Yep and I'd be surprised if the judge doesn't see it that way and tell them to get their systems in order
Anyone would think it was really easy to pick 4 winners on a lucky 15 and apparently defraud Bet 365 out of a million pounds
No idea. Given that the company is worth £3bn, they probably take lots of £25,000 bets every week and it would have gone unnoticed. Next time she logs on, she will find she is restricted to £25. As they are the ones whose rules are being breached, they have reasonable grounds for requesting that the client proves that she is not funded by Gerry Adams. Perhaps she is a member of the DUP and got the money from Theresa May. We have various other authorities that are responsible for countering money laundering. If they think it is of dubious authenticity, they should report it to those authorities as they are legally obliged. I can think of a few 19 year olds that can bet £25,000 on four rubbish races but they have surnames like Beckham and Blair; and rich parents. Maybe Ms McCann is a lottery winner using a pseudonym... You chose not to quote the rest of the paragraph, where I queried whether this was a regular betting pattern for this 19 year old. If she is placing £25,000 bets every day of the week, the system – a computer that has no concept of the individual but can interpret logical algorithms – would not detect anything unusual, just as Mastercard would not query Alan Sugar picking up a £500 restaurant bill every day of the week if that was a regular pattern. If she had won £25,000 the previous week from 960 32.5p Lucky 15s, then she was just playing up her winnings if her normal bets are around £625. That just does not seem very probable. If they have been accepting £25,000 bets regularly from Ms McCann then their defence immediately falls because they have failed to question her affluence previously. It may actually turn out that she was placing the wagers on behalf of parties who have been using intermediaries to get around the fact that nobody would take their bets in their own names. Nothing like a good old conspiracy theory... So you are absolutely sure that Ms McCann has read the rules. If you read the rules and cannot understand them, I am sure that it is possible to contact them and ask for clarification. I do not doubt for one second that when signing up for Bet365 (just like countless other internet platforms) there is a checkbox that states “I agree to accept the terms and conditions” and Ms McCann just glibly ticked the box and continued on. When I sign up for things, I do read the terms and conditions because if subscribing for some service I want to know how to end the subscription and whether it entails writing in triplicate on papyrus and hand delivering the request to the Buddhist temple in Ulan Bator on the third Wednesday of September.
According to the original report, the teenager had 12 horses and given that she had 960 Lucky 15s, it looks most probably that she had done some sort of permutation involving three selections in each race. To my cynical mind it would appear that she has been duped into putting the wager on for somebody and they have now engaged the services of a lawyer who successfully got a bookmaker to pay out for Barney Curley because his legal fees amount to thirty per cent of any payout.
I didn't purposely choose not to quote the rest of the para QM. As for a computer that has no concept of the individual, I worry about the systems being designed these days. Any designer worth his salt would recognise that customers are important and that it is important to have meaningful information about them. In the crudest possible sense any customer that has a regular expensive investment habit would as a bare minimum be flagged as such. If she was not one of these then the "irregular activity" should have been flagged up for referral before accepting the bet. It ain't rocket science. I have no sympathy for the bookies at all.
Another classic example of "Deja Vu." From time immemorial, gambling has had no effective status in British law. A wager is simply a "debt of honour" and not enforceable in the High Court. How ironical that the nobility- essentially the persons who historically instituted our laws- were also the group responsible in most cases for gambling and any resultant disputes. Their only recourse for serious breaches of honour was to obtain satisfaction at the end of a loaded pistol. This latest dispute has echoes of the famous Dagenham Dogs Case in 1964 when the High Court ruled that winning bets should be paid, especially since no illegality had been committed and off-course betting had been legalised in 1961- following the Betting and Gaming Act of 1960. Nonetheless no monies were ever paid and I'm afraid Miss McCann will probably face the same denouement. It remains to be seen whether she will face the added indignity of losing her stake monies, despite the basic premise of gambling stating that "if one cannot win, then one cannot lose." Bookmakers traditionally are devoid of honour and hide behind the ultimate safeguard of this "debt of honour" ruling. Arguably our judiciary has even less honour in perpetrating an archaic and antiquated law- morally worsened by the billions of pounds it has gained from gambling. A further irony is that the European Court legalised online gambling in 2010. Perhaps Miss McCann should go and talk to the French and Germans. And when that fails, then simply load up an old flintlock pistol; enter the head office of Bet365; and blow the head off their managing director.
