Breeders’ Cup Scheme Joins Annals of Infamy

The Breeders’ Cup Three didn’t bribe jockeys, a la Tony Ciulla and Richie Sklar. They didn’t run a ringer like Mark Gerard. They didn’t kite checks like Eugene Zeek. They didn’t ride out of the fog like Sylvester Carmouche Jr. And they certainly didn’t paint -- yes, paint -- horses like Paddie Barrie.

Although the Breeders’ Cup Three have been charged with blazing an infamous trail last month, hatching a $3-million payoff after submitting a doctored ticket following the running of the first four races in the pick six, their high-tech coup was really only a computerized refinement of what has been pecking away at racing’s soul since the Romans, circling Circus Maximus with their chariots.

One of the Breeders’ Cup suspects, the fired tote-company programmer Chris Harn of Newark, Del., pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New York to single charges of wire-fraud conspiracy and money-laundering conspiracy. At a hearing, Harn implicated Derrick Davis and Glen DaSilva, who were charged earlier in the case.

Racing’s sporadic flimflams are inevitably greeted in two ways by racing’s pooh-bahs: indignation, followed by knee-jerk reform. At Agua Caliente in Tijuana, in the days before tote machines, bets made out by hand were time-stamped to ostensibly preserve their integrity. But it was no secret that a few insiders could still time-stamp a partially completed ticket, then fill in the numbers of the winning horses afterward. So in Northern California, with much fanfare in 1934, Bay Meadows introduced a new totalisator system. “Totalisators have been in use in America less than four years,” the track said, “and the one at Bay Meadows will be the first one on the West Coast. It is a marvel of electric mechanism, with almost human intelligence, and it will leave no room for doubt.”

The Daily Racing Form headline: “Human Equation Removed.” Almost 70 years later, at the Autotote nerve center in Newark, Del., a reported 18 employees knew the password that would let them tap into the computer system, and on Oct. 26 it took only one -- the 29-year-old Harn -- to re-create a ticket and perpetrate what has been called racing’s most damaging scam. Because of the money they allegedly hoped to collect, the Breeders’ Cup Three are making all the rogues that went before them look like pikers.

By comparison, Mark Gerard risked his reputation as a distinguished veterinarian for a pittance. Some scams play on sympathetic heartstrings -- a trainer at Santa Anita who hates computers even had a kind word for the Breeders’ Cup trio -- but there was nothing likable about Gerard, who signed off on a $137,000 insurance claim although he knew Lloyd’s of London was erroneously paying on the death of a sore-backed bleeder instead of a Uruguayan champion.

Gerard, who had treated stars such as Secretariat and Canonero II in building up a $200,000-a-year practice, then ran the good horse, the estimable Cinzano, in the name of the pitiable no-account, Lebon, on a fall 1977 day at Belmont Park, and cashed a $78,000 bet when the ringer rolled in at 57-1.

Two things unraveled Gerard’s hefty payday. The race was the last of the day, and the vet figured he could go to the mutuel windows, quickly collect his haul and walk away unnoticed. But the cashier, short of the full $78,000, sent a part-time runner down the line for more cash. The runner happened to gallop horses in the mornings at Belmont, and recognized Gerard upon his return. “Hi, Doc,” he said casually. “Nice hit.”

A little later, a winner’s circle picture of “Lebon,” the rank longshot, was published in South American newspapers. Cinzano and Lebon were both bays, but Cinzano, unlike Lebon, had a white star on his forehead, which was clearly visible in the photograph. A call from South America to U.S. racing authorities led to an investigation and the prosecution of Gerard. Represented by F. Lee Bailey, Gerard was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison. One of the appeals court judges, while rejecting Gerard’s request for leniency, said that the case “might have been authored jointly by Alfred Hitchcock and Damon Runyon.”

Paddie Barrie was as Runyonesque as they come. A man of many aliases, the English-born Barrie came to the U.S. illegally from Canada, to become known as the “Racetrack Rembrandt.” If you needed a bay to masquerade as a chestnut, Barrie was your man. He did such good work -- using the best of henna dyes -- that trainers didn’t have to worry about the color running in the rain.

One of Barrie’s favorite chattels was Aknahton, a horse that frequently ran in any name but his own. In 1931, Barrie painted Aknahton to look like a horse named Shem and ran him at Havre de Grace in Maryland. Instead of going off as a longshot, the horse won at 5-1 and Barrie and his confederates made a nice score. By the time the authorities picked up the scent, Barrie, Aknahton and the others were off for another try.

Aknahton and Barrie showed up at a fair in York, Pa., in 1933. In the official track program, Aknahton was called Chinese Puzzle. The horse won again, but in 1934 Barrie was caught and deported. “Barrie, one of the greatest of horse painters, has been in and out of the country many times in recent years,” the Racing Form reported, “never bothering about a passport or the immigration authorities. Furthermore, he has been exceedingly active pursuing his favorite calling, according to his own admission, although the valiant Pinkertons were busily engaged looking for him all the while. He probably would be on the loose today, but one of his accomplices spoke out of turn.”

Eugene Zeek, another flamboyant character, trained horses at Eastern tracks, including Laurel Park, Penn National and Liberty Bell Park. Zeek’s money-making scheme was hardly intricate: He cashed worthless checks at the tracks, duped a New Jersey banker into aiding him, and by the time the tracks awoke, Zeek was thousands of miles away, on an isle in the West Indies that had no extradition treaty with the U.S.

