnson? No Breeders’ Cup link.
Jose Santos? Just looking for a mount.
Students of speed figures could easily have taken a shot at Volponi if they escaped all the pre-race hype. He was the bang-for-the-buck entry in a field overloaded with question marks.
I certainly feared that my selection, Medaglia d’Oro, might get chewed up by the superior opposition than he faced when burning up the track at Saratoga. The fact is he ran his race.
But nobody was whipping Volponi on that day.
Have I changed my mind about eliminating horses with equipment changes?
No.
That’s the beauty of the game — there are no absolutes. If you never bet first-time starters, the chances are strong that one will inevitably beat you. If you never bet double class drops, you will occasionally get burned, and so on.
So let me stick to my guns.
Even if it possibly cost me an $89 winner in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

[hobbes]

Another nail in racing's coffin Published in the Asbury Park Press 10/30/02
Hi. My name is Bill, and I am a sucker.
For years I have been trying to beat the most challenging game there is, the thoroughbred game, knowing full well that it wasn't always on the level.
For years I have been racking my brain trying to solve mysteries that didn't necessarily lend themselves to rational solution or plausible explanation.
For years I have been careful to factor larceny into my machinations, figuring I might occasionally benefit from fraud without being party to it.
If you hit .200 in this league, you're Hall of Fame material. That's how tough a game it is. But you get lucky every now and then, and you get caught up in the intoxicating rush, and you find yourself putting up with the abuse.
This is going to change soon.
By the time my grandchildren are ready to go to the racetrack, there won't be any racetracks. I guess I should be happy about that, for their sake, so they're not in danger of getting sucked in the way grandpa got sucked in.
But I'm not happy about it at all, because deep down in some remote region of my heart I still love thoroughbred racing.
That's why I'm so angry.
While I was angry long before the Breeders' Cup Ultra Pick Six embarrassment came to light, this certainly disturbed the smoldering embers in my belly.
Maybe I never fully appreciated just how crooked a game this was.
In case you hadn't heard, a 29-year-old man from Baltimore allegedly opened an on-line account at an OTB parlor in the Catskills in the past two weeks, made his first bet there Saturday, and won over $3 million.
What a great story! He was the only person in the world who correctly picked the final six Breeders' Cup winners that day.
But instead of betting a $2 Pick Six, he made a remarkable mistake and bet it for $12. By the time he realized what he had done, it was too late to change his bet. Oh well. That's what he told a reporter for Thoroughbred Times.
Anyway, he used only one horse in each of the first four legs -- Domedriver, Orientate, Starine, Vindication -- and all the horses in the last two legs.
A $2 Pick Six played this way would have cost $192. A $12 ticket costs six times that, or $1,152. So the guy made a $960 mistake, it happens. Haven't you ever made a $960 mistake like that?
Wait, it gets deeper: Domedriver paid $54 to win, Starine $28.40.
And deeper: The lucky winner, who owns a computer service company, told Thoroughbred Times he studied really hard to come up with these horses.
And deeper: The guy who runs the OTB up in the Catskills insisted everything was on the up and up, that his customer just had a very good day.
Are you sufficiently insulted yet?
The National Thoroughbred Racing Association and the Breeders' Cup are on the case, investigating these peculiar circumstances. The guy in Baltimore won't get any money until all the questions are answered. If they aren't answered to the satisfaction of everyone concerned, then the people who had five out of six will each be getting an additional $35,000 or so (they had to sign IRS slips because five out of six paid $4,606).
This is nice. But who's going to reimburse all the people who believe they've been getting cheated out of money since the advent of full-card simulcasting, when horses started leaving the gate as 5-1 shots and hitting the wire as 3-1 winners? How is the racing establishment going to explain this away now, with some computer service man from Baltimore getting caught stealing money from tens of thousands of people all over the country on the day of the Breeders' Cup?
You know, allegedly.
If a 43-1 shot doesn't win the Classic, the last leg of the Pick Six, this little betting maneuver probably gets lost in the shuffle.
But since Volponi did win, racing now has to deal with perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of the game.
I mean, this makes the little games jockeys play look like kids stuff. This makes all the latter-day Oscar Barreras look like pikers. Even the boldest of these detestable chemists pale in comparison to anyone who can somehow tap into a computer system on the day of the Breeders' Cup and get a bet down after four of the races have already been run. Allegedly . . . allegedly . . . relax.
The one thing they have in common is monumental greed. They can't just take a little off the top and leave some for everybody else, like the regular cheaters do. No, they have to have it all, and they have to rub your face in it.
Then again, they know they can get away with it. Anybody can get away with anything in this game, because there are no police.
Look at it this way: If something's fishy, who does the investigating? People who need to fill races to stay in business, that's who.
So you've got guys claiming horses and getting them to improve 15 lengths overnight and nobody says boo. Everybody on the racetrack can see it plain as day. Yet the racing media oftentimes glorify these people.
You've got guys who are ruled off the racetrack training horses on somebody's farm, and everybody knows about it. But when racing secretaries depend on cheats to fill their races, what are you going to do, sick the NTRA on 'em?
You've got big players buying their own off-track betting parlors in far-flung outposts like South Dakota so they can set up sophisticated computer systems, make bets at the last possible second, and give themselves the largest possible rebates while they're at it. What a great country.
Of course none of this should faze us here in New Jersey. Why would it? We have a racing establishment that can't get out of its own way, or won't get out of its own way, as the case may be. Four years ago the voters told the lawmakers to go ahead and help racing. Four years later there is still no phone betting, still no off-track wagering. Why? Follow the money. You're sure to find your answer at the end of that dirty trail.
Scam artists who tap into computers to steal your money, loathsome trainers who abuse animals for short-term profit, thieving jockeys, crooked politicians and their cronies . . . what's the difference?
Racing is like one big trough, and everyone's feeding there.
Everyone except you and me.
At least there should be some good theater in the days ahead. We'll get to hear fairy tales about the guy in Baltimore and the bet he made, and we'll get to watch the suits squirm as their noses begin to grow and their pants catch fire. And some day maybe we can tell our grand children about all this and watch their eyes light up and listen to them giggle and laugh.
Just don't count on taking them out to the racetrack, because it won't be there anymore. The pigs will have seen to that.
Bill Handleman is an award-winning Asbury Park Press columnist. E-mail: "handle@app.com"

[hobbes]

"In fact, my friend in the mutuel room can go to his computer 10 seconds after all bets are in (allowing time for legit simulcast moneys to reach the computer, which can take a minute or two after the start)"
oh my -- the statement above just adds to worries that some may be able to get bets down after a race has started.
if the software run by the US tote companies is so slow it takes the bets that long to reach their final destination they are running some rubbish dated software and just asking to be hacked.
"Groth said Tuesday that investigators had not asked any questions yet concerning the possibility that the bettor was provided with inside assistance. He said that no one other than investigators for the New York wagering board have participated so far in the investigation.
One racing official who is assisting in the investigation said that it would be logical to take a closer look at the security of the totalizator system. The official cited concerns stretching back two years that some bettors were placing large wagers after races had started, leading to drops in odds after the gates had opened. Officials from the tote companies have denied that any past-post betting has occurred, attributing late odds changes to time-sensitive data being transmitted from far-flung sites.
"This has to be done now," said the racing official, referring to a review of the security for the tote system. "[The investigators] have to go in there and run the forensic tests and determine once and for all that someone is or isn't able to manipulate the data. They have no choice now."
By MATT HEGARTY -- DRF
"There could be nothing wrong; there could be everything wrong," said Ed Martin, executive director of the Racing and Wagering Board. "If it’s found that there’s a problem with Pick Six wagering, my board would have to reconsider Pick Six wagering. Is this possibly indicative of a larger problem?"—Bill Heller
it looks increasingly likely individual races pools are being bet after the race has started in at least some situations.
it also seems as though the racing authorities are'nt doing much about it except talking.
[ October 31, 2002, 09:14 AM: Message edited by: hobbes ]

[cheesebeast]

Now being referred to as the Fix Six.
It's hard to believe that the system could be so sloppy as to not require a back-up of data from all OTB centres at least after each of the first 4 legs, or preferably at close-off time of the first leg, prior to sending it to the main computers after the fourth race.
Also hard to believe that the central computers are "too busy" to have all bet data sent as and when the bets are placed - unbelievable. This guy just won the lottery, had the only winning ticket and had it not once but six times!
Horse racing rocked by 'Fix Six' bet scandal
By JAMES CHRISTIE
Thursday, October 31, 2002 – Page A1
The world of horse racing was abuzz yesterday over what is becoming one of the biggest betting scandals in the sport's history -- one man's $3-million (U.S.) payday that some say was more about computer hacking than luck or handicapping skill.
Derrick Davis, a 29-year-old bettor from Maryland, had the only winning tickets in the Ultra Pick Six bet at Saturday's Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships in Chicago. He spent $1,152, and when 41-1 long-shot Volponi won the Breeders' Cup Classic to cap a day of improbable outcomes, Mr. Davis's six winning tickets were each worth $428,392.
Mr. Davis, who made his bet through a New York telephone account, also had a series of consolation tickets that pushed his total payout to $3-million.
But racing officials raised the alarm on Mr. Davis's bet almost immediately, and expert horse bettors branded it the "Fix Six."
Racing officials are urging the New York State Racing and Wagering Board to call in outside experts on computer fraud to investigate, and some tracks are asking authorities to look into suspicious Pick Sixes from the past.
The issue is not what you might find in a Dick Francis novel -- drugged horses or crooked jockeys. Rather, it is about the transmission of computer-betting data.
To win a Pick Six, a bettor must correctly predict the winners of six consecutive races. The odds against doing so are astronomical, so the payouts are lucrative.
An investigation this week by the Daily Racing Form revealed that while the amount of a Pick Six bet is transmitted immediately to a central computer, the horses selected are not often transmitted until after four of the six races have been run. Skeptics believe there is a window of opportunity here to change the selections after the winners are known.
Bettors often form large syndicates to play the Pick Six, a bet that can be lucrative but is prohibitively expensive. To bet every horse in every race on Saturday would have cost $5.5-million. On each of his tickets, Mr. Davis selected only one horse in each of the first four races. He was right each time, despite the long-shot odds on two of the four. In the final two races, he had every horse going for him.
Mr. Davis told the Thoroughbred Times this week that "I didn't do anything wrong. I don't want any attention. I do computer work, but I'm not a hacker."
The president of the Catskill Off-Track Betting Corp., the company that took Mr. Davis's bet, said he believes nothing improper occurred, and that this was simply a brilliant bet.
But the Breeders' Cup withheld payment to Mr. Davis and issued a statement on Monday saying it had asked New York officials to investigate the winning bet, citing "possible electronic manipulation of wagering data." The New York State Racing and Wagering Board would say yesterday only that the investigation is continuing.
Big payouts are common on big race days. More than $100-million was wagered worldwide on Saturday's eight championships races.
In this case, though, most betting experts have no doubt that something improper happened.
"Was it a legitimate bet? No, you kidding? This was not even a mildly disguised ripoff," Len Friedman said. Mr. Friedman is a partner in the Ragozin Sheets, a sophisticated speed-figure service used by horse owners, trainers and bettors. Mr. Friedman is widely known as one of North America's most successful handicappers and bettors.
"It's insulting that they thought they could get away with this," he said. Mr. Friedman called for a probe by private investigators. "This was a crude ripoff . . . There could even be people playing games on the inside."
Glenn Crouter, director of media at Toronto-based Woodbine Entertainment Group, said that Canadian observers "are all kind of shocked. It's awfully fishy, no question."
Mr. Crouter said no Canadian money was involved in the controversial Pick Six. Canadian tracks offer their own betting pools on major U.S. horse-racing events, so customers will not have to pay U.S. taxes on winning bets.

[cheesebeast]

Integrity of all wagering in doubt
Suspicious Pick Six wager probably not 1st-time occurrence
COMMENTARY
By Andrew Beyer
Oct. 30 — The suspicious wager placed on the Breeders’ Cup Pick Six may have defrauded bettors of more than $3 million, and that is only the beginning of the racing industry’s problems in this scandal. It raises questions about the integrity of the entire American parimutuel business and, if true, would confirm doubts that horseplayers have harbored for years.
BETTORS FREQUENTLY WONDER if cheaters have found a way to wager after a race has begun. They wonder when a horse’s odds drop from 3-to-1 to 2-to-1 just before he wins. They wonder when various types of exotic bets return unusually low payoffs. Wagers now come into a track’s parimutuel pool from many sources, including off-track and telephone-betting operations that have little or no regulation. Couldn’t there be rogues among them? Yet every leader of the American parimutuel industry has insisted that the system is secure and there is no way to bet after a race begins.
But in the wake of Saturday’s events at Arlington Park, it’s possible that these assurances were wrong. Somebody might have beaten the system in the Breeders’ Cup. And if someone could do it on America’s biggest racing event, how many other weaknesses in the parimutuel system have they found and exploited?
The incident came to light after a single bettor held all six winning combinations on the Breeders’ Cup Pick Six, worth more than $3 million. The bets were placed by phone to Catskill Region Off-Track Betting, whose chairman, Donald Groth, continues to insist they were legitimate.
But anyone who understands Pick Six wagering believes it is inconceivable that a handicapper could have made this bet before some of the races were run. The winning bettor, identified as a 29-year-old Derrick Davis of Baltimore, “singled” — i.e. stood alone with — the winners of the first four races, including the 26-to-1 Domedriver and the 13-to-1 Starine. I would wager confidently that no other bettor in America playing a substantial ticket singled either of these horses — let alone both. Gamblers play the Pick Six by singling standout horses and using several contenders in races where they hope to catch a long shot. Moreover, Davis played in a $12 denomination, enabling him to hit the winning combination six times. This, too, is almost unimaginable. Even high-rollers typically play the minimum $2 unit, because they want to use their available capital to cover as many combinations as possible.
The structure of the winning bet — four singles followed by all the horses in the last two races — looked even more suspicious after the Daily Racing Form yesterday explained the way computer systems handle the Pick Six. When betting closes, the outlets taking the Pick Six tell the host track the total of wagers they have taken. But because all of the individual pick-six combinations involve so much data, computer gridlock would result if every outlet transmitted the information immediately. So the individual bets are not sent until later — until after four races of the Pick Six have been run. If doctored, a ticket with four “singles” followed by two “alls” would suggest that somebody not only knew how the system worked but also knew how to penetrate the system and insert winning numbers after four races had been run.
If this is the case, the winner had a magic formula for making a fortune. It is probably naïve to assume that Saturday is the first time it was used. Such a scam might have gone on indefinitely if a $12 ticket including singles in the first four races had not been so conspicuously suspicious. If the winner had played a $2 ticket using two or three horses in each of the first four legs of the Pick Six, followed by two “alls,” he would be hailed as a handicapping and betting genius for making his $3 million score.
After the questions about the Breeders’ Cup, bettors must wonder how many Pick Sixes at tracks across the country have been won by fraud. How many tens of millions of dollars have been taken from the game’s customers who wrongly trusted the integrity of the parimutuel system? When a horse plummets from 3-to-1 to 2-to-1 in mid-race now, who is going to believe the assurances of the tote companies that it is impossible to bet after a race has started?
The racing industry faces a major crisis of confidence. Some of its leaders may still be in denial, such as Brooks Pierce, president of Autotote, the company that processed the Pick Six bets. He made this astounding comment to the New York Times: “I would like to think we have a pretty good story about a guy who didn’t bet much and made a lot of money. I believe this is good for racing.”
But to their credit, the Breeders’ Cup and the National Thoroughbred Racing Association immediately recognized the magnitude of the problem, issued a statement and publicly requested an investigation by New York racing authorities.
Until now, the NTRA’s major undertaking has been its effort to promote the sport with such ventures as its “Go, Baby, Go” advertising campaign. Plenty of critics have questioned the organization’s usefulness. But now the sport desperately needs the NTRA to assume a strong leadership role. The NTRA has to address the operation of the nation’s tote systems and whole issue of parimutuel integrity. It must ensure that nobody can ever again tamper with computer systems that handle wagers. When the NTRA has done so, it must convince bettors that the game is honest. This is going to require more than a cute slogan and an advertising campaign, because there is scarcely a serious bettor left in America who trusts the parimutuel system.
[ November 01, 2002, 12:07 AM: Message edited by: hobbes ]

[masun]

If this is the case, the winner had a magic formula for making a fortune. It is probably naïve to assume that Saturday is the first time it was used.
What is incomprehensible is, if some other people had also figured out the weaknessess in the mutuel system, there surely should have been more than one person winning the BC fix six?

[cheesebeast]

This from a BB on the internet so no vouching for the accuracy - WFAN a NY radio station
Just heard on WFAN that Mike Francesa reported Derrick has been the "winner" on the other 2 pick 6's in question and all told has now one well over 3 million dollars for 3 days work.Funny thing is the stratgey was exactly the same in the other two scenarios 1x1 x1 x1 x 1 x all x all.Callers are climbing all over the story.According to the sources at the station the focus is on a group of 4 individuals including Derrick.All as Yorker said earlier innocent until hung.
http://www.nyra.com/messageboard/post.asp?Id=106216798

[cheesebeast]

Hi F=
olks.....
What better way to judge what this year's BC Pick 6 should have paid than to=
compare it with the five prior BC Pick 6's run to date, from last year back=
to 1997, the first year it became a Pick 6 after being run as a Pick 7 from=
1991 to 1996.
I just went back through my copies of the Blood-Horse BC recap issues to che=
ck how each year's Pick 6 payoff compared to the $2.00 win parlay on the sam=
e races. Using the parlay amount is a better benchmark to than comparing the=
Pick 6 payoffs to the same year's consolation payoff, since we know that in=
the case of this year's BC results, the consolation payoff pool contains 10=
8 of 186 conso's that were bought as part of the 6 sole winning Pick 6 ticke=
ts now under scrutiny. So we'll stick to comparing Pick 6 payoffs versus the=
parlays.
What I found is that the Pick 6 payoffs from 1997 to 2001 ranged from a low=20=
of 85% of the parlay in 2000 (the year my group hit it, of course : ) to a h=
igh of 514% in 1999, the year a single, legitimately documented paper ticket=
sold on track at Gulfstream paid $3,058,137.60. Before I list all the data=20=
below, from which anyone may draw their own conclusions, let's first throw o=
ut the high and the low percentages of 514% and 85% noted above and apply th=
e average of the "Pick 6 to Parlay" percentages for the other three years. I=
n those years, the $16,417.20 Pick 6 payoff in '97 was 145% of the $2.00 par=
lay of $11,306.05. The $34,607.20 Pick 6 payoff in '98 was 152% of the $2.00=
parlay of $22,835.31 for that year. The $226,442.00 Pick 6 payoff at Belmon=
t last year was 186% of the $2.00 parlay of $140,739.47.
The $2.00 parlay on this year's BC Pick 6 races comes to $1,223,397.58 based=
on mutuels of $54, $7.40, $28.40, $10.20, $3.80 and $89.00. If we take 161%=
, the average of those three "median" percentage figures of 145%, 152% and 1=
86%, it is not unreasonable to expect the 2002 BC Pick 6 payoff to have been=
in the neighborhood of $1,969,670.
Too high? Okay, lets take the 85% P6 payoff/parlay ratio from 2000 and apply=
it to the 2002 parlay figure of $1,223,397.58 to arrive at a projected Pick=
6 payoff of "only" $1,039,888. Too low? Just for fun, let's compare it to t=
he only other "single winner" year. Using the 1999 ratio of 514% would resul=
t in a payoff of $6,294,195=E2=80=A6=E2=80=A6.if this year's Pick 6 pool wer=
e large enough to accommodate such a payoff.
But what about the actual 2002 Pick 6 payoff of $428,392? How does IT stack=20=
up percentage wise against the parlay figure of $1,223,397.58? Let's see, lo=
oks like anything near the 514% figure for the only other "lone group" winne=
r in '99 is out of the question. How 'bout 186%? Nope. What about the 85%, l=
owest of the five Pick 6's to date. Not even close.
Folks, this year's Pick 6 payoff of $428,392 is a paltry 35% of the $2.00 pa=
rlay, less than half of the next lowest percentage of 85% two years ago. Thi=
nk about the fact that this involves a Pick 6 pool of $4,569,515, a figure w=
hich most major racetracks in this country would love to have as their avera=
ge daily handle. It was "slammed" like a rag doll by one $12.00 wager by a n=
on-professional of apparently modest means who apparently wasn't concerned a=
bout losing his $1,152.
Is there anyone out there who still believes that this individual legitimate=
ly took down the entire 2002 BC Pick 6 pool six times over?
Ernie Dahlman, are you out there????
Here is the data for the prior years:
Year / leg1 / leg2 / leg3 / leg4 / leg5 / leg6 / Parlay / Pick 6 payoff / P6=
payoff divided by parlay
1997/ $35.20/ $11.60/ $6.20/ $4.40/ $5.80/ $5.60/ $11,306.05/ $16,417.20/ 145%
1998/ $3.60/ $9.60/ $25.20/ $8.00/ $9.20/$11.40 / $22,835.31/ $34,607.20/ 152%
1999/ $16.40/ 9.40/ $9.20/ $62.60/ $5.20/$41.20/ $594,407.72 / $3,058,137.60
/ 514%
2000/ $8.00/ $5.40/ $12.00/ $14.60/ $11.20/ $20.40/ $54,040.09/ $45,772.00/ 85%
2001/ $12.20/ $21.20/ $14.00/ $16.40/ $4.80/ $15.80/ $140,739.47/ $262,442/ 186%
2002 $54.00/ $7.40/ $28.40/ $10.20/ $3.80/ $89.00 / $1,223,397.58 / $428,392 / 35%
Vinnie Ralph

[hobbes]

Pick six investigation looks at computer tech
By MATT HEGARTY DRF.COM 31/10/02
NEW YORK ---------- SNIPPED
Racing and wagering experts have called the structure and denomination of the bet unusual, raising red flags with the New York Racing Association mutuel officials, who reported their suspicions to the board on Sunday morning.
"It's the stupidest bet I've ever seen," said Vince Hogan, NYRA's director of mutuels.
Tote officials continued to maintain on Wednesday that they believed the bets were legitimate and that their systems were not compromised.
John Corckran, the president of AmTote, which is the tote supplier for Arlington Park, the site of the Breeders' Cup races and the hub for all Cup wagers, said: "We are confident that it could not happen in our system," referring to manipulation of a pick six ticket. He would not be specific about the controls in the system that would prevent someone from altering a ticket and said the company had no plans to change any of its procedures.
Brooks Pierce, the president of Autotote, the tote supplier for Catskill, said earlier this week that technicians had reviewed the wagering data and found nothing wrong. Pierce declined to respond to a request for comment on security procedures that would prevent the alteration of a pick six ticket after it had been placed.
Both tote officials confirmed that investigators from the board have already contacted them. Investigators are also "poring over" documents at Catskill, Groth said. Board officials have refused to comment on any details of the case.
The investigation is more than likely being led by Tom Casaregola, the board's director of audits and investigations.
"Tom's certainly the best auditor and investigator the racing board has ever had," said Bennett Liebman, a former board member who is now the coordinator of the Racing and Wagering Program at the Albany Law School. "It's the first time that the board has had someone who is qualified to do financial investigations."

[hobbes]

No shady dealings in odds plunges By MATT HEGARTY JUL, 2002
NEW YORK - It has become common at some racetracks. A front-running 7-2 shot is rounding the turn for home when his odds suddenly drop to 2-1. The horse goes on to win, leaving ticket holders to complain bitterly about mysterious gamblers who are getting bets down after the bell.
The phenomenon, called a late-odds change, is shaking some bettors' confidence in horse racing. Many of the drops are occurring long after the horses have left the gate, and in some cases in Florida, horseplayers have complained that odds are dropping between the time the horses pass the finish line and when official prices are posted.
To some horseplayers, the answer is simple: Someone, somewhere, is making bets after the horses leave the gate, placing massive wagers to win on front-running horses who did not have trouble at the start.
"I get the phone calls all the time," said Mike Marten, a spokesman for the California Horse Racing Board. "We explain that we have a very good system in place and that it's not possible to place a bet after the machines lock. Some people say, 'Thanks, that was nice of you,' but others say, 'I don't believe it,' and that's it. There's nothing you can say to convince them otherwise."
According to racing officials, the current checks and balances put in place to regulate betting and the tote system make it nearly impossible to place a bet after the gates open. The late-odds changes, officials say, are simply the consequence of the flood of money that comes in just before the post, which requires time to calculate and transfer the final odds.
"The system is unforgiving," said Wes Angerville, the manager of Autotote's operations at Belmont Park. "When betting stops, it stops, everywhere."
Checks and balances
Certainly, the perceptions of late-odds changes are reinforced by racing's unsavory history with past-post wagering. It wasn't so long ago that betting rings at some tracks paid unscrupulous tellers to keep their machines open for several seconds after the post.
But those days are long gone, officials say, because of a sophisticated totalizator network that locks the machines and time-stamps all bets. In fact, racing officials said, the only way to bet after the race starts would be to take down the communications link between the host track and the simulcast site, place bets on the simulcast machines, and then convince the host track's mutuel department to allow the affected bets back into the pools - all the while hoping that no one ever asked to see ticket reports from the simulcast site's individual machines.
That might not sound so difficult. In fact, communications links between host tracks and simulcast sites go down all the time, totalizator officials said. But a system of controls put in place about 10 years ago - mostly to handle the enormous growth in interstate betting - and refined over the years has convinced most racing officials that any past-posting scheme would be easily tripped up.
"If it's a system failure, it's an easy check to follow up, and if the track is vigilant, it's very easy to monitor," said Chris Scherf, the executive vice president of the Thoroughbred Racing Associations, a racetrack trade group.
At most U.S. tracks, the signal to stop betting comes from the state steward at a host track. At Belmont, for example, the steward has to press a button twice. That signal is relayed instantly to the tote room, where it is then forwarded to every machine in the country that is accepting bets on the track's signal. The stop-betting command is received nearly instantaneously throughout the network, tote officials said.
If the steward does not issue the stop-betting command, most tracks have back-up plans. At Belmont, a radio transmitter attached to the gate sends a signal to the tote room that the gate has opened. The signal tells the tote system to lock if the signal has not yet come from the steward.
If the radio signal is not received, two employees in the tote room are on the lookout. A "no-lock" call goes out, and the operators shut the system manually. And if those two operators don't notice, tote companies employ technicians at other tracks to monitor signals from the host track for lock failures.
Tote employees are reluctant to admit it, but those lines of defense break down occasionally. In New Jersey, the racing commission has collected fines and settlement fees from Autotote, the only tote company doing business in New Jersey, of $16,500 for five instances over the past four years in which the machines were not locked on a timely basis, according to Mike Vukcevich, the commission's deputy director.
But Vukcevich said that no one was ever accused of making past-post bets because of those failures. Vukcevich also said that no incidents had occurred in the past two years.
"When you look at the amount of signals that Autotote handles, it's incredibly minute," Vukcevich said. "But we perceived it as a developing problem and a potentially embarrassing situation, so we threw a lot of effort at it and started imposing fairly substantial penalties, and that seemed to clean it up."
The trickier situations, racing regulators and officials said, are communications failures. Occasionally, a simulcast site will lose contact with a host site, preventing the transmission of any information. The failure usually lasts only seconds before the link is restored. But sometimes the link is down when the stop-betting command is issued, creating problems.
If the failure occurs at post time, the machines at the disconnected simulcast site still shut down even though they don't receive the stop-betting command from the host. The key piece of information in this process is the host track's expected post time. At the beginning of the day, simulcast machines receive a list of the day's probable post times from the host tracks. Under a programming change that was put into effect two years ago, the machines lock if the link with the host is down when there is zero minutes to post.
Even though the simulcast machines automatically lock, the site's wagers are not automatically allowed into the host track's pools if the link was not up at the time the stop-betting command was transmitted. In most cases, the link is restored quickly, and a quick check can verify that the betting numbers are accurate. The tote system accepts the numbers and makes the final calculations.
But in other cases, the link cannot be restored quickly, so the host track and the simulcast site have to reach a solution in order to post accurate track prices. Most of the time, the host track will accept a fax of the wagering details from the simulcast site and enter the figures into the pools manually. But in others, the host site will tell the simulcast site that any wagers made after the link went down are the simulcast site's responsibility.
An identification trail is supposed to ensure that the simulcast site can't forge the figures it provides to the host site. Each machine is connected to a network hub, which assigns a unique number to each bet. Among other information, the exact time that each bet was placed is recorded. Tote officials said that they had uncovered no instances of reports being altered, and they also said that reports could be cross-referenced with other information to verify their authenticity.
"It's all on the ticket reports," said David Payton, an Autotote official. "If you are unsure, you can always go back and look at the available documentation."
So what's happening?
If no one is betting past post, then why are odds changing during a race? Tote officials point to two factors: the dramatic influx of late money - currently, two-thirds of the handle is bet in the last two minutes before post - and the tote cycle, which is the way the system crunches and consolidates the massive amounts of data from the host track's network of simulcast sites.
The cycle is currently initiated every 60 seconds. It starts when the host track asks for all of the machines in the network to transmit the information for the wagers placed since the last cycle. Information on win, place, and show wagers are transmitted nearly instantaneously, while two-leg wagers - daily doubles, exactas, and quinellas - take a bit longer. The biggest wagers, like trifectas, superfectas, and pick sixes - what tote officials call "scan bets" because of the enormous will-pay matrices - take even longer because of the many possible betting combinations.
After the system receives all the information, it consolidates the numbers and begins calculating the payoffs. When the calculations are complete, the host site's system transmits the final odds and payoffs to all the simulcast sites. Only when all the sites have received the information will the final odds be displayed.
"If we didn't do it that way, then the people on-track would see the results much quicker than the people off-site," said Victor Harrison, an official with United Tote. "That's an unfair advantage."
At Belmont Park on a recent Friday, the calculations for win, place, and show odds for the 12-horse fifth race took 44 seconds to be completed, meaning win odds did not reflect all the betting information until nearly halfway through the 1 1/4-mile race. Calculations for the other pools took 1 minute, 26 seconds, or 35 seconds before the race ended.
Tote officials said the final updates could not be completed any faster under today's technology. "We're working with the laws of physics," Autotote's Payton said. "It's not the calculations. It's that there's no way to instantaneously transfer all that information."
An extra step in Florida
Tote officials said the late-odds phenomenon is most noticeable in Florida - and for a good reason: Florida, like Illinois, Colorado, and Arizona, has regulations requiring all bets to be consolidated at one local site before being forwarded to the host site. That creates an additional step in the calculation process, referred to by tote officials as a double-hop.
"You can sit there and watch the board and see that as everyone else is finishing up, someone in a double-hop situation is just coming up as final," said Jeff Murphy, United Tote's director of operations. "The time effect nearly doubles."
That would partly explain several jaw-dropping odds changes at Calder Race Course this summer. Ask Me Again, a horse in the first race on June 1 at Calder, was 22-1 when the gates opened but 12-1 when crossing the finish line. In the fifth race on June 10. Vidlocity was 18-1 in the gate but 10-1 at the final change. Both were front-runners.
Ken Dunn, the president of Calder, said his mutuel managers have vigorously investigated the late changes and discovered nothing unscrupulous. But he remains concerned, and he is now urging industry officials to do something about the phenomenon, which he said is jeopardizing the perception of the game.
"Most people will argue that perception is just as important as fact or reality," Dunn said. "In this case, even the most sophisticated person, we can explain it to him, and he will say, 'I understand,' but then once he walks out the door, he says, 'Yeah, but . . .' There's still some level of skepticism. So we have to do everything in our power to correct the perception, because there's no problem with the system's integrity."
- Reprinted from DRF Simulcast Weekly

[hobbes]

very good point re vested interests dave ( of those tote officials assuring everyone their systems are secure ). they need to believe it AND to say so to keep their jobs. hence their assurances are worthless.
their claims that there is too much data to transmit all the pick 6 combinations are rubbish. it simply means they are running antiquated software. also allowing the actual combinations to be sent after race 4 is just begging to be hacked.
immediately i read that i would not trust the integrity of ANY of their pools.
"Tote officials said the late-odds phenomenon is most noticeable in Florida - and for a good reason: Florida, like Illinois, Colorado, and Arizona, has regulations requiring all bets to be consolidated at one local site before being forwarded to the host site. That creates an additional step in the calculation process, referred to by tote officials as a double-hop.
"You can sit there and watch the board and see that as everyone else is finishing up, someone in a double-hop situation is just coming up as final," said Jeff Murphy, United Tote's director of operations. "The time effect nearly doubles."
That would partly explain several jaw-dropping odds changes at Calder Race Course this summer. Ask Me Again, a horse in the first race on June 1 at Calder, was 22-1 when the gates opened but 12-1 when crossing the finish line. In the fifth race on June 10. Vidlocity was 18-1 in the gate but 10-1 at the final change. Both were front-runners.
Ken Dunn, the president of Calder, said his mutuel managers have vigorously investigated the late changes and discovered nothing unscrupulous. But he remains concerned, and he is now urging industry officials to do something about the phenomenon, which he said is jeopardizing the perception of the game."
earlier in the article he referred to it taking up to 45 seconds to calculate all the bets as they came in from the various sources. this seems too slow but the "double-hop" scenario just seems to allow further opportunity for hacking.
basically they are using dated software that seems to beg to be hacked because it is too slow.

