Study Says Integrity Is Intact

A study of hundreds of large pick-six and pick-four payoffs at racetracks last year has determined that the integrity of the tote systems was not compromised, much as it was in October when three former college fraternity brothers came close to breaking the bank on Breeders’ Cup day at Arlington Park in Illinois.

The Breeders’ Cup culprits, who stood to collect more than $3 million before they were caught, infiltrated the betting system because one of them, Chris Harn, worked at Autotote and was able to alter tickets after four of the pick-six races had been run. Harn and his conspirators have pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the scam and are scheduled to be sentenced next month.

The pick-six scandal jolted the confidence of many horseplayers and triggered one class-action lawsuit, but Thursday, after a costly investigation into nationwide payoffs on multiple-race betting, the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn. and Giuliani Partners said that they could find no suspicious betting patterns. Last year there were 337 pick-six bets and 127 pick-four wagers that paid $10,000 or more, and more than half -- all that have been reviewed to date -- have been declared devoid of tampering.

“There is not another incident like [the Breeders’ Cup],” said Rudolph W. Giuliani, former major of New York and head of Giuliani Partners, who were reportedly paid in excess of $1 million for their participation. “At the end of this process, horse racing fans will be confident that the sport’s wagering systems have upgraded security standards. If what was done [at the Breeders’ Cup] is attempted now, the software would detect someone altering a wager after four legs had already occurred.”

The country’s three major tote companies have introduced progressive scanning, which can detect attempted ticket altering starting with the first leg of the pick six.

Of the $10,000 payoffs that were included in the review, 77% came from races that were run in California and New York.

Harn and his accomplices covered their pick-six bets by betting every horse in the last two legs of the wager. They might not have been detected if the final race, the Breeders’ Cup Classic, had not been won by Volponi, a 43-1 longshot. That left Harn’s group with the only six perfect tickets. The money was never paid. After Harn and the others are sentenced, the payoffs will be redistributed, with interest, to holders of tickets with five winners. Forty-two bettors with 78 winning consolation tickets have already collected about $4,606 and are entitled to an additional $39,000 per ticket.

The NTRA released figures that show that in the two months after the Breeders’ Cup furor, betting declined 1.9%, to $2.1 billion, at all tracks. The comparison was made with similar dates from 2001. Average betting per racing card was actually higher, however, because there were 895 race days last year compared to 927 in 2001.

Local tracks have not done well since the Breeders’ Cup. At the Hollywood Park meet that ended in December, on-track attendance was off more than 10% and betting, down about 3% overall, showed a decrease of almost 14% at the track. At the current Santa Anita meet, overall betting is up more than 2%, but on-track handle and attendance have been marked by 6% drops.

Harn and his fraternity brothers from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Derrick Davis and Glen DaSilva, were already testing the waters for almost a year before the Breeders’ Cup, cashing smaller bets illegally on races run in New York and Illinois. The memory of schemes still makes bettors edgy, especially when odds shift dramatically in short periods of time. Last Sunday at Santa Anita, the odds on a horse about to enter the starting gate plunged from 3-2 to 4-5 in one blink of the tote board. The horse won the race.

Last April at Hollywood Park, the odds on a winning horse plummeted from 9-2 to 2-5 while the race was under way. The Daily Racing Form reported that the drop was caused by a $110,000 win bet that was made at an off-track betting facility in the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. The racebook manager there said that $100,000 of the bet was made by a bettor’s mistake. In November, the California Horse Racing Board voted down a Hollywood Park proposal to cut off betting before the horses are loaded into the gate.

While business might be slow at Santa Anita this winter, pick-six players, when enticed by lucrative carryover pools, seem to be as hearty as ever. On Wednesday, when several inches of rain pelted the track and less than 3,000 fans showed up, the pick six, which started with $201,000 already in the pool from Sunday, swelled by an additional $1 million. A track spokesman said that this is typical: When there’s a Sunday-to-Wednesday carryover, the pool usually grows at a 5-to-1 clip. There were 20 winning tickets, worth more than $40,000 each.