As a performance artist, Zeek qualified. To give the victimized tracks a sense of security, he purposely moved some bad paper, worth thousands of dollars, and when they questioned the absence of funds, Zeek would reach into his pockets, produce a wad of bills and make good on the spot. By New Year’s Eve 1973, however, Zeek was no longer around to chase, and the tracks were holding more than $1 million in bad checks. A private plane had taken him, two other men and a woman to the island of Grenada.

Zeek’s money ran out along with his welcome, which ended during a government overthrow four years later. He returned to the U.S. to serve his time.

Eugene Zeek was at least 6 feet 3 and weighed well over 200 pounds, but he still would have been dwarfed by Tony Ciulla, who was just as tall and weighed close to 350. Ciulla admitted fixing hundreds of races at dozens of Eastern tracks in the 1970s, bribing jockeys for as much as $10,000 a race. He eventually testified before a U.S. grand jury in Detroit (leading to indictments of two jockeys and a trainer), and was given a new identity before moving to California.

Ciulla in a hotel room with a reluctant but cornered jockey was once described as a classic mismatch. He bragged that he could get to just about all of the riders, listing Ron Turcotte -- Secretariat’s jockey -- and Michael Hole as the exceptions. Hole was found near a Long Island beach, dead by asphyxiation. His family and friends have long doubted that he committed suicide. Turcotte was paralyzed in a 1978 racing accident at Belmont Park.

In the late 1990s, Ciulla, living in Santa Barbara, would call regularly. The serial race-fixers seem to have this need to reminisce, just as Richie “Richie Fingers” Sklar wanted to do this week. In March 1998, Ciulla’s phone was cut off and a note to him came back with no forwarding address. A few weeks before, he had mentioned some waterfront property in Singapore that needed tending.

“He’s been off our [radar] screen as well,” Paul Berube, president of the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau in Maryland, said recently. “But you always have the feeling that guys like him never really go out of the business. They’re drawn to the element they’ve always known, and the element to them.”

Sklar, convicted of bribing jockeys to hold back horses in two Arabian races and one for thoroughbreds at Los Alamitos, served a six-month federal sentence in 1998. He says that his activities were much broader than that -- 80 jockeys, every track in California and a couple out of state -- but track executives dismiss his tales as incurable braggadocio.

The other day, Sklar told a story of a fixed race that went awry with jockey Ron Hansen at one of the Northern California tracks. Hansen was a premier rider at Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields, but upon his death near the San Mateo Bridge in 1993, rumors swirled that alleged race-fixing had led to foul play. Because Hansen had been missing for 3 1/2 months before his badly decomposed remains were discovered in January 1994, a coroner was unable to determine the cause of death.

During a brief period in the early 1990s when there was a pick-seven bet, Sklar said that between him and Hansen, they had most of the races tied up. With a carryover, there was a pool of more than $1.5 million, and Hansen was to share 15% of the proceeds from Sklar’s ticket, which cost $38,000.

In the first race, Hansen’s role was to get his horse beat. But the favorite broke down on the far turn, and at the 16th pole Hansen’s mount, which was the 5-2 second choice, was four lengths in front with no one challenging.

“I looked around, and got sick,” Sklar quotes Hansen as saying.

Finally, near the wire, another horse came up to Hansen’s but wasn’t going to win. Deliberately whipping left-handed, Hansen was able to force his horse into lugging out, into his rival’s path. As the stewards flashed the inquiry sign, Hansen was confident his winning mount would be disqualified for interference. He gladly admitted culpability to them on the phone near the winner’s circle.

But the stewards let Hansen’s number stand. The four winning tickets -- none of them Sklar’s -- on the pick seven paid about $400,000 apiece.

“That’s the toughest beat I’ve ever taken,” Hansen said later, according to Sklar.

These are the stories that make racing leaders blanch, and sometimes even the positive stories can take on a reverse spin. A 16-race winning streak by the Louisiana filly Hollowed Dreams in 1999-2000 was marred by the fact that two of her jockeys were carrying scam baggage.

Billy Patin, who rode Hallowed Dreams to her first stakes win, was unable to ride the filly again because of the start of a five-year suspension resulting from the Arkansas Derby in 1999. Patin’s winning mount in the $500,000 race at Oaklawn Park, Valhol, was stripped of the purse when stewards ruled that Patin had used an illegal electrical prod, usually called a battery. Patin’s replacement aboard Hallowed Dreams, Sylvester Carmouche Jr., had served 8 1/2 years of a 10-year suspension before being reinstated in 1998.

On a foggy January night at Delta Downs at 1990, nine horses broke from the gate, but only eight could be seen as the field went past the finish the first time. The missing horse, Carmouche’s Landing Officer, took a left-hand turn shortly after the start, then waited in a heavy fog pocket for the others to circle the track and reach the top of the stretch. Carmouche then kicked Landing Officer into gear and, running only an eighth of a mile or so compared with a mile for everyone else, they won by 24 lengths.

“What I did was a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Carmouche said after he had ridden Hallowed Dreams to her 15th consecutive win. “I’m glad this filly has given me a reason to talk about the good things.”