[hobbes]

Tote worker fired in connection to pick 6 By MATT HEGARTY 31/10/02
NEW YORK - Autotote, the totalizator supplier for Catskill Off-Track Betting Corp., fired one of its employees on Thursday and turned over evidence to the New York state police in connection to the investigation into the Breeders' Cup pick 6, the company announced.
Autotote officials were not immediately available for comment. A release announcing the firing said the company had "uncovered evidence of potential employee wrongdoing" in connection with a suspicious large winning bet on the Breeders' Cup race last weekend.
The New York State Racing and Wagering Board began an investigation into the Breeders' Cup pick 6 on Sunday after racing officials contacted the board about the suspicious winning bet, which was worth a total of $3.1 million when consolation payouts are included.
All six winning bets were contained on one $1,152 ticket that included one horse in each of the first four legs and every horse in the final two legs. The bet was made in a $12 denomination, a highly unusual amount.
The bet was placed by Derrick Davis, a 29-year-old self-employed computer technician who lives in Maryland, according to investigators. Davis punched in the bet on a touch-tone response telephone system, investigators have said, through an account he had opened just a week earlier.
Investigators are looking for evidence that might indicate that the winning ticket was altered after four legs of the pick six were already run. The totalizator system does not transmit information about which horses are used on tickets until after the fourth leg, in order to minimize traffic on the tote network.
According to an official involved in the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the Autotote employee worked at a betting hub in Delaware.
Racing and wagering experts in contact with investigators have said this week that only someone with access to the tote could have altered the ticket. Tote officials have maintained this week in interviews that their systems were secure and not compromised. Yesterday, though, Brooks Pierce, the president of Autotote, declined to comment on Autotote's specific security controls that would prevent someone from altering a pick 6.

[hobbes]

from various articles the quotes below from the president of Autotote who process 65% of all racing in wagers in North America.
he must be fired and Autotote replaced by a more competent organisation.
"From a systems perspective, we're 100 percent certain that the pools were closed and that this gentlemen made his bets 20 minutes before post time of the [first leg]," said Brooks Pierce, Autotote's president.
Brooks Pierce, president of Autotote, which processes 65 percent of all horse racing wagers in North America, confirmed that the Maryland man won more than $3 million on his $1,152 bet. He also said that his company's records show the man made two bets at 2:13 p.m. and 2:14 p.m. on Saturday, well before pool was closed at 2:37 p.m.
Pierce said the bettor made a pick-six wager on a $2 ticket that did not win using a similar strategy — he bet the entire field in the first two legs and then picked one horse in the remaining four. He said he had not yet been asked for the data by state investigators, but he intended to provide it.
"We've done the autopsy and do not have any question about the veracity of the bets," Pierce said. "I can understand how a skeptic can look at a pool of this size and only one winner — especially with those four singles — and have concerns.
"But I also would like to think we have a pretty good story about a guy who didn't bet much and made a lot of money. I believe that is good for racing as well."
The racing industry faces a major crisis of confidence. Some of its leaders may still be in denial, such as Brooks Pierce, president of Autotote, the company that processed the Pick Six bets. He made this astounding comment to the New York Times: “I would like to think we have a pretty good story about a guy who didn’t bet much and made a lot of money. I believe this is good for racing.”
Brooks Pierce, the president of Autotote, the tote supplier for Catskill, said earlier this week that technicians had reviewed the wagering data and found nothing wrong. Pierce declined to respond to a request for comment on security procedures that would prevent the alteration of a pick six ticket after it had been placed.
Yesterday, though, Brooks Pierce, the president of Autotote, declined to comment on Autotote's specific security controls that would prevent someone from altering a pick 6. ( this after employee from the Delaware hub fired and information provided to investigators.
[ November 01, 2002, 06:38 AM: Message edited by: hobbes ]

[cheesebeast]

BC Cup Pick 6 probe leads to firing
Autotote worker axed amid evidence of ‘potential wrongdoing’
By Mike Brunker
NBCSPORTS.COM
Oct. 31 — In a move that sent shockwaves through the horse racing industry, an employee of a company that processed millions of dollars of wagers on last weekend’s Breeders’ Cup races was dismissed after investigators uncovered evidence of potential wrongdoing in connection with the placing of the lone winning wager on the Pick 6 - a ticket worth more than $3 million. Meanwhile, a source close to the investigation told NBCSports.com that investigators were reviewing “dozens” of other suspicious wagers in New York and that regulators in other jurisdictions were scrambling to see if their jackpot-producing wagers had been manipulated.
SCIENTIFIC GAMES Corp., the parent company of Autotote, said in a press release that the unidentified employee had been dismissed and “evidence of potential wrongdoing” had been turned over to the New York State Racing and Wagering Board as well as the New York State Police.
Rhonda Barnat, a spokeswoman for SGC, said the company had no further comment.
The New York State Police and the racing board did not immediately respond to calls for comment, but a source told NBCSports.com that the fired employee worked on Autotote’s wagering software at the company’s headquarters in Newark, Del. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the employee was dismissed after refusing to cooperate with the company’s internal investigation of the Breeders’ Cup bet.
No evidence has been found linking the employee and the bettor who placed the lone winning wager on the Pick 6 — a wager that requires bettors to pick the winners of six successive races — the source said. Nevertheless, the dismissal of the Autotote employee was prompting a massive re-examination of the security of various wagering systems, the source acknowledged.
INDUSTRYWIDE REVIEW UNDER WAY
“Pick 4, Pick 6 and Pick 9 wagering all around America is being looked at,” the source said, adding that “dozens” of other such wagers were under review in New York alone.
The winning wager on the Pick 6 has been under investigation since Monday, when the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and Breeders’ Cup Ltd. asked New York racing regulators to look into unusual circumstances surrounding its placement.
The winning bettor, identified in press accounts as Derrick Davis of Baltimore, played a $12 ticket through the Catskill OTB chain that used single horses in each of the first four races, then used the full fields in the last two races of the wager. The ticket, which cost, $1,152, would have returned $3.1 million to Davis had authorities not frozen payment.
Because only single horses were used in the first four races, racing officials immediately suspected that the bettor had taken advantage of the fact that information on Pick 6 wagers placed at simulcasting locations around the country isn’t transmitted to the wagering “hub” — at Arlington Park racetrack outside Chicago in this case — until after four races are run.
PROCESSING OF WAGERING DATA DELAYED
The delay is meant to ensure that the computers aren’t overwhelmed as they simultaneously try to process multiple-wager bets like the Pick 6 at the same time as the millions of dollars of simpler wagers typically wagered on high-profile races like the Breeders’ Cup
The bettor, who reportedly runs a computer service business, professed his innocence in an interview the Thoroughbred Times, an industry publication, published Tuesday.
“I didn’t past post anything,” said the bettor, who was identified only as “Derrick” in the article but whose full name emerged in subsequent accounts. “I do computer work, but I’m not a hacker.”
After Tuesday, Davis stopped responding to media calls and a woman who answered the phone at his house when a New York Times reporter called on Wednesday said he was no longer living there.
Attempts by NBCSports.com to reach Davis on Thursday also were unsuccessful.
The bettor told the Thoroughbred Times that he mistakenly placed a $12 wager instead of the $2 wager he intended, thus the ticket cost six times $192, a total of $1,152.
[ November 02, 2002, 02:13 AM: Message edited by: hobbes ]

[hobbes]

Posted: 10/31/2002 6:08:00 PM ET thoroughbred times
‘Rogue’ software engineer pinpointed in Ultra Pick Six probe
The Autotote Corp. employee fired for alleged wrongdoing in the Breeders’ Cup Ultra Pick Six wagering was a “rogue software engineer” who apparently altered the betting ticket of a Baltimore man so that it would be a winner.
Lorne Weil, chairman and chief executive officer of Scientific Games, the parent company of Autotote, said during a conference call on Thursday afternoon with Wall Street investment firms that the employee was identified after an internal investigation that relied on Autotote's "procedures and warning signals." Weil did not identify the person, state exactly how the ticket had been changed, or take questions from reporters.
However, he did say that the employee possessed the password to get into the data system and alter the ticket after the first four races of the Ultra Pick Six had been run and the results were known.
"We have taken all the data we have collected, including the identity of the individual, and turned it over to the New York State Racing and Wagering Board and to the New York State Police," Weil said. "The good news—if there is any in this situation—is that our detection system worked."
Weil also said that he had spoken to officials with the Jockey Club, who told him that a racing industry task force will be formed to study how betting frauds such as what apparently happened with the Ultra Pick Six can be prevented.
Since no money has been paid out on the pick six wager, Weil said Autotote has incurred no liability. The bettors who are due consolation payments on the 72 outstanding tickets that had five of six winners in the Ultra Pick Six have been identified and will be paid when investigators and Breeders’ Cup officials determine that the time is right, he said.
"Thank God it worked out the way it did," Weil said. "In a certain sense, it is a blessing in disguise because it exposed a weakness."
Autotote officials, including President Brooks Pierce, initially said that the bet appeared to them to be legitimate. Weil noted that he had insisted during a Tuesday conference call that he thought it was "absolutely impossible" that a computer hacker could get into the Autotote system and alter any data.
The Baltimore bettor, who placed his wager through Catskill Off-Track Betting Corp.’s Interbets system on the Internet, which is served by the Autotote totalizator service, has been identified as Derrick Davis, 29. He has said he did nothing wrong, but he could not be reached for comment after Weil’s teleconference.
"I’m the guy who won this, but I’m the last person to find out what’s going on," Davis, who works for a computer firm, told Thoroughbred Times earlier this week. "It’s ridiculous. If I would have hit the lottery, I don’t think it would be this tough with everything going on."
Breeders’ Cup Ltd. and National Thoroughbred Racing Association officials asked New York authorities to investigate Davis’s wager, which was the only winning bet in the Ultra Pick Six. He said he singled the winners of the first four races and then included all of the horses in the last two races, the Breeders’ Cup Turf (G1) and Classic (G1).
Weil did not comment on whether there is any connection between Davis and the fired Autotote employee.
Under widely used simulcasting procedures, racetracks and off-track betting companies that take pick six wagers on races from another track, Arlington Park in the case of the Breeders' Cup, only report the total amount of wagering to the host track immediately after pick six betting closes, Weil explained. Data regarding individual tickets is not sent until after the fifth race, due to costs and other problems involved with data transmission, he said.
Changes undoubtedly will be made immediately in the pick six and other betting systems. Rapid action, Weil said, "will quickly restore whatever lack of confidence there is in the [racing] industry right now. ...
"I think people see this for what it is--a rogue individual bound and determined to exploit the only weak link we see in the system so far," he said.
Michele MacDonald

[Horny Harry]

NEW YORK - Autotote Corporation, the country's largest totalizator supplier, fired one of its employees Thursday, presumably for altering the suspicious winning ticket placed on the Breeders' Cup pick six, company officials said.
Lorne Weil, chairman of Scientific Games, the parent company of Autotote, declined to identify the employee but said he was a software engineer who worked at the company's Delaware headquarters. Weil said the company has turned over information about the engineer to the New York state police and the New York State Racing and Wagering Board.
"It was a rogue software engineer who works for Scientific Games who had the necessary password into the system and had the capability to do what he did," Weil said Thursday. "We believe the individual had the ability to alter the ticket."
The firing is the first break in a case that has shaken the confidence of horse racing bettors, some of whom have called for boycotts of pick six wagers, if not the racing industry altogether.
The winning Breeders' Cup pick six wager was purchased Saturday by a 29-year-old Baltimore resident through a telephone account with Catskill Off-Track Betting Corporation in New York, according to racing and wagering officials, who immediately became suspicious because of the way the bet was structured. Autotote provides the computerized wagering service for Catskill OTB and about 60 percent of the country's betting outlets.
"This is a big left turn in the story, I'm afraid," said Donald Groth, the chairman of Catskill OTB, who had consistently maintained since Sunday that the bets were legitimate, but raised doubts on Thursday. "I'm still in shock. It's always regrettable when humans act like the textbooks say they should."
The investigation centers on an oddly structured wager that contained all six winning tickets and 108 of the 186 consolation tickets on the Breeders' Cup pick six last Saturday at Arlington Park near Chicago. With a $3 million guaranteed mutuel pool, the bet was targeted by some of the most sophisticated handicappers in the country and attracted $4.6 million in wagers.
Several officials involved in the investigation said Thursday that critical pieces of evidence were missing, including an audio recording of the bet being placed over Catskill OTB's touch-tone telephone system. Another official, citing missing security logs of Autotote employees entering and leaving the tote system, characterized the investigation as a "nightmare
Stacy Clifford, a spokeswoman for the board, said that the investigation is "progressing and moving forward," but she declined to offer any further details.
"Our job is to protect the integrity of the racing industry, and this issue is getting our full and undivided attention," Clifford said.
Autotote announced the firing at 1:11 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, and trading on the stock of Scientific Games Corporation was suspended for 35 minutes. The stock dropped 57 cents, or 7 percent, to $7.62.
Investigators have been focusing on whether the winning pick six ticket was altered after as many as four races in the sequence were run. In order to alter the ticket, most wagering experts have said that the bet would have to be modified by someone with access to the tote system, most likely a totalizator employee.
"The systems are very secure, and whenever there's been one of these maneuvers, it's been an insider," said Porter Houston, a tote company employee for 23 years who now works as a consultant to Autotote's parent. "It's never been proved that you can hack through the system from the outside."
Although the amount of a pick six ticket is transmitted into the commingled parimutuel pool within minutes of the bet being placed, the totalizator system does not immediately transmit the information about which individual horses are used in the bet. Instead the remaining information is transmitted only for bets that are still live after the fourth race in the pick six sequence. The delay is intended to minimize traffic on the tote system, a sophisticated computer network that links betting sites around the country.
Investigators and wagering experts said they believe that if someone were to manipulate a pick six ticket, the person would first submit a bet selecting one horse in each of the first four races followed by two "all" selections in the final two races and then wait. After the first four races were run, the person would enter the tote system and change the betting numbers to the winners of the first four races before the system sent the bet into the commingled pool.
That appears to be what happened, according to Weil.
Investigators and racing officials said the bet was placed by Derrick Davis, a self-employed computer technician who lives in Baltimore. Davis has not responded to several messages requesting a comment. According to investigators, Davis punched in the bet on a touch-tone telephone through an account he opened with Catskill OTB a week earlier.
At Catskill, Groth confirmed that an audio recording of the wager Davis allegedly placed does not exist because Catskill has not installed the security device that records bets placed through the touch-tone system.
"This is a topic we are taking up with Autotote," Groth said. "The system is relatively new."
The audio recordings of touch-tone calls are considered a backup to other security data, but one former employee of a tote company said Thursday that it would be a critical piece of evidence in the investigation.
"When you have an [interactive telephone] system, it's an extra cost and an extra hassle to record the call of the touch-tone, where you can positively say that this bet was one by one by one by one, with the right numbers," the official said.
One tote official, who declined to be identified, said of the security gap: "If they did it, they went in through a weak link."
Tote officials declined earlier in the week to describe the controls in place that would prevent a computer hacker outside the system or an insider from altering a pick six ticket. Autotote began its internal review after officials from the New York State Racing and Wagering Board asked for documents related to the pick six wagers, investigators said.
Some officials said that the investigators have been unable to find adequate security logs for technicians and employees who entered Autotote's system on Saturday. It was not clear, the officials said, whether the logs were missing or were never properly kept.

[hobbes]

http://www.newsday.com/sports/columnists/ny-moran312985736oct31,0,4155308.column
Pick-Six Ticket Seems Like A Real Stretch
Paul Moran
October 31, 2002 snipped
The payoff has been frozen until the investigation - which may eventually involve Federal agencies - is complete.
There are many approaches in the construction of a pick-six play, but single, single, single, single, all, all - for $12 - is not among them.
Most people with extensive pick-six experience tend to lean toward the position shared by the scam theorists: that the entire nature of this transaction laughs in the face of logic.
A yawning hole in the transmission of pick-six information, one not well known before this incident, suggests strongly that the system is vulnerable to manipulation. Pool totals are transmitted immediately to the host track. Specific information on remaining live tickets is delayed until after the fourth race in the sequence. The difference can be as much as 2½ hours.
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.

[hobbes]

Scientific Games fires worker over suspicious bet
October 31, 2002 1:46:00 PM ET
NEW YORK, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Scientific Games Corp. (SGMS), a leading maker and operator of horserace betting equipment, on Thursday said it had uncovered potential evidence of wrongdoing by an employee in connection with a suspicious large winning bet on the Breeders' Cup race last weekend.
The company said it had terminated an employee as a result and has turned over its findings to the New York State Racing and Wagering Board and the New York State Police.
The state board has been investigating a "Pick 6" wager on last Saturday's Breeders' Cup race after it was learned that all six winning tickets were bought by the same person through a New York OTB telephone betting system in the Catskill Mountain region. The six winning tickets were valued at more than $2.5 million.
Shares of Scientific Games, based in New York, were halted on Nasdaq shortly after issuing its statement. The stock had been down 65 cents, or nearly 8 percent, at $7.54 before trading was stopped. REUTERS
quite right too. they certainly should fire the President of Autotote. now the fact that the stock fell BEFORE the statement was issued could indicate some insider trading there also.

[Horny Harry]

Investigators and wagering experts said they believe that if someone were to manipulate a pick six ticket, the person would first submit a bet selecting one horse in each of the first four races followed by two "all" selections in the final two races and then wait. After the first four races were run, the person would enter the tote system and change the betting numbers to the winners of the first four races before the system sent the bet into the commingled pool.

[Horny Harry]

Big payouts are common on big race days. More than $100-million was wagered worldwide on Saturday's eight championships races.
In this case, though, most betting experts have no doubt that something improper happened.
"Was it a legitimate bet? No, you kidding? This was not even a mildly disguised ripoff," Len Friedman said. Mr. Friedman is a partner in the Ragozin Sheets, a sophisticated speed-figure service used by horse owners, trainers and bettors. Mr. Friedman is widely known as one of North America's most successful handicappers and bettors.
"It's insulting that they thought they could get away with this," he said. Mr. Friedman called for a probe by private investigators. "This was a crude ripoff . . . There could even be people playing games on the inside."
Glenn Crouter, director of media at Toronto-based Woodbine Entertainment Group, said that Canadian observers "are all kind of shocked. It's awfully fishy, no question."
Mr. Crouter said no Canadian money was involved in the controversial Pick Six. Canadian tracks offer their own betting pools on major U.S. horse-racing events, so customers will not have to pay U.S. taxes on winning bets.

[cheesebeast]

NYRA requests probe of two Saratoga Pick Six jackpots
By Associated Press, 11/1/2002 06:35
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) A New York Racing Association executive said his organization asked state regulators to investigate two Pick Six payoffs at Saratoga Race Course, a day after the Breeders' Cup Pick Six probe.
The Saratoga investigation focuses on a $421,998 payoff on Aug. 4 and a $330,989 payoff on Aug. 17. The tickets were bought by two different bettors who have not been identified.
NYRA made the request after learning that bettor Derrick Davis, 29, of Baltimore had all six winning tickets at Illinois' Arlington Park on Saturday in the Breeders' Cup Ultra Pick Six, wagers he placed electronically by phone in the Catskill Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. in Pomona, N.Y.
''After this incident, (NYRA vice president) Bill Nader wrote an e-mail requesting that in light of the suspicious nature of this payout, would they (the board) also look at the Aug. 4 and Aug. 17 Pick Six from Saratoga,'' Jim Gallagher, NYRA's vice president of parimutuel operations, told the Times Union of Albany in Friday editions.
Gallagher said it appears the Breeders' Cup and Saratoga incidents are unrelated but that NYRA wanted to be certain there was no wrongdoing.
On Thursday, an employee for the company that handled the Breeders' Cup Pick Six wagering was fired for allegedly altering tickets that turned out to be worth more than $3 million.
Lorne Weil, chairman and CEO of Scientific Games, the parent company of Autotote Corp., said during a conference call with Wall Street investment firms that the former employee was identified after an internal investigation.
Weil said the former Autotote Corp. employee had the password to get into the data system and alter the betting ticket after the first four races of the Ultra Pick Six had been run and the results were known.
Weil didn't identify the employee or say how the ticket had been altered. The New York Times in its Friday editions, quoting unidentified racing officials, identified the employee as Chris Harn, 29, who worked in Autotote's offices in Newark, Del.
A phone message left at Autotote on Thursday by The Associated Press was not returned.

[cheesebeast]

Worker Dismissed as Inquiry Widens Into Big Racing Bet
By JOE DRAPE
s the authorities investigated whether an exotic bet worth $3 million on last Saturday's Breeders' Cup horse races was rigged, the company that processed the wager said yesterday that it had fired a "rogue software engineer" who exploited a weakness in its system.
The company, Scientific Games Corporation of New York, said it had turned over the employee's name and evidence of potential wrongdoing to the state police and state wagering officials.
The employee attended Drexel University in Philadelphia with the winner of the bet, racing officials and a state investigator said.
The head of the company, Lorne Weil, said the worker had the access and know-how to breach the system run by the company's subsidiary Autotote, which processes 65 percent of racing wagers in North America.
Industry and law enforcement officials said that the F.B.I. had joined the police and the New York State Racing and Wagering Board in the inquiry of the wager, known as a pick six, which requires bettors to pick winners in six straight races. Payoff on the bet, made through the Catskill Off-Track Betting hub by telephone from Baltimore, has been held up.
Investigators are also looking into whether there have been questionable payoffs at other tracks. "This goes beyond one afternoon and the East Coast," said an investigator, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Though Mr. Weil tried to calm investors in his conference call yesterday, his disclosures pointed up the vulnerability of the $14.5 billion-a-year betting industry for which consumer confidence is crucial.
As racing has become more reliant on off-track and telephone betting, it is also depending more on a network of computers that link tracks and off-track sites. If the systems are proved flawed, or susceptible to manipulation, it could scare off bettors worried about the integrity of the process.
"There needs to be total review of the system so everyone can feel good and see that these things are not widespread," said Bill Nader, a New York Racing Association vice president. "Without integrity in the way a wager is processed, we don't have a sport."
The case in question involves the pick six bet on the last six races of the Breeders' Cup, horse racing's season-ending championship. The entire winning pool was held by Derrick Davis, a 29-year-old Maryland man who made the bets by phone.
Investigators are looking into whether the computer system was manipulated so that a bet made after several races had been run would appear to have been made beforehand.
Though Mr. Weil did not name the dismissed employee, the state investigator and racing officials identified him as Chris Harn, 29, who worked in Autotote's offices in Newark, Del.
Mr. Davis owns a Baltimore-based computer networking business, Utopian Networks Inc., but said yesterday that he was a knowledgeable bettor whose winning tickets were legitimate. "I didn't do anything wrong here," he said, refusing to elaborate and referring questions to his Baltimore lawyer, Steven A. Allen. Mr. Allen said his client was cooperating with the authorities and had nothing to hide.
"He is caught in the middle of a maelstrom," Mr. Allen said. "As far as he's concerned, he made a legitimate bet. The race was run, and he won, and he should have received his payoff. And that should have been the end of it. Now, instead, there's an investigation, people are making a variety of wild accusations, and his reputation is being sullied for no good reason."
Thomas Davis, Derrick's father, said his son grew up in Baltimore and attended engineering school in Pennsylvania, but would not be more specific. "I just think it's like the equivalent of his hitting the lottery," the father said. "I know in the bottom of my heart that it's a legitimate bet."
Stacy Clifford, a spokeswoman for the state wagering board, would not comment on the personnel involved in the investigation or its progress.
"The board routinely involves other organizations in its investigations and will involve law enforcement if it feels appropriate," she said. "They fired this person in connection with what happened Saturday, and since we're investigating what happened Saturday, we're certainly looking into it."

[hobbes]

SPA PROBE NOT TIED TO CUP --- By ED FOUNTAINE
November 1, 2002 -- The betting sequences of two big Pick 6 tickets cashed at New York City Off-Track Betting on races at Saratoga last summer, currently under investigation by the N.Y. State Racing & Wagering Board, bear no resemblance to the controversial Ultra Pick 6 ticket called in to Catskill OTB on last Saturday's Breeders' Cup, according to OTB officials.
The Breeders' Cup ticket, which is being investigated by the SRWB because of its suspicious pattern, was placed by a Maryland resident identified as Derrick Davis using his Interbets phone account. The $12 ticket, which cost a total of $1,152, singled one horse in the first four races and used "all" in the final two ($12x1x1x1x1x8x12). It netted Davis $3.1 million, nearly the entire national pool, as longshots won the first, third and sixth legs.
Payment has been held up, however, as investigators try to determine if somehow Davis or an associate hacked into the Autotote pari-mutuel betting system and "past posted" the Pick 6; that is, placed the bet after the first four races were run.
The Pick 6 bets at Saratoga, which the New York Racing Association asked the SRWB to examine after the Breeders' Cup, were placed on Aug. 4 (one winning ticket for $421,988) and Aug. 17 (one winning ticket for $330,389).
According to Ira Block, executive VP-legal affairs and general counsel for NYCOTB, the Pick 6 sequence on Aug. 4 was placed at an OTB branch office via a betting card and consisted of two straight $2 tickets using a single horse in each race.
"Apparently he was using his lucky numbers," Block said.
The Aug. 17 ticket, placed using a phone account, totaled $16 and used two horses in the first leg, one in the second, one in the third, two in the fourth, one in the fifth and two in the sixth.
Both bettors, whose names cannot be released because of IRS rules, were residents of New York and apparently had no connection to Derrick Davis.
This information previously was passed along to the SRWB, Block said.

[hobbes]

The Catskill OTB received complaints as well.
"Hi . . . Can I still make a wager on the Breeders' Cup Pick Six with your company?" read one post on the company's Internet message board.
Don Groth, president of the Catskill OTB, initially said that Davis made his bet legally and should be paid. Today, however, he said he was "shaken by the news."
"I deeply regret this," Groth said. "I am grateful to Autotote for removing a human weakness from the parimutuel system."
Asked what the finding of fraud means for Davis, his customer, Groth said, "It is unlikely he will be getting paid."
National Thoroughbred Racing Association President Tim Smith and Breeders' Cup President D.G. Van Clief Jr., who initiated the request for a probe by the New York State Wagering Board, could not be reached to comment.
Trading of Scientific Games Corp. stock was temporarily suspended yesterday.
Groth said he maintains confidence in the company, but is concerned about the ability of people to penetrate what is supposed to be an airtight system.
"We're open for business," Groth said. "We continue to have faith in the company. The only thing I can imagine is that such a thing [could happen] in many places and it may not be a single incident."
Scheinman reported from Washington. © 2002 The Washington Post Company

[hobbes]

Changes undoubtedly will be made immediately in the pick six and other betting systems. Rapid action, Weil said, "will quickly restore whatever lack of confidence there is in the [racing] industry right now. ...
"I think people see this for what it is--a rogue individual bound and determined to exploit the only weak link we see in the system so far," he said.
Lorne Weil, chairman and CEO of Scientific Games, the parent company of Autotote Corp.
—Michele MacDonald

[hobbes]

Industry sources said that Davis and the fired software engineer are believed to be longtime acquaintances who were classmates at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
As of Thursday evening, no one had been arrested in the case.

[hobbes]

Officials hip to Breeders' betting gyp November 1, 2002
BY JIM O'DONNELL STAFF REPORTER
THE BREEDERS' CUP ''Fix Six'' started to crumble Thursday. But horseplayers were left with few assurances that anything extraordinary was being done to assure the integrity of the interstate simulcast tote system.

[hobbes]

Gamblers might cash in big By JERRY BOSSERT DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
So, what happens to the money?
In a bizarre twist in the Breeders' Cup Pick Six controversy, some shady gamblers who roam the betting areas at racetracks — they're known as "10 percenters" — may cash in big time.
Here's how it works:
If it is determined that fraud was committed on the Breeders' Cup Pick Six, all of the money in the pool will go to those who cashed consolation Pick Six tickets by having five of six winners.
That means 78 racing fans will see their initial payoff of $4,606.20 increase to $43,937.
But all of those people may not have cashed their own tickets. Some of them likely paid a 10-percenter — someone who signs the W-2 form for a cut, generally 10% — to cash the ticket to avoid paying taxes.
There are three types of 10-percenters according to a racetrack regular.
"You have the college kid, the retired man living on a fixed income and the professional," he said. "The college kid and the retired man would do it because they won't get taxed because they fail to make the required minimum income."
But it's the professional 10-percenter the track is most concerned with.
"They have it down to a science," said the track regular. "At the end of the year if they cash $60,000 in winners, they are allowed by law to write off $60,000 in losers putting them in a much lower tax bracket. Plus they also get the initial cash in the pocket from the transaction. They know what they're doing."
At the three New York Racing Association tracks, investigators are always looking for 10-percenters to ban them from the track as undesirables. Ten-percenters and their customers can be prosecuted for tax evasion. Track officials go through the cashed IRS winning tickets and look for the same name being repeated. If they find one, they pass it on to racetrack investigators.

[hobbes]

http://www.tra-online.com/manual/
Where the heck did you find this? Interesting: if you go to the "Mutuels" link, go to the Section titled "Stop Betting Signal", then to the subsection "Pick N Pools", you would learn that a scan is generated after the penultimate leg of the wager is made official.
So, if someone wanted to manipulate Pick 6 data, they would have to do so before the 5th race is official--but could wait until after the 4th race is official. Sound familiar?
below repeated from earlier article >>
At Catskill, Groth confirmed that an audio recording of the wager Davis allegedly placed does not exist because Catskill has not installed the security device that records bets placed through the touch-tone system.
"This is a topic we are taking up with Autotote," Groth said. "The system is relatively new."
The audio recordings of touch-tone calls are considered a backup to other security data, but one former employee of a tote company said Thursday that it would be a critical piece of evidence in the investigation.
"When you have an [interactive telephone] system, it's an extra cost and an extra hassle to record the call of the touch-tone, where you can positively say that this bet was one by one by one by one, with the right numbers," the official said.
One tote official, who declined to be identified, said of the security gap: "If they did it, they went in through a weak link."
Tote officials declined earlier in the week to describe the controls in place that would prevent a computer hacker outside the system or an insider from altering a pick six ticket. Autotote began its internal review after officials from the New York State Racing and Wagering Board asked for documents related to the pick six wagers, investigators said.
Some officials said that the investigators have been unable to find adequate security logs for technicians and employees who entered Autotote's system on Saturday. It was not clear, the officials said, whether the logs were missing or were never properly kept.

[cheesebeast]

The New York Times reports the fired Delaware Autotote technician,
Chris Harn, has obtained the services of attorney, Dan Conti.
Hmmm, so it turns out the "rogue" software technician just happens to
be connected enough to get a big time mob lawyer. Geeze, what luck that
a 29 year old rogue insider, who allegedly was working with an ex-frat
buddy, could get such top class representation -- whatta da odds on
that?
I did a search on Dan Conti and found that he is indeed a big time New
York criminal law attorney. Here is a brief blurb from his bio on his
web page:
"Mr. Conti is an experienced trial lawyer. He has successfully defended
high profile clients, including alleged organized crime figures, Wall
Street stock brokers, and the local chairman of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission.
He has been quoted in major newspapers, including The New York Times,
Newsday, The New York Daily News, and The New

[cheesebeast]

Bettor, tote worker linked
By MATT HEGARTY
NEW YORK - Derrick Davis, who made the suspicious, winning wager on the Breeders' Cup pick six Oct. 26, and Chris Harn, a computer programmer who was fired by Autotote on Thursday, were fraternity brothers at Drexel University in Philadelphia in the early 1990's, according to the school's records.
The link between Davis and Harn is an important development for officials of the New York State Racing and Wagering Board, who have been investigating the case since last Sunday, because it establishes a connection between the person who placed the wager, worth $3.1 million, and someone with the knowledge and opportunity to alter it. Autotote provides totalizator services for Catskill Off-Track Betting Corporation in New York, which took Davis's bet.
Davis and Harn have emerged as the central figures in a rapidly moving investigation that has transfixed the racing world. Neither Davis nor Harn, both 29, graduated from Drexel, according to the records, which were confirmed by the school's human resources department. But their paths crossed for at least 16 months, from September 1992 until December 1993, when both were members of Tau Kappa Epsilon, the records show. Phone calls to the fraternity Friday were unanswered. The fraternity is popular with business, engineering, and information technology students, according to the roster of its members on the fraternity's website.
Davis was identified on Monday by racing officials as the person who purchased the winning ticket through a phone account at Catskill OTB.
Harn, whose identity was confirmed by investigators on Friday, was first linked to the investigation after his employer, Autotote, fired him on Thursday and turned over information to the board about his potential involvement in altering the winning ticket. Lorne Weil, the company's chairman, declined to identify Harn at the time but said he "had the necessary password and the capability to do what he did."
According to Drexel records, Harn attended the school from 1991 to 1997, majoring in information systems. Davis attended Drexel from September of 1992 until December of 1993. He never declared a major.
Harn, reached by phone in Newark, Del., declined to comment on Friday and referred questions to his lawyer, Daniel Conti.
Conti, reached in his office in New York, said that he would not respond to specific questions. In a statement, Conti said he believed that Harn would be cleared of any wrongdoing.
"The past 24 hours have been very difficult for Chris and his family," Conti said. "He's been fired from his job, and he now finds himself the target of a criminal investigation. Suppositions abound, yet no one has referred to a single shred of legally recognizable evidence that Chris has done anything wrong."
Davis has so far declined to comment. His lawyer, Steve A. Allen of Baltimore, declined to answer specific questions Friday.
"It's my client's position that he made a legitimate bet," Allen said. "He's concerned about the allegations that you are circulating. He believes that they are damaging, and we are confident that when this investigation is complete it will show that he has done nothing wrong."
The investigation has shaken the confidence of many longtime bettors and raised serious questions about the security of the electronic systems that process billions of dollars in wagers made every year on horse racing in the United States.
The National Thoroughbred Racing Association and its partner, Breeders' Cup, which market the sport and conduct the season-ending championship races, announced on Friday that they would form a task force to review existing security procedures for parimutuel wagering.
Two former co-workers of Harn described him as quiet and somewhat shy, a member of the upper tier of Autotote's software engineering corps. "He knew the system in and out," said one former co-worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He was very bright." The co-worker said he believed that Harn was hired just after leaving Drexel in 1997.
The other former co-worker said that Harn was often on duty on weekends, when one on-call technician would sometimes have the entire office to himself. It was unclear, however, if Harn was working on Oct. 26, when the Breeders' Cup was run at Arlington Park outside Chicago.
"It's not like there's a guard at the building or anything and it's locked down," said the second co-worker. "You go in there, you're on call, and it's like being the Maytag salesman. Ninety-nine percent of the time, you sit there with absolutely nothing to do."
The second former co-worker recalled that Harn could "get on a computer anywhere he was and dial into the system and do whatever he wanted to do."
Tote experts said that a properly trained technician, working from Autotote's headquarters in Delaware, could have retrieved the wager by entering Autotote's system and searching through a Catskill computer file containing the pick 6 bets. The bets are identified by serial number.
A technician would have had to alter the ticket before Catskill was told to send its pick six data into the national commingled hub at Arlington Park. That would have happened sometime between 4:30 and 5 p.m. Eastern time.
Investigators have said that Davis purchased a ticket through his Catskill phone account approximately 20 minutes before betting closed on the pick six, at 2:14 p.m. Eastern. The ticket used only one horse in each of the first four races of the pick-six sequence and all horses in the final two races. The bet was made in a $12 denomination, meaning Davis bought six $2 tickets, at a cost of $1,152.
According to tote officials, somone could have altered the ticket as much as 2 1/2 hours later, changing the betting numbers of the horses in the first four races so that they matched the winners. The winning horses included Domedriver in the Breeders' Cup Mile, which paid $54, and Starine, the winner of the Filly and Mare Turf, at $28.40.
A skilled computer technician, or hacker, can alter pick six tickets because of a security gap in the tote system involving pick six and other multirace wagers, tote officials said. While the cost of these tickets is merged into the commingled hub within minutes, the actual horses used on the tickets, which can have millions of permutations, are not transmitted until after one or more races are run. For the pick six, the betting numbers of the horses are not transmitted until after four races are run to reduce traffic on the network.
Before the bets are sent in, they are vulnerable to tampering from insiders, tote officials said.
"Not immediately transferring the data and letting it sit in limbo was an accident waiting to happen," Weil said.
As of Friday afternoon, no criminal charges had been filed in the case, according to Stacy Clifford, a spokeswoman for the New York State Racing and Wagering Board. Clifford declined to provide further details about the investigation. However, Clifford did dispute some published reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was involved in the investigation. "That is definitely not true," Clifford said.
A spokeswoman for the New York State Police, which received some of the information from Autotote about Harn, declined to comment on the investigation, except to say that "we are assisting the board. This is their case."

