Bellewstown 2015 Actor Pauric McIntyre as Barney Curley celebrating the 40th anniversary of the gamble © Photo Healy Racing
It is nearly impossible to defraud an online casino. When you try to cash out from JackpotCity online casino, you need to provide proof of your identity, proof of your address, and you need to undergo a security check in order to receive your money. In the past, online gambling venues have paid out without too many questions and were far worse at detecting fraud - and this cost them a lot of money. Over the years, the Jackpot City and other online gambling venues - from bingo halls to betting sites - have adapted tighter security themselves.
But when it comes to betting, pulling a stroke is possible - but it is not easy to pull off. Usually, one needs many connections and a lot of money - and it's not the system that's bent to the interests of the player but the event being bet on. This takes a lot of courage to pull off, quite a lot of money, and a lot of luck for things to work out as the trickster wants. Against all odds, there are two famous cases of horse racing gambles that have gone down in history, both of them in the 1970s.
Irish builder Tony Murphy was a racing enthusiast - and a millionaire. His fortune was apparently not enough because he planned a heist at the Ulverston Novice Hurdle at Cartmel in 1974, with the help of Scottish trainer Antony Collins. Upon allegedly presenting Gay Future (actually, it was another, poorly performing horse) at his stables, Collins lowered the expectations of the reviewers and raised the betting odds on offer. On the busiest day of the race calendar, two of Collins' horses were supposed to run at different courses and a number of bets were placed on them in combination with those placed on Gay Future. These two horses were withdrawn without running, so the bets placed on them rolled over onto Gay Future.
The horse running at Cartmel was, in turn, the real thing, not the horse reviewed at the stables. Of course, Gay Future won easily - and the racecourse's single phone line was kept busy so the betting companies couldn't inquire about it.
Collins' horses were discovered at the stables, though, and the bookmakers refused to pay out the winnings, so the coup didn't work out as planned. Ultimately, the two ringleaders of the conspiracy, Murphy, and Collins, were convicted of attempting to defraud bookmakers.
Bellewstown 2014 Yellow Sam Jockey Mick Furlong with a picture of the race on the day that he landed the gamble for Barney Curley © Photo Healy RacingOne year later, Barney Curley, an Irish professional gambler and subsequent philanthropist, attempted a similar job - but in his case, it worked.
Curley instructed trainer Liam Brennan to train Yellow Sam, a "slow but steady" thoroughbred, for a National Hunt race at Bellewstown. He first ran the horse in a series of races on tracks under very unfavorable conditions, thus ensuring that it had a low handicap mark. On the day of the race, the starting price of Yellow Sam was 20 to 1. Curley knew that if a significant bet was placed on the horse, these odds would drop quickly, so he made sure the news didn't reach the Bellewstown racecourse by cutting one of the two telephone lines servicing the venue and keeping the other occupied.
He placed dozens of his friends, along with paid accomplices, in bookmaker's shops around the country, and instructed them to place bets of 50 to 300 pounds on a horse. The name of the horse was not revealed until 10 minutes before the race. Curley used a "snowball" method to place as many bets as possible - he called six or seven of his associates and instructed them to call 10 others each. Curley invested all his savings, 15,000 pounds in the plot.
As I said before, the plot worked - Curley made a profit of more than 300,000 pounds (over 1.7 million euros today). And since his actions could not be considered illegal, the bookmakers had to pay him the entire amount. But they paid it all in single notes, filling over 100 bags.
