Man Pleads Guilty to Schemes

Glen DaSilva, one of three men linked to the $3-million scam at the Breeders’ Cup pick six, pleaded guilty Wednesday to three federal charges regarding other racetrack schemes that he and his former college fraternity brothers had engineered.

DaSilva, 29, faces reduced sentences totaling about two years after he admitted guilt in conspiracies to commit wire fraud and computer fraud and to launder money. The New York City resident will be sentenced on March 11. He has been ordered to pay a $4,000 fine and make restitution of $200,000, the approximate amount that he and the two other former Drexel University students shared after a wide-ranging plot that included making pick-six and pick-four bets after some of the races had been run, and counterfeiting winning tickets not cashed at five Eastern racetracks.

Chris Harn, the dismissed Autotote employee who was the mastermind of the schemes, changing bets and manufacturing tickets in his job as a senior software engineer for the bet-processing company, has already pleaded guilty and may face a six-year sentence. Another former Drexel student, Derrick Davis of Baltimore, is expected to plead guilty today. Harn’s sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 15.

DaSilva, who appeared Wednesday in a court in White Plains, N.Y., was not charged in connection with the Breeders’ Cup pick-six bet, which was not paid after an investigation showed that the winning tickets had been altered after four of the six races were run. The Breeders’ Cup bet was made by Davis on a telephone account with an off-track betting site in New York and was changed, to correspond with the outcomes of the early races, by Harn, who appeared on his day off at the Autotote offices in Newark, Del.

Three weeks before the Breeders’ Cup, in early October, DaSilva had an account at the same New York OTB as Davis, and Harn altered tickets that resulted in a $1,757 pick-four payoff at Balmoral Park, a harness track in suburban Chicago, and a $107,608 return on a pick six at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y.

Those bets have been described as dry runs for the Breeders’ Cup. The counterfeiting scheme, in which Harn entered the Autotote system to pinpoint uncashed tickets and then re-created the tickets for DaSilva and Davis to cash at the tracks, began in November 2001. Court records show that Harn, working after hours, intercepted payoffs due ticketholders who were either unaware they had won or who had accidentally discarded their tickets. Harn’s scheme took money that belonged to thousands of bettors, in amounts ranging from hundreds of dollars to the thousands.

Records showed that DaSilva deposited $80,000 from his OTB account into a bank account in New York. From the bank account, he paid $25,000 on a mortgage on a Delaware home that belonged to Harn, and also paid off a $6,500 loan on Harn’s car.

“These guys are amateurs,” said Ed Hayes, DaSilva’s attorney, after his client entered his plea. Hayes has been critical of Harn for making an early guilty plea that accelerated the prosecutors’ case.

DaSilva, Harn and Davis have remained free after posting $200,000 personal bonds. Before the pick-six investigation began, DaSilva had been on parole for possession of cocaine. When the three men first appeared in court, in White Plains on Nov. 12, the U.S. attorney’s office said that DaSilva and Davis had tested positive for cocaine.

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Meteoric and A Ransom are the favorites in two quarter horse races worth $1.8 million at Los Alamitos this weekend.

Meteoric is even money on the morning line for Friday night’s $1.3-million Los Alamitos Million.

A Ransom is 6-5 on the morning line for Saturday’s $500,000 Champion of Champions.