[hobbes]

A dark day at the track
Pick Six ordeal threatens to erode public confidence
By MATT GRAVES, Staff writer
First published: Sunday, November 3, 2002
Thoroughbred racing has faced a public perception problem since the moment parimutuel wagering became an ancillary element of the sport, and now that concern has become crystallized in the continuing saga of Breeders' Cup XIX.
While no charges have been filed and the New York State Racing and Wagering Board continues its investigation, it appears that the pari-mutuel system was cracked -- and may have been vulnerable for some time, at least to Pick Six wagering.
"What's scary," said Capital Off Track Betting president Tom Cholakis, "is that if this can happen in the Breeders' Cup, you can be pretty sure they've done it before."
The jackpot prompted the New York Racing Association to revisit a pair of big Pick Six payoffs at Saratoga Race Course this summer. Those winners had different betting patterns, however, and NYRA said it requested the investigation only because of the single-winner nature of the Breeders' Cup incident.
Still, the atmosphere created by the Breeders' Cup investigation has to be alarming to racing officials and any bettor who ever played the Pick Six, an exotic wager in which the bettor must select the winners of six consecutive races.
Over the years, racing has been confronted by everything from race-fixing, to medication scandals and sponging of horses, kidnappings, and insurance fraud. But the prospect of the parimutuel system being manipulated by insiders may be the most serious affront to bettors and the integrity of the sport.
What the state Racing and Wagering Board now appears to be dealing with is a conspiracy between a bettor and at least one parimutuel insider, collegiate buddies playing out a real-life version of "Sneakers" or "War Games." They chose racing's greatest stage for their production.
A lot of bettors already are wondering how many times this show has been replayed and how much of the $14.5 billion wagered annually on thoroughbred racing is affected.
"The need is clear to work on the confidence of our customers," NTRA spokesman Tim Smith said.
The NTRA and Breeders' Cup Ltd. late last week announced the formation of a task force to make wagering technology more secure. "We need to get the best systems and procedures available," Smith said.
Many bettors, though, are concerned that the horse already is out of the barn.
"I would suspect (Davis is) the front man for a several-person operation who found a way to exploit the way information is relayed," said one bettor at the Latham OTB branch. "They got burned by their great success with Volponi. If these tickets had paid $100,000 each and other people had them, nobody would have thought a thing about it. This is going to hurt racing, big time."
NYRA vice president Bill Nader, one of those responsible for initiating the investigations at Arlington and Saratoga, said track officials justifiably are concerned about the security of the three tote companies that handle all pari-mutuel racing.
"You never want to see anything like this happen," he said. "The parimutuel process has to be absolutely secure. Without it, we can't exist. The fact is, it happened. You can't bury it. Hopefully it's an isolated incident."
One of the problems is a side effect of the direction in which racing has gone -- from less on-track wagering to increased off-track electronic and phone betting. If the computer networks become a source of trepidation to bettors, that concern ultimately will be reflected in decreased handle, which in turn would drive down purses and begin a spiral that might be difficult to reverse.
"If hackers can get into the Pentagon, they can get into anywhere," Nader said.
But this does not appear to be a case of a wiseguy hacking from the outside. Regardless of what the investigation turns up, bettors figure to view this as a painful violation of their trust.
Catskill OTB's Donald Groth at first called Davis "a lucky guy who had a lucky day." Two days later he was, in his words, "shocked" by the investigation's developments.
"Anyone who has spent more than a few hours at the track, let alone 30 years, knew this bet smelled from the get-go," former area resident and bettor Bill Opatka said, referring to Groth's initial comments. "He spent five days defending the situation ... when the betting public's interest was severely compromised."
Likewise, Autotote president Brooks Pierce quickly defended his company's security. Two days later, Harn was fired.
Now, the concern is twofold -- prosecuting misdeeds, if they were found to have occurred, and, perhaps more important to the long-term viability of racing, damage control.
"No security breach is a good thing," Lehman Brothers gambling analyst Joyce Minor told the New York Times. "We think an inside job is probably less serious than a security breach by someone hacking into a system from the outside. Scientific Games (Autotote) should be able to put this behind them pretty quickly."
But will racing? Trainer Nick Zito said he doesn't believe the Cup incident will be devastating to the industry.
"No," he said. "People forget, look at the baseball strikes. They go back every time. And this has nothing to do with the racing itself. Racing's an honorable sport, but this is where our sport gets hurt, when the integrity factor gets questioned."
In addition to the task force that will address security measures throughout the tote industry, race tracks likely will step up their own activity to restore consumer confidence. Oak Tree at Santa Anita, which had a guaranteed Pick Six on Saturday, wasted no time leading the way.
Executive vice president Sherwood Chillingworth said he began by changing all the locks on the doors to the tote room, placing a security guard at the door, and installing security cameras in the room. As for any immediate effects of the brewing scandal, he said none were apparent.
"The Pick Six handles on Wednesday and Thursday were actually higher than the same dates last year," he said. "As far as we can see, there's been no erosion of (bettor) confidence."
That may take a bit more time to manifest itself as the investigation on the other side of the country plays out.
"(Public confidence) is shaken in spirit right now," Nader said. "There'sgonna be some damage. Frankly, it makes me want to throw up. The part that scares me is that people will think it can happen in win, place, show and other bets. This is a Pick Six problem. The pools will have to be shipped immediately, and not scanned as they are now. The tote companies have to deal with that. The technology is there."
Zito said this incident is no different than any other get-rich-quick scheme, and should not be a black mark on the racing itself.
"This is the 21st century," he said. "The sophisticated guys have obviously found a way to do this. Anytime there's money involved, somebody's going to try to get up a scheme -- whether it's on the grounds or in a computer. The Pick Six is an American dream, like hitting the lottery."
It may be months, however, before the accurate effects of this scandal are measured.
D.G. Van Clief, president of Breeders' Cup Ltd., had this succinct observation, one that should send chills through all of racing: "We have no idea what the level of concern is among the betting public."

[hobbes]

Posted on Sun, Nov. 03, 2002
RACING NOTEBOOK Industry well behind times
New software needed for off-track betting By Maryjean Wall HERALD-LEADER RACING WRITER
You've all heard that old saw about closing the barn door after the horse ran out. Racing's reaction to its Breeders' Cup Pick Six crisis has been to lock the front door -- with the back door left wide open.
We refer to that industry announcement Friday that some tracks have changed the locks on their tote rooms in the wake of a suspected computer manipulation of a $3 million Breeders' Cup Pick Six ticket.
A horseplayer who writes computer programs laughed when this was mentioned.
As with so many things in the racing industry, the "suits" just don't quite get it.
The only good that can come of this suspected scandal is a complete overhaul of computerized betting. Wagering is so global now that betting can come from nearly anywhere to the host tracks. So read the bettors' lips, please: updated software is needed in this sport. Software with audit controls that leave a trail. Software with updated security, at the least.
It's clear from the buzz last week that until betting equipment is overhauled, players aren't going to bet with any confidence that the product is secure.
The industry's creating a task force Friday to study computer security was a step in this direction. But any task force created at this point still seems a clear case of reacting only after the horse got loose.
Players everywhere are saying they've suspected manipulation with Pick Six bets for years. Whether or not that's gambler paranoia isn't the issue now. Unless racing can salvage consumer confidence quickly, the sport won't need to change any more locks on tote rooms. It might just as well throw away the keys.
The bettors, in fact, are the ones to get the Sherlock Holmes award. They were all over this one right from the first announcement of the winning wager. Horseplayer logic always has held fast to the belief that if something smells like a rat and looks like a rat it just might be a caper.
The Breeders' Cup Pick Six is still under investigation and no one has been charged. But there is a hot trail of circumstantial links. What got horseplayers screaming was the ingenuous nature of this bet. It seemed too artless to be real.
Bettors have had so much to say about this that it was nearly impossible all last week to log onto the overloaded Derby List site (www.escribe.com). The tipoffs, bettors were saying, were the curious configuration of the wager and the very idea of a $12 Pick Six bet.
Horseplayers say you just don't buy a $12 Pick Six ticket. By the time you would multiply $12 times the number of combinations you are picking in each of the six races, times the number of races, the price-earnings ratio of a $12 Pick Six ticket would be too costly to be a good deal.
Even the big players buy $2 Pick Six tickets, although that $2 denomination is misleading. Such a ticket often winds up costing hundreds or thousands of dollars, depending on how many combinations can be crowded onto one bet.
Also suspect was the configuration of this wager. Bettors say they would never single the first four races and then go all-all for the final two. Handicapping guru Andy Beyer reflected on two of those "singled" winners in this bet: long shots Domedriver (26-1) and Starine (13-1). Beyer wrote in the Washington Post, "I would wager confidently that no other bettor in America playing a substantial ticket singled either of these horses -- let alone both."
Matt Hegarty, writing in the Daily Racing Form, suggested the Pick Six is vulnerable to manipulation because of a 21/2-hour time window of opportunity from the time betting closes until the final information is relayed to the host track. Why the delay? The computers would be swamped, say the tracks, if all the information arrived at once.
So where do we stand? Whether or not there was a perp in this Pick Six, this sport still is in the dark ages. There are people at the controls of horse racing who apparently think a hacker is one who takes an ax to a tree.

[hobbes]

BET FIX SOWS PANIC, DOUBT ----- LONG ODDS:
When 43-1 longshot Volponi (center) won Breeders' Cup Classic on Oct. 26, it left one bettor with Pick 6 winner and sparked suspiscions that led to investigation of possible rigged wager.
Reuters
November 3, 2002 -- EMBARRASSED to the point of panic, American racing officials are scrambling to restore public confidence in the parimutuel betting system after electronic wiseguys almost walked off with $3 million in the biggest swindle ever perpetrated in betting history.
The culprits struck last Saturday on the biggest racing day of the year - The Breeders' Cup - when they penetrated the supposedly foolproof national computer betting network, punched out winning tickets in the Pick Six betting pool after the results of four races were known - and ended up with a mind-boggling jackpot.
They would never have been caught, either, but for one fact: they were too successful. They were the only winners, immediately arousing official suspicion. Within hours, the scam was uncovered.
Now, all hell has broken loose in the racing industry, which handles nearly $15 billion a year in bets. Horseplayers from one end of the country to the other are stunned and angry at the prospect that computer insiders may have been tampering with betting results for years. Public confidence has hit rock bottom.
Racing, suddenly, has its Enron.
"I don't know what is going to happen; only time will tell," said Frank Lamb, executive director of the North American Pari-Mutuel Regulators Association. "Public confidence has been shaken. We're going to have to do everything to assure the public it's getting a fair shake. And that's going to be a tough problem."
It sure is. High rollers and syndicates of big bettors pump millions of dollars a year into Pick Six wagers in pursuit of large payoffs. If they perceive the system is rigged against them in favor of electronic insiders, the game will collapse.
And that doesn't take into account millions of everyday fans who bet daily doubles, exactas, quinellas, Pick Threes and Pick Fours. Today, they are all wondering, "What's going on?"
As a result the whole system of simulcast racing and the electronic transmission of millions of dollars all around the country every day and night from casinos and off-track betting sites to hub racetracks is under suspicion.
Industry leaders promptly announced a task force to review tote security systems, moved to introduce new technology to remove flaws and promised to install new locks, guards and cameras around their computers.
But if the sting itself was a shock, an even bigger surprise might await the betting public - don't bet the alleged perpetrators will be convicted.
A week after the hit, nobody has yet been arrested or charged. Investigators, led by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board, are tight-lipped.
The first alleged scammer is Derrick Davis, a 29-year-old computer businessman from Baltimore, who placed a Pick Six bet by phone to the Catskills OTB office. The bet was made 20 minutes before the first Pick Six race in the Breeders' Cup at Arlington, Ill.
Nobody goes to jail for making a phone bet. Prosecutors will have to prove collusion with the other alleged scammer, Chris Harn, 29, a computer technician with the tote company, Autotote Systems, Inc., in its Newark, Del., offices.
Harn was dismissed after Autotote boss Lorne Weil fingered him as a "rogue software engineer." Said Weil: "He had the password into the system and the capability to do what he did. He had the ability to alter the ticket."
Weil thus states flatly that Harn did it. But knowing is one thing, proving it another. Who saw Harn change the ticket numbers? Indeed, what proof exists that the ticket was changed, especially since there is no original audio recording of Davis' bet at Catskills OTB?
And that might only be the beginning of the nightmare. If prosecutors cannot prove the case, what happens to the $3.1 million winning payoff, still held by Arlington Park Racetrack? Will they have to give it to the suspected rogues?
No matter how you look at it, thoroughbred racing is snared in a credibility crisis. Whether it can be resolved by the industry investigating itself is open to debate.
Gerald Lawrence, a former executive with the New York Racing Associaiton and Autotote, saw at least one glimmer of light.
"Last Saturday, about $156 million was bet at the tracks, one guy tried to cheat - and he got caught," Lawrence said. "No money was paid out. No money was lost. The races themselves were not tampered with.
"We need to tighten security, but in the end, the system worked."

[hobbes]

Racetracks Put in Place New Security Measures By JOE DRAPE NYT
North America's three most important racetrack owners have started new security measures, including background checks on all employees with access to their computer wagering systems, in response to an investigation into the legitimacy of a bet that paid more than $3 million at the Breeders' Cup on Oct. 26.
The announcement yesterday by the New York Racing Association, Magna Entertainment Corporation and Churchill Downs Inc. came as investigators continued to try to determine whether a former employee of Autotote, which processes about 65 percent of all horse-racing wagers in North America, manipulated the company's computer system to ensure that a former fraternity brother at Drexel University held the entire winning pool for the pick six of the Breeders' Cup. The pick six requires bettors to select the winners of six consecutive races.
Investigators from the New York State Racing and Wagering Board, with help from the state police and the F.B.I., continue to review large payoffs at racetracks in New York and elsewhere. They are searching for possible links between the two men — Chris Harn, the former Autotote employee, and Derrick Davis, the ticket holder who made the bet by telephone through Catskill OTB — and at least one other person who may have aided them, said a state investigator and racing officials.
The investigators are looking at paperwork provided to the Internal Revenue Service required on tickets that pay off at odds of more than 300-1 — common on pick-six wagers. They are also looking at pick-four wagers that work much like the pick six, but with only four races. Investigators are also looking at records of phone and off-track betting accounts, the state investigator and racing officials said.
On Friday, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association formed what it called a Wagering Technology Working Group, which will work with the three American tote providers and independent technology and security experts to review the computerized wagering systems. The measures announced yesterday by the track owners are intended to signal immediate action to racing's core customers.
The measures include more vigilance over access to wagering systems, greater physical security, in addition to the background checks.
Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, operates racetracks in California, Florida, Indiana and Arlington Park, where the Breeders' Cup was held. The company also holds interest in off-track betting facilities. Magna operates racetracks across the country, including Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif., and Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla., as well as off-track betting facilities. It also owns and operates a national account wagering system called XpressBet.
The private, nonprofit New York Racing Association owns and operates the state's three largest racetracks — Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga.
"Our customers are our No. 1 priority," said Barry Schwartz, chairman and chief executive officer of the racing association. "We understand that the ongoing investigation has raised concerns. That is why we are going over our vendors' onsite tote operations with a fine-tooth comb to ensure that strict security controls are maintained and the reliability of our wagering systems is unquestioned."
Neither Harn nor Davis has been charged. Harn's lawyer, Dan Conti, and Davis's lawyer, Steven A. Allen of Baltimore, have maintained their clients' innocence.
Last Thursday, Lorne Weil, chairman and chief executive of the Scientific Games Corporation of New York, which owns Autotote, said that Harn had exploited a weakness in Autotote's security to alter the tickets after the winners of the first four races of the pick six were known.
Ever since Breeders' Cup Ltd. officials and Arlington Park held up payment on the winning tickets, industry officials have tried to address bettors' concerns that the computer tote services are vulnerable to tampering. Nearly 85 percent of the $14.5 billion bet annually come from 1,100 outlets across North America.
Autotote, along with United Tote Co. and AmTote International Inc., provide totalisator systems under contract to American parimutuel wagering operations. The tote companies operate their respective central tote systems and the on-site tote systems at racetracks and off-track hubs. The new security initiatives will also involve an audit of the tote companies' security protocols.
If betting handle is any indication of the public's reaction to the inquiry, Santa Anita seemed to have emerged intact yesterday. The track offered a $1 million pick six, guaranteeing that at least $1 million would be wagered on the pick six. In the end, horseplayers bet $1.3 million on the pick six, making the promotion a success.

[hobbes]

RACING FIGHTS BACK VS. SCAMS --- By ED FOUNTAINE --- November 4, 2002 --
As the investigation into the possible rigging of the Breeders' Cup Pick 6 continues, the next question is, when will the other shoe drop? Because industry insiders and horseplayers alike suspect this isn't the first time.
To this end, last Friday the National Thoroughbred Racing Association announced the formation of a "wagering technology working group" to review computer security. The task force will explore whether scams like this occurred before.
"I don't know of any other situation," NTRA commissioner Tim Smith said. "We have heard every rumor out there. That's why we want to establish facts."
Also on Friday, America's leading racetrack operators - the N.Y. Racing Association, Churchill Downs Inc. and Magna Entertainment, which together own 21 tracks that handle most of the nation's wagers - launched full-scale audits of current systems and past wagers.
"We are going over our tote operations with a fine tooth comb," said NYRA chairman Barry Schwartz.
Even before the Breeders' Cup, industry watchdogs mounted an in-depth review of more than 50 betting hubs nationwide.
"With all the stories floating around, (security) was already a matter of increasing concern," a source said.
Several veteran horseplayers at Aqueduct yesterday said it wouldn't surprise them if bets were rigged in the past. They added, however, that the Pick 6 scandal would have little impact.
"Has it happened before? Absolutely," one said. "But the idea it will stop people from betting is laughable at best. Anyone who would think that has got to be a non-player."
"It won't stop me," said another. "What's done is done. A month from now, no one will be talking about it.
"If (43-1 outsider) Volponi didn't win (the final leg of the BC Pick 6, leaving the suspected fixers with the only winning ticket), we wouldn't be having this conversation. That's what got them. If it wasn't for Volponi, they could still be doing it."

[hobbes]

Horse Racing -- NTRA Makes Plans to Secure Computer Systems
By John Scheinman Special to The Washington Post Tuesday, November 5, 2002; Page D02
Attempting to restore integrity in the sport of horse racing in the wake of a fraud scandal stemming from the Pick Six wager during the recent Breeders' Cup championships, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association announced plans yesterday to hire an independent technical audit firm that specializes in securing information technology systems.
Members of the recently formed NTRA Wagering Technology Working Group declined to name the firm or the cost to retain it, but said in a release it would be hired shortly, pending approval of the NTRA board of directors.
The technology working group was formed after Autotote, the Newark, Del.-based company that operates the computers that collected and processed wagers for the Breeders' Cup on Oct. 26, fired a computer programmer for allegedly manipulating software to trigger a $3 million payoff.
"We talked about bringing in any outside expertise to get to the bottom of this and move forward," said Alan Foreman, chairman of the Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association and member of the working group's legal task force.
The Pick Six probe is being conducted by the New York State Police, New York Racing and Wagering Board and the FBI; the NTRA is focusing on reforms in parimutuel wagering.
The task force will attempt to address several issues: the lag time between when Pick Six wagers are made and actually sent to the host system -- an opening that Autotote employee Chris Harn was believed to have exploited; the ability for a tote company employee to compromise the system; and the potential for outside hackers to get into the system.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company

[hobbes]

A deliberate pace in pick six case --- By MATT HEGARTY
NEW YORK - The investigation into the suspicious winning wager on the Breeders' Cup pick six has yet to move beyond New York state and reach out to the two men at the center of the controversy, racing and law enforcement officials said on Monday.
The primary suspects are a Maryland resident, who placed the bet by telephone through the Catskill Off-Track Betting Corporation in New York, and a software engineer who was fired last week by Autotote, the Delaware company that processed the bet. The investigation is being conducted by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board because the bet was placed through a New York company.
The board cannot make arrests, cannot charge anyone with a crime, and cannot force anyone outside New York to comply with a request for information, board officials said, which complicates any effort to subpoena telephone or computer records from Maryland, Delaware, or Illinois, where the Breeders' Cup races were run at Arlington Park outside Chicago on Oct. 26.
But Stacy Clifford, a spokeswoman for the board, said that the board's probe would not be compromised by its limited powers.
"Our first step is always to ask, and we hope the person replies with the request," Clifford said, referring to requests for information. "But if they don't, we have to go to other avenues." Clifford said the board has enlisted the New York State Police to help enforce its requests.
The board has so far declined to ask for the services of the FBI., which has broad investigative powers that reach across state lines, according to Clifford and other law enforcement officials.
The board's limited powers have contributed to the investigation's initial regional scope and deliberate pace. Officials involved in the investigation said that the board is hoping to build a case in New York before expanding. That would suggest that any charges resulting from the investigation, if ever filed, may be further down the road than racing fans and officials might expect.
The suspicious bet was made by Derrick Davis, a 29-year-old Baltimore resident who opened a phone account with Catskill a week earlier. Chris Harn, also 29, was linked to the investigation when his employer, Autotote, fired him last Thursday after the company made an internal review of the circumstances surrounding the winning wager. Autotote, the country's largest totalizator company, processes wagers for Catskill.
Davis and Harn, who were fraternity brothers for 16 months at Tau Kappa Epsilon at Drexel University in 1992 and 1993, have denied wrongdoing through their lawyers.
The investigation is certain to concentrate on telephone and computer records that could link Davis and Harn. The probe is also expected to seek any evidence that might be left behind in the totalizator system, the computer network that links the country's racetracks and betting outlets. At issue is whether someone altered the winning pick six ticket after several races had already been run. The evidence could include security logs that track the movements of anyone who gains access to the system.
Investigators have said they believe the winning wager was altered sometime after the fourth race of the Breeders' Cup pick six sequence. The wager used one horse in each of the first four races and every horse in the last two.
The bet, which cost $1,152, was made in a $12 denomination and accounted for all six winning $2 tickets. The wager was worth $3.1 million, but payment has been withheld pending the investigation.
If the ticket was altered, someone would have had to change it before detailed information about the bet was transferred from Catskill to Arlington Park, site of the national wagering hub for the Cup races. The transfer time was approximately 5 p.m. Eastern, after the fourth race in the pick six sequence.
Investigators have already spent a week sifting through records at Catskill OTB and interviewing Catskill employees, according to Don Groth, the Catskill chairman. Groth said on Monday that while Catskill was cooperating "in full," he was surprised that investigators had not moved on yet.
"I think jurisdiction is an issue that is delaying the investigation," Groth said. "I would guess that the investigators are seeking evidence that would allow the federal authorities to take jurisdiction. At some point, you would think that the investigation would move to Delaware and Baltimore for better clues."
Bennett Liebman, a former commissioner who served on the New York State Racing and Wagering Board for 12 years, said that he would be surprised if federal agencies were not already involved.
"We're talking about a Maryland guy placing a bet in New York that is tampered with in Delaware and being hubbed in Illinois," Liebman said on Monday. "It makes no sense for [federal law-enforcement agencies] not to be involved."
Jim Margolin, a spokesman for the F.B.I.'s New York office, declined on Monday to comment about the F.B.I.'s possible involvement, citing policy neither to confirm nor deny ongoing investigations.
A spokesman for Autotote, who declined to be identified, said that the company is "cooperating fully" with the investigation. When asked if that meant that Autotote would turn over documents from its Delaware operations or other remote sites, the spokesman repeated that the company is cooperating fully.
Law enforcement officials said that the New York board will have to turn over the results of its investigation to the police or a state or federal attorney's office before any criminal charges could be brought. The charges would depend on which - if any - crimes were uncovered, the officials said, ranging from federal or state computer fraud to tampering with a sporting event.
"Sometimes these things are tough, because with computer crimes it's often a case of, where is the venue?" a law-enforcement official said. "Where was the person who committed the crime? Where was the victim? Where was the event?"
Also on Monday, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and its partner, Breeders' Cup, said in a statement that a task force to review the security of parimutuel pools and tote systems met on Monday for the first time.
The task force discussed hiring an "independent technical audit firm with specialized experience in testing of information security systems," the statement said. The NTRA said it would make funds available from its budget to hire the company, which was not named. The task force was scheduled to meet again on Thursday.

[hobbes]

Avoiding spill of faith is goal in bet scandal
Possibly tampered bet in Breeders' raises fears off-site wagers will drop; Racing forms security task force; 'Integrity is very much a question now,' fan says
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Jon Morgan Sun Staff Originally published November 2, 2002
Leaders of thoroughbred racing scrambled yesterday to reassure fans shaken by allegations of tampering on last Saturday's Breeders' Cup wagering.
The allegations -- that a computer engineer working for a tote company may have electronically altered a bet after the race had been won -- could devastate a sport increasingly dependent on fans betting from afar through computers.
The $3.1 million payoff to a Baltimore man has been frozen as investigators probe the circumstances of his wager. On Thursday, the tote company that processed the bet fired a software engineer it said may be involved and turned over evidence to police.
The National Thoroughbred Racing Association, a self-styled league office for the sport, yesterday announced the creation of a task force on computer security. Also, Santa Anita Racecourse, where a $1 million guaranteed Pick Six will be offered today, announced it had added cameras and guards to its tote rooms where wagers are tallied.
"Whatever the outcome of the current investigation, we must stay focused on the overriding priority of keeping faith with the fans and customers who support our game and industry through legal wagering," said NTRA commissioner Tim Smith.
Smith has long stressed the importance of interactive television, computers and other new media to the future of racing. Last year, more than 85 percent of the $14.6 billion wagered on thoroughbreds came from fans somewhere other than the track where the race was run. If confidence is lost in the electronic backbone of this wagering, it could severely hamper racing.
"It is a big part of the future. Getting it right from the standpoint of computer security is critically important," Smith said at a teleconference yesterday.
Smith said he does not know of any other case where someone has been shown to have breached computer security in thoroughbred betting. But that may not be enough for fans who were already suspicious of late-changing odds and other peculiarities of wagering in the computer era.
"Me and my friends have suspected there has been manipulation for years. It just seems that the odds are doing funny things," said Bob Rivera, a mortgage banker and devoted horse player from Los Angeles.

[hobbes]

A Lack of Answers Only Leads to More Questions -- By Andrew Beyer --Saturday, November 2, 2002
Horseplayers worried about the implications of the Breeders' Cup Pick Six scandal were surely amazed by the comments of Lorne Weil, chairman of the company where the alleged fraud was perpetrated. "This matter has been resolved," he said, "before any damage has been done."
Oh, really?
Weil is the head of Scientific Games Corp., the parent company of Autotote, which processed wagers placed on the Pick Six at Arlington Park last Saturday. A mountain of circumstantial evidence had indicated that a bettor managed to enter a wager after four of the Pick Six races had been run, and the company acknowledged Thursday that a "rogue software engineer" was part of the coup.
The employee, who has been identified as 29-year-old Chris Harn, exploited a weakness that had evidently existed for years in the system for processing the Pick Six. Wagers are not transmitted to the host track -- in this case, Arlington -- until four races are completed. During this crucial time Saturday, the data resided in the computers of Catskill Off-Track Betting Corp., whose wagers are processed by Autotote. The rogue employee, Weil acknowledged, "had a password into the system," and with it he was evidently able to alter the combinations that had been phoned into Catskill by Derrick Davis of Baltimore.
After the Breeders' Cup story made headlines from coast to coast, Autotote examined its records and identified the culprit. Weil said the wrongdoing was uncovered "thanks to procedures and warning signals built into the system. . . . The good news is that our detection system worked." He suggested that the detection system would have worked in any event, but that the procedure was merely hastened by the nationwide furor over the implausible Breeders' Cup bet. "The audit trail would have turned this up," he insisted.
Speaking on a telephone conference call for stock analysts and the media, Weil never directly addressed the question that every horseplayer in America, and everybody in the thoroughbred industry, wants answered.
Although callers were invited to ask questions, the only ones the chairman took came from Wall Street analysts who lobbed him softballs. One of them began, "Lorne, we're with you! You'll get through this." Another analyst said, "Lorne, these were the days your mother warned you about. You should have gone to medical school." (Weil responded: "I can't stand the sight of blood.") No wonder Wall Street analysts have credibility problems these days.
I can't stand the sight of blood, either, particularly when it's my own, and I worry that my fellow bettors and I have been the ongoing victims of cheaters within the parimutuel business. The question I wanted to ask Weil in the conference call was this: How do you know this hasn't been going on for years?
If he responded with assurances that Autotote's "detection systems" would have caught the wrongdoer, I had my follow-up question ready: "Are you saying, Lorne, that this rogue employee knew all of the weak links in the processing of Pick Six bets. He knew how to crack into the system. He knew how to alter a bet that was already placed -- something the tote companies had claimed was impossible. And yet he didn't know you had a detection system guaranteeing that he would be caught?"
Maybe I am just a typical, cynical gambler, but I doubt that the Autotote company would have detected any wrongdoing unless the crooked Pick Six play had already become a national scandal. The first reaction of people involved with taking the bet was to deny that anything was amiss -- despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Donald Groth, the head of Catskill OTB, insisted that "everything . . . points to the legitimacy of this bet."
Brooks Pierce, president of Autotote, fatuously said it was a "good story" for the sport that a bettor had made a relatively small investment and made a $3 million score. Given such responses, were Autotote and Catskill OTB going to ferret out an illicit transaction and blow the whistle on themselves?
The whole tenor of Thursday's conference call was to reassure analysts and investors and thus protect Scientific Games' stock price. But if Autotote's brass believe that no damage has been done, they are totally out of touch with the business for which they process billions of dollars of wagers. I do not know a single horseplayer who thinks the Breeders' Cup scandal was an isolated incident of a sort that has ever happened before and will never happen again. Most think this is the tip of the iceberg.
Some leaders of the racing industry do know they have a problem. "We believe we have a confidence issue to address," Tim Smith, commissioner of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, acknowledged yesterday. He said the NTRA had created a working group of wagering technology experts to establish "standards needed to ensure customers of the integrity of the wagering process."
The industry had better act purposefully -- and fast. Contrary to Weil's assurances, the Breeders' Cup Pick Six scandal has already done plenty of damage to the sport.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company

[masun]

hobbes I once watched a TV program about fraud cases in Las Vegas and many of them had to do with insiders, esp. those with an understanding of how a system's software works. This Fix Six scam has got me thinking: has something similar ever happened in HK? Is this the reason that the huge Triple Trio was never collected?