Yes, Tamerlo, the mafia-style solution is worth considering, it may well be the only way. For Bet365 to refuse to pay-up is bad enough, but to retain the stake money paid is beyond belief. Their's is a very shadowy business.
Noticed when I was at Chester recently what a poor show the Tote put on. Is this a cynical plan to kill it off (2 people at windows for a thousand or so racegoers...everyone gave up trying to get a bet on)? Surely Jezza would bring in a Tote monopoly.
I'm open to correction here, Tam, but I thought that the time-immemorial situation had moved on following the Gambling Act 2005. That Act stated, pretty baldly, that a contract was henceforth enforceable in law if it involved gambling. For the purposes of this case, we're then thrown back on to the nature of the 'contract': clearly a bet was struck, and equally clearly was accepted at the time. The question (for the courts) then becomes whether either party had done anything which could void the contract. The bookmaker is claiming that its rules permit it to disallow a bet placed on behalf of a third party (i.e. the stake money was not the property of the punter). Significantly, Miss M's legal team aren't suggesting that it ever was her own money, but are claiming that (i) the 'rule' is buried away in print so small that no one would ever read before placing a bet and (ii) it's so widely flouted every day by people putting on bets for their grannies and teenage kids that it's effectively a dead letter. Personally, I'm in no doubt that one or more sharp operators asked, or bribed, Miss M to use her name to open an account and place the bet. Equally, the bet could have lost, in full or in part - it wasn't one of those headsIwin/tailsyoulose inherently unfair bets; and B365 had a number of opportunities to review things while the bet was in progress. If it turns out that the punter(s) behind Miss M were people who had previously had B365 accounts closed or restricted, then I'd say the bookmaker will probably win. But a likelier outcome, imo, is that it won't get to court at all and that B365 will settle; if they were my client, I'd suggest that they return the stake (£25k-ish, I believe), make a goodwill settlement of about the same amount, and go and give their rules a good spring clean.
Hi, Rainer. I trust you are keeping well. I must admit that I don't understand fully the force majeur involving gambling contracts. Yes, the 2005 Gambling Act did rule that gambling contracts were legally binding. However, my understanding has always been that, even if the High Court supports the plaintiff in a claim against a defaulting bookmaker, the ancient precedent of a gambling debt being " in honour only" would preclude the defendant bookie from paying out- if he so wished. There have been several past cases (involving large sums of money) where this has been tested. As far as I know, none of these large debts has been paid out. Quite possibly, bookmakers may have the words "debt of honour" somewhere within the small print of their terms and conditions. If so, then this could render null and void any legally binding contract. I know there was an Anti-Gaming Act in the eighteenth century. Maybe that formed the basis of debts of honour. Beyond that, Rainer, I have no idea. Maybe the best advice is to 'cash out' when you can.
I believe that you will find that the lawyer representing Ms McCann originally worked for Barney Curley when he went to court after a bookmaker refused to pay him on a betting coup that he had planned with members of his family. On that occasion, the bookmaker settled out of court.
Whoever is in the right at the very moment in time I bet the student is pissed off at the moment Will bet365 honour my bet on that !!
More likely the racecourse owner restricting the number of tote windows to enhance the business of his own outlet "ChesterBet" which is everywhere at that particular **** hole of a racecourse!
It would make more sense to just nationalise all the bookmakers. He could take the profits from all those gaming machines and put stable staff wages up to £30 per hour, reduce racecourse admission charges to £5, scrap all elitist premier/members enclosures and, obviously, the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. The woman who is CEO at Bet365 allegedly is making over £100m a year, so look at all the extra taxes she could pay. While she is funding the local NHS they could reinstate her child benefit so her five kids did not starve. How dare she be a successful businesswoman when she should be at home looking after Jezza’s next generation disciples.
From what I've read Bet365 are one of the few on line gambling companies that actually pay some tax on their earnings. The CEO is worth well north of £3 billion however so she can afford to pay her way. She can also afford to pay this lass out too. Piss poor form in my view.
