Columnist Ralph Siraco: Fraternity brothers tried to pull off sham — and failed

Ralph Siraco

Monday, Nov. 25, 2002 | 9:56 a.m.

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

When Christopher Harn, a 29-year-old from Newark, Del., was fired from his job as senior programmer with Autotote just days after the now famous Breeders' Cup Pick Six scandal, those who understand the nature of the game were not surprised.

Autotote is the betting data company that was infiltrated by Harn, with outside assistance from two fraternity brothers, during the Breeders' Cup, resulting in $3 million-plus fraud perpetrated on racing's biggest day.

Horse racing is a business of high cash flow and high-paced action. That combination has always attracted more than its share of scam artists.

And sometimes they get away with it. For a while.

Harn struck a deal with U.S. attorney James Comey of the Southern District of New York and entered a guilty plea last Wednesday morning in federal court at White Plains, N.Y. The former Autotote employee admitted he was the mastermind behind two separate betting scams.

Harn pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud and one count of conspiracy to launder money. The pair of felonies carry collective penalties of a maximum 25 years in prison and a $750,000 fine.

According to documents describing the plea agreement, Harn was the ringleader of the betting scams. Both scams were enabled by his intimate knowledge of the Autotote system and his access to that system.

The most publicized of the scams, of course, was the altered Breeders' Cup Pick Six tickets. Harn inputted the winning numbers of the first four pick six races on a $12 denomination ticket that covered all runners in the final two events, thus guaranteeing a pick six winner.

Derrick Davis, also of Maryland and a former fraternity brother of Harn, was the winner of record, supposedly having purchased the $1,152 ticket through a Catskill, N.Y., Off Track Betting phone account. Another fraternity brother, Glen DaSilva, of New York, also was on record as winner of two "dry run" bets which pilfered a Balmoral Park pick four and a Belmont Park pick six in October from the same Catskill OTB.

However, the plea revealed that Davis and DaSilva opened the accounts, but Harn actually made the bets by accessing the accounts and circumventing Catskill's touch-tone betting system which he helped design.

Harn's revelation of the second scam came as a result of plea-bargaining agreements that state defendants give full accounting of any criminal activity. Legal experts say that such plea bargains require full disclosure or the deal can be voided.

Harn also retrieved information from Autotote's computers on uncashed tickets. In this scam, Harn printed fake tickets with the same bar code as the unredeemed tickets, then sent either DaSilva or Davis to cash the bogus tickets at automated self-serve Autotote pari-mutuel machines at tracks up and down the Eastern seaboard.

The fake tickets, which industry officials say could have been identified as counterfeits by human ticket cashiers, were run through the unmanned machines at Aqueduct, Belmont Park, The Meadowlands, Monmouth Park and Philadelphia Park. This scheme, which began in November of 2001, netted almost $100,000 and was split between Harn and either Davis or DaSilva, depending on who cashed the ticket.

Harn's strategy to plead guilty negates any move that Davis or DaSilva could have made to testify against him. An official involved in the investigation said the strategy made sense for Harn and leaves Davis and DaSilva hard-pressed to make their case of innocence.

In this case, there is no honor among thieves. Or fraternity brothers.