[hobbes]

Posted: 11/5/2002 12:27:00 PM ET
Name of third person turned over to Ultra Pick Six investigators
The name of a third person who could have been linked to the Breeders’ Cup Ultra Pick Six wager now under investigation has been turned over to authorities, Catskill Region Off-Track Betting Corp. President Don Groth said Tuesday.
Previously, the investigation has centered on Derrick Davis, who hopes to win more than $3-million from the Ultra Pick Six, and Chris Harn, a software engineer who was fired last week by Autotote Corp., the company that processed Davis’s bet through a telephone account with Catskill OTB.
"I provided the names of two individuals to the authorities on October 28, and I’m now certain they are both friends of Chris Harn," Groth said, explaining that Davis was one of the two names.
"The other name is an account holder we had been studying prior to Breeders’ Cup day," said Groth, who added that he turned the names in to investigators last week. "It wasn’t until the Autotote announcement that I was able to connect the dots."
Investigators, including officials with the New York State Racing and Wagering Board, the New York State Police, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have been trying to determine what happened ever since it was revealed Davis, a 29-year-old computer service business owner in Baltimore, had the only winning Ultra Pick Six ticket. His $12 ticket—the equivalent of six $2 winning tickets each worth $428,392—also produced 108 of the 186 consolation tickets, each worth $4,606.20 for five of six winners.
The investigation was triggered by alert officials of the New York Racing Association, who relayed suspicions to the State Racing and Wagering Board, Breeders’ Cup Ltd., and the National Thoroughbred Racing Association on the morning after the Breeders’ Cup.
Subsequently, Autotote fired Harn, a 29-year-old employee who had attended Drexel University in Philadelphia with Davis and was a member of the same fraternity.
Published reports that indicated Groth had known Davis prior to the Breeders’ Cup were inaccurate, Groth said.
"That was a misquote," he said. "We had come to know him because he had been in touch after the pick six on Monday. I absolutely did not know him before."
Bill Heller

[hobbes]

Breeders' Cup Pick 6 fraud probe widens
By SHERRY ROSS and JERRY BOSSERT DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS
A third man has been linked to the possible fraud involving the Breeders' Cup Pick Six, although the authorities probing the wager have yet to file any charges as the investigation continues.
Donald Groth, chairman of the Catskill OTB where the bet was placed, told the Thoroughbred Times yesterday that he had turned over the name of the person to the New York State Racing and Wagering Board. The man allegedly has ties to Derrick Davis — who holds the sole winning Pick Six tickets as well as consolation tickets, totaling $3.06 million — and Chris Harn, a fraternity brother of Davis who was fired last week by Autotote, the pari-mutuel firm that handled the pool.
Stacy Clifford, spokeswoman for the NYSRWB, said she could not confirm that the name had been given to the board, which is leading the investigation. She said that Groth's public disclosure of the information "sure doesn't help the investigation at all."
"I provided the names of two individuals to the authorities, and I'm now certain they are both friends of Chris Harn," Groth said. He said Davis was one of the two names. "The other name is an account holder we had been studying prior to Breeders' Cup day. It wasn't until the Autotote announcement (last week) that I was able to connect the dots."
The third person is suspected of having cashed two fraudulent Pick Six tickets prior to the Oct. 26 Breeders' Cup. Those wagers are not believed to be the two large Saratoga Pick Six bets that were previously under review by the board.
Harn and Davis, both 29, were members of the same fraternity at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Because of the limited powers of the NYSRWB, the New York State Police have been cooperating in the investigation. For example, the board is unable to subpoena telephone records in Delaware and Maryland, where Harn and Davis live, to establish a recent link between the two men. However, Clifford said the FBI has yet to be involved. The pace of the investigation is expected to quicken once the probe is able to move past the New York-based scrutiny.
Since Davis placed his bets through an automated telephone system, which is not recorded by Catskill OTB, officials believe the most important proof may be found through computer records, which will require extensive, and expensive, expertise. At issue will be whether anyone got access to the totalisator system after the first four races of the Pick Six were run and altered the bets. Lorne Weil, CEO of Scientific Games Corp., the parent company of Autotote, identified Harn as having password access to the system.
The National Thoroughbred Racing Association, which initiated the probe along with Breeders' Cup Limited, will hold the second meeting of its newly formed technology task force tomorrow. The NTRA said it has discussed hiring an "independent technical audit firm with specialized expertise in testing of information security systems," and would make funds available from its budget to hire the company.

[hobbes]

has something similar ever happened in HK? Is this the reason that the huge Triple Trio was never collected?
Masun, in answer to the 1st question i and others have suspected it from time to time, but the HK$118M non collect i am sure was made by a computer team who preferred to have the HKJC donate the money to charity rather than irritate them by collecting it. still the $30 ticket was not rational on 2 grounds >
1) many of the combinations WOULD HAVE COLLECTED THE WHOLE POOL rather than just 30/49ths of same
2) not very sensible to make the bet if you are not going to collect the winnings ( especially as it had happened before where the team contemplated whether to collect a ticket worth HK$37m over the summer, and by the time they decided "yes" the 2 mth limit had run out and the HKJC would not pay ).

[hobbes]

Concern rising over tote security ---- By MATT HEGARTY
NEW YORK - Racing officials are becoming increasingly concerned that Autotote, the wagering systems company that fired an employee last week in connection with the Breeders' Cup pick six investigation, does not have adequate security controls to prevent someone from altering a pick six ticket.
The concerns are emerging as racing officials become more familiar with the investigation into the wager, which used one horse in each of the first four races and all the horses in the final two races of the Breeders' Cup pick six Oct. 26 at Arlington Park outside Chicago. Some officials have said they believe that Autotote has poor monitoring systems to track the movements of people who have access to the system, complicating the ability of investigators to gather evidence.
Last Thursday, Autotote fired Chris Harn, a 29-year-old software engineer based in Newark, Del., after the company conducted an internal review of the winning bet. Lorne Weil, chairman of Scientific Games, Autotote's parent company, did not name Harn at the time but said that the employee "had the password and capability to do what he did." Derrick Davis, a 29-year-old from Baltimore, placed the winning bet through a telephone account at Catskill Off-Track Betting Corporation in New York.
Investigators suspect that an insider altered Davis's bet sometime after four races in the pick six were run. Harn and Davis, who were fraternity brothers at Drexel University, have not been charged with a crime, and their lawyers have said they will be cleared of any wrongdoing.
Autotote officials declined to answer questions Tuesday about the company's security procedures, citing the ongoing investigation.
However, racing officials said this week that they were unclear whether Autotote's system was equipped to generate incident reports, which would show when a technician with privileged access to the computer system - called a "power user" or "super user" - had altered bets or other files. Incident reports are considered standard for computer systems that handle financial transactions, according to computer security experts.
"If the bets are in a database somewhere and they can be manipulated by a super user, then the key is putting checks and balances on your super users," said Alan Marzelli, the chief financial officer of the Jockey Club, who stressed that he was not speaking about the Autotote system specifically. "A good security system will create an incident report in real time whenever a super user changes anything." The Jockey Club maintains many of the industry's statistical data bases.
Investigators suspect that an insider gained access to Davis's wager after the fourth race in the pick six and changed the selections to the winning numbers. A skilled technician would be able to alter the bets, investigators said, because the information about which horses are used in a specific pick six wager is not immediately transmitted to the national hub. The delay is to minimize traffic on the tote network, which links hundreds of wagering sites.
Before the wager is sent, the information about which horses are used in the bet is stored on individual computers at the sites where the bet is placed. In this case, the bet was stored on Catskill's computers, which were linked to Autotote's headquarters in Delaware, where Harn worked. Investigators believed an Autotote insider could have altered the bet before it was sent to Arlington Park, the hub for Breeders' Cup wagers.
Tote and racing officials clarified on Tuesday the time frame in which pick six bets are sent to the national hub. The bets are sent after the fifth race has been run - not after the fourth race, as many racing officials have said since shortly after the investigation was launched Sunday by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board. Tote officials said the bets are sent immediately after the fifth race in the sequence is declared official, making it nearly impossible for someone to have enough time to alter the fifth-race winner.
Davis's winning ticket, which cost $1,152, was purchased in a $12 denomination and accounted for all six winning $2 pick six wagers. The $3.1 million payoff has been withheld pending the investigation.
Currently, three tote companies serve the country's parimutuel wagering outlets: Autotote, which has 65 percent of the market; AmTote, which handles Arlington Park's bets, and United Tote.
Churchill Downs Inc., the New York Racing Association, and Magna Entertainment - the country's three largest racing companies - were expected to meet with top officials from all three tote companies on Wednesday to discuss security issues and other topics underlying the investigation.
Some racing officials have said that profit margins at tote companies have been squeezed over the past decade as the companies undercut each other to keep existing contracts and gain new ones. The companies derive most of their revenue from a small share of the wagering handle, normally around 0.25 percent.
Bryan Krantz, the president of Fair Grounds, said last week that as investment dollars have shifted over the past 10 years to develop new ways to bet over the Internet, telephone, and through other remote devices, the money to develop new security measures dried up.
"Everybody had felt pretty confident with the level of security that we had out there," Krantz said. "But now, there are some reasons to question where we are, in light of the growth of account betting."
One high-ranking racing official characterized the tote companies' technology as "from the 70's."
Jonathan Glosser, the president of Systems Experts Inc., a Sudbury, Mass., company that specializes in computer security, said it was common for systems that are more than a decade old to lack protections from insider manipulation. Glosser said those systems were designed before the "hacker era," a time when requiring a password for entry was thought to be adequate protection against theft or manipulation.
"Most of the old applications don't tend to have good controls," Glosser said. "They looked at it with the idea that anyone who was here was supposed to be here. So if you have a password, you probably should have a password, and you should be able to do what you want."
Alex Corckran, the vice president and general manager of AmTote, declined Tuesday to answer specific questions about whether AmTote's system generates an incident report when a technician alters a file.
"Security is a very difficult subject to discuss, because too much detail compromises the system," Corckran said. "But I can tell you that we have controls in place that would prevent tampering with the system."
A second Catskill customer
On Tuesday, Donald Groth, the chairman of Catskill OTB, said that he had provided the name of a second Catskill account-wagering customer to the New York State Racing and Wagering Board on Oct. 28 in connection with the pick six investigation. Groth declined to name the person but said that it was "pretty likely" that the person knew Derrick Davis, who placed the winning bet through Catskill. Groth said he did not believe the person had a direct connection to the winning Breeders' Cup pick six ticket.
Board officials declined to discuss the person on Tuesday. "We're looking at anybody who could be related to those guys and any and all wagers that may have been placed related to them," said Stacy Clifford, a spokeswoman for the board.

[hobbes]

November 6, 2002 Bill Christine:
Horse Racing Bettors' Suspicions Concern Officials
When Tim Smith, the commissioner of the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn., brunched with industry leaders last week at a Beverly Hills hotel, Rick Baedeker, president of Hollywood Park, posed a timely question.
"What can we do about the final odds not showing on the tote board until the horses turn for home?" Baedeker asked.
Smith didn't have a ready answer and, for now at least, neither does anyone else in the sport.
"This is all linked to the consumer-confidence issue," Smith said. "It's a problem we have as an industry. We've got to take a deep, thorough look at all aspects of wagering technology."
Today is another opening day at Hollywood Park -- the track's 35-day fall meet runs through Dec. 22 -- and Baedeker no doubt is thinking about what happened when his track's spring-summer season opened in April. A maiden filly left the gate in the first race at 9-2 odds, but by the time she reached the wire, 3 1/2 lengths in front, her price had plunged to 2-5. Even winning bettors were puzzled and angry. A $2 win ticket, instead of being worth $11, paid only $2.80.
At the time, it was only a blip on the public-confidence screen, explained away by last-second bets totaling $118,000 that went through a hub in Lewiston, Maine. Those bets, made in denominations of $3,000 and $5,000, represented 91% of the total win pool on the winning horse and brought a quick profit of $47,200.
Now, when viewed through the prism of the questionable winning pick-six tickets at last month's Breeders' Cup -- bets worth more than $3 million that might never be paid because they are suspected of having been placed four races into the pick six -- Hollywood Park's opening-day first race is perceived by jaundiced horseplayers as a precursor of bigger scams.
It's not a pretty landscape out there for track managers like Baedeker.
The Daily Racing Form, which usually runs a full page of readers' letters about a variety of topics on Sunday, published nothing but responses to the Breeders' Cup pick-six fiasco last Sunday.
"Absent the integrity of the betting pool, there is no point in ever making a bet on horses again," was a comment from Oklahoma.
Another cynical opinion came from Kentucky, heartland of the thoroughbred breeding industry in the U.S.:
"Until the obvious design flaw in the system is rectified, betting the pick six requires belief that every person involved in administering and operating the system is honest. That is a leap of faith I am not prepared to make."
Another letter, from Florida, referred to tracks like Hollywood Park pinning dramatic during-the-race odds shifts on simulcast betting:
"If they have no other solution, then they have to stop accepting bets at least three minutes before the start of a race. Bettors may not like that, but we prefer it to cheating and being robbed by computer-savvy thieves."
The investigation into the Breeders' Cup pick six broadened Monday when Donald Groth, president of the Catskill Off-Track Betting Corp. in New York, told the Thoroughbred Times that he had turned over to authorities the name of a third person who may be questioned. That person, a Catskill betting account holder who was not identified by Groth, is believed to be an acquaintance of Derrick Davis and Chris Harn, who have been linked to the possible scam.
Davis, who bet $1,152 on the pick six through a new Catskill account, held the only winning tickets on the pick six, and Harn, a fraternity brother of Davis' in college, was fired Thursday by the Autotote Corp., whose officials said that he had access to the system and could have altered tickets after the first four races were run.
Payoffs have been held up on the pick six. Attorneys for Davis and Harn have said that their clients will be cleared of wrongdoing.
Roger Licht, vice chairman of the California Horse Racing Board, said that the fallout from the pick six is more detrimental to the game than a race-fixing scandal.
"One thing that might happen is that all the needed attention that's being focused on the operations of the tote companies might detract from the energy usually expended on sniffing out improper backstretch activities," Licht said.
With more scrutiny than ever, track executives are monitoring the sizes of their pick-six betting pools. At California tracks this year, more than $100 million has been bet on the pick six. The tracks heavily promote a pick six when a day or days go by without anyone picking the winners of all six races, resulting in a carry-over pool with the potential for a huge payoff. The Hollywood Park payoff record for a pick six, set in 1998, is $928,127.40. The national record, set at Bay Meadows in 1985, is $1,132,466.
During the last five days of the Oak Tree meet that ended Sunday at Santa Anita, betting on the pick six did not appear to have suffered. Comparable-day studies of the pick six are sometimes difficult because of the carry-over factor. Last Saturday, for example, Oak Tree offered a guaranteed $1-million pick six on California Cup day. The track did not have to supplement the pool, because the handle totaled $1.3 million, with the benefit of a two-day carry-over of almost $360,000. On Cal Cup day the year before, the pool for another guaranteed $1-million pick six totaled $1.2 million, with a one-day carry-over of $82,000.
What did drop on Cal Cup day was track attendance, which with an attractive card had been expected to surpass the crowd of the year before. Instead, the gate count was 27,901, a decline of more than 30% from 2001.

[hobbes]

Posted on Wed, Nov. 06, 2002
NOTES
Pick Six inquiry includes 3rd person
MEN WERE MEMBERS OF FRATERNITY
By Joe Drape And Bill Finley
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
LOUISVILLE - The investigation into the six Pick Six Bets that led to a payoff of $3 million in last month's Breeders' Cup has now widened to include a third person who was a former student at Drexel University in Pennsylvania.
The latest person to be investigated, a 29-year-old man who is now believed to live in New York, is connected to the two other individuals already named in the case through their membership in the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Drexel in the mid-1990s, said a New York state racing investigator and other racing officials.
The two men who have already been named in the case are Derrick Davis, who placed the six winning bets -- the only winners in the country -- in the Breeders' Cup pick six; and Chris Harn, an employee at Autotote, a company that processes 65 percent of racing wagers in North America and was directly involved in the bets now under suspicion. Both men are 29.
Neither Harn nor Davis has been charged with any wrongdoing. Harn's lawyer, Dan Conti, and Davis' lawyer, Steven A. Allen of Baltimore, have maintained their clients' innocence.
Like Davis, the latest person to be investigated had a telephone betting account at the Catskill Off-Track Betting hub in upstate New York.
Officials are examining several winning tickets with substantial payoffs that he cashed before Breeders' Cup day.
A former fraternity member at Tau Kappa Epsilon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Davis, Harn and the third person had all been members of the fraternity.
The Pick Six investigation began on Oct. 27 when it was discovered that a single bettor had used an unusual and, by racing standards, illogical configuration to pick the winner of six consecutive Breeders' Cup races, and that he held the only winning tickets in the country.

[hobbes]

In Pick Six Scam, Greed and History Repeat Themselves
By Andrew Beyer Wednesday, November 6, 2002; Page D02
The alleged attempt by two computer experts to rig the Breeders' Cup Pick Six was one of the biggest, most audacious coups in the history of racing. But it was by no means unprecedented.
The events of Oct. 26 are similar in many ways to a scam that took place at Miami's Flagler Greyhound Track in the 1970s. In both cases, the perpetrators managed to enter wagers after races had been run. In both cases, they were employees of Autotote, the company that processed the bets. And in both cases, the cheaters were ultimately tripped up by their own greed.
Computer technology at the nation's tracks was relatively primitive in 1974, when Jacques Lavigne was working in the mutuels room at Flagler. Lavigne had spent his life around horse and dog tracks and he had larceny in his heart; he wondered if there might be a way to exploit a new wager called the trifecta. Because probable odds on the trifecta weren't posted on the tote board (as they were for win and quinella bets), the public wouldn't know if a payoff dropped because a bet was entered after the race was run. Could it be done?
Lavigne sounded out William Deal, Autotote's computer manager at Flagler, and found him a willing accomplice. They concocted a way they believed would beat the system.
After a race was run, the computer would normally indicate the number of winning tickets and then calculate the payoff. If there were four winning tickets and $10,000 to be distributed, each would pay $2,500. But with the flip of a few switches -- a process that took little more than half a minute after the greyhounds had crossed the finish line -- Deal could make the computer say that there was a fifth winning ticket and that the payoff was $2,000.
The victims of the fraud -- the people cashing $2,000 tickets -- would have no idea they were being cheated. At the end of the day, the collaborators would print out the fifth winning ticket. If it was worth more than $600, requiring the completion of an IRS tax form, they would pay a confederate to cash it.
In contrast to the Breeders' Cup bettors, who tried to make one great score that would have been worth $3 million, the Florida sharpies were trying to take home the track, brick by brick. There wasn't enough money in the Flagler pools to permit a single massive score, but the cheaters executed their scam race after race, day after day, year after year, on matinee and evening cards. When Deal left his job, Lavigne found new allies in the mutuels operation, the money kept rolling in -- and the money started attracting attention.
The wife of one of Lavigne's collaborators was having an affair, and she told her lover about the cash from Flagler. "The track got an anonymous call about shoeboxes full of money," recalled Fred Havenick, Flagler's current president. "We turned the information over to the state immediately."
A state investigator named Martin Dardis was put on the case. He was baffled until he started studying IRS forms linked to big trifecta payoffs, and saw that one bettor had cashed more than $150,000 worth of tickets in a short period of time. Dardis confronted the winner and from him obtained the name of Lavigne. The conspiracy began to unravel.
Five men went to jail, with Lavigne getting a five-year term. He alone refused to cooperate with prosecutors or make restitution of any of his winnings.
In a Sports Illustrated article about the coup, author John Underwood related that the investigator suspected that Lavigne had stashed away so much money that he was willing to give up five years of his life to keep it. Dardis visited Lavigne in the prison where he was serving his time and asked him flatly: "Did you make a million, Jacques?"
Lavigne replied: "All of us? More -- closer to two" million.
The cop told the crook: "Let me tell you where you blew it, Jacques. You got greedy. All you had to do was keep the tickets under $600. I'd never have caught you. Once you started filling out [IRS] forms, you left your mark."
"Yeah, I know," Lavigne said.
If the cheaters had created phony tickets on smaller trifectas, and collected cash without filling out any forms, the scam might have gone on indefinitely. They were undone by their own carelessness. A quarter-century later, this is what most people believe about the Breeders' Cup fraud.
The evidence indicates that Derrick Davis of Baltimore placed a Pick Six wager by phone and that Autotote employee Chris Harn cracked into the computer system and altered the bet after four races had been run. The scheme might not have provoked a national uproar if the bets had been more intelligent. Davis's ticket had the first four winners cold, followed by all the horses in the final two races -- an utterly implausible bet. (If the ticket had been larger, using two or three horses in some of the first four races, it would have been believable.) Davis compounded this mistake by playing the Pick Six in a $12 denomination instead of $2 -- another action that generated immediate suspicion. As with their predecessors a quarter century earlier, Davis and Harn got greedy and careless.
Perhaps it is in the nature of many scam artists to become overconfident, complacent and greedy, but surely some of them are smart enough to be cautious. And this suggests the most intriguing question rising from the recent Pick Six fix. If wise guys could figure out loopholes in computer systems at Flager in the 1970s and at the Breeders' Cup in 2002, how many others have pulled off similar acts in the intervening years? Were some of them judicious enough in their larceny that they never were detected?
© 2002 The Washington Post Company

[hobbes]

In an effort to bolster confidence among horse-racing bettors, racing industry leaders on Friday announced the formation of a task force to review and ensure that the sport’s wagering technology is tamper-proof.
The National Thoroughbred Racing Association and Breeders’ Cup Ltd. said the formation of the wagering technology working group “to assure our fans and customers that the technology in connection with wagering on horseracing is as reliable and secure as possible.” In a conference call following the announcement, NTRA Commissioner Tim Smith promised fast action to ensure that bettors can have confidence that
“This won’t be an academic drawn-out study,” he said. “It will aim to identify best practices, minimum standards in this important area. … Already racetracks and members of our association are working on changing procedures.”
Smith said, however, that there are no plans to conduct an industrywide review of multiple event wagers like the Pick 6 to ensure that the apparent manipulation of the Breeders’ Cup ticket was an isolated instance.
Both Smith and D.G. Van Clief, president of the Breeders’ Cup and vice chairman of the NTRA, said that it is not clear to what extent fans’ confidence in the integrity of the wagering system has been shaken. But Sherwood Chillingsworth, president of the Oak Tree Racing Association, said that the betting handle on the Pick 6 on Wednesday and Thursday at Santa Anita racetrack was up from the corresponding dates last year.
‘NO EROSION OF CONFIDENCE’ SEEN
“So as far as we can see there has been no erosion of confidence,” he said. Nonetheless, Chillingsworth said Oak Tree would be taking special precautions to ensure that no “abnormality” affected the guaranteed $1 million Pick 6 being offered Saturday at Santa Anita, including changing the locks of the tote room, where wagering data is processed, as well as adding a security camera and posting a guard at the door. Even before the investigation has been completed, the incident has prompting a massive re-examination of the security of various wagering systems, one industry source told NBCSports.com last week. “Pick 4, Pick 6 and Pick 9 wagering all around America is being looked at,” the source said,

[hobbes]

Pick Six Probe Widens --- More Bettors Named; Tote System Criticized
By Greg Sandoval And John Scheinman -- Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, November 6, 2002
Less than two weeks after the $14 billion horse racing wagering industry was rocked by allegations that a winning $3 million bet was rigged, investigators have been told that the possible wrongdoing could be more widespread than first believed.
Industry observers also have raised questions about the vulnerability of older computer equipment used by the companies that process bets. Two years ago, a proposed overhaul of those systems "fell apart" when "the scope and cost of the plan became an issue," according to Tim Smith, president of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.
Don Groth, president of Catskill Off-Track Betting Corp, the OTB site where Derrick Davis placed his winning wager, said yesterday that he has turned over to authorities the names of two Catskill OTB account holders, one of whom made a winning Pick Six wager prior to the Breeders' Cup. Groth said he told authorities that he believes the two are friends of Christopher W. Harn, the senior software engineer fired by Autotote, a computer wagering company, for his alleged role in the Pick Six bet.
"Following the Oct. 31 announcement by Autotote [that it had fired Harn], I was able to connect the dots and determine that both individuals are friends of Chris Harn," Groth said.
Harn's lawyer, New York-based Daniel Conti, maintained his client's innocence. Neither Davis nor Harn has been charged.
"As far as I'm concerned, nothing has changed," Conti said. "My client is out of a job with a large mortgage and a two-year-old daughter at home. And no one involved in the investigation has produced any evidence that he's done anything wrong."
Investigators believe Harn and Davis, both 29, worked together to manipulate the winning wager. The two were housemates and members of the same fraternity at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
The New York State Racing Board would not comment on Groth's allegations, spokeswomen Stacy Clifford said, adding that "the backgrounds of the individuals involved are part of the investigation." Clifford said the investigation, which is being led by the board and includes the New York State Police and the FBI, includes a review of multiple bettors and many different races.
The betting scandal has led to questions about the quality of the industry's tote system. When wagers like a Pick Six are made from off-track sites, there is a delay in the time they are reported because the volume of information is too much for current systems to handle. But banks and other financial service companies have paid to upgrade systems so that larger amounts of data can be moved much faster, said Steve Surdu, director of Consulting for Foundstone Inc., a computer security firm in Mission Viejo, Ca.
"In general the parimutuel wagering industry's technology infrastructure is relatively arcane compared to other technology heavy industries," said Michael Tew, a Bear Stearns analyst who follows the industry.
Racing officials concede a plan to upgrade the industry's tote system was unsuccessful in 2000. The NTRA and IBM proposed creating an Internet-based network that would run through a fiber-optic system. That deal disintegrated due to technology issues, such as simulcasting, networking and standardizing, said Smith.
"The IBM plan did not go forward for a variety of reasons," Smith said. "The scope and cost of the plan was an issue."
The NTRA formed a task force last week charged with finding ways to improve security at the wagering companies. The task force, which has enlisted the systems security unit of Ernst & Young, will attempt to address the lag time between when Pick Six wagers are made and actually sent to the host system. In a Pick Six, bettors try to choose the winning horse in six consecutive races. To avoid overloading computer systems, information is divided and recorded at different times. The amount of a wager and the time the bet is made is transferred through computer systems. Details such as which horses bettors choose is held back at the off-track site or at "wagering hubs."
The task force will also examine the ability of a tote company employee to compromise the system, and the potential for hackers to get into the system
"Technology has changed so fast that some things that were problems then aren't now," Smith said. "The cost of accessing bandwidth has gone down considerably.
"There needs to be industry-wide standards; to get that done will take the cooperation of tracks, tote companies and regulators."
As the investigation continues, the possibility that other tainted bets have been placed in the past has moved to the forefront. A former Autotote employee who worked closely with Harn said there were more than a dozen people with access to Autotote's computer system who could have manipulated wagers.
"I'll bet [Autotote executives] are working 24-7 on finding out if somebody has done this before," said the former Autotote employee. "It doesn't make sense that somebody would do $3 million right off the bat."
Harn worked in Autotote's research and development department, assigned to maintain the company's computer system. Many of the 19 people in the unit have the same computer access as Harn, according to an Autotote executive who requested anonymity.
"The other companies have a lot of people with the same level of clearance," said one industry analyst. "[They] could do the same things that Autotote accused Harn of doing."
An executive at Autotote said that during 2000 Harn also worked at another tote company, AmTote, one of only three companies that handle national parimutuel wagering.
"He [told people] he was leaving for a position that had more managerial potential," the executive said, adding that he did not know why Harn returned to Autotote.
A spokesman at AmTote denied this week that Harn had ever worked there.
Reached this week, Harn refused to comment.
Two of his former Autotote colleagues said Harn was well-respected and traveled often on company business. One on trip, he met his future wife, Mercedes, in Peru.
Davis placed his wager 20 minutes before the start of the first race. After the fourth race and after the winners of those races had been announced, Harn allegedly plucked the wager from the electronic hub and changed Davis's picks to the winning horses. Davis put money on every horse in the final two races.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company

[hobbes]

HORSE RACING Betting Inquiry Widens to Possible Dry Run Before Breeders' Cup By JOE DRAPE
The investigation into the pick six bets that led to a payoff of $3 million in last month's Breeders' Cup now includes two similar payoffs on difficult and speculative wagers in early October at Belmont Park and an Illinois harness track, a state investigator and racing officials said yesterday.
Investigators said they thought the two earlier bets might have been a dry run for the Breeders' Cup wagers.
A third former member of a fraternity at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Glen DaSilva, of New York, is also being investigated with Derrick Davis of Baltimore and Chris Harn of Newark, Del.. None have been charged.
Investigators are looking into whether the computer system that handled the bets was manipulated so that a bet made before the races in question had been run was later changed to reflect which horses had won the races.
Davis, who owns a computer services business in Baltimore, used a touch-tone telephone betting system to place the six winning bets in the Breeders' Cup pick six — the only winners in the country — investigators say. Harn was a computer software engineer at Autotote, a company that processes 65 percent of racing wagers in North America and handled the bets under suspicion. He was fired last week. DaSilva has a business Web site.
Davis, Harn and DaSilva all belonged to the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Drexel in the mid-1990's, a state investigator, racing officials and a former Tau Kappa Epsilon member said. Lawyers for Davis and Harn have maintained their innocence; DaSilva did not respond to e-mail or phone messages.
Like Davis, DaSilva had a telephone betting account at Catskill Off-Track Betting in upstate New York. Two winning tickets, a pick four at Balmoral Park, a harness racing track in Crete, Ill., on Oct. 3, and a pick six at Belmont Park on Oct. 5, are being examined, a state investigator and racing officials said.
The Breeders' Cup pick six investigation began on Oct. 27 when it was discovered that the previous day a single bettor had used an unusual and, by racing standards, illogical configuration to pick the winner of six consecutive Breeders' Cup races and that he held the only winning tickets. To win a pick six, a bettor must name the correct winner in all six races; in a pick four, a bettor must name the winner in four.
To increase their chances, bettors usually pick more than one horse in each race and often select three or four or five horses, although that greatly increases the cost of the bet.
The Balmoral Park and Belmont Park bets were configured similarly to the disputed Breeders' Cup tickets with early races "singled," or picking just one horse, and the late races having the entire field as possible winners, the state investigator and racing officials said.
Lorne Weil, chairman and chief executive of the Scientific Games Corporation of New York, which owns Autotote, has said that Harn exploited a weakness in Autotote's security to alter Davis's six tickets after the winners of the first four races of the Breeders' Cup pick six were known. The tickets cost Davis $1,152. The payoff on each six was worth $428,392. He also had winning consolation tickets.
The total pool for the Balmoral pick four on Oct. 3 was $14,960, and a winning $2 ticket paid $1,851.20; one of them paid off to a phone account from Catskill belonging to DaSilva, the state investigator and racing officials said.
On Oct. 5, the pick six at Belmont Park had a pool of $1,259,009, a total that was pumped up because of a three-day carryover of $389,707. On a day when no one wins the pick six, a small consolation payoff is paid to bettors who have picked five of six correctly and the remainder is rolled into the next day's pool. There were more than 70 winning tickets each worth $13,070 on Oct. 5, and eight of them came from DaSilva's phone account at the Catskill OTB, the racing officials said. As in the case of the Breeders' Cup, each of the eight winning tickets had four races in which only one horse was picked to win; the other two races had the entire field as possible winners, the racing officials said.
What raised suspicions about the winning tickets at the Breeders' Cup, investigators have said, was that only one horse was picked to win in the first four races — and two of them were long shots — and that the same combination of bets was played six times without any alteration in the betting scheme.
On the Oct. 5 Belmont Park ticket, the configuration was the same, but there were more winning tickets because five of the six races were won by horses with low odds.
DaSilva has a business Web site, DaSilva Digital, which is described as a "provider of creative technology-enabled business solutions that help companies capture value from the Internet and other emerging technologies."
An employee at DaSilva's building on the West Side of Manhattan, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a state investigator had been to the apartment last Friday.
The National Thoroughbred Racing Association, meanwhile, has hired the Technology and Security Risk Services practice of Ernst & Young to assess and test tote security systems.
The association is coordinating its efforts with racetracks, tote companies and the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau, an investigative arm of the industry.
Weil, of Scientific Games, has acknowledged that a lack of updated technology may have been a factor. Because of space and speed limitations of the computer system, the nearly $4.7 million in pick six Breeders' Cup tickets logged at satellite sites like Catskill OTB sat in limbo through the first four pick six races. They were not transferred to the host site, Arlington Park in Illinois, until after the fifth race of the pick six, when the exact bets were verified. Because of this, Weil said, Harn, who had the password to Autotote's data system, altered tickets after the first four races.
In addition, a recording device used by some off-track wagering outlets to keep an audio record of touch-tone telephone bets is not used by Catskill OTB. The recording device is mandatory in some states but not in New York.

