Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Columnist Ralph Siraco: Pick six probe shows system’s flaws

Ralph Siraco's horse racing column appears Monday and his Southern California selections run Tuesday-Sunday.

When Volponi won the $4 million Breeders' Cup Classic at Arlington Park nine days ago, he not only upset a field of 11 competitors, he may have very well uncovered the biggest racing scandal ever perpetrated through the sport's pari-mutuel betting system.

Moments after Volponi crossed the finish line as the longest shot on the board in the final race of the World Thoroughbred Championships Ultra Pick-Six wager, those who participated in the pick six pool throughout the nation wondered if anyone could have selected the previous winners culminating with the unlikely Classic victor.

The correct pick six winners included Domedriver at $54, Orientate at $7.40, Starine at $28.40, Vindication at $10.20, High Chaparral at $3.80 and Volponi at $89. When the result was posted that six -- not one but six -- tickets had all the winners for $428,392 each, those who were lucky enough to get the five-out-of-six consolation payoff of $4,606.20 considered themselves fortunate and viewed the winners as handicapping geniuses.

The genius behind the winners may not have been in handicapping the horses but in handicapping a weakness in the integrity of the sport's lifeline -- a security flaw in the pari-mutuel betting computer system.

After the pick six tickets were identified as a single winner who purchased all six tickets through a Catskill, N.Y., OTB phone account, red flags were raised. Catskill records indicated the bettor, later identified as Derrick Davis, a 29-year-old resident of Maryland, opened the account just two weeks before the Breeders' Cup and used the account only once during that period -- to place the pick six bet.

Raising suspicions further was the way the ticket was built. The ticket revealed a single selection in the first four races with all horses selected in the final two events.

That was enough for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and Breeders' Cup LTD to request payment of the tickets -- which totaled $3,067,821.20 that included 108 consolations -- be withheld until a formal investigation by The New York State Racing and Wagering Board could be conducted.

Donald Groth, chairman of the Catskill OTB, stated that Davis' ticket was placed at least 10 minutes before the bet closed at 2:14 p.m. EST, postime for the Breeders' Cup Mile which was the first pick six race. Groth also said he was familiar with the customer although Davis had never visited the Catskill OTB and opened his account through Yahoo on the Internet.

So, how then, could Davis' ticket be altered? How could the Autotote system be breached?

Investigators turned up a well-kept, but not entirely secret policy. In the Pick Six pools when betting has closed, the outlets taking pick six bets transmit the total amount of the monies wagered on the format from each location. The handle immediately shows up in the total pools. However, because of the magnitude of combinations that cover the pick six bets, the individual selections on each ticket are not identified until the fourth of the six races have been complete. Some 2 1/2 hours after the pools have closed.

Totalizator companies instituted the practice because the tote systems cannot handle the huge load of pick six data in addition to ongoing wagering without causing computer gridlock. Therefore, after the four races, a scanning of all pick six tickets is conducted to identify those tickets still "live" and that information is then transmitted to the host track, creating a window of criminal opportunity.

But how would Davis, a self-employed computer technician, know this, or more importantly, how could he infiltrate the system to his advantage?

The plot thickened last Thursday.

The Autotote Corporation, the largest totalizator supplier in racing, fired an employee from the company's Newark, Del., simulcasting hub. Calling the company technician, identified as 29-year-old Chris Harn, a "rogue software engineer," the company indicated Harn had the necessary clearances and passwords to penetrate the Autotote system through the Delaware hub and the capability to alter a pick six ticket shortly before the scanning took place.

With a "T" type ticket, such as Davis' pick six ticket, the first four single selections could have been altered with the corresponding winning numbers while covering all other possible combinations in the final two events, after scanning, to allow a certain winning ticket.

On Friday, it was learned that Harn and Davis attended Drexel University in Philadelphia in the early 1990s and records show that they were fraternity brothers at Tau Kappa Epsilon, a fraternity popular with engineering and informational technology students. Drexel records also revel that neither Davis nor Harn graduated from the university.

The investigation is ongoing, but circumstantial evidence is building toward fraudulent tampering with the Breeders' Cup pick six pool.

The ramifications reach way beyond just this Breeders' Cup Pick Six scam. If anyone but Volponi wins the Classic, or, if runner-up Medaglia d'Oro -- who was the second choice -- had taken the Classic there could have been as many as 25 winning tickets.

One wonders then, if a bettor with six of those tickets from the Catskill OTB would have ever been scrutinized as anything more than a lucky bettor on Breeders' Cup Day.

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