Attorney Blasts Study on Betting

An attorney who has filed a class-action lawsuit against Autotote, the tote company that was in the middle of the pick-six scandal in last year’s Breeders’ Cup, has called a preliminary investigation into horse-race betting “a whitewash.”

The study, commissioned by the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn. and released on Thursday, said that after analyzing hundreds of large pick-six and pick-four payoffs from 2002, there was no evidence of any betting irregularities.

An Autotote employee was able to tap into his company’s betting system on Breeders’ Cup day and alter six pick-six tickets after the first four races were run. The next day, officials at Arlington Park, the suburban Chicago track where the races were run, froze the payoffs, which would have been worth more than $3 million.

Chris Harn, a senior programmer at Autotote, and his two partners have pleaded guilty to federal charges and are scheduled to be sentenced March 20 in White Plains, N.Y.

“What I’ve seen so far is a whitewash,” said Joseph Lisoni, a Pasadena attorney who’s suing Autotote on behalf of Jimmy “The Hat” Allard, a well-known pick-six bettor in Southern California. “I’ll bet that Rudy Giuliani is sorry that he put his name on the report.”

Giuliani, former mayor of New York, and his new consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, were hired by the NTRA to conduct the study.

“They’re paying [Giuliani’s firm] $1.5 million for this?” Lisoni said. “What they’ve given us is no more than a random check of a lot of payoffs. They’ve conducted no investigation into offshore betting or what’s going on at California tracks. I’ve got a small law office, and already I’ve discovered more than what they came up with.”

Lisoni declined to be specific. He said that more details will be provided when his suit is expanded to include plaintiffs other than Allard and additional defendants.

Phone calls to a spokeswoman for Giuliani Partners in New York were not returned. Tim Smith, commissioner of the NTRA, was attending a board meeting in Florida and could not be reached for comment.

According to the Giuliani report, more than half of 464 multiple-race payoffs worth $10,000 or more have been scrutinized. Tracks in California and New York account for 77% of these bets, but the report did not say which bets had already been investigated.

“The thing that’s been lost in all this,” Lisoni said, “is that the Breeders’ Cup bettors who wound up winning -- the ones with consolation tickets -- haven’t been paid, and the NTRA is doing nothing to get their money for them.”

On a day of longshot winners, the Harn group made the only bets that hit all six winners. Forty-two bettors, who held 78 tickets that had five winners, are entitled to an extra $39,000 per ticket. They collected about $4,600 per ticket on Breeders’ Cup day. The frozen funds, which are gathering interest, are expected to be released by Arlington Park after the pick-six trio is sentenced.

Lisoni’s client, Allard, attended the races at Arlington, but did not have five winners on any of his tickets. Betting $21,504 on the pick six, the best he could do was four winners. When Allard’s suit was filed in December, Autotote said that the case was without merit.