[hobbes]

Racing warned 2 years ago of wagering flaws
IBM review had urged technology upgrades to safeguard electronic bets; Breeders' Cup probe continues; 'Told we were sitting duck for tote problem'; control fears axed unified remedy
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By Jon Morgan and Walter F. Roche Jr. Sun Staff Originally published November 7, 2002
The thoroughbred racing industry was warned two years ago that the technology underlying its electronic wagering was inadequate but balked at forming a more sophisticated, unified system.
A review by International Business Machines Corp. concluded that broad-based upgrades - including technology to safeguard bets - were needed. However, segments of the racing industry feared a single "tote" firm, under IBM auspices, would stifle competition.
Some racing officials think the idea should get a second look in the wake of revelations that a computer technician had the ability to tamper with a Breeders' Cup wager that is potentially worth $3.1 million. The man has been fired by the tote company.
A Baltimore man, who attended college with and belonged to the same fraternity as the fired worker, holds the winning tickets on that bet. Both the bettor, Derrick Davis, and the computer technician, Christopher Harn of Newark, Del., deny any wrongdoing. No charges have been filed.
The New York State Racing and Wagering Board and the New York State Police are investigating the bets, as well as those of a third fraternity brother who attended Drexel University in Philadelphia with Harn and Davis.
The third man won bets on earlier races through the same phone betting service. He was identified yesterday as Glen M. DaSilva, 29, of New York, according to a source involved in the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Calls to DaSilva's home and work phone numbers were not returned yesterday.
The payoff on the Breeders' Cup bet has been frozen pending the outcome of the inquiry. Investigators also are searching track records around the country to see if other wagers were compromised by security breaches.
If someone had the capability to manipulate bets in a computer system, that would confirm the worst fears raised in the IBM review.
"One of the things they told us was that we were a sitting duck for a tote problem," said Alan Foreman, a Baltimore attorney and founding board member of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.
"I can't tell you that if IBM had been engaged that this would have been prevented," said Foreman, who supported the idea. However, he added, the tote companies that currently tally and process wagers are poorly capitalized.
"It's still pretty much of an archaic system."
Three firms dominate the business of processing wagers, the largest of which is Autotote of Newark, Del. Autotote fired Harn last week, saying it found evidence he may have used the company's computer system to alter bets on the Oct. 26 Breeders' Cup before they were forwarded to the host track - but after the races had been run.
Davis made his bets through the phone-betting service of Catskill Off-Track Betting Corp. of Pomona, N.Y. , which used Autotote to process its bets.
Meanwhile, the NTRA has formed a task force on security and yesterday announced that it had hired the Technology and Security Risk Services practice of Ernst & Young to test tote systems.
One of the things racing officials are looking at is the practice of tote companies to transmit data on multi-race bets in two phases. For a Pick Six bet, like the one Davis won, the specific wagers are held in the computers of the company taking the bet until after most of the races have been run. Then, only information on the bettors who correctly picked the completed races is transmitted. That prevents the central computers from being inundated - and slowed - by irrelevant data.
Investigators are trying to find out if Davis' bets on the first four races were changed before being forwarded to the central hub computer tallying the Breeders' Cup races in Chicago. The wagers attracted suspicion because they consisted of the winning horse in each of the first four races - including several long shots - and the entire field in the last two races. Bets made on the account of DaSilva followed the same pattern.
Harn possessed the necessary passwords to change the bets prior to their transmittal, according to Autotote.
In 1999, the NTRA hired IBM to conduct a technology review of racing as a precursor for wider involvement by the computer giant. The results included a harsh assessment by Mark Elliott, then general manager of IBM's Global Services Business, who told racing leaders in 2000 that "as an industry, you are as far behind in the use of technology to improve your business as any I have ever seen."
IBM offered to establish and finance an NTRA-owned company. But the proposed, multimillion-dollar partnership was shelved as the fledgling NTRA defended itself against complaints by some track owners who felt its consolidation efforts were going too far.
Foreman said the tote companies feared being put out of business by the venture. The idea may be brought back to life in the wake of the betting scandal, he said. A spokesman for IBM could not offer immediate comment on whether it would be interested in the work.
Catskill OTB president Donald Groth said the IBM proposal was "fraught with controversy."
"The cost would have been enormous and the people who owned the racetracks did not want to have a situation where they pay for it and lost the control they have now," Groth said.
The current system of competitive bidding puts a squeeze on tote companies to keep costs down, said Jim Snow, a spokesman for International Lottery and Totalizator System Inc., of Carlsbad, Calif., which no longer operates racing systems in the United States.
"There's not been a lot of R&D and system upgrades over the years and that can lead to problems like this," Snow said.
His company - which briefly employed Harn - contends its racing systems are secure. It only sells abroad. The reason: foreign tracks generally buy tote systems, while their American counterparts contract with tote companies that install and maintain the equipment in exchange for a percentage of the revenue. This consumes a lot of capital for the tote companies.
Among the NTRA members who was wary of an IBM-led tote operation was Joseph De Francis, president of the Maryland Jockey Club, which operates Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course. De Francis, who is also an NTRA board member, said he recognizes the need for greater research and development, but worries about lessening competition among vendors.
"We don't have a whole lot of competition now with just three suppliers," he said.
In addition to Autotote, tote services are provided by AmTote of Hunt Valley, Md., and United Tote, which was once based in Timonium but has moved to Pennsylvania.
Even if the IBM deal had gone forward, it probably would not have resulted in wholesale changes in tote operations in time to have prevented the alleged Breeders' Cup security breach, De Francis said. Also, there are limits to how much can be done to guard against theft by an employee, he said.
A spokeswoman for Autotote declined to comment, and a spokesman for United Tote did not respond to requests for comment.
Alex Corcoran, a vice president of Amtote, was unavailable yesterday but said last week that his company is cooperating in the security review. The practice of transmitting data in phases was approved by regulators, he said.
But the lack of a recording system for phone bets at Catskill, and the apparently slow pace of the investigation, has some observers concerned that the system may not have adequate safeguards to prevent, or even track, tampering.
Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun

[hobbes]

I.D. THIRD MAN IN 'FIX' --- By ANTHONY STABILE and ED FOUNTAINE
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November 7, 2002 -- The cast of characters in the Pick Six Fix has gotten bigger. Investigators believe Glen DaSilva, a 29-year-old New York native and former Drexel University student, is the third member of the gang that allegedly tried to pull off a $3 million heist on Breeders' Cup Day.
Two former Drexel fraternity brothers, Derrick Davis of Baltimore and Chris Harn, have been under suspicion since last week. Davis made the bet on Oct. 26 that netted him the entire Pick Six prize, worth over $2.5 million. Numerous consolation payoffs would up the take to over $3M. At the time, Harn was an employee of Autotote, the company that processed the wager. He was fired last Thursday.
Davis has professed his innocence to The Post while Harn has been unavailable for comment.
Racing officials yesterday said DaSilva, like Davis, had a telephone betting account at Catskill Off-Track Betting, the facility that accepted the wager under suspicion. One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said investigators were also looking at winning wagers worth more than $100,000 that were cashed at the Catskill outlet before the Breeders' Cup. One theory is that those bets were made to test whether the system could be manipulated.
Attempts to reach DaSilva were unsuccessful. His phone was disconnected and the doorman at his last known address said DaSilva moved a few months ago.
Don Groth, president and CEO of Catskill OTB, would not confirm nor deny that DaSilva was the third party but said he had turned over the names of two account holders to the New York State Racing and Wagering Board.
In a related story, Nassau County OTB has stopped accepting Pick Six wagers until the investigation provides the answers to some important questions.
"We have temporarily suspended Pick Six wagering," said Larry Aaronson, president of Nassau OTB. "While no allegations of wrongdoing involve Nassau OTB, management decided to take this action in the interest of our customers."
Joe Galante, director of public affairs for Nassau OTB, said the company "wants to be completely confident in the integrity of the tote system and wants to protect our bettors in every way."
According to Galante, Nassau OTB will "play it by ear" as to when it will resume taking Pick Six action. New York City OTB is still accepting the bet.

[Horny Harry]

http://a799.g.akamai.net/3/799/388/7820ea9e4ebe40/www.msnbc.com/news/1680804.jpg
Volponi, who won the $4 million Breeders' Cup Classic under Jose Santos on Saturday at Arlington Park, paid $89 to win, leaving only a single winning Pick 6 ticket.
Like Davis, DaSilva had an account with Catskill OTB and placed two multi-race wagers that have drawn the attention of investigators — a Pick 4 wager at the Balmoral Park harness track in Illinois on Oct. 3 and a Pick 6 wager at Belmont Park on Oct. 5, the newspaper said.
Both tickets were configured similarly to the disputed Breeders’ Cup wager, with early races “singled” — meaning only one horse is selected — and the entire field of entrants used in later races, it said.
Attempts to reach DaSilva by NBCSports.com were unsuccessful.
Sources have told numerous news organizations that the 29-year-old Harn is suspected of conspiring with Davis, also 29, to falsify what turned out to be the lone winning wager on the Breeders’ Cup Ultra Pick Six, a ticket worth more than $3 million if it is ever cashed.
Attempts to reach Harn and Davis were unsuccessful. Lawyers for the pair say they did nothing wrong.
[ November 08, 2002, 02:16 PM: Message edited by: Horny Harry ]

[hobbes]

http://www.newsday.com/sports/printedition/ny-moran072995243nov07,0,1152198.column
Pick 6 Revelation? Not The Sleaze but the Ease
Paul Moran
November 7, 2002
There is great yowling and gnashing of teeth as an investigation into the now infamous if still alleged attempt to steal $3.1 million in the pick six on Breeders' Cup day moves forward in secrecy. Those burdened by reality, however, are neither surprised nor particularly outraged at the alleged perpetrators, the number of which is now uncertain.
Wherever there is money, there is someone attempting to steal it and the larcenous heart is no more a stranger at a racetrack than is the criminal. Drugs have been misused. Races have been fixed. This is not church. This is where people gather for a daily redistribution of funds from the many to the few. As trainer and turf philosopher Leroy Jolley once said: "They don't play this game in short pants." If an attempt to victimize people accustomed to being victims should be expected, then the ease with which it was accomplished is incomprehensible.
Shortly after Volponi won the Breeders' Cup Classic on Oct. 26, Jim Gallagher and Bill Nader, both New York Racing Association executives, took note of the bizarre winning wager placed at Catskill OTB and warned officials of Arlington Park and the Breeders' Cup, who called for an investigation by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board. Were it not for that phone call, Arlington Park would have transferred the necessary funds to Catskill OTB, which would have credited Derrick Davis' week-old phone account.
While officials of Autotote, which operates betting systems at many racetracks and OTB agencies, echoed Catskill OTB president Don Groth's "pay the man" rant, the first day of an internal investigation led to Chris Harn's immediate dismissal. Harn, a software engineer based at Autotote's Newark, Del., hub, had access to the system in which pick-six data is held in limbo until the fourth race of the sequence is official. He is alleged to have altered the original wager placed by Davis using a telephone keypad, using one horse in each of the first four races and all horses in the last two. The wager was placed in a $12 denomination, which itself raised a red flag.
Racing industry officials identified a third subject in the investigation yesterday: Glen DaSilva of New York, like the other two men, is 29 and a former Drexel student. Officials have not yet revealed what DaSilva's role might have been.
There is reason to suggest that Harn is familiar with the Catskill system and knew that no recording device was installed that would record the keypad transaction. All voice transactions are recorded, however. Lack of this equipment is damning to Catskill OTB. It exposes a cavalier disregard of its customers' security. The incident also has raised ominous questions concerning Autotote's internal security, as well as those of other, similar enterprises. Are employees with access to sensitive betting data under constant video surveillance while in restricted areas? Is entry and departure recorded electronically? Does each log-on cause an incident report to be generated automatically? How many client systems has Harn programmed?
In August, pursuant to a settlement agreement with the New Jersey Racing Commission, Autotote paid a $25,000 fine for, " ... Failing to cause pari-mutuel machines to be and remain locked at off-time in connection with one race [the third] simulcast from the Fair Grounds on Nov. 23, 2001." That ruling suggests strongly that people were using Autotote equipment to past-post races at the Fair Grounds almost a year ago.
For the moment at least, the allegedly larcenous computer geeks have been beaten back and we await the grim details. The core of the industry is in quake and the National Thoroughbred Racing Association is leading the rush to hire experts and form committees. Reform comes from dire necessity, not vision. If you're looking for vision, don't go to the racetrack.
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.

[hobbes]

Now, racing has a problem, a big problem with its tote system. The bits of information that have come out of the Catskill OTB investigation appear to indicate that Autotote's security system wasn't quite as secure as company officials have said. It appears that an employee may have been able to change the bets after four of the six races were completed.
The fear, of course, is that all three of the major tote companies in America are vulnerable to breaches of security. Is it possible that high-tech vandals have been quietly reaching into tote systems for years, and pulling out money without doing any handicapping.
"Think big," one racing official said this week. "Think real big."
For good reason.
A week and a half ago, that $3 million Breeders' Cup Ultra Pick payoff to Davis' Catskill account looked gigantic. When all the counting has been completed, it may be a tiny part of the score.
Contact Mike Kane at 395-3152 or japan@dailygazette.com.

[hobbes]

Racing taking steps on betting
New security measures for computer wagering may be unveiled today; 'Moving very aggressively'; End to 2-phase sending of data likely as probe of Pick Six bets continues
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By Jon Morgan Sun Staff Originally published November 8, 2002
A national task force on thoroughbred racing plans to announce measures to boost security - including changes in the way bets are processed in computers - as early as today.
The group, one of several formed by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, met yesterday in Lexington, Ky., with some members participating by conference call.
It is exploring a variety of measures to restore confidence after revelations that wagers on the Oct. 26 Breeders' Cup may have been tampered with during transmission of data on the Pick Six bets.
Chip Tuttle, an NTRA spokesman, declined to comment on what, if anything, the group may announce today. But, he said, "The working group is looking at short-term, concrete steps to upgrade security and to enhance consumer confidence."
Baltimore attorney and NTRA board member Alan Foreman also declined to divulge details of the discussions, but said the self-styled league office of racing is "moving very aggressively and very methodically."
According to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity, among the remedies likely to be announced today is an end to the two-phase data transmission of multiple-race bets, such as the Pick Six.
So far, three men have been linked to suspicious betting through a New York telephone betting service. One of them, Derrick Davis of Baltimore, holds winning tickets for the Breeders' Cup Pick Six that could be worth $3.1 million.
However, payment has been put on hold as investigators probe the circumstances of the bet. A former fraternity brother of Davis, Christopher Harn, has been fired from the company that processed the bets. The company, Autotote of Newark, Del., said Harn, a computer engineer, may have altered bets after the races had been run.
In addition to the Breeders' Cup race, investigators are looking into a Pick Four bet placed on an Oct. 3 harness race at Balmoral Park and a Pick Six bet made on Oct. 5 race at Belmont Park by another fraternity brother of the two men, identified by sources as Glen DaSilva.
"I think a Balmoral race might have been a guinea-pig race," John Johnston, president of Balmoral Park, told the Chicago Tribune. "We scrutinize every race every night. We had been reviewing this race. "
The three men are all 29 years old and attended, but did not graduate from, Drexel University in Philadelphia, where they were all members of the same fraternity.
None of the men has been Charged. Attorneys for Harn and Davis say they are innocent of any wrongdoing. Attempts to reach DaSilva, of New York, have been unsuccessful.
Suspicions were raised by the nature of the bets. In the Pick Six, a bettor tries to select the winners of six consecutive races. In a Pick Four, it is four consecutive races.
The bets being investigated consisted of single-horse picks for the first races, coupled with bets on the field (all of the horses) for the final few.
Investigators suspect this indicates the bettors may have been taking advantage of a little-known nuance in the way wagers are processed. After each wager is made, the dollar amount is instantly transmitted from the site where the bet is made to the hub where the race is run so odds can be calculated.
The identity and picks of each bettor, however, are retained by the host computer until after most of the races have been run. Then, only the data on winning bettors is transmitted. This avoids swamping the computer network with superfluous data on losing bets, which would slow the system.
Officials fear, however, that someone with access to the host-site computers may have altered the bets before they were send to the central hub.
Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun

[hobbes]

COPS KO CATSKILL TOUCH-TONE BETS By ED FOUNTAINE
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November 8, 2002 -- The N.Y. state police have impounded Catskill OTB's touch-tone phone-betting system as part of the probe into whether this year's Breeders' Cup Pick 6 was rigged to collect $3 million, The Post has learned. Two other suspicious exotic bets made through Catskill are also being investigated by the State Racing and Wagering Board.
"They shut it down Oct. 30," Catskill OTB president Donald Groth said, adding that phone betting is now available only through an operator. All calls are recorded.
Unlike other touch-tone systems, that was not the case with Catskill's, which Derrick Davis of Maryland used to place his $12 bet on the Breeders' Cup, the only wager to pick all six winners. Davis' former fraternity brother Chris Harn, a software engineer who was fired last week from the Autotote hub in Delaware where the bet was processed, is suspected of changing the ticket to ensure a winner.
The other exotics were a pick 4 at Balmoral Park on Oct. 3 paying $1,851.20 and a pick 6 at Belmont Park on Oct. 5 that returned $13,070.
Glen DaSilva of Manhattan, who along with Davis and Harn belonged to Tau Kappa Epsilon at Drexel University in the 1990's, reportedly collected both bets through his Catskill account, including the Belmont pick 6 eight times.
The Catskill touch-tone system is one piece in a complicated puzzle that won't be solved overnight, according to a former federal prosecutor.
"Don't draw any inference that no one's been charged yet," he said. "It's been a very short time."
Even after an in-depth investigation, a conspiracy to fix the tickets could be difficult to prove in court, the former prosecutor added, depending on the strength of the computer evidence and whether it's prosecuted by state or federal authorities.
"I think it unquestionably falls under federal jurisdiction," he said. "One of the things I'd look at is the federal wire-fraud statute. The call was made across state lines knowing that down the road it would be transmitted to Delaware, and from there to Chicago. You'd have that, plus the information was altered to obtain a winning payoff without following the rules.
"If a federal prosecutor gets involved, he'll have postal inspectors and the FBI knocking on doors, serving subpoenas. It's important to show an association between the bettors and the Autotote employee.
"Telephone calls and e-mails might have passed between them in close proximity to the Breeders' Cup. I'd also do a financial workup on their bank accounts and credit cards, to see if there is spending at levels significantly greater than their income."
The key, the former prosecutor said, is what the computer logs reveal.
"The thing that's going to make the case is the audit trail generated at Autotote. If it shows this engineer was accessing the system at a day and at times when there was not normally reason to do it, they may be able to show he did something."
That alone, however, might not be enough.
"It certainly doesn't sound like proof beyond a reasonable doubt, just because the guy was fired for picking his nose at the wrong time. You can draw smelly inferences, and it might be enough on the civil side to hold up payment.
"But for a criminal case, the key thing is being able to show an altering of the wagering information that first resided in the system."

[hobbes]

FEDS JOIN 'PICK 6 FIX' PROBE --- By ED FOUNTAINE
November 9, 2002 -- The probe of the suspected "Pick 6 Fix" to allegedly scam $3 million from this year's Breeders' Cup got a powerful boost yesterday with the announcement that the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District have joined the investigation being conducted by the N.Y. State Racing and Wagering Board.
"At the request of the N.Y. State Police, this office along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation is assisting in this matter," Manhattan-based U.S. Attorney James Comey said in a statement.
"Following a collaborative decision, the U.S. Attorney's office has joined the investigation as the lead prosecutorial agency," echoed NYSRWB spokesperson Stacy Clifford.
The feds, in fact, have been on the case for several days, a source said.
"We welcome the presence of their expertise and will continue to cooperate fully with all the investigators and regulators," said Tim Smith, commissioner of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.
Also yesterday, the NTRA announced three immediate steps "to improve electronic wagering security and increase customer confidence."
Within 30 days, each tote company that does business with NTRA tracks will install the necessary software to scan all wagering pools in connection with multi-race wagers (pick 3, pick 4, pick 6, etc.) after each leg. Previously, information on pick 6 wagers wasn't processed until the first four races were run, leaving a window of opportunity to go into the system and alter bets.
Î All account-wagering operators must install software to record telephone wagers. In Catskill's case, phone wagers placed through its touch-tone system were not recorded, leaving no proof of Davis' original bet.
Î Any winning simulcast wager involving multi-race bets will be reviewed, and any questionable wagers will be investigated.

[hobbes]

Federal gumshoes enter Pick 6 fray -- November 9, 2002
BY JIM O'DONNELL STAFF REPORTER
THE FEDERAL CAVALRY has finally arrived in the expanding web of investigations concerning the integrity of North America's parimutuel wagering systems. The office of the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York confirmed Friday that it has entered the official probe into alleged irregularities involving the winning bets for the Breeders' Cup Ultra Pick 6.
''At the request of the New York State Police, this office, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is assisting in the matter,'' said James Comey, U.S. Attorney for New York's Southern District. Since the outset of the investigation 12 days ago, the New York State Board of Racing and Wagering has spearheaded the gumshoeing.
WITH THE ENTRY of federal authorities, speculation grew that multistate arrests could be imminent in the case. The primary suspects remain three 29-year-old computer engineers who were fraternity brothers at Philadelphia's Drexel University a decade ago.
Two of the three reportedly have accounted for more than $3.1 million in winning bets made through a telephone wagering service at the Catskills OTB since Oct. 3. The third was an inside software specialist fired by AutoTote last week. Included in their winning total is $2.5 million from the only six perfect tickets sold on the BC's UP-6.
CHURCHILL DOWNS INC. tried to move ahead of the confused posse of race tracks investigating its own tote vendors on Friday. The Louisville-based corporation announced that beginning next Wednesday, it will shut down betting on all races originating from its owned tracks when the tote board reaches zero minutes to post.
CDI CEO Tom Meeker said that the ''interim'' procedure would likely leave ''one and one-half to two minutes'' from the shutdown until the actual start of a race. CDI tracks immediately affected include Churchill, Calder and Hoosier. Other CDI ovals include Arlington, Hollywood and Ellis Park.
THOMAS CAREY III--Hawthorne's director of operations--said that his track will not adopt measures mirroring the new Churchill standards. ''I have yet to see a shred of evidence that a maneuver like that in any way enhances tote security,'' Carey said. ''I think it only annoys the public.''
yet another moron who should be fired.

[hobbes]

The key elements of the initiatives announced by Smith were:
Within 21 days, each tote company involved with any NTRA-affiliated track or off-track wagering facility must install software to scan all wagering pools involving multi-race wagers, such as the Pick Six, after each race.
Each account wagering operator authorized by any NTRA-affiliated race track must install software that will record wagers via telephone.
On an interim basis, any winning simulcast wager involving multiple-leg bets will be reviewed by the relevant racing organizations.
Catskill did not have the recording device for its touchtone telephone accounts, making it difficult, if not impossible, for investigators to determine Davis' initial bet.
Equipment upgrades
Dennis Kopec, vice president of Capital District Regional Off-Track Betting Corp., said Friday that his company does not have the recording devices either, but had recently asked vendors to bid on equipment for its 36 operator-assisted and 48 touch-tone lines. Kopec said the final bids have not been returned, but he expects the bids to be in a range between $40,000 and $65,000.
"Because we had already gotten the bidding process started, I'm optimistic that we can meet the deadline set by the NTRA," Kopec said.
Later Friday, Thomas Meeker, chairman and CEO of Churchill Downs Inc., said that his company has adopted additional, stricter policies intended to restore consumer confidence.
Beginning Wednesday, betting on races on the six CDI-owned tracks will automatically close at least one minute before the scheduled post time, and CDI will not accept bets from off-track simulcast facilities that do not have front-end electronic recording equipment to record bets and start an audit trail.
In the short term until the new equipment is installed, Capital OTB telephone customers may be unable to bet on CDI tracks.

[cheesebeast]

Big Horse Racing Payoff Poses Tough Questions
By JOE DRAPE and JOHN SCHWARTZ
If Medaglia d'Oro had captured the Breeders' Cup Classic 15 days ago as the 5-2 favorite, Derrick Davis might have walked away with a lot of money and not drawn much scrutiny.
The $4 million Classic is North America's richest horse race, and any number of bettors would have pocketed a modest amount if Medaglia d'Oro had finished first on that cold, gray afternoon at Arlington Park outside Chicago. A much smaller group — the holders of 18 winning pick-six tickets each worth $141,666 — would have made a fortune.
No one would have made more than Mr. Davis, 29, of Baltimore, the owner of a computer service business. He would have had 6 of the 18 winning pick-six tickets, a startling achievement in itself, but one that might still have allowed him to get lost in the small crowd that had managed to pick the winners of six straight Breeders' Cup races.
But Medaglia d'Oro did not win that Oct. 26 race. Instead, the 44-1 long shot Volponi did, the steam from his nostrils cutting into the air as he stormed across the finish line in the last of the day's championship races. And because of Volponi, there were only six winning pick-six tickets, all of them held by Mr. Davis, worth $428,392 each.
Instead of receiving accolades for his handicapping prowess, Mr. Davis found himself under suspicion for a score too good to be true, one that now has him and two other former Drexel University students in the cross hairs of a widening investigation that includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York and Baltimore and the United States attorney's office for the Southern District of New York.
At the heart of the investigation is whether one of the three men, Chris Harn, a computer specialist, manipulated Mr. Davis's bets after they were made so that he was guaranteed to win. At stake is the credibility of the racing industry and the integrity of the computer systems that now process more than $14.5 billion a year in wagers in this country.
Mr. Harn was a senior programmer for Autotote, one of three companies in the United States that handle the bets made at racetracks and off-track betting parlors and from the living rooms of people who possess telephone betting accounts. It is a growing system that allows horseplayers in California to bet comfortably on races in Florida, and for people in the Bronx to put down money on a race in Kentucky. But it is also a system, computer security experts say, that has obvious holes in it that can be exploited and conceivably turned into million-dollar frauds, particularly ones involving the ultimate score for horseplayers: the pick six, a wildly lucrative format that did not exist in the United States until 1980.
Investigators say they are examining whether Mr. Harn dipped into the Autotote computers on Breeders' Cup day and changed Mr. Davis's bets after the first four races had been run. Because of the large amount of computer information, the bets are not transferred until after the fifth race, providing an opportunity for tampering. Mr. Davis had bet every horse in the last two races of the pick six, so he could not lose if he had the first four races right. His total winnings on the day were more than $3 million.
Mr. Harn is also suspected of tampering, in the same fashion, with pick-four and pick-six bets made earlier in October by Glen DaSilva, a third man under investigation. Mr. DaSilva's bets yielded more than $100,000 in winnings; like Mr. Davis, he placed his bets via touch-tone telephone at an off-track betting hub in Catskill, N.Y., where there was no recording devices to keep an audio record of the original bets.
None of the three have been charged with any crime, and all three say they are innocent. Mr. Harn has been fired by his company, however, which has termed him a "rogue software engineer" and has implied he had tampered with the Breeders' Cup bets.
A law enforcement official said yesterday that the investigation was nearing its conclusion, and that criminal charges might be brought as early as this week. The official also said that the investigation had not largely expanded beyond the three men.
The Breeders' Cup payoff for Mr. Davis's six winning tickets remains frozen. And the suspicions have left many bettors leery.
"We have to move past this problem to where our patrons don't lose sleep over integrity issues," said Chris Scherf, executive vice president for the Thoroughbred Racing Associations, which represents the majority of the nation's racetracks. "The best way for that to occur is for everybody in the industry to have a healthy dose of paranoia right now."
The Technology: College Whiz Kids Can Make the Grade
In a sport long associated with dreamers and schemers, the three men who became friends at Drexel have become the buzz of the nation's backstretch.
Drexel, a campus of low brick buildings on the western edge of downtown Philadelphia, likes to bill itself as the first wireless university in the United States. It gained national attention in 1983 by requiring all incoming students to have a computer. One of its more prominent graduates, Paul Baran, invented the technology known as "packet switching" and is credited with being one of the creators of the Internet.
"We attract students who have a real technological interest and superior technical skills," said Philip Terranova, vice president for university relations.
In the early 1990's, Drexel attracted the three men now under investigation. Mr. Harn studied information systems from September 1991 to March 1997; Mr. Davis was an engineering student with an undeclared major from September 1992 until December 1993; and Mr. DaSilva studied business administration from September 1991 until March 1997. None of them graduated, Mr. Terranova said.
They were mainstays, however, of the Tau Kappa Epsilon house, a well-maintained Georgian-style structure along Drexel's fraternity row. And in a series of interviews with friends and former fraternity brothers, a portrait has emerged of three likable young men who shared an affinity for computers, the latest fashions and the throbbing techno music of Philadelphia-area clubs.
The lanky, 6-foot-3 Mr. Harn was especially memorable for balancing a gentle nature with extraordinary computer talents and the pursuit of fun, four former fraternity brothers said. As part of Drexel's co-op program, in which students attend classes half the year and hold professional-level jobs the other half, Mr. Harn at one point worked as a computer-support technician at the nearby University of Pennsylvania.
He was described as a formidable foe when it came to computer video games and was the fraternity house's acknowledged champion at a brain-teaser game that reached about 100 levels of difficulty.
Still, with Mr. Davis and Mr. DaSilva, he was always eager to make excursions to nightclubs where strobe lights and high-tech beats sent young people bopping and flailing along the dance floor.
"He was good with computers — I mean he really knew what he was doing," David Pyne, 28, a former fraternity brother and a self-employed computer specialist, said of Mr. Harn. "I expected him to be with a company making some really good money."
In a 1994 personal ad that Mr. Harn posted on an Internet bulletin board, he jokingly described himself as the "Philly stud" and said he was enthralled with "dancing, clubbing, drinking and partying."
Those who knew him at Drexel, though, said that he read inveterately, was interested in Eastern philosophy and seldom talked about his computer expertise.
"The stereotype of a fraternity guy is a meathead," an acquaintance said. "He wasn't like that at all. He was really quiet, nice. He wasn't like computer dorks, where that's all they talked about."
Mr. Davis and Mr. DaSilva were described by those who knew them as being more gregarious and less studious than Mr. Harn, and Mr. Davis was a fixture on campus soccer fields.
"They were all pretty good guys, especially Derrick," a former fraternity brother said, referring to Mr. Davis, then to Mr. Harn. "He was very outgoing, very sociable. Chris was more laid-back."
And none of the three showed a particular fondness for horse racing outside of an occasional trip to an off-track betting site in the heart of the city.
We went for the beers and none of us could handicap our dinner," said a former fraternity member who is now an engineer in Philadelphia. "Look, these guys weren't leaders and weren't followers. They were good with computers, but everyone at Drexel was good with them. We went to clubs, drank beer and chased women. Do I believe they'd be involved in something like this? Not at all."
In the years since leaving Drexel, Mr. Harn, Mr. Davis and Mr. DaSilva showed up at fraternity golf tournaments and fund-raisers, attended weddings of other brothers and rarely spoke of their current professional endeavors, friends said.
Mr. Harn married a woman he met while working in Peru, and the couple live in Delaware with their 2-year-old daughter. Mr. Davis runs his computer business from a Maryland row house in the blue-collar East Baltimore neighborhood of Highlandtown.
Last week, a handwritten note was taped to the front door of the house that read: "Dear Press: Derrick no longer lives here. I do not have a forwarding address."
Mr. DaSilva has lived at several addresses in New York City in recent years, most recently on Manhattan's West Side. He had maintained a business Web site, which was described as a "provider of creative technology-enabled business solutions that help companies capture value from the Internet and other emerging technologies." That site, dasilvadigital.com, is no longer online. It was taken down Thursday.
The Big Winner: Origins of Pick Six, Luring the Dreamers
For most of its history, horse racing was a simple game when it came to betting. Gamblers could bet either to win, to place or to show, or on the daily double, which requires selecting the winners of the first two races of the day. But by the late 1960's and early 1970's, fans began to hunger for larger payoffs and the chance to parlay a few dollars into several hundred or even a few thousand. Tracks complied with the additions of bets like the exacta (picking the first two horses in a race in exact order) and the trifecta (picking the first three finishers in exact order), but even they were not enough to satisfy people's appetites for potentially huge payoffs.
For everyone who dreamed of getting rich quick at the track, the pick six was the answer. In the pick six, the bettor has to select the winners of six consecutive races. In 1980, Hollywood Park, a Southern California track, introduced the bet in the United States, and several other tracks — including Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga in New York — wasted little time adding the wager to their betting options.
The bet has proved so challenging that there are often days when no one can pick six straight winners. When that happens, the majority of the betting pool is carried over to that track's next racing card and added to whatever new money pours in through the betting windows on the pick six.
The carry-over concept sometimes results in pools of $1 million or more and payoffs nearing that same figure. Some gamblers will pool their resources and form syndicates that bet tens of thousands of dollars trying to hit the bet by playing tickets with multiple combinations of possible winners.
In recent years, just about every track and racing organization in the country was looking for a way to build huge pools in the pick six or similar wagers, knowing racing fans could not resist. The Breeders' Cup, racing's biggest day, fell right in line, offering racing's biggest and best pick six.
In 1998, the Breeders' Cup announced it would guarantee a minimum pick-six pool of $5 million and would cover the difference if less than that was bet. The guarantee was reduced to $3 million in 2001, but the Breeders' Cup Ultra Pick Six remained one of racing's greatest handicapping challenges.
That is why Mr. Davis's winning pick-six bets immediately seemed so suspicious to knowledgeable horseplayers. Each of his six winning tickets cost $192; each picked the same single horse in the first four races, then every horse in the final two races.
That is not a logical way to play the pick six, horseplayers insist. Bettors cannot select only one horse in four of the six races and expect to win; they might pick a single horse in one of the six races if there were a strong favorite, but in the other races they have to cover their options, picking at least two, three or four horses to win.
It would be hard to find a serious bettor who, having spent $192 on a pick-six ticket, would spend the same amount on five more identical tickets, as Mr. Davis did.
Horseplayers maintain that the right way to bet, the only way to bet, is to vary the selections on each pick-six ticket to cover as many combinations as possible.
The Opportunity: A Wagering System With Loopholes
But one thing serious horseplayers did not know: the pick six itself could be manipulated. To keep the main racetrack computers that tally complicated wagers from being inundated with raw information, the computers at companies taking the bets from sites across the country do not send in every bet on every race in real time. Instead, they store them and forward them in more manageable chunks of data. In the case of the Breeders' Cup pick six, the wagers were not passed along to Arlington Park until five of the six races had been run.
That opened the window of opportunity for mischief. Lorne Weil, the chairman and chief executive of Scientific Games Corporation of New York, the parent company of Autotote, has implied that Mr. Harn took advantage. A person with knowledge of the way Autotote operates, who asked that he not be named, said that evidence from the audit system on its computers pointed to Mr. Harn. As a senior member of Autotote's research and development team, Mr. Harn would have had the authority to ask Autotote workers to give him access to the computers at the Catskill OTB — where Mr. Davis and Mr. DaSilva placed their bets — if for no other reason than to do routine maintenance and troubleshooting.
"There were fingerprints that raised suspicions," said the person close to Autotote. He said the company was able to "go through and follow a formal procedure to identify who had been on the system, and why they had been on the system," and that data allowed the company to question Mr. Harn and "find a number of loopholes in the explanation we were given."
But how had the company left itself vulnerable in the first place? Computer security experts complain that in many companies, security is the 11th item on a 10-item list of priorities, because too few top executives want to spend the money on something that has no obvious benefit.
Autotote's software was ancient by the standards of the computer world, first written some 20 years ago, in Pascal, a computer language that is rarely used for major projects today, a former employee of the company said. It was patched and tinkered with over time by a succession of programmers, he said. But the company had not put a large effort into making that software secure, the former employee said. Autotote denied that, saying it takes security measures seriously.
Even if Autotote's software and facilities had been more modern and secure, that would have served only to keep out a hacker from the outside.
Although much of the fretting about computer security focuses on the threat of teenage hackers, insiders are recognized by experts as a far more potent threat, said Tom Patterson, who heads the security services practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Deloitte & Touche, the consulting firm.
Managing and monitoring insiders is a growing business. "Companies are spending millions on identity-management solutions to address exactly this problem," Mr. Patterson said.
Although businesses have become increasingly security conscious in the age of computer worms, hackers and the prospect of cyberterrorism, there are always companies and industries that are slow to change, said Mr. Patterson, who compared the situation to the early adoption of Internet technology by business.
Erik Petersen, the chief technical officer of Polar Cove, a security company in Providence, R.I., said few gambling companies had invested heavily in security.
Autotote is now exploring ways to shore up its security and to "shrink-wrap" bets so that they cannot be tampered with before being sent on to the central computer. Such systems, the person close to Autotote said, are already in use in the lottery industry.
Meanwhile, the Breeders' Cup investigation continues and the horseplayers keep betting, hoping that handicapping and luck — a formula that predated computers — will lead them to a few winners, even if they are not a pick six.

[cheesebeast]

Pick 6 scandal reveals weakness in wager system
Breeders' Cup problem shows technology hasn't kept pace with simulcast betting
At the first Breeders' Cup in 1984, 19 simulcast outlets accepted wagers on the seven races, with Churchill Downs taking only the Classic. By last year, North American simulcast outlets numbered 1,070.
The resulting explosion in simulcast wagering, which helped boost Breeders' Cup wagering from $16.5 million in 1984 to $115.6 million this year, has not only expanded the number of Cup bettors but also increased the chances of fraud. Investigators are trying to determine whether this year's winning Ultra Pick Six wager might be a classic example. The wager involved six races in Illinois, a bet placed through New York by a person in Maryland and a fired Autotote software engineer in Delaware.
''Want a classic example of how the industry has changed, you got it,'' said Alan Foreman, Thoroughbred Horsemen's Associations Inc. chief executive and a board member of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA). ''This is textbook.''
Simulcast wagering has grown to 83 percent of all betting, but the technology has fallen behind. Race tracks, looking to save money at every turn, have played tote companies off one another for the lowest price. Tote companies, meanwhile, have resorted to methods such as transmitting potential winning ticket information five races into a Pick Six, which have made the system vulnerable, racing officials said.
The chief executive of Scientific Games, the parent company of Autotote, which handled the suspect bet, concedes that methods for transmitting Pick Six wagers largely haven't changed in the past decade and blames an effort to save money.
Many racing officials agree that before the industry can improve the technology of its wagering systems, race tracks have to take a longer-range view of the service they expect from tote companies.
Derrick Davis of Baltimore had the only six winning tickets on the Ultra Pick Six, worth $3.3 million. But Autotote fired software engineer Chris Harn -- reportedly a fraternity brother of Davis' at Drexel University -- on Oct. 31. Autotote alleged that an employee had accessed the company's computer system and altered the ticket so it would correctly pick all six winners. The winning tickets have not been paid out.
An NTRA task force spent the past week studying tote technology. The NTRA group is looking for gaps in the technology and working to come up with remedies, NTRA Commissioner Tim Smith said Wednesday. The organization announced on Wednesday that Ernst & Young accounting firm would assess and test tote security systems starting immediately.
But racing officials say the drive to get the lowest price for wagering systems stifles technological innovation among the three companies that provide tote services: AmTote, Autotote and United Tote. Tote systems accept wagers, process the information and determine winning tickets and payoffs.
Catskill OTB President Don Groth, whose telephone account wagering system accepted the suspect wager, said race tracks have taken advantage of competition among the three companies. Most tracks pay totalizator companies 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent of betting handle for their services.
''The totalizator service industry is under-capitalized, and that is the doing of industry participants through contract negotiations that force companies to underbid each other to keep contracts,'' Groth said.
''The cost of doing business in the racing industry just went up. . . . Any change will cost money to implement. We must all be willing to pay for this.''
''In today's world of technological advances, there are many who say that at least from a tote standpoint they are in the dark ages,'' said Foreman of the NTRA.
Several race-track operators agreed that the tracks' efforts to get the lowest price from tote companies might have been short-sighted.
''There's no denying we've kind of squeezed these guys down to the point that they're operating on a fairly small margin,'' said Bryan Krantz, president and general manager of Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans. ''Up to now, everyone was fairly comfortable that they were working on a level that was acceptable.''
Jack Hennessian, part-owner and general manager of River Downs in Cincinnati, said the tote competitors ''were undercutting each other to take all the business'' as simulcasting took off in the 1990s. He said, for instance, United Tote tried to ''lowball'' AmTote to get in at River, but Hennessian elected not to switch.
Executives from Autotote and Scientific Games would not speak on the record last week about the Pick Six investigation and its fallout. AmTote would not elaborate on a statement released Nov. 1 by President John Corckran Jr.
Corckran said the company's security software and procedures ''give us great confidence that an incident such as the one involving the Breeders' Cup Pick Six could not happen within the Amtote system.''
United Tote did not return several calls seeking comment.
Scientific Games is profitable, but recognizes it has a heavy debt load. In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company says it continues to pursue new technology, but doesn't provide details or disclose how much is being spent on improving pari-mutuel systems and telecommunications. The company describes its technology investments as part of efforts to improve efficiency and increase cash flow.
The suspect Pick Six bet revealed three potential technological loopholes: a security breach at Autotote, the lack of an audio-recording function on Catskill's automated phonewagering system, and racing's practice of transmitting Pick Six wagering information after the fifth of six races, rather then before the first.
During an Oct. 31 conference call, Lorne Weil, chief executive of Scientific Games Corp., credited the ''procedures and warning systems built into our system'' for quickly identifying a possible security breach.
Jonathan Gossels, president of SystemExperts Corp., a Sudbury, Mass., company that specializes in computer security, estimated that insiders are involved in 70 percent of computer break-ins.
Automated telephone wagering systems, such as Catskill's, record each wager. The system allows bettors to bet using the push buttons on their telephones. Groth said Catskill's system records the time each bet is made and the betting information but not the actual call.
Because each button has a different tone, the recording would be the equivalent of a printed ticket that shows what wager was made at what time.
Pick Six transmission standards have existed for about a decade, Weil said, because of the lack of bandwidth, the space available for computers to transmit information to one another.
''With narrower bandwidth and dedicated phone lines, there was an interest in saving costs such that only live bets were coming back to the host computer,'' Weil said on Oct. 31.
Greater bandwidth is now available. Autotote, in partnership with Churchill Downs, created NASRIN Services LLC to provide bandwidth access to the racing industry.
''Since we put in the NASRIN network a few years ago, we have the capacity to scale bandwidth up immediately,'' Weil said, ''so we can respond to the demand.''
NASRIN's reach is not readily apparent. Its Web site does not list its racing/simulcasting partners, and Autotote executives did not return a call seeking information. Churchill Downs officials have declined to comment on any aspects of the Pick Six situation.
The racing industry responded to two of the problems Friday. The NTRA announced that the tote companies had 21 days to install software to scan wagering pools on multi-race bets after each race and that all telephone-account wagers must be recorded.
The industry had an opportunity to improve its technological infrastructure two years ago under an IBM proposal that would have cost the industry $100 million to $200 million. IBM Global Services general manager Mark Elliott recommended the creation of a broadband network to link simulcast partners; improved racetrack technology; and the purchase of a tote company by the NTRA.
The idea was shelved in October 2000 because of the potential expense and after a group of NTRA member tracks, primarily in the MidAtlantic region but also including Krantz's Fair Grounds, questioned the propriety of the organization owning a tote company.
But Foreman said the race tracks feared what the proposal's costs would do to their bottom line.
Tracks ''obviously felt threatened because they had the best of both worlds,'' he said. ''They had three tote companies whom they could bid against each other to keep the price down and saw the NTRA and a move by IBM as potentially driving up the costs of totes.''
Smith said any claims that the IBM initiative would have prevented the Breeders' Cup Pick Six furor would be ''revising history.''
Foreman said that IBM could envision problems with the industry's technology, but that it was unfair to say the IBM deal would have prevented the Pick Six controversy.
''It was pointed out by IBM that there were technological deficiencies in the tote systems,'' he said. ''Unfortunately, it's a situation like this that has exposed it.''
Oddly enough, the industry now seems to look to the NTRA for leadership and a solution.
''Where the NTRA may have been called off two years ago, it's the NTRA everybody is looking to right now to lead the charge to deal with this crisis,'' Foreman said. ''This may be one of the NTRA's best hours in its short history.''

[cheesebeast]

Autotote Inc., the tote company whose former employee is the center a
pk-6 fixing scandal, agreed to pay a settlement valued at $11,000,000 in
'95 when a class action suit was brought against the company for
artificially and fraudulently inflating stock prices.
Company head, Lorne Weil, personally sold off $500,000 of his own stock
while Autotote employees continued lying about earnings, falsified
documents, issued false information through press releases and to the
Securities and Exchange Commission.
Autotote later reported huge losses that year, causing many stockholders
to incur major losses. Autotote stock rose to a high of $45 a share in
'93 based on the disinformaton provided by the company. When Autotote
had to declare it's true earnings, the stock fell to $5 a share.
Back to Weil. Lorne Weil was the guy who initially said the pick-six
ticket was legit in spite of the fact that the ticket was highly
suspicious. The ticket was very weird, it was bet in a $12 units,
costing $1152, and had four horses singled while leaving out heavy
favorites.
Some of those singles were huge longshots and no wagers bet to win were
made on them.
Later, when it became evident that this might become a federal
investigation, Weil changed his tune and fired a "rogue" employee based
in Delaware. Now that "rogue" just hired a high profile attorney from NY
known for defending alleged mobsters, Daniel Conti. Hmmm.
Read below about the unethical and crooked dealings of the top level
management of Autotote who are still working at this company. Marvel how
so many racetracks were either incredibly naive, incompetent, or just
plain corrupt to award this crooked company exclusive multi year
contracts.
It seems to me that the criteria for awarding any company responsible
for handling hundreds of billions of dollars of bettors money should be
-- FIRST and FOREMOST -- INTEGRITY!
It doesn't matter how competent the company is if it is run by a bunch
of lying deceptive criminals. Some heads need to roll in racetrack
management for whoever appoved the contract to this company. This is a
genuine scandal
Here is an excerpt from the results of the class action suit against
Autotote in 1995:
BACKGROUND OF THE LITIGATION
1. The Amended Consolidated Class Action Complaint (the "Complaint") was
filed in this Court on or about June 16, 1995.
2. In substance, the Complaint alleges violations of Sections 10(b) and
20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule10b-5 promulgated
thereunder. Plaintiffs allege that, during the Class Period (as defined
below), Defendants issued materially false and misleading statements
about the earnings, profitability and business prospects of Autotote
which were contained in public statements, press releases and filings
with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC").
Plaintiffs alledged that such misstatements were made during the "Class
Period" commencing on March 18, 1994, when defendant A. Lorne Weil sold
500,000 shares of Autotote common stock, and continued until February
14, 1995 when Autotote issued a press release announcing that the
company had a loss for Fiscal Year 1994 and that Autotote would restate
its previously reported operating results for the first three quarters
of its Fiscal Year 1994.
Specifically, the Complaint alleges that Autotote's publicly reported
assets, revenues, earnings, and earnings per share for the first three
quarters of Autotote's Fiscal Year 1994 were wrongfully inflated by
means of a series of improper and fraudulent accounting practices.
Plaintiffs allege that, as a result of these allegedly false and
misleading statements and/or omissions, the market price of Autotote
common stock was artificially inflated throughout the Class Period.
Plaintiffs allege that they and members of the Class were damaged as a
result of the alleged misstatements and non-disclosures.
3. These allegedly materially false and misleading statements concerning
Autotote were contained in various documents and releases filed with the
SEC and/or disseminated to the Company's shareholders and the investing
public. The Complaint alleges that as a result of these allegedly
materially false and misleading statements, the market prices of
Autotote securities were artificially inflated.

[cheesebeast]

By MICHELE McPHEE
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF
Three former fraternity brothers will surrender tomorrow on charges they nearly pulled off the biggest heist in horse racing history, the Daily News has learned.
The three - accused of an elaborate computer scheme that rigged bets for a $3 million payout - are expected to turn themselves in to the Southern District U.S. attorney's office in White Plains at 8a.m. tomorrow, sources said.
Glen DaSilva, Chris Harn and Derrick Davis will be charged with wire fraud conspiracy for allegedly ripping off the Breeders' Cup - America's richest day in horse racing, sources told The News.
The charges against the three 29-year-old computer whizzes - frat brothers at Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity when they attended Philadelphia's Drexel University - have rocked the racing world.
The men have been the targets of a huge investigation ever since their stunning payoff two weeks ago. Authorities say they didn't fix the race but fixed the computers to win.
DaSilva's attorney, Ed Hayes, confirmed to The News yesterday that his client will turn himself in. But he said the government has no proof that DaSilva or his friends did anything wrong.
"They made bets. They won. They got paid. These are very risky bets. They have very high payouts," Hayes said. "Can the government show the bets they placed are different than the bets they won? I don't think so."
Sources close to Harn and Davis said they will surrender, too.
The charges are the culmination of a probe into what authorities call the biggest ripoff in racing history.
It began early last month, when the suspects allegedly tried a dry run for their elaborate scam, authorities said.
Betting by phone
DaSilva used a push-button phone account with Off Track Betting in upstate Catskill to place two bets on races at Long Island's Belmont Park on Oct. 5 and at an Illinois harness track on Oct 3.
The Catskill branch has no live operators or recording device keeping records of bets - making it impossible to prove what wagers were placed when, authorities said.
Investigators believe that Harn, a senior programmer for Autotote in Delaware - a company that handles bets made at tracks and off-track betting parlors - hacked into his system to change DaSilva's bets, netting him more than $100,000.
Then the three allegedly moved onto an even bigger payday: the prestigious Breeders' Cup, held last month at Arlington Park outside Chicago.
Davis, who owns a computer company in Baltimore, placed a Pick Six bet using a phone account with the Catskill OTB. Pick Six bettors must pick the winners of six consecutive races, difficult even for the best racing handicappers.
He picked a single horse in each of the first four legs of the wager. But then he picked all of the horses in the last two races - so he couldn't lose either one.
Harn, prosecutors believe, hacked into his company's system to manipulate Davis' bet after the first four races, guaranteeing him a win for the whole ticket.
But there was one thing they didn't count on, authorities say. Volponi, a 44-1 longshot, won the last race of the day, the Breeders' Cup Classic - making Davis the only Pick Six winner.
His purse was nearly $3 million, and that immediately set off alarms with authorities.
Marvin Smilon, spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney James Comey, refused comment on the case.
Steven Allen, the Baltimore-based attorney for Davis, would not confirm or deny his client will surrender tomorrow morning. "It's my client's position that he did nothing wrong," Allen said yesterday. Harn's attorney, Daniel Conti, would only say his client is innocent.

[hobbes]

SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA TO ME
Calder to close bets at post time --- By John Crittenden, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
The starting gates open. In the steward's box, the state steward pushes a button that locks the mutuel machines. Betting is stopped.
This sequence, in effect since Calder Race Course opened in 1971, changes Thursday.
Before each race, Calder will shut off betting before horses enter the starting gate. This is a reaction to the concern about the investigations involving illegal bets totaling $3 million placed last month on the Breeders' Cup.
Instead of stopping bets when the race begins, bets will close down at post time, the time designated by the track for all horses to arrive at the starting gate. The new betting shutdown will come about a minute earlier than usual before each race.
The change begins Wednesday at the tracks in operation owned by Churchill Downs. This includes Hollywood Park in California, Hoosier Park in Indiana and the home track, Churchill Downs.
Because Calder is closed Wednesday, the changed betting arrangement cannot begin until Thursday.
Post time will be shown in the infield odds board, with a sketch of a clock as a viewing aid.
"But some people are not going to get the message, not at first, said track President Ken Dunn.
"Some readjustment is going to be necessary,'' said Patrick Mahony, vice president for mutuels at Calder. "All our clerks have been instructed to be understanding. Each employee has received a notice about the change.''
Dunn knows the track will lose some bets. Many gamblers wait until the last second to place their wagers, pausing for a final study of the odds board.
"But once a person has been shut out on a winner, it's not going to happen again,'' Dunn said.
Announcements concerning the change were made on track monitors starting Sunday. There were notices in the track program. Announcer Phil Saltzman offered reminders in his public-address announcements.
On Friday, Churchill Downs said all of its tracks would operate with the early shutdown. Magna, which owns Gulfstream, and the New York Racing Association are expected to follow suit.
Under the old system, with betting stopped when the race began, odds would change on the television monitors and the infield tote board while the horses were running. This represented the late reporting of bets from remote simulcast sites. But for the bettors it was disconcerting to see a 9-5 horse drop to 6-5 after the betting windows closed.
The earlier shutdown time is supposed to stop most of that. Churchill Downs estimates that it takes 66 seconds to record its bets from around the country. At least 66 seconds should elapse between post time and off time, the time the race starts.
"The whole idea is public protection,'' Mahony said. "We need to get that across to everyone.''
john_crittenden@pbpost.com

[hobbes]

All eyes on Churchill's new betting restriction --- By MATT HEGARTY
NEW YORK - When Churchill Downs Inc. begins its new policy on Wednesday to close betting approximately one minute before horses enter the gates, other track operators will be watching carefully to see if they should follow suit.
Churchill officials are hoping that the change will dampen fears that parimutuel pools are being manipulated and quell speculation that some bets are being made after the horses leave the gate. The policy was announced last Friday in response to the Breeders' Cup pick six investigation, in which authorities suspect that the only winning tickets were altered after several races were run.
Churchill's new policy does not come without risks. Approximately two-thirds of all bets are placed within two minutes of the starting bell, and many players could be shut out until they adjust to the new restrictions.
Officials at other racetracks, including the tracks operated by the New York Racing Association, said on Monday that they were considering similar policies, although no other tracks were prepared to take that step yet.
Churchill operates six tracks, and four are currently conducting live meets: Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., Hollywood Park in Los Angeles, Calder Race Course in Miami, and Hoosier Park in Anderson, Ind. All except Churchill Downs are closed on Wednesday. Churchill's other two tracks, Arlington Park outside Chicago and Ellis Park in Henderson, Ky., do not run live meets until next year.
Under the new policy, betting will stop when the "minutes to post" countdown reaches zero, which will be approximately a minute before the first horse enters the starting gate. Previously, betting was allowed until the starting gates opened. The time until betting closes will be displayed continuously on Churchill's simulcast feed, company officials said.
Churchill officials said that the policy will allow the track to calculate final odds on all bets before the horses leave the starting gate. Many bettors have complained over the past two years about dramatic odds fluctuations during races. Racing officials have said that the fluctuations are because of the delay in receiving data from out-of-state sites, merging the data into the host site's pools, and calculating the payouts.
Tom Meeker, the chief executive officer of Churchill, acknowledged during a news conference on Friday that Churchill's handle could suffer temporarily because of bettors being shut out. But he said that he believed the long-term benefits would outweigh those short-term losses as players adjust.
"I'm pretty confident in our players," Meeker said. "They are pretty adaptable."
At the New York Racing Association, which operates Aqueduct, Belmont, and Saratoga, officials are considering a dual-pronged stop-betting plan that would affect simulcast players and ontrack bettors differently. Under the plan, betting at every offtrack site would close as soon as the first horse went in the gate, the officials said. Ontrack, betting would be allowed until the race started, which is the current system.
NYRA officials were waiting to hear from totalizator companies about the viability of the strategy before making any change, officials said.
The plan would have an advantage for ontrack bettors, who - unlike offtrack bettors - would be able to see major odds changes and react to any late odds moves as the horses are being loaded into the gate.
NYRA officials said that ontrack money moves odds in real time, meaning the bets can be included in calculations to determine payoffs nearly instantaneously because the information does not have to be transmitted over long distances or merged with bets from other sites. That justifies treating ontrack patrons differently than offtrack customers, the officials said.
Up until 1995, NYRA stopped all offtrack betting two minutes before post time. The policy was criticized by bettors at many simulcast sites, in part because NYRA was the only company in the country that closed its betting early.
Officials at other racetracks said they were waiting to see how Churchill's policy affected handle before making a decision. The officials said that their betting policies would also be affected by whatever changes were eventually put in place by totalizator companies to create better security controls on the computer systems that process bets.
Nick Nicholson, the president of Keeneland Racecourse, said on Monday that Keeneland would shut betting early for its spring meet next year if reforms in the tote system were slow in coming.
"If things stand as they stand now, I would do as Churchill is doing," Nicholson said.

[hobbes]

washingtonpost.com
Scandal Reveals There May Be No Safe Bets
By Andrew Beyer
Tuesday, November 12, 2002; Page D01
Shortly after the Breeders' Cup Pick Six scandal erupted, Santa Anita was offering a special Pick Six of its own, with a guaranteed pool of $1 million. Sherwood Chillingworth, executive vice president of the Oak Tree Racing Association, sought to reassure bettors that the wager would not be corrupted, and he announced: "We are doing everything possible to make sure there are no abnormalities. We are changing locks on all the doors in the tote room. We are putting a guard on the central doors so no one gets in who is not authorized."
These measures, of course, were laughably irrelevant to crimes allegedly committed in cyberspace. While the Breeders' Cup was run in Chicago, a software engineer at the Autotote Corp. offices in Delaware allegedly used a computer to alter wagers made at an off-track betting site in upstate New York. All the locks and guards in Fort Knox wouldn't have made a difference.
Understandably, the racing industry is so worried about customers' loss of confidence in the parimutuel system that it is desperate to reassure them. But it has not yet done one thing necessary to restore trust: determine how extensive its problems have been. "One of the first rules of crisis management," said a racetrack publicity executive, "is to get all the bad news out fast." Instead, racing fans have been left to suspect that there is a lot of bad news yet undisclosed.
Of all the revelations emanating from the Breeders' Cup investigation, none is more disturbing than information about the events of Oct. 5 at Belmont Park.
Exactly three weeks before the Breeders' Cup, Belmont had a large Pick Six carryover, one that generated more than $1 million in wagers. Chris Harn, the Autotote employee implicated in the Breeders' Cup scandal, is accused of rigging this one, too. One of his allies allegedly made a bet similar to the play in the Breeders' Cup, standing alone with the first four winners and using all the horses in the last two legs. He hit eight winning combinations worth $13,070 each. And nobody noticed that anything was wrong.
Autotote executives have insisted they have "warning signals build into the system," but no warning signals went off after the Belmont Pick Six. Catskill OTB paid off a six-figure sum to a bettor who held eight winning Pick Six combinations -- something almost unheard of -- but no warning signals went off there, either. The New York Racing Association knew that eight winning tickets came from a single location, but nobody questioned that oddity.
"Now that we look back, October 5th leaps off the page," New York Racing Association Vice President Bill Nader acknowledged. "But I'll be honest -- it wasn't on our radar screen then."
If the Belmont larceny could have escaped everybody's notice, then how many other Pick Sixes have been tainted? "That's the issue that keeps coming up again and again for bettors," said Jim Quinn, a handicapper who is a member of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association's special task force on wagering.
It is not easy for the industry to discover the extent of its past problems. Officials at a track can't simply query their own computer system and ask it to look for Pick Six combinations with four "singles" and two "alls." Reviewing a year of Pick Six results would be laborious and expensive. Moreover, some people in the industry don't want to look for the truth, fearing it would simply tarnish their sport further.
The NTRA task force has pushed for changes in the way tote companies process the Pick Six so that nobody can tamper with this wager in the future. And everybody is scrambling to restore bettors' confidence.
Churchill Downs Inc. announced this week that it will lock its betting pools about two minutes before races begin. This change is designed to mollify horseplayers who suspect that somebody is placing wagers after races have begun.
Although horseplayers frequently see horses' odds drop just before they cross the finish line, almost every tote expert believes this is one area of the parimutuel system that is reasonably secure. I believe so, too. I suspect that such drops in odds have become a cause celebre because gamblers have very selective powers of observation. They notice and remember the cases when late money drives a horse from 3-1 to 2-1 and he wins, and they ignore the evidence when a horse loses with the same pattern. Churchill Downs understandably wants to allay any perception of wrongdoing, but this change is just a cosmetic one that won't address a real problem. It's the equivalent of switching the locks on the tote room door.
whilst beyer may be correct here, i would not be so confident, especially with the "double hop" transmission of bets from some states. the delay just begs a hack to bet on a horse 10 to 30 secs after the start of the race ( or alter an existing bet ).
also the Churchill Downs move seems a sensible one to try and reassure punters.
What the industry has to do should be obvious: review every Pick Six in New York, California and other major racing states that had a substantial payout in the last year (or more). Find out if there were any winning combinations with four "singles" and two "alls." Discover if there were any other possible scams besides the trio involved in the Breeders' Cup scandal. And then get the bad news out. If the industry doesn't do these things, all of its positive actions will go for naught, and its customers will suspect that a whitewash is in progress.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company

[cheesebeast]

When the bookie asked the veteran horse player the secret of
his consistent success, the gambler provided a simple
explanation. "I'm just lucky, I guess. I turn to the racing
page, close my eyes and stick a pin in it," he said.
"Lucky!" the bookie exclaimed in disbelief. "But how did you
pick this four-horse combination?"
"Well," the gambler admitted, "I didn't have a pin, so I
used a fork."

[hobbes]

‘BETTOR' OFF WITHOUT $3M --- By JOE McGURK and WILLIAM J. GORTA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 13, 2002 --
Three computer-whiz fraternity brothers - two of whom allegedly tested positive before court for cocaine use - were formally charged yesterday with using their expertise to exploit a security glitch and switch bets at the Breeders' Cup last month to produce a stunning $3 million winner.
Derrick Davis, Glen DaSilva and Chris Harn, all 29, surrendered to state troopers and FBI agents around 8 a.m. yesterday.
They were handcuffed and whisked to the federal courthouse in White Plains before being brought separately into the courtroom to hear the charges read.
Each man was hit with one count of conspiring to violate wire-fraud laws.
Each was freed on $200,000 personal recognizance; none entered a plea.
The three pledged the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Drexel University in 1992.
None of the frat brothers graduated from the Philadelphia school.
Davis and DaSilva both tested positive for cocaine after the three surrendered yesterday morning, prosecutors said.
Stephen Allen, Davis' lawyer, said his client was "dumbfounded" at the drug-use revelation.
Davis took a second test but failed that as well, officials said.
Of the betting-scandal charges, Allen said, "He denies doing anything wrong, and the evidence does not support the charges."
Rae Koshetz, former NYPD trials commissioner, represented DaSilva, a Manhattan resident.
"All we have right now is an allegation," she said. "He made a bet, and he won. At this point there's no proof he did anything wrong." She refused to comment on the failed drug test.
Harn, who lives in Newark, Del., is alleged to have used his access at a computer wagering company to change bets for the other two.
"My client didn't do anything wrong" said Dan Conti, Harn's lawyer.
The court complaint alleges Davis, of East Baltimore, Md., placed a bet via a New York Off-Track Betting telephone account, keying into a touch-tone telephone his picks for a six-race parlay at the Breeders' Cup, run Oct. 26 at Arlington Park near Chicago.
He picked horses to win the first four races and then bet every horse in each of the last two races, laying out $1,152.
Because of the volume of bets on the popular Breeders' Cup Ultra Pick 6, his bet remained on an OTB computer in Poughkeepsie, which would be queried by the Breeders' Cup computer after several races had been run, eliminating many of the bets as potential winners.
Before Davis' bet was queried, Harn, a senior programmer with Autotote used his work computer to connect to the OTB records in Poughkeepsie and gained access to the bet, prosecutors said.
A colleague told officials Harn, who went to the office even though he was not scheduled to work on Oct. 26, received several cell-phone calls while he was accessing the OTB computer hub.
Phone records show Harn and Davis spoke several times during the Breeders' Cup races.
Harn also used his cell phone to access the Catskill OTB telephone betting system.
As long as Davis' bet showed winners in each of the first four races, he would automatically win, having played the entire field to win in each of the last two races.
Davis' account showed he had $12 worth of winning tickets - six bets each worth more than $428,000.
Counting his second-prize winnings - for predicting five out of six races - he was due a payout of $3,067,821.60.
But given the strange betting strategy - coupled with the unlikely notion a single bettor would have the only six winning bets - race officials immediately suspected a scam was afoot and held onto the cash until they could investigate.
Before the big Pick-Six jackpot for the Breeders' Cup, DaSilva picked up a pair of smaller scores at Catskill OTB using the same unorthodox betting style - picking winners in the earlier races and wheeling the last two.
In early October, he won nearly $1,800 on a Pick-Four and then collected over $100,000 on a Pick-Six bet.
DaSilva transferred $80,000 from his OTB account to a personal bank account after the win.
There is no independent evidence of what Davis' original bet was. Catskill OTB does not make recordings of the telephone transactions, which would provide an audit trail for each bet.
Churchill Downs Inc., which owns several racetracks, including the famous course where the Kentucky Derby is run as well as Arlington Park, has already taken steps to prevent another fiasco, announcing last week it would no longer accept bets from systems that do not record the transactions.
The company will also shut down betting on races at the official post time, rather than the actual start of the race.
This will allow data in the off-track pari-mutuel pool to be uploaded to the racetrack computers rather than remain on the remote betting system to await a query from the track.
Despite the high-tech maneuvers, U.S. Attorney James Comey said the trio's actions were simply attempted theft.
"This was garden-variety fraud; there was nothing fancy about this," Comey said. "They used their access to computers and knowledge of horse racing to try and create a sure thing.
"The only thing for sure is they'll be going to trial."
Of the positive cocaine tests, Comey would say only, "It's a bad thing."
He added additional charges may be lodged against the trio before their case is heard.
If convicted on the current charge, each man faces a five-year prison stretch and a $250,000 fine.
With additional reporting by Anthony Stabile and Post Wire Services

[hobbes]

In drug tests routinely given after arrests, Davis, from Baltimore, and DaSilva, from New York, tested positive for cocaine. As a condition of their bail, Fox ordered the pair to submit to thrice-weekly drug tests.
"We're not going to have you out there high on drugs," Fox scolded DaSilva. He warned DaSilva and Davis that they would go to jail if they failed any more tests.

[hobbes]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Hi-tech, hi-stakes OTB case
By GREG GITTRICH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Monday, November 11th, 2002
As the suspected culprits of the biggest heist in horse racing history prepared to surrender today, criminal experts said prosecutors could have a hard time getting out of the gate.
It's not that fixing horse races is so uncommon. It's that the schemes usually include a crooked jockey or a drugged horse, not high-tech computer hacking.
"We've never seen anything like this," said David Steingold, a Detroit-based expert in horse racing law. "The beautiful thing about this scheme is they wouldn't have had to pay off a jockey and worry about somebody spilling the beans. ... It probably looked like the perfect scam."
Three former fraternity brothers at Drexel University in Philadelphia are accused of rigging bets for a $3 million payout at the Breeders' Cup in Arlington Park, near Chicago. Investigators believe the men placed bets and then hacked into a computer system that tracked the wagers to change them after races were completed.
As first reported by the Daily News, Chris Harn of Newark, Del., Derrick Davis of Baltimore and Glen DaSilva of New York plan to surrender today at the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District in White Plains.
Sources said the three will face wire fraud and conspiracy charges. They have insisted they did nothing wrong.
Rae Koshetz, part of DaSilva's legal team, said the "burden is on the prosecution to show a crime was committed."
Harn's lawyer, Daniel Conti, said his client is innocent. Davis' lawyer, Steven Allen of Baltimore, could not be reached.
Prosecutors scheduled a 1 p.m. news conference for today.
Confusing case
"The difficulty in defending or prosecuting a case like this is getting past the technical wizardry that can be very confusing and complicated," said Benjamin Brafman, a Manhattan white-collar criminal defense lawyer. "What you're going to end up with is a battle of computer experts."
But Brafman said the case could be simplified if prosecutors have witnesses or if one of the suspects turns.
Investigators believe Davis placed a Pick Six in Baltimore using a phone account with Catskill Off-Track Betting.
To win, bettors must select the winners of six consecutive races. Davis picked a single horse in the first four races and bet on all the horses in the last two.
Prosecutors believe his pal Hahn, a senior programmer for Autotote in Delaware - a company that handles the bets - hacked into the system after the first four races and changed Davis' bets. Because Davis picked every horse in the last two races, he couldn't lose.
Investigators also are looking into DaSilva's winning wagers at Balmoral Park, a harness track in Illinois, on Oct. 3 and at Belmont Park on Oct. 5.
With Robert Gearty

[jb]

Three computer-whiz fraternity brothers - two of whom allegedly tested positive before court for cocaine use - were formally charged yesterday with using their expertise to exploit a security glitch and switch bets at the Breeders' Cup last month to produce a stunning $3 million winner.
-------------------------------------------------
What a life "Hacking & Snorting"
Looks like they did too much snorting , if they wer`nt so greedy they`d still be hacking ?

[cheesebeast]

I think they probably would still be snorting and hacking - I don't know if they were greedy so much as dumb - if they had someone on their team who knew a bit more about structuring a bet they'd still be out there I think.
They could easily have won the Pick 6 if their bet was for one unit and looked something like this
3x2x3x1xFieldxField

[Horny Harry]

PHILADELPHIA -- The two guys who invented the bar code went to school here. So did the man who developed the technology that made the Internet possible.
Now, three former students have brought attention to Drexel University again.
http://sportsmed.starwave.com/media/horse/TKE_House_021114_v_i.jpg
The Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity house at Drexel University.
Derrick Davis of Baltimore, Glen DaSilva of New York and Chris Harn of Newark, N.J. -- all members of the same fraternity at Drexel -- were charged Tuesday with tampering with a national off-track betting system to rig a $3 million bet on six horse races at the Breeder's Cup at Arlington Park, Ill., last month.
As prosecutors have described it, the trio's alleged plan to rig a complicated Ultra Pick Six bet was more likely a crime of opportunity than one hatched years ago in a Drexel study hall; Harn worked as a technician for the company that handles most computerized horse betting.
http://sportsmed.starwave.com/media/horse/DeSilva_i_021112.jpg
Glen Da Silva leaves New York District Court in White Plains, New York
But the case has created a buzz at Drexel, where students and faculty occasionally complain about being unfairly overlooked because of the long shadow cast by their Ivy League neighbor, Penn.
Here, some said with a degree of pride Wednesday, was another example of Drexel ingenuity.
Glen Da Silva leaves New York District Court in White Plains, New York.
"I know what they did wasn't right, but in a twisted sort of way, it shows our high standards. It shows the quality of the education you can get here,'' said Lang Kirchheimer, an 18-year-old freshman.
That opinion wasn't shared by many, however. More students said the allegations only obscured good work by the school's researchers and alumni.
"It doesn't reflect well on us. What they did wasn't much of an achievement,'' said Andrew Aiello, a 22-year-old senior. "I'd rather have us establish our reputation in other ways.''
As to whether the case would give Drexel a reputation as some sort of hotbed for hackers, most students were doubtful.
"I guess they learned what they needed to learn here. But what they do with that knowledge is personal choice. It's not the school's fault. It's not like they're teaching this stuff in class,'' said Lee Hamilton, a 28-year-old junior.
Drexel's vice president for university relations, Philip Terranova, shrugged off the attention.
"We are used to making headlines,'' he said. "I think the public at large has a good understanding and appreciation of the positive contributions that our alumni make to this world.''
The university's library and information science programs have been ranked among the nation's best by U.S. News & World Report. Universal Product Code inventors Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver are alumni, as is "packet-switching'' guru Paul Baran. Drexel has long bragged of being at technology's forefront, as in 1983 when it became the first U.S. college to require all students to own computers.
None of the three men charged in the pick six scam graduated from Drexel, Terranova pointed out. Harn and DaSilva attended from 1991 to 1997, Davis from 1992 to 1993.
Most students agreed that one scandal probably won't be enough to lift Drexel completely out of Penn's shadow -- even in the annals of crime. Penn's business school, after all, produced Michael Milken, the junk-bond trader who served prison time for securities fraud.
The former Drexel University frat brothers, of Tau Kappa Epsilon, surrendered to the FBI Tuesday. All were released on $200,000 personal bond, though Davis and DaSilva tested positive for cocaine and were ordered to undergo random drug testing, said Michael Kulstad, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office.
http://www.drexel.edu/univrel/aboutdu/images/06.gif
Technological Focus In 1983-84, Drexel became the first university to require all entering students to have personal access to a microcomputer. Microcomputing is integrated into all fields of study, with more than 2,000 course-related materials and applications available to students through the University's computing center. Drexel faculty and researchers are linked to the national very high performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS), as well as Internet2. "CyberZones" are located throughout the campus, offering wireless connections to the University's computer network, library resources, and the Internet. All classrooms and campus dorm rooms are wired for network connections.Yahoo! Internet Life Magazine has ranked Drexel as Philadelphia's "most-wired campus" and 18th in the United States. Each year, the Office of Information Resources and Technology distributes to all faculty, staff and students the Drexel CD containing numerous computer applications, including the complete suite of Microsoft Office 2000.

[hobbes]

BACKTALK -- Facing Unpleasant Facts After Breeders' Cup Scandal -- NYT
By TIM SMITH
t the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and Breeders' Cup, we want to get back to public debates like Pat Day versus Jerry Bailey, Wayne Lukas versus Bob Baffert. We want speculation over next year's Triple Crown contenders or what the latest Storm Cat-Serena's Song foal might bring next year at the summer sales. And, as winter approaches, we long for a fresh case of Derby fever.
The truth is, though, we can't responsibly go back to business as usual in our sport without unblinkingly facing some unpleasant facts brought to light after the pick-six betting scandal on Breeders' Cup day. While proof and guilt are matters for courts and juries to decide, it is clear that the security of at least some aspects of the sport's electronic wagering system have been breached. It is also clear that many of horse racing's most avid fans and best customers are justifiably concerned about overall system integrity.
Only three weeks ago, my colleagues and I were celebrating one of the most successful days in horse racing's colorful history. Our sport's Super Bowl, the Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships, at Arlington Park, drew a sellout crowd. NBC's national audience for the event was up 18 percent over 2001.
Equally important — since legal wagering ultimately finances our prize money and other costs — a wagering record for Breeders' Cup day was set: a total of $116 million, including $100 million handled through hundreds of off-track facilities and through authorized telephone or computer account wagering services.
Within 24 hours, however, the celebration ended. The N.T.R.A., based on questionable circumstances surrounding winning wagers totaling more than $3 million on the Breeders' Cup pick-six, was asking Arlington Park to stop payment and formally requesting the New York State Racing and Wagering Board to start a thorough investigation of the suspicious bets, which were made through the Catskill OTB in New York.
Within a few days, an N.T.R.A. task force began work on initial, short-term steps to improve wagering security with racetrack owners, state regulators and totalisator companies. (Totes perform the arithmetic involved in parimutuel wagering and also handle communications of the wagering information from offtrack or simulcast sites to the host track and its wagering pool.)
Within a week, the N.T.R.A. retained the computer security unit of Ernst & Young to do an initial assessment of horse racing's simulcast-wagering systems. The firm's experts, who work mainly with large banks and electronic commerce companies, explained the role of their attack and penetration team, a group of in-house hackers who would begin testing immediately. I asked when the testing would be completed, and the sobering answer essentially was, "If your industry is smart, never."
Before the Breeders' Cup, I worked to improve TV ratings for horse racing, get new fans to try a day at the track and the thinking person's wager, and to recruit more national sponsors. Now, whole days are spent on topics like progressive scanning (asking the totes to transmit wagering details before each leg of a multileg bet, reducing the time window for potential fraud) and wagering forensics (steps like keeping records of every phone wager).
This is essential, because while it is true that the Breeders' Cup pick six allegations involve an inside job versus computer hacking, it is also the case that the industry's security technology and procedures require updating and improvement.
The immediate, short-term steps taken recently by the industry are a good start. Horse racing's real test, however, lies ahead. In a sport and business increasingly involved in electronic commerce, new investment in systems security will be needed to protect the sport's integrity and earn public trust. The best practices in wagering security will need to become standards. Overreaction on the part of regulators will need to be avoided, however, as new protections and safeguards are implemented.
The stakes are high. At issue are things like the game's future growth, the 472,000 jobs involved in horse racing and directly related businesses, and the economics of the large agribusiness — horse-breeding farms — that underlies the sport.
Any business should listen to its customers. Horse racing has an added reason to include its frequent participants in the current process. In horse racing, bettors compete against each other, with tracks taking a fee to cover purses and other operating costs of putting on the show. In a real sense, handicappers, along with the equine and human athletes competing on the track, are the show.
For its millions of passionate fans, horse racing combines spectator sport with a challenging wagering game to produce compelling entertainment. That the wagering part is not simple or easy is actually a key part of its allure. Indeed, maintaining this defining characteristic of the sport is what we are being asked by our customers to assure: that hitting the pick six will always be hard, and never again easy.
Tim Smith is the commissioner of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.

[hobbes]

Scandal shakes racing to roots
Alleged scam is traced to connections made at Drexel fraternity house
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By Jon Morgan Sun Staff Originally published November 17, 2002
PHILADELPHIA - The biggest scandal in horse racing history, an alleged $3 million bet-rigging scam, appears rooted in friendships formed in a stately colonial revival mansion here on a campus that brags it is the nation's most wired.
Three men accused of fixing the payoffs in a series of races met and lived a decade ago in the Tau Kappa Epsilon house on Drexel University's fraternity row. Wedged between a sorority and a playground, the 1898 house, with its soaring columns and grand fireplaces, evokes a time of steam locomotives and knickers.
Not so Drexel. The school, which until 1970 was known as Drexel Institute of Technology, has long been a magnet for technophiles and entrepreneurs. It was the first American college, in 1983, to require students to own computers and lately has been among the first to offer a wireless campus network. Its information science program is among the top ranked.
So it's not surprising that Drexel would attract people with a keen eye for the unique opportunities of the digital age. A crime of opportunity is how prosecutors describe the Pick Six case, an alleged manipulation of a computer system that sorts the winners from the losers for an upstate New York off-track betting company.
Despite its technological underpinning, the crime amounted to "garden variety fraud," according to the chief prosecutor. "There was nothing really fancy about this," said James Comey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The three men - one a former soccer star from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute - are accused of rigging wagers that generated $3.2 million in payoffs. But most of the lucre has been withheld by investigators, brought in soon after a 43-1 long shot, Volponi, captured the Breeders' Cup Classic on Oct. 26. The resulting high payoff attracted the scrutiny of the Baltimore man's Ultra Pick Six bet, which was the only one in the country with the winning horse in six consecutive races. .
Comey filed wire fraud charges Nov. 8 against Derrick Davis of Baltimore, Glen DaSilva of New York and Christopher Harn of Newark, Del. A grand jury may return more charges next month.
They surrendered to the FBI on Tuesday and were released on $200,000 personal recognizance bond. DaSilva and Davis, both of whom tested positive for cocaine at the time of their surrender, were also ordered to take drug tests three times a week.
The three defendants are all 29, and all make their living working with computers. All declined to comment but, through their attorneys, proclaimed their innocence.
"My client denies the charges. We are confident that at the end of these proceedings, he will be exonerated," said Davis' lawyer, Steven A. Allen of Baltimore.
First time in trouble
Trim, handsome and dressed in stylish suits for their hearings at the federal courthouse in White Plains, N.Y., on Tuesday, the men could have easily passed for young lawyers or bond traders - except for the handcuffs.
In fact, friends and relatives of all three say they are stunned by the charges. None of the men had been in trouble with the law, other than an underage-drinking charge filed against Davis in 1993 and a speeding ticket issued in 1998 to Harn in Baltimore.
Davis has been running a computer services business in Baltimore, where he grew up. His parents live in a white Cape Cod in Rosedale, where his mother was reached by phone.
"He's my son and I love him, and that's all I have to say," said Vanessa Davis.
Charlie Sullivan, a former Poly math teacher, remembered Davis as "a go-getter kid, an overachiever who always seemed to do better than he thought he would ... a gritty sort of kid who always seemed like he had a good future."
He was co-captain and a popular forward on Poly's 1990 soccer team his senior year. Mark Schlenoff, athletic director at Poly for 12 years, recalled a student who, in addition to his athletic prowess, was enrolled in the demanding "A Course" engineering curriculum.
"This was a pretty brilliant kid. It requires recommendations by teachers and features a curriculum weighted toward more stringent classes," Schlenoff said.
In the Poly yearbook, alongside Davis' senior picture, is a wide-ranging list of activities: the diving team, student government, Shakespeare workshop and yearbook staff.
A year after graduating, Davis went off to Drexel, a 6,000-student college in Philadelphia's west end. Named for its founder, pioneering financier Anthony J. Drexel, the university has always sought to innovate.
Drexel's 1992 yearbook, the Lexerd, boasts about the school's cyber-orientation, described as crucial "because you can't live in today's society without knowing how to use a computer."
Davis entered Drexel's engineering program in September 1992, never declared a major and left the school in December of the next year without a degree, according to Drexel records.
Along with Harn and DaSilva, Davis in 1992 pledged the TKE house.
"Drexel was not a big fraternity school," said Norman Leebron, who was an adjunct business professor at the school and academic adviser to the TKE house in the 1990s.
The TKE men were a "polyglot group" of business and engineering students, he said. "They didn't get into the usual trouble as fraternities that were rowdier. The Tekes seemed to be more academically oriented."
Harn and DaSilva attended the university from 1991 to 1997 but did not earn degrees. Harn studied information systems, DaSilva business administration and marketing.
Harn stood out at the fraternity for his gangly, 6-foot-3 frame, long hair worn in a ponytail and the jeans and oversized sweaters he preferred to others' preppy attire. He was also the fraternity's computer whiz, a laptop in tow, always several steps ahead of fellow computer devotees.
"He was very helpful to anyone who needed help with computer-related projects," recalled Joseph Wallace, 29, who lived next door to Harn on the fraternity's second floor.
Wallace, a computer engineer who lives in Philadelphia's Center City, remembers Harn as having a self-taught kind of intelligence. "He was independently smart - not really book smart."
As part of the university's co-op program, in which students divide the school year between a job and class, Harn worked as a computer troubleshooter at the University of Pennsylvania.
Inside the frat house, Harn and several brainy friends took turns mastering a video game in which a motley group of objects had to be strung together to solve an puzzle.
"I did level 5 and gave up," recalled David Pyne, 28, a fraternity brother whom Harn had sponsored for membership. "I think they completed the entire game - all 100 levels."
DaSilva was Harn's roommate, and their room housed the fraternity's only cat - a little black one. The two were close friends despite DaSilva's flashier style. And their well-kept room, with a couple of new couches, became a pre-party gathering spot. "Most parties ended up starting there," says Pyne, a self-employed Internet consultant outside Philadelphia.
Davis, a wisecracker who favored what one fraternity brother described as "the newest of the new" in fashion, lived across the hall. At 5-9 and a trim 140 pounds, he played club soccer.
"Derrick was pretty loud," Pyne said. "He always liked to make people laugh. He was just a funny guy, like Seinfeld is a funny guy."
The three were part of a group that went to dance clubs like The Bank, where dress-to-impress young professionals danced to techno music.
The closest they came to gambling was in the in-house football pool, according to Wallace. But another fraternity member remembers occasional trips to Atlantic City.
The fraternity continued to be a draw for Davis, who Pyne said returned periodically "to party."
'Didn't hurt anyone'
Since news of the allegations broke, Wallace says that former fraternity brothers have been calling each other, many expressing disbelief.
"If they did something wrong, this is the first time they did something wrong with their lives," Wallace said. "They shouldn't be crucified. They didn't hurt anyone."
Pyne says that the easygoing Harn didn't have the temperament - or stupidity - to engage in a fraud on this scale.
After college, Davis got married and set up a computer business in Baltimore. State incorporation records list him as president of Utopian Networks Inc., which a friend said provides computer network support for small- and medium-sized companies that don't have their own computer staffs.
In November 1997, Davis bought a house in the 300 block of South Collington Avenue, land records show. His wife, Cara Cameron, answered the door at the house last week. She said she and Davis separated in January and that she plans to file for divorce in a few months. She provided a brief written statement, saying:
"To the best of my knowledge, I am not now nor have I ever been a subject of this investigation. I will continue to cooperate with the FBI and other investigating authorities but will have no further comment."
Records show DaSilva moved to New York after leaving Drexel. One of his attorneys, Rae Downes Koshetz, said he is a "consultant" and is unmarried. The New York Times reported that a Web site for DaSilva Digital - described as a "provider of creative technology-enabled business solutions" - was taken down earlier this month.
After college, Harn landed a job as a programmer in Delaware at the Newark headquarters of Autotote, the top operator of computerized "totalisator" systems that record bets and calculate odds.
Harn met and married a woman from Peru while on a business trip, and briefly took a job at a competitor, International Lottery and Totalizator System Inc., of Carlsbad, Calif., according to Jim Snow, a spokesman for that company.
"We were going to send him to work on a customer site out of the country but he had a new wife and they didn't want to go to Europe," Snow recalled.
Harn instead returned to Autotote as a senior computer programmer in Newark. Two years ago, he and his wife had a baby.
This year, Harn was one of about a dozen software engineers in Newark, according to a co-worker who asked not to be named because Autotote told employees not to speak to the media. One of his tasks was upgrading Autotote's system to allow people to place bets over the phone without going through a clerk. Bettors set up accounts, deposit money and bet by touch-tone phone.
Luck or help?
Just how and when Harn's two friends became involved in betting on horse races is unclear.
Donald Groth, president of a telephone betting service in upstate New York, said Davis told him he was a regular at Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course. There is no record of him ever filing a tax form, required if he had won more than $600, said Louis J. Raffetto, chief operating officer for the tracks.
On Oct. 18, Davis faxed an account application, which he had downloaded from the Internet, to Groth's company, Catskill Off-Track Betting Corp., a corporation set up by the state and controlled by the counties in the Catskill region. DaSilva had done the same thing on Oct. 3, according to police.
Depending on whom you believe, the men had remarkable luck - or help from a friend on the inside.
On the same day he established his account at Catskill, DaSilva won $1,757 by picking in advance the winners of four consecutive races run at Balmoral Park, a harness track near Chicago. Two days later, he hit a Pick Six, selecting the winners of six races run at Belmont Park in New York. The payoff: $107,608.
But that was chump change compared with what his Baltimore friend would soon win. On Oct. 26, Davis used his Catskill account for the first time to make a series of Pick Six bets on one of the biggest days in racing, the Breeders' Cup. That series of races is called the World Thoroughbred Championships and attracts the fleetest horses.
Multi-race strategy
Held at Arlington Park in suburban Chicago, this year's Breeders' Cup was a thriller - capped by Volponi winning the prestigious Classic despite having never won a top-graded race. The payoff, $89 on a $2 bet, was the Classic's second biggest.
On Davis' winning wager, placed about 15 minutes before the first Pick Six race, he bet each horse in the Classic, as well as in the race before that one. That strategy is not uncommon in multi-race wagering. But in the four preceding races, he picked only winners: Domedriver, a 26-1 long shot in the mile; Orientate, the 5-2 favorite in the sprint; Starine, a 13-1 long shot in the turf race; and Vindication, the 4-1 favorite in a race for younger horses.
A few days later, Davis, in an interview with The New York Post, explained his selections like a veteran handicapper. He liked Domedriver, for example, because the horse was bred in Ireland and, he thought, would do well on the wet turf that day.
His six tickets on the races cost him $1,152 - he says he meant to bet less but hit the wrong key on the phone - and were the only Pick Six winners in the country. The payout was $428,392 per ticket, for a total of $3,067,821.
In his other bets that day, he picked every horse in the first two races and one horse in each of the final four. He lost $364.
Big winnings require a wire transfer, which delayed payment a few days. In the meantime, William A. Nader, senior vice president of the New York Racing Association, which regulates Catskill, said he looked at the bet and thought its single-single-single-single-all-all composition was fishy.
A hold was put on the payoff, and the New York Racing and Wagering Board began to investigate. It contacted Catskill, where Groth identified two other wagers that followed the same pattern: DaSilva's.
DaSilva was up by more than $100,000 in an account that had been used only a few times. He already had cashed in most of his winnings, a net of $80,000 after taxes.
In office on day off
Autotote, too, was contacted. Officials there examined computer logs and quickly found that an employee in Newark had accessed Catskill's hub in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., via modem and could have tampered with bets. The company fired Harn on Oct. 31.
Investigators spoke with co-workers and discovered that Harn had come to the office Oct. 26, even though he was not scheduled to work. A check of cell phone records revealed conversations between Harn and Davis during the races. Harn's phone also was used to access the Poughkeepsie computer, according to police.
Investigators concluded that Harn may have taken advantage of security gaps in the tote system. For example, not all the data on wagers is transmitted before a race begins to ease congestion in tote systems.
For multiple-race bets, such as the Pick Six, information on who bet on what horse is retained in the computers where the bet is placed - Catskill in this case - until just after the fifth race. Then, information on only the few who still stand a chance to win is forwarded to the track where the race is run.
That would have given Harn time to correct bets on the first four races, something he would have been able to do because he helped set up the system and had the passwords. It also would explain the single-single-single-single-all-all pattern.
Furthermore, Harn would have known that Catskill's system did not automatically make a tape recording of touch-tone bets - a security procedure required in some states, but not New York. Catskill assumed it had such a device on its new system and investigators are exploring the omission, according to one source familiar with the probe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Widespread effects
Revelations of the alleged scam have reverberated through the industry, which has grown to depend on computers and off-track wagering like a patient on life support. Last year, 85 percent of the $14.5 billion bet on thoroughbred races in this country was wagered someplace other than where the races were run.
Racing officials in Illinois and Canada last week banned Pick Six and Pick Four wagers. Catskill shut down touch-tone betting. The National Thoroughbred Racing Association has appointed a task force and hired security consultants to audit the system. Autotote has named a chief security officer and promised to transmit multi-race bets promptly.
Tom Gilcoyne, a historian at the National Museum of Racing in Saratoga, N.Y., said the scam, if proved in court, will be the biggest in history.
"In terms of dollars, I don't think there are any that are even close. This could impact the entire racing system as it exists today," Gilcoyne said.
Sun staff writers Ariel Sabar, Mike Klingaman, Laura Barnhardt and Walter F. Roche Jr. and staff researchers Elizabeth Lukes and Sandy Levy contributed to this article.
Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun

[hobbes]

NYRA TO NIX LATE TV TIX ---- By ED FOUNTAINE
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November 14, 2002 -- In the wake of the Breeders' Cup "Pick 6 Fix" scandal that focused attention on the shortcomings of the nation's pari-mutuel computer systems, the New York Racing Association announced yesterday it will stop taking bets from simulcast sites when the first horse enters the starting gate, effective Dec. 4, the first day of the inner-dirt-track meet at Aqueduct.
The new measure is designed to prevent the fluctuation of odds after a race begins, a cause of complaint - and distrust - among horseplayers for some time.
"This ensures that virtually all money wagered off track will be in our system before the start of each race," NYRA chairman Barry Schwartz said. "We made a formal request to Autotote [NYRA's totalisator company] last week, and the new software needs to be coded, installed and tested. We have been told this process will take three weeks."
On-track wagering at the Big A will still remain open until the bell rings to start the race.
NYRA is the latest of several racetrack operators to change wagering procedures since the suspected insiders' attempt to rig the Breeders' Cup Pick 6 at Arlington Park. Churchill Downs has stopped taking bets after the official post time, rather than waiting for the start of the race, and the Illinois Racing Board has temporarily suspended all wagering on Pick 4 and Pick 6 bets. The action affects Hawthorne Race Course, Balmoral and Maywood Park. Other tracks are considering similar measures.

[imaufo]

ACROSS THE BOARD by Steve Davidowitz
for TrackMaster - November 2, 2002
The following column represents the private views and opinions of author-handicapper Steve Davidowitz and are not necessarily those of Axcis/TrackMaster or any of it's management or personnel. Each week, Mr. Davidowitz has the freedom to express his point of view in this forum and encourages comments from readers directed to him at davidwtz@aol.com
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So there we were throwing away our Pick Six tickets staring at our TV screens wondering how in the world a half dozen winning tickets could have been played on THAT combination of winners.
The $428,392 winning payoff seemed ridiculously low. And so it was, the first of many hints that something was suspicious beyond belief.
In the days since the National Thoroughbred Racing Association stopped payment on $3.1 million in winnings this much was immediately clear: Six winning Pick Six tickets and 108 of 186 consolation tickets were traceable to one player in Maryland, Derrick Davis, a 29 year old computer technician who claimed he accidentally punched in a $12 Pick Six ticket instead of a $2 ticket, with four straight singles linked to ALL in the last two races.
All claims to the contrary, the most logical conclusion from such a play and the subsequent news that has flowed from the case is that the security of the pari-mutuel wagering system has been exposed as seriously flawed.
One unidentified Autotote employee based in Delaware, which relays Pick Six betting data, already has been fired and his performance on the job Saturday afternoon has been referred to the cops.
Tote companies that have repeatedly assured us and reflexively claimed that they had "air tight control" over the way bets are communicated, have been left to look like the Brinks Security company that lost several millions to amateurish robbers in Boston 40 years ago.
Amazingly, Donald Goth, chairman of Catskill OTB in upstate New York, actually vouched for Davis as someone he knew when it was quickly revealed that he had never met Davis and the latter had opened up his Catskill account two weeks earlier via the Internet, without leaving the state of Maryland.
It was equally astonishing to see Brooks Pierce, president of Autotote, the company that processed the pick six bets for Catskill, express his naivety with these inane comments to The New York Times: "I would like to think we have a pretty good story about a guy who didn't bet much and made a lot of money. I believe this is good for racing."
Before week's end, Goth and Pierce were seen crawling back into their holes to await others to clean up their mess and were given a more disturbing insight into the weaknesses of the present pari-mutuel system. In particular consider these comments by Peter Houston, who now works as a consultant to Autotote's present company, after 23 years of experience in the field.
Said Houston to Daily Racing Form on Thursday: "The systems are very secure, but whenever there's been one of these maneuvers, it's been an insider."
An "insider"?
"Whenever there's been one of these maneuvers?"
Obviously then, the BC Pick Six scandal was not the first time someone has cracked the tote system to pull off a scam.
No laughing matter, this scandal. No joke to those who may have been fleeced in this apparent $3.1 million scam. Nothing but heavy scrutiny to follow for Davis and the unnamed Autotote employee who now is on the hot seat for his alleged participation. Yet, no matter the outcome, lawyers from Maryland to Delaware to New York and every other wagering state will be lining up at their friendly neighborhood courthouses to file an assortment of writs against a long list of possible defendants.
The Breeders' Cup may be sued; the same with New York Capital OTB and just about every racetrack and wagering outlet in the civilized world. The suits will claim negligence---for selling the public a bill of goods; for failing to carry out the industry's own security guidelines; for lying to the betting public that a fool proof wagering system was in place. There even may be suits filed by players who were knocked out of the Pick Six after the fourth leg who claim they wagered more money on the last two races because they were led to believe they were no longer in running for Pick Six money.
Of equal concern: Do we really believe that computer related betting scams have not been perpetrated on numerous occasions? Do we really think that the people who govern the sport, the people who watch the integrity of the game have been paying strict attention?
Yes, we have been assured numerous times that all those late changes in betting action merely are caused by the extra time it takes to transmit (pre-race) bets into pari-mutuel pools thousands of miles away. Weren't we told that the $200,000 wager made on Monarchos to win the 2001 Florida Derby was made totally legally? This, despite the fact that the odds changed dramatically after the race had begun and the huge bet was made at an obscure off track betting parlor in North Dakota by a betting 'whale' who was given direct computer access into the private tote lines.
Legal or no, who amongst us believes anyone should have such private access to the betting pools? Who really believes the system is not wide open to computer criminals?
My wagering partner and I wagered and lost several thousands of dollars on this Pick Six, but we were both left to wonder how many times our winning Pick Six plays have been rewarded with lower payoffs than they deserved.
A man sitting two seats away from me in the Mohegan Sun Casino Race Book did have five out of six when the results were declared "official." He was celebrating his $4,606 hit, but he deserved about $33,000. He still might get it, but not until all the legal issues play themselves out all the way, perhaps to the Supreme Court. The over and under on that payoff is 2010. Unless!
Unless the NTRA and the Breeders' Cup and the racing industry collectively decides to bite the bullet, by doing something very unusual to buy back public confidence.
Pay the Pick Fives before too many days or weeks drag on.
Why wait for the courts to sort this out? Should proof of an invasion of the pari-mutuel system be uncovered, there will be no further need for delay, even if injunctions are filed to stop distribution of the $3.1 million.
Does anyone doubt the racing industry could raise $3.1 million on a loan to be put into a special account to pay the rightful winners?
Would that not be a direct investment in the integrity of the game?
Wouldn't the positive effect of such a powerful move be priceless?
Of course, some players who had five out of six might regret that they quickly sold their ticket(s) to a '10-percenter' to avoid declaring the winnings to the IRS. Another law suit probably lurks there, although the courts probably will point out that people often sell things they should keep for a while. I can recall having a Mickey Mantle Rookie card. Traded it to my next door neighbor Charlie Butera for a Warren Spahn card when we were 11. Today, the Mantle card probably could buy a new Mercedes convertible. The lesson learned would have stood me in good stead had I hit five out of six on Saturday.
Of more immediate concern is the Pick Six being offered on the Cal Cup at Santa Anita, November 2 and every other bet at every track in the country from this point forward. To deal with this mushroom cloud, there is only one solution.
Complete the present investigation without fear of the consequences.
Find out all that can be discovered and declare everything to the public as soon as it is available. This should be done even if the release of such information compromises an indictment, or a conviction. Whether one or a few men go to jail or get fined is not nearly as important as the full restoration of public confidence and the need to repair the nation's wagering system.
With that, there is at least one hopeful sign to report:
The mere fact that the NTRA and BC officials DID hold up the money and DID launch an immediate investigation and quickly blew holes in the BS that was uttered by Autotote's Pierce and Capital OTB's Goth is a refreshing shift that deserves encouragement.
The cynical among us probably do not believe anything will change. The hopeful are not really sure, but they anxiously await the next revelations and a host of badly needed reforms.

[hobbes]

Posted: 11/18/2002 1:19:00 PM ET
Wagering integrity panel added to Symposium agenda
In response to concern and lingering questions over the integrity of racing’s wagering procedures in the aftermath of the Breeders’ Cup Ultra Pick Six scandal, the University of Arizona Race Track Industry Program has added a discussion panel on the integrity of technology to this year’s Symposium on Racing.
"Given the recent series of events and the potential changes within the industry as the result, this is a ‘must have’ panel," RTIP Director Doug Reed said.
The panel has been added to the schedule for December 11. To accommodate the session, a panel on marketing the racing product panel has been rescheduled from December 13 to December 12, and a panel on account wagering has been moved to 8 a.m. on December 13.
Wendy Davis, associate coordinator, said that the Race Track Industry Program would announce participants on the integrity panel later this week, possibly as early as Tuesday. For the most up-to-date listing of the Symposium schedule, visit the RTIP Web site by clicking here.
http://www.ag.arizona.edu/rtip/Symposium/symposium.html

[Horny Harry]

Inside man pleads guilty in Breeders' Cup scam
Associated Press
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- A computer programmer admitted in court today that he was the inside man for a series of horse racing scams that culminated with a $3 million win on the Breeders' Cup last month.
He also implicated his two co-defendants, who were his fraternity brothers in college.
Chris Harn, 29, of Newark, Del., told a federal judge that he used his job at Autotote, which handles most of the nation's racetrack and off-track betting, to manipulate bets while races were being run.
In pleading guilty to fraud and money laundering conspiracies, Harn said he used one codefendant's Off Track Betting account to place a Pick Six bet on the Oct. 26 Breeders' Cup "and later modified it so it would win."
Prosecutors compared the scam to "The Sting," the 1973 film in which con men played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford take advantage of a delay in the reporting of horse racing results to dupe a wealthy crook.
http://www.reelartgallery.com/pages/s/the_sting.jpg
Harn said he placed and manipulated similar bets on two earlier races to win more than $100,000 for the other co-defendant and found a way to duplicate and cash winning tickets worth tens of thousands of dollars that had gone temporarily unclaimed at tracks in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Harn was fired Oct. 30.
No mention was made in court of whether Harn will testify against co-defendants Derrick Davis, 29, of New York and Glen DaSilva, 29, of Baltimore. The U.S. attorney's office would not comment.
Harn, DaSilva and Davis surrendered to the FBI last week and were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a prison term of up to five years. They were Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity brothers at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
The crimes to which Harn admitted carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison but federal guidelines would likely make it a much shorter term. He remains free on a $200,000 bond pending sentencing Feb. 19.
http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/72/039_43058.jpg
The big money from the Breeders' Cup aroused suspicions and was never paid out, but Harn said in court that his share of the winnings from the earlier races was enough to pay off a $25,000 second mortgage on his home and a $6,500 car loan.
Harn would not talk outside the courtroom. His lawyer, Daniel Conti, said Harn "has accepted fully the responsibility for the crimes he has committed. He has asked me to express his deepest apologies to everyone who's been affected adversely."
Lawyers for the co-defendants were unmoved.
DaSilva'a attorney, Ed Hayes, said Harn was the mastermind and getting him to implicate the others "is like getting John Gotti to testify against a busboy who's skimming tips." Hayes added, however, that he had discussions with prosecutors about a possible guilty plea for his client.
Steven Allen, the attorney for Davis, wouldn't comment on Harn's plea.
Also Wednesday, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association announced that a consulting firm headed by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had been hired to review the industry's electronic wagering system.
"We have a great sport that is threatened by wrongdoing," NTRA Commissioner Tim Smith said.
Now, all bettors who picked five of the six winners at the Breeders' Cup stand to earn more money. The racing commission in Illinois will determine how to redistribute the winnings.
[ November 21, 2002, 10:24 AM: Message edited by: Horny Harry ]

[imaufo]

Illinois board to meet on Ultra Pick Six pool on December 9
Following Wednesday’s guilty plea by Chris Harn in the Breeders’ Cup Ultra Pick Six case, the Illinois Racing Board plans to discuss and possibly decide the distribution of the pick six pool at a meeting on December 9.
"It’s our call," Walter Dudcyz, board executive director, said on Thursday. Since the Breeders’ Cup was run at Arlington Park in suburban Chicago, the Illinois board has jurisdiction over the bet.
Under the Ultra Pick Six rules, when a bettor has all six winners, there is a consolation payoff for those with five winners. Derrick Davis of Baltimore, a friend of Harn’s implicated in the fraud scandal, had the only "winning" pick six ticket with the equivalent of six $2 wagers, each worth $428,932.
There were 186 consolation tickets with five winners, each worth $4,606.20. Davis also held 108 of the 186 tickets.
Ultra Pick Six rules state that when no bettor has all six winners, the entire net pool is divided among those with five winners. If Davis’s tickets ultimately are voided, the entire net pool would be redistributed, leaving 78 winning tickets, each worth $39,331.
To date, Davis has maintained he did nothing wrong. However, Harn, a former programmer with Autotote Corp., admitted he altered Davis’s selections within the Autotote computer system to make his friend’s bet a winner. Harn also said he had manipulated other tickets to be lucrative winners for Davis and another friend, Glen DaSilva.
Those bettors who correctly and validly chose five winners in the Ultra Pick Six are known and can be contacted if the pool is redistributed because they had to sign for their potential winnings to conform with tax laws.
Under Illinois racing law, racetracks wishing to conduct pick six wagering can choose any of six categories to do so. Of the six options listed under Section 308 of the racing board’s rules, the one which matches the rules of the Ultra Pick Six is the one that involves no consolation pool and no carry-over.
Any other option involving a consolation pool would mean paying off Ultra Pick Six tickets with only four winners, which could elicit lawsuits from those with five winners who expected to divide the entire net pool as stipulated by Ultra Pick Six rules.—Bill Heller

[poledancer]

How greed brought the pick-six scam undone
November 22 2002
As a computer whiz pleads guilty to bet-rigging, consultant Rudolph Giuliani vows to make wagering foolproof, reports Joe Drape from New York.
One is a college dropout turned computer ace; the other is the former mayor of New York and of late a well-paid symbol of integrity. But this week the two shared the spotlight: Chris Harn for pleading guilty to fixing the Breeders' Cup pick-six last month and Rudolph Giuliani for promising to come up with security to make horse racing's wagering systems impenetrable.
In the United States District Court on Wednesday, Harn stood before Judge Lisa Margaret Smith and told how, as a senior programmer at Autotote, a company that processes many horse-racing wagers, he used his work computer to rig three sets of bets - including a $US3 million ($5.4m) Breeders' Cup pick-six pay-off - made on the accounts of two of his former Drexel University fraternity brothers, his co-defendants. "I placed a bet and later modified it so it would win," Harn said.
He also acknowledged he had masterminded and carried out a more grinding scheme along with the same two men of counterfeiting uncashed betting tickets and vouchers that netted more than $US92,500 during the past year.
By pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and computer fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, Harn, 29, of Newark, Delaware, can be sentenced to up to 25 years in jail, although sentencing guidelines project a six-year term. Harn's co-operation may lessen such a sentence.
Harn implicated Derrick Davis, 29, of Baltimore, the man who held the winning Breeders' Cup tickets, and Glen DaSilva, 29, of New York. Both are charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit wire and computer fraud.
"This morning, by pleading guilty, Chris has accepted fully the responsibility for the crimes he has committed," Harn's lawyer, Daniel Conti, said. "He has asked me to express his deepest apologies to everyone who's been affected adversely by his actions."
In court on Wednesday, a felony information document presented by prosecutors and Harn's guilty plea outlined a history of manipulations by the three former Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity brothers to beat the system. Harn, as part of his plea agreement, volunteered what prosecutors characterised as the "bogus winning ticket scheme". It centred on Harn's access as a senior software engineer at Autotote to uncashed betting tickets and vouchers.
Working after hours, Harn grafted the barcodes from uncashed tickets onto a test ticket used at Autotote for maintenance or repair and printed thousands of tickets in amounts varying from several hundred to several thousand dollars.
Davis and DaSilva inserted those tickets in automated betting machines at racetracks in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and collected their winnings in the form of betting vouchers. DaSilva cashed $US80,000 worth of these tickets and Davis $US12,500, and the three men split the money, Harn and prosecutors said.
Even Giuliani acknowledged such a scam might go undetected.
"There's a concept that I write about in my book called 'exceeding the pig factor'," he said. "Very often, and that's how scams are originally uncovered, somebody goes too far and it becomes obvious; and then below that surface can often be other situations."
What prosecutors characterised as the "altered wager scheme" might have exceeded that threshold and brought the three men under scrutiny when it was discovered Davis held the only winning Breeders' Cup pick-six ticket. Earlier in October at two other racetracks, DaSilva placed winning bets worth more than $US100,000 that had a configuration similar to the disputed Breeders' Cup tickets - the early legs had only one horse selected, while the last two had the entire field selected.
Giuliani was introduced on Wednesday in Midtown Manhattan by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association as the industry's point man for a nationwide review of pick-four and pick-six wagers in the past year.
Association commissioner Tim Smith said Giuliani's consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, would work with Ernst & Young to create a security system to protect the more than $US14.5 billion bet annually in the US.
"The addition of mayor Giuliani will help in a variety of ways," he said. "He brings independence and high standards. As a prosecutor he showed great skill and tenacity in combating white-collar crime, and as a fan of our sport and the legal wagering that sustains it, he understands our game."
Davis and DaSilva opened telephone accounts at Catskill OTB in October at Harn's behest because he knew that facility did not have independent recording devices for bets from a touch-tone phone. On Breeders' Cup day, as well as the two previous occasions, Harn called in the bets on the accounts of Davis and DaSilva, then re-entered the computer system and changed the bets in the first four races to winners as the tickets sat in limbo. But just as the odd configuration of the tickets raised officials' suspicions, the three men made some missteps that caught the eye of prosecutors.
Most glaring was an email message on October 25 - the day before the Breeders' Cup - Harn sent to DaSilva asking him to send cheques to his personal creditors: $US6500 to pay off Harn's car and $US25,000 to pay off his second mortgage. As the investigation of the Breeders' Cup pick-six was starting, DaSilva obtained bank cheques.
Ultimately, the evidence led Harn to enter guilty pleas. He is free on bail until sentencing in February. Davis and DaSilva are also free on bail, but Davis will continue to fight the charges.
The New York Times

[cheesebeast]

Counterfeit tickets fooled machines
By MATT HEGARTY
NEW YORK - When investigators first targeted Chris Harn, one of three suspects in the Breeders' Cup pick six scandal, little did they know that the case would grow to include a counterfeit ticket scheme that involved unredeemed bets and took advantage of self-operated mutuel machines.
Several officials involved in the investigation said Thursday that investigators did not learn of the bogus ticket scheme until Harn, one of three suspects in the case, described it to prosecutors as part of his guilty plea agreement, which was formally accepted at federal court Wednesday in White Plains, N.Y.
The scheme underscores recent concerns about the security of racing's electronic betting system, which has prompted a wide-ranging review led by the consulting firm of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Harn, 29, entered guilty pleas to two federal conspiracy counts, admitting that he altered pick four and pick six tickets worth $3.2 million and nearly $100,000 in bogus winning tickets that were cashed at tracks across the East Coast. The counts carry a maximum sentence of 25 years in jail, but prosecutors said they expect Harn's sentence to be far less because of his cooperation with the prosecutor, James Comey, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York.
The two other suspects, Glen DaSilva, 29, of New York, and Derrick Davis, 29, of Baltimore, were named as recipients of a portion of the proceeds from both scams in Harn's plea agreement. The lawyer for Davis has said that he intends to fight the charges. DaSilva's lawyer said Thursday that he is consulting with his client.
Harn likely revealed the bogus-ticket scheme to prosecutors because plea agreements usually require defendants to give a full accounting of any criminal activity. If any other criminal activity is discovered after a plea bargain is reached, the deal can be voided, legal experts said Thursday.
According to tote and racing officials, the tickets produced by Harn were likely generic representations of winning tickets that could have been identified as counterfeits by most mutuel tellers or racing officials. Instead, they were cashed at self-operated machines, eluding human detection.
In his guilty plea, Harn admitted to printing out bogus winning tickets in the "tens of thousands" of dollars beginning in November 2001. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, Mark Kulstad, said that further details about the scheme could not be disclosed because the investigation was still in progress.
One person involved in the investigation said that Harn had told prosecutors that he divided the proceeds equally between himself and either Davis or DaSilva, depending on who cashed the tickets. The scheme, which started in November 2001, went on for nearly a year and netted nearly $100,000, the person said.
"We haven't really settled on a good number, but we know it was around that much," the person said.
The tickets, which were reproductions of bets that had not been cashed by winning horseplayers, were redeemed at Belmont Park and Aqueduct in New York; Monmouth Park and The Meadowlands in New Jersey; and Philadelphia Park in Pennsylvania, the plea said. Uncashed tickets are usually stored on the computers that process wagers for at least a year after being placed.
Harn was a senior programmer at Autotote, the country's largest tote company, before being fired on Oct. 31 after the company conducted an internal investigation. The guilty plea said Harn used "unauthorized access" to locate uncashed winning tickets that were retained by Autotote on its computer systems. Harn then used Autotote's printers to create counterfeit tickets that could be redeemed for the same amounts, officials said.
All of the tracks that the officials said were used to cash the tickets are Autotote customers.
A former totalizator employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that printing out uncashed tickets would be a simple matter for an insider. The only risk, the former employee said, would be if the legitimate ticket buyer tried to cash after the fake tickets had already been redeemed, which could tip off an investigation.
The employee said that information about uncashed tickets are kept in computer files called "outs" that are sorted by track. The files can be accessed by employees with the password to the system.
To create a fake ticket, the insider would "go into the system and look for the outs for a particular track," the former employee said. "You can go down to the ticket level in there. So you find a $100 show bet that someone hasn't cashed in months, read the serial number, and then print out a ticket that has that serial number encoded into the bar code."
The fake tickets would have to be cashed at a self-automated terminal, the employee said, because the counterfeits would lack information that is reproduced on legitimate tickets, such as the name of the track and the number of the race.
"The vouchers wouldn't look perfect, but the self-service machines really only need the bar code," the employee said. "A mutuel teller would know it wasn't a real ticket."
A high-ranking racing official said that tote companies were warned by the Thoroughbred Racing and Protective Bureau in 1994 that the "outs" file presented an opportunity for fraud after investigators uncovered a scheme in Southern California where a person had attempted to alter bar codes on tickets. The person was not an employee of a tote company, the official said.
Self-automated machines are a particularly ripe target for scams, many racing officials said. Some described crude schemes to extract dollars from the machines - the "string-around-the-quarter" variety - while others described other more sophisticated scams like the 1994 bar-code alteration scheme in California.
"All these things play upon the lack of security and the growth of automation," said the former tote employee.
Tickets from self-automated machines are not regularly checked for irregularities, racing officials at a number of tracks said on Thursday.
In New York, the tickets collected from self-automated machines during the year are placed in storage until April 1 of the following year, according to Jim Gallagher of the New York Racing Association, which operates Aqueduct, Belmont, and Saratoga Race Course. The tickets are normally discarded on April 1 after consultations with New York tax and finance officials, Gallagher said.
John Corckran, the chief executive officer of AmTote, said that the tickets from self-automated machines are not usually checked. Corckran said that the auditing responsibilities for the tickets in most states falls on the tracks, although tote employees normally open up the machines to retrieve the tickets. Rhonda Barnat, a spokeswoman for Autotote, said that inspection of tickets is a track responsibility.
In Maryland, specifically, the tickets are removed from the machines at night and then placed in bags behind the mutuel counters, Corckran said. When asked what happens to the tickets after they are bagged, Corckran said: "I guess they throw them out."
Lou Raffetto, the chief operating officer of the Maryland Jockey Club, said that it would be "physically impossible" to check all the tickets in self-automated machines. Raffetto said the machines process 45 percent of the MJC's on-track handle.
"I'm not sure if that's the point anyway," Raffetto said. "The problem was with a guy going into Autotote's system and the lack of controls they had there. I'm comfortable with the job that AmTote does here."

[cheesebeast]

A Sport With A Long Way To Go
By Andrew Beyer
Thursday, November 21, 2002; Page D01
When the alleged mastermind of the Breeders' Cup Pick Six fix pleaded guilty yesterday, he brought horse racing's worst scandal nearer to closure. The three wrongdoers are likely to go to jail. The rightful winners of the Pick Six will collect their money, sooner or later. And the racing industry is taking aggressive steps to make sure that such a fraud doesn't happen again. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that the sport has learned all the necessary lessons arising from this jolt to its public image.
On the same morning that former Autotote employee Chris Harn admitted his role in the Pick Six as well as another parimutuel scam, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association held a news conference announcing that Giuliani Partners would join with Ernst and Young in reviewing its wagering systems. The sport is calling on some heavy firepower as it tries to correct its problems, and its effort merits respect. Not all industries act the same way. The big stock-brokerage and accounting firms had to be clubbed by regulators and threatened by lawsuits before acknowledging that they had a problem.
When suspicions arose about the Pick Six, the NTRA immediately called for an investigation and quickly formed a special task force on wagering technology. It demanded that Autotote and the other companies processing bets reform their procedures. With Giuliani Partners and Ernst and Young, the NTRA will undertake a review of past Pick Sixes and Pick Fours to determine if other frauds have been committed.
But, of course, all of this action comes too late to prevent the barrage of publicity that has damaged the sport. Racing didn't focus on the security of its parimutuel systems until after the Breeders' Cup Pick Six was making headlines. An industry that has historically attracted the attention of scam artists ought be vigilant in guarding against corrupt practices, but racing has a history of ignoring them.
The sport didn't exercise enough control over the tote companies it hired and didn't recognize the shortcomings in their technology and their security systems. This is not merely 20-20 hindsight. Two years ago, Mark Elliott of IBM Global Services told industry leaders: "You are as far behind in the use of technology as any [business] I've ever seen."
Revelations in the aftermath of the Pick Six have shown that this was a scandal waiting to happen.
Nor did racing officials even exhibit a healthy skepticism that might have prevented the Breeders' Cup fix. In early October, Harn and his confederates held eight winning tickets on a Pick Six at Belmont Park and collected more than $100,000. Yet nobody in the New York Racing Association thought it was unusual that eight winning tickets were sold at a single upstate New York off-track betting outlet. Nobody at Catskill OTB thought it was unusual, either.
The three were brought down only by their carelessness and greed in betting the Breeders' Cup -- what Rudy Giuliani yesterday described as "exceeding the pig factor" -- and not by any special vigilance on the part of the sport's officials.
As the racing industry proceeds full-bore to address issues involving the honesty of the parimutuel systems, most of its customers surely share the same opinion: This isn't enough. We all know that breaches of the tote system constitute a minuscule percentage of horse racing's integrity problems.
Virtually every racing fan in America believes that the sport is being permeated and poisoned by the widespread use of illegal drugs. Trainers come from obscurity to stardom overnight. They transform horses miraculously. They achieve winning percentages that would make history's greatest horsemen envious.
Yet in almost every important respect, horse racing has failed to address its most corrosive problem. The horsemen and industry leaders who favor a sane medication policy are intimidated by the cabal of horsemen and vets (mostly based in Kentucky) who say that modern horses can't run without the aid of chemicals. Drug-testing methodology lags behind the sophistication of the alleged fixers. When trainers are caught violating drug rules, they are most often given slaps on the wrist -- particularly if they have lofty reputations. Stewards, racing commissioners and track owners don't want to face the drug issue squarely for fear of stirring up scandals that will hurt the sport.
In this context, Harn and his pals might have done the industry a great service. For if there is any lesson that horse racing should have learned from the Breeders' Cup Pick Six, it is this: Face up to your problems and solve them before, not after, they reach Page One.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company

[imaufo]

Bettor sues in Breeders' Cup scam

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associated Press


WASHINGTON -- In the latest fallout over the Breeders' Cup betting scandal, a professional handicapper filed suit Wednesday against the company that handles most of the nation's on- and off-track betting.

Jimmy "The Hat'' Allard, a California horse player, charged Autotote Systems with negligence. An Autotote employee has acknowledged using his job at Autotote to manipulate a Pick Six bet during the Breeders' Cup, resulting in a $3 million payoff. The money was never paid.

Allard said Autotote's failure to prevent rogue employees from changing wagers offered another way for bettors to lose at the track.

"No matter how good you are, there are 1,000 ways to lose a horse race and only one way to win,'' Allard said. "Now there are 1,001 ways to lose.''

Autotote officials said they had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment.

A California law firm filed the class-action suit Wednesday on behalf of Allard and other bettors in California Superior Court. Lawyer Joseph Lisoni said bettors have lost millions of dollars in the last decade when bets were changed after the race began because Autotote did not have the proper safety precautions in place.

"Fraudulent tickets were entered numerous times over the past eight to 10 years at dozens and dozens of racetracks,'' he said.

The Breeders' Cup scandal two months ago involved the Pick Six, in which bettors must choose the correct winner in six consecutive races.

[cheesebeast]

Tote Companies: No Answers at Racing Symposium
Date Posted: 12/5/02 6:03:55 PM
Last Updated: 12/5/02 6:07:04 PM

The University of Arizona's Race Track Industry Program staff has had to cancel the "Tote Forum – Issues and Answers" segment scheduled at its annual Symposium on Racing when representatives of the major totalizator companies said they would not participate.
The university issued a press release on Thursday saying each tote company contacted the RTIP staff and said legal counsel for the companies recommended their employees withdraw from the panel discussions they previously agreed to join.

The panel was an add-on to the Symposium following the Breeders' Cup Ultra Pick 6 scandal that has led to criminal charges, including a guilty plea by a former Autotote employee, along with a class-action lawsuit filed against Autotote earlier this week.

The symposium held at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort in Tucson, Ariz., runs from next Tuesday-Friday. UofA Symposium Schedule

[Handy Harry]

Final guilty plea entered in Breeders’ Cup pick six scandal

Following the same path of his two former fraternity brothers and co-conspirators in one of racing’s biggest scandals, Derrick Davis pleaded guilty on Thursday to his connection with rigging the lone winning Breeders’ Cup Ultra Pick Six ticket worth more than $3-million.
Davis, a 29-year-old resident of Baltimore and the actual holder of the supposed winning ticket, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy in front of United States Magistrate Judge Mark Fox. He also admitted to cashing hundreds to thousands of other fake winning tickets. Davis faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Davis, along with co-conspirator Glen DaSilva of Manhattan, who pleaded guilty to computer fraud conspiracy and money laundering on Wednesday, will be sentenced on March 11.

The third co-conspirator, former Autotote software engineer Chris Harn, who altered Davis’s winning pick six ticket and two winning tickets by DaSilva, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and computer fraud and money laundering on November 20. Harn will be sentenced on February 19.

The trio attended Drexel University together in the early 1990s and were members of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at the Philadelphia school.

Court papers released Thursday show that Harn, who was employed at Autotote’s headquarters in Newark, Delaware, found out he could exceed his security authority and tap into Autotote’s data base to identify unclaimed winning tickets. Between November 2001 and December 2001, Harn and DaSilva “discussed the cashing of bogus winning tickets.”

Harn printed bogus winning tickets and “in or about mid-2002,” and delivered hundreds of them to Davis, who then cashed the tickets and delivered thousands of dollars in cash to Harn, court papers said.

On October 3, DaSilva opened a telephone wagering account with the Catskill Off-Track Betting Corp., and bet the pick four that night at Balmoral Park, a harness track in Illinois.

Catskill OTB serves as a hub for Autotote in Poughkeepsie, New York. Multiple wager bets such as pick fours and pick sixes were stored at that hub, until the final two legs of both wagers when the information was passed on to the host track.

Harn hacked into Autotote’s system and changed DaSilva’s Pick Four wager to include the winners of the first two legs of the pick four at Balmoral which had already been run and used all the horses to ensure a winning ticket. DaSilva’s ticket that night was worth $1,757.

Just two days later, DaSilva made a pick six wager on Belmont Park through his phone account. Harn again hacked his way into the data after the first four races had been run and rigged DaSilva’s ticket to have the winners of the first four legs and all the horses in the final two races. That scheme produced winning tickets worth $107,608.

On October 26, when the Breeders’ Cup was run at Arlington Park, Davis, who had opened a phone account with Catskill OTB on October 18, bet a $12 ticket on the Ultra Pick Six. After the first four races had been run, Harn got into Autotote’s computer and changed Davis’s wager to have the winners of the first four legs with all the horses in the fifth and sixth.

When longshot Volponi won the final leg, the Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1), at odds of 43.50-to-1, Davis held the lone winning ticket. His $12 ticket was the equivalent of six $2 tickets, each worth $428,932. The ticket also produced 108 of the 186 winning Pick Five consolation tickets, each worth $4,606.20. Davis’s total winnings were $3,071,061.60.

The final guilty plea by Davis could free up the winning Ultra Pick Six pool, which was frozen pending this investigation. Under the rules of the Ultra Pick Six, the bettors who had originally won consolation Pick Five payoffs would split the entire winning Pick Six pool. The value of their winning ticket would rise from $4,606.20 to $39,331.

—Bill Heller

[cheesebeast]

From Racing Post


The maximum sentence is 25 years in prison, but prosecutors have recommended a prison term of 21 to 27 months, a $4,000 fine and a restitution payment of $200,000.

[cheesebeast]

Does Pick Six scandal have a silver lining?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Bill Finley
Special to ESPN.com


The Breeders' Cup Pick Six scandal has been a badly needed wake-up call for an industry that is determined to correct all security lapses, expose whatever frauds may have taken place in the past and is finally ready to treat its customers with more respect and take care of their needs.

That opinion comes not from Tim Smith or some NTRA toady or flak, but from Jim Quinn, a horseplayer and handicapping author who, like many, was convinced the industry had a "drop dead" attitude toward its customers. The reason his thoughts are so pertinent is that he, better than anyone, understands all sides and every aspect of the integrity issues the racing industry has had to deal with since the fiasco rocked the sport. Quinn knows what the customers want. He's a professional player and a handicapping author. He sees what the industry is doing and where it is headed. He's a member of the Wagering Technology Working Group that was put together by the NTRA to delve into security and consumer confidence problems.

"I have been very impressed with the leadership and what Tim Smith has done and with the changes that have already been made," Quinn said. "This has been a positive experience for me, and by extention, the players. They have listened to my views and they have responded to them."

Quinn was happy to help when asked to join the industry task force, but the invitation didn't ease his skepticism. Cynicism and playing the horses go to together like salt and pepper; the bettors largely believe the industry doesn't care about them, and they haven't necessarily been wrong.

But there's nothing quite like a crisis to slap some sense into people. Consumer confidence became a vital issue the second it was revealed that Derrick Davis' Pick Six bets may have been bogus. If the customer lost faith in the wagering process then only fools and suckers would still play the game. The industry could have told everyone that things were fine, that the Breeders' Cup Pick Six was an isolated and fixable problem and then done nothing to ferret out any other cases of bet tampering. Quinn said they figured out very fast that wasn't the thing to do.

"They hired Powell Tate, which is a crisis management firm, and they got some good advice from them," Quinn said. "One of the basic principles of crisis management is to get all the information out. Tim Smith made it clear that that's the way it was going to be done and it's been happening that way."

The NTRA and member racetracks have put the wheels in motion to eliminate the security gaps that Autotote computer programmer Chris Harn admittedly took advantage of to rig the Pick Six wager. In the near future, tote companies will no longer be able to transmit Pick Six information after four or five of the races in the wager have already been run and no betting outlet will be allowed to accept touch tone telephone bets without have a recording device in place. It's also certain that the tote companies will keep far better tabs on their employees.

Having done that, it would have been easy to say that all the problems have been solved, but that wouldn't have been enough to calm consumer suspicions that people were routinely being scammed by rogues other than Harn and his accomplices. The NTRA intends to find out. According to Quinn, a comprehensive review of winning Pick Six wagers placed in 2002 is underway and it will cost the NTRA between $3 million and $4 million to take this much needed look back. Rudy Giuliani's group will do much of that work, but Quinn himself has already been busily studying stacks of tickets from players who had five of six winners on their Breeders' Cup Pick Six tickets.

"I am not so naive to believe that there have not been any other examples of fraud or efforts to manipulate the system," he said.

As Quinn sees it, these efforts are necessary, but not nearly enough. There are still dozens of issues beyond the Pick Six scandal that rankle horseplayers that need to be addressed. Apparently, someone is listening to him. And that's what has him particularly upbeat about the process.

"What I hope happens is that once we move beyond the security issues we will get into elements of fairness and get reforms on those aspects," Quinn said. "There is going to be a pari-mutuel wagering task force that will be formed and its charter will be to identify other concerns and irregularities that players want to see corrected."

With that in mind, Quinn was in contact with some 200 big bettors, seeking their opinions and concerns following the Pick Six scandal. What he found didn't surprise him. While people were outraged by the scandal they were reasonably confident the industry would fix the problems. But they were equally upset about other issues that never seem to get addressed.

According to Quinn, the Big Four, were:




Customers hate the fact that they are automatically assigned the favorite in a Pick Four or Pick Six race where their selections have been scratched. "It is far too arbitrary to just assign someone the favorite," Quinn said.


Players want to see prospective payoffs on some of the bets where that information is not now available. Want to know what a trifecta or a Pick Three might may? Good luck.


Big bettors in particular are outraged that the IRS is allowed to withhold so much of their winnings when they cash a bets that pays off at odds in excess of 2,500-1, often the case with Pick Six and Pick Four wagers.

"The withholding threshold is way too low," he said. "I talked to a guy who bets between $8 million and $10 million a year and he says that in a normal year the IRS withholds between $400,000 and $600,000 of his money. He's furious about that."


Customer complaints about excessive takeouts have yet to be addressed by an industry that doesn't seem overly concerned that the high takeouts make winning in the long run nearly impossible.

Will these issues be addressed? Prior to the Breeders' Cup, there was no chance that they would have been. The sport will never be the same again and the industry will never take its customers for granted the way it once did. At least that's what Jim Quinn believes. Let's hope he is right.

[Handy Harry]

By MIKE WELSCH

Gulfstream Park has instituted a 35-second odds board cycle, the shortest of any track in the country, according to the track's director of mutuels, Ed Mackie, and Amtote officials.

Amtote officials said on Tuesday that they believed the shorter cycle will allow for a more accurate representation of the direction that odds move. Last year, Gulfstream updated the mutuel odds every 60 seconds.

This summer, when Gulfstream was not running live races, the three major U.S. tote companies reduced the cycle from 60 seconds to 45, in response to concerns about dramatic late-odds changes.

[imaufo]

Arlington Park and its parent company, Churchill Downs Inc., filed a petition on Tuesday in United States District Court in New York in an effort to distribute winnings to 78 remaining ticket holders who correctly selected five of six horses in the Ultra Pick Six wager on the Breeders’ Cup program.

The 78 ticket holders have already been paid $4,606.20 based on the initial consolation payout. Arlington Park and Breeders’ Cup would give each consolation winner an additional $39,331 plus interest because $3,067,821.60 of the pool went to fraudulent ticket holder Derrick Davis, who worked with Autotote employee Chris Harn and Glen DaSilva to rig the bet. Davis, Harn, and DaSilva all pleaded guilty and await sentencing.

In granting the petition, the court would allow the Illinois Racing Board to authorize Arlington Park’s payment to the rightful winners. The funds have been held in an interest-bearing escrow account by Arlington Park since the Breeders’ Cup on October 26, when officials noticed irregularities in the supposed winning wagers placed through Catskill Off-Track Betting in New York.

"The rightful owners have been waiting nearly three months to receive what is theirs," said Breeders’ Cup President D. G. Van Clief Jr. and Arlington Park President Steve Sexton in a joint statement. "The petition being filed in court is a request for simple justice. We will continue to do everything within our power to see that the winners receive their payments, with interest, as soon as possible."

According the petition filed on January 28, the value of the account had increased $9,135.01 to $3,076,956.61, resulting in an extra $117.11 payout on each consolation ticket.

[hobbes]

He's no expert, but Stone wins $2.6M Pick 6 payoff

October 29, 2003

BY JIM O'DONNELL STAFF REPORTER

FANTASY OR MERELY FANTASTIC, the Breeders' Cup Limited and the National Thoroughbred Racing Association have wheeled out the winner of their $2.6 million Ultra Pick 6 payoff from Saturday's turf extravaganza at Santa Anita. But an odd dissonance arose Tuesday even during a 45-minute patty-cake teleconference with national racing media.



The winner's name is Graham Stone. He is a 40-year-old father of three from southeastern South Dakota. He is in wholesale jewelry and never has seen a horse race live. Stone wagered a total of $8 on the BC's big bet. He said it was his second horse-betting excursion of the year.

STONE'S PARTNER in the $2.6 million score was Will Dixon, 39, also his business partner and also a father of three. Stone said Dixon knows even less about racing than he does.

On Saturday morning, according to Stone, he sauntered into the Time Out Lounge near Rapid City, S.D., and bet a total of $80 on the BC, centering most of the other $72 on Rolling Pick 3s.

He said he then went home to watch the races on NBC, helped his youngest child with a coloring book for the early part of the card, then shooed everyone away so he could ''pace'' from the Juvenile through the Turf into the climactic Classic. At first he thought he had won only $18,000 because of misreading the payouts on the Santa Anita Web site.

STONE SAID he selected Six Perfections (5-1) in the Mile because of her closing style and the presence of Jerry Bailey in the irons. He liked the favored Aldebaran in the Sprint but added eventual winner Cajun Beat (22-1) because it was Andy Beyer's top pick on the Daily Racing Form Web site.

Filly & Mare Turf winner Islington (5-2) was ''the best horse in the race,'' according to Stone. He loved Tiger Hunt in the Juvenile but added final champ Action This Day (26-1) because it reminded him of Anees, the 1999 Juvenile victor.

HE WAS GOING to go with Falbrav as a single in the Turf, he said, but switched at the last moment to the dead-heating winner High Chaparral (9-2) because the race was so suited to his style. And he loved Classic champ Pleasantly Perfect (14-1) even last year at Arlington, where the Richard Mandella trainee had to scratch because of Illinois rules on horses who have bled. Stone said he couldn't bet last year anyway because his mother-in-law was ill.

''Hopefully, this doesn't change me too much,'' Stone said. "One thing I've been hearing so far is that it couldn't happen to two more deserving guys who have worked hard for 20 years in our business.''

BUT MIDWAY THROUGH the teleconference, Stone was asked by ''At the Races'' about any possible connection to Racing Services Inc. That is the North Dakota-based parimutuel simulcast firm that hubs betting out of the Time Out Lounge and has been in a negotiated receivership since August because of allegedly underreporting $98.5 million in wagering to the state of North Dakota between October 2002 and April 2003.

The state is claiming ''at least'' $6.5 million in back taxes from Racing Services, according to the office of Wayne Stenehjem, the attorney general for North Dakota. In August, according to local media reports, Stenehjem said: ''The company is clearly in a serious financial situation.''

ASKED IF HE, DIXON or any family, friends or other associates have any connection to Racing Services, past or present, Stone said, ''No.'' Asked if he was sure, Stone replied, ''Totally confident.''

But a short while later, while under questioning from another newsman, Stone said his sister Donna used to ''manage a [betting] parlor.'' Asked where the parlor was, Stone initially ''couldn't remember.''

Later, asked where his sister has lived in recent years, Stone said, ''The OTB was here in South Dakota.''

ACCORDING TO THE South Dakota Commission on Gaming, which oversees simulcast wagering in the state, there are four OTBs in its jurisdiction. Three -- the Time Out Lounge and ones in North Sioux City and Aberdeen -- contract for signal and betting access through Racing Services. The fourth, in Sioux Falls, uses a Florida-based firm.

There were no further questions to establish any sort of link from the family of the BC's newest Ultra Pick 6 winner to Racing Services Inc. Representatives of the attorney general's offices in North and South Dakota and the U.S. Attorney's offices for the regions declined to comment on the matter.

FOR THEIR PART, managers of the Breeders' Cup Limited appeared satisfied with the legitimacy of Stone's amazing triumph and rather perplexed that any other inquiries would be raised.

Said Ken Kirchner, the BC's senior vice president of product development: ''For one thing, there was a paper ticket sold from a teller, so there was a paper trail. Part of the review process was to look at all of the transactions from this teller's window.

''We looked at all of the other Pick 3 wagers [Stone] made. We saw that they were comprised of many of the horses that were in his Pick 6 wager.''



Copyright © The Sun-Times Company

[Seabiscuit]

http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=11906&perpage=15&pagenumber=1

Based on the above thread from paceadvantage it seems the Breeders Cup Pick Six scam and lack of tote integrity has damaged USA racing (at least from the point of view of horseplayers/bettors).

[cheesebeast]

The Pick Six Scandal

"We've done the autopsy and do not have any question about the veracity of the bets. I can understand how a skeptic can look at a pool of this size and only one winner -- especially with those four singles -- and have concerns. But I also would like to think we have a pretty good story about a guy who didn't bet much and made a lot of money. I believe that is good for racing as well." Brooks Pierce, 10/29 New York Times

"We do not think there’s anything suspect, so we welcome those who have greater knowledge to explore it to ensure the integrity of the races. It was a lucky day for a lucky fan. We believe that’s what it was. We hope that’s what it was." Don Groth, 10/28 Thoroughbred Times

"The bet was supposed to be $2 and I kind of screwed up with their phone system. It was a $12 ticket that was the winning one. It was too late to cancel. I couldn’t get back to them. Vindication I thought was pretty much a lock. Orientate was a favorite. Domedriver and Starine were the only two longshots I had. I liked Domedriver. I did a lot of research. I liked Starine. I was trying to play it a couple different ways." Derrick Davis, 10/28 Thoroughbred Times

"I got divorced at the beginning of the year." It’s been a crappy year up to now." Derrick Davis, Id.

"There is nothing to indicate that this was anything but a very good day for our customer… I know why you’ re suspicious, but that’s not my job. I’m familiar enough with the customer that I believe this is legitimate." Don Groth, 10/28 Daily Racing Form

"I think it’s pretty simple." Don Groth, 10/29 Thoroughbred Times

"I didn’t past post anything. I do computer work, but I’m not a hacker… If you go to Yahoo and do a search for ‘horse betting,’ the first Web site name that popped up is Interbets. So I clicked on it, made a call, and set up an account. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m the guy who won this, but I’m the last person to find out what’s going on. It’s ridiculous. If I would have hit the lottery, I don’t think it would be this tough with everything going on." Derrick Davis 10/29 Thoroughbred Times

"From a system perspective, we’re 100% certain that the pools were closed and that this gentleman made his bets 20 minutes before [the first leg of the pick six]," Brooks Pierce 10/29 Los Angeles Times

"Our records indicate he placed the bet at 2:14 p.m. and the race went off at 2:37 p.m. I certainly don’t want to second-guess the investigation or the state, but all they should discover is that he was a lucky guy who had a lucky day." Don Groth, 10/30 Albany Times Union

"We’ve found nothing to indicate that this was anything but a legitimate wager by a guy who got very lucky." Don Groth, 10/31 New York Post.

"I didn’t know any of the results before I made my bets… I’m innocent. If they got proof that I did something wrong, then show it to me. If not, give me my money. It makes me feel [ticked] off. They’re dragging my name through the mud, saying I hacked into their computer system. Man, I just picked a few horses and got lucky." Derrick Davis, 10/31 New York Post.

"This is a big left turn in the story, I’m afraid… I’m still in shock. It’s always regrettable when humans act like the textbooks say they should." Don Groth, 10/31Daily Racing Form

"I think I should get an award if they convict those guys. He (Volponi) sure exposed it." Phil Johnson, 11/13 Albany Times Union

"We don’t believe the evidence supports the charges that have been brought. We intend to mount a vigorous defense. " Attorney Steven A. Allen representing Derrick Davis, 11/13 Baltimore Sun

"Chris has maintained his innocence, and nothing that occurred today has changed that." Attorney Daniel Conti representing Chris Harn, Id.

"They also bet that law enforcement couldn’t catch them. But that’s a bet they couldn’t fix." U.S. Attorney James Comey, 11/13 Chicago Tribune

"In this context, Harn and his pals might have done the industry a great service. For if there is any lesson that horse racing should have learned from the Breeders’ Cup Pick Six, it is this: Face up to your problems and solve them before, not after, they reach Page One. Andy Beyer, 11/21Washington Post

"The Breeders' Cup was only the tip of the iceberg. This has been going on for a long time. In the last three to five years, there were some things that just out and out smelled, and while I was suspicious, it wasn't anything I could really put my finger on." Jimmy "The Hat" Allard 12/4 Los Angeles Times

"A number of people who went out and bought new Land Rovers had to pay cash," Don Groth on the 78 winners of the consolation of $43,000-plus Pick Six, 12/25Albany Times Union

http://www2.als.edu/glc/wagering/02quotes.html