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28 May 14
18:00
Joined:
Date Joined:
18 Jan 09
A former manager of **** bookmakers at Castle St in Cork stole almost €600,000 from the shop and gambled most of it through Paddy Power’s website.
Detective Garda Padraig Harrington yesterday said Paddy Power became so concerned about the extent of the gambling by Ronan Crowley, aged 33, of Carrig Downs, Carrigtwohill, that it investigated it internally and refused to take any more bets from him.
The detective said Paddy Power did not notify management at **** of the matter.
The 236 separate thefts, where Crowley failed to lodge shop cash receipts into the company’s main account any day on which he was working over a 22-month period, were eventually discovered by his employers, but not before he had stolen €590,810.
The chances of the gambling addict repaying any money was described by the detective as zero. He gambled every day, blowing €398,000 with Paddy Power online.
Det Garda Harrington said that because of the scale of gambling by an individual, they are required to investigate the source of the money.
When Paddy Power contacted him, it was told by Crowley that he had inherited the cash.
“They (Paddy Power) failed to notify ****. They knew he was a manger at ****,” the detective said.
James Duggan, defending, said that if the matter had been detected earlier, Crowley would have had some chance of dealing with it.
He said that like a lot of gamblers, his hope was that he would have a big win, drive to Drogheda to pay it all back, and then resign from the job.
Instead the offence was detected, the gardaí called to him, and he subsequently co-operated with the investigation.
Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin imposed a five-year jail sentence on Crowley, but suspended it in its entirety.
The judge said: “This is a truly extraordinary case. In excess of half a million euro was stolen from **** over almost two years, a significant breach of trust.
“It beggars belief that a company like **** are so disorganised in their set-up they did not know this was going on for almost two years — a man entrusted to make lodgements was not making the lodgements.
“One would expect this would be picked up overnight or within a week in a properly-run business.
“Paddy Power knew or suspected there was something wrong and had the accused as a monitored customer and seemed to be slow in either reporting it or detecting it. Again that is quite extraordinary.”
The charges state that Crowley stole varying sums from ****, Castle St, on dates between November 19, 2011, and September 2 2013.
Detective Garda Padraig Harrington yesterday said Paddy Power became so concerned about the extent of the gambling by Ronan Crowley, aged 33, of Carrig Downs, Carrigtwohill, that it investigated it internally and refused to take any more bets from him.
The detective said Paddy Power did not notify management at **** of the matter.
The 236 separate thefts, where Crowley failed to lodge shop cash receipts into the company’s main account any day on which he was working over a 22-month period, were eventually discovered by his employers, but not before he had stolen €590,810.
The chances of the gambling addict repaying any money was described by the detective as zero. He gambled every day, blowing €398,000 with Paddy Power online.
Det Garda Harrington said that because of the scale of gambling by an individual, they are required to investigate the source of the money.
When Paddy Power contacted him, it was told by Crowley that he had inherited the cash.
“They (Paddy Power) failed to notify ****. They knew he was a manger at ****,” the detective said.
James Duggan, defending, said that if the matter had been detected earlier, Crowley would have had some chance of dealing with it.
He said that like a lot of gamblers, his hope was that he would have a big win, drive to Drogheda to pay it all back, and then resign from the job.
Instead the offence was detected, the gardaí called to him, and he subsequently co-operated with the investigation.
Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin imposed a five-year jail sentence on Crowley, but suspended it in its entirety.
The judge said: “This is a truly extraordinary case. In excess of half a million euro was stolen from **** over almost two years, a significant breach of trust.
“It beggars belief that a company like **** are so disorganised in their set-up they did not know this was going on for almost two years — a man entrusted to make lodgements was not making the lodgements.
“One would expect this would be picked up overnight or within a week in a properly-run business.
“Paddy Power knew or suspected there was something wrong and had the accused as a monitored customer and seemed to be slow in either reporting it or detecting it. Again that is quite extraordinary.”
The charges state that Crowley stole varying sums from ****, Castle St, on dates between November 19, 2011, and September 2 2013.
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Has taken its toll on the guy, 33 and he looks 53.
No sympathy for any of them, the bookies deserve to lose for their inability to identify the discrepancies, the guy himself, a proverbial loser in life in general.
No sympathy for any of them, the bookies deserve to lose for their inability to identify the discrepancies, the guy himself, a proverbial loser in life in general.
Bookmakers would never have any customers if the "Barred" suspected degenerates.
Indeed,they positively look for them.
Indeed,they positively look for them.
Online with PP and in the PP shop across the road from where he worked for Boils, when losing the sums he was losing daily you can always get on
I know someone with a p account that can easily get 2-3 k bets on horses for a takeout of 10-15k, opened years ago though where at the start they would take a lot larger bet than nowadays with a new account. They are about but they are huge losing accounts.
Blimey, I've been in the wrong job all these years if it's that easy...
I know Padraig Harrington hadn't been playing well lately but surprised that he's joined the police, I swear I saw him at Wentworth the other day
Phucking hell, in the 70s/80s if you made a rick for a score then you'd have the area manager on the phone rucking at you
If he'd actually had any brains could have made a packet and put it all back again...
What part of "degenerate gambler" do you not understand,Stu?
It shows you how good Spoils finance dept is. They not so slow stopping your account when you 5 straight winners in a row for less than 1k. But to let over 500k go unotice tells me they are full of klowns in certain depts. They spend too much of their time talking to the trader to see if the punter can get their bet on.
I stole £20 from William Hill when I worked as a cashier for them during the summer when I was a student. I should have moved to Ireland and nicked a few k from Boils.
Well if they didn't realise someone has taken £600,000 off them they deserve everything they get. Especially as they are a hopeless bookmaker any way.
Five years suspended....... Boyle Sports must be well 
!!
!!
They are all the same, racingstar.
That's why they should be properly regulated.
If an addict is dropping 10k a week, the bookmaker should be required to establish the source of the funds.
And there shouldn't be one rule for the problem gambler (as much as you like on any market you want) and another rule for customers who bet within their means and
shop around (like a maximum bet so small a child could lay it with his pocket money).
That's why they should be properly regulated.
If an addict is dropping 10k a week, the bookmaker should be required to establish the source of the funds.
And there shouldn't be one rule for the problem gambler (as much as you like on any market you want) and another rule for customers who bet within their means and
shop around (like a maximum bet so small a child could lay it with his pocket money).
Blackwater,
The fortunes of all Big Bookmakers has been made by getting "wealthy degenerates" on their Books.
The fortunes of all Big Bookmakers has been made by getting "wealthy degenerates" on their Books.
lol at the image of a shop-manager pockets stuffed with cash going into " the PP shop across the road from where he worked for Boils" on a daily basis and blowing the lot - and the PP shop turning a blind eye to the ruination of their rival
5 years suspended? - I would steal £600k tomorrow if I thought I wouldn't go to prison
might be a loser, but the luckiest loser going getting 'suspended'
No mentioned of PP giving back this stolen money then?
no mention of how much he made laying his useless paddy bets back on here ....
Considering that hundreds of people are jailed every year for not having a TV licence, you would indeed have to say he got off lightly.
That said, if staff thought for a moment that the takings weren't going to be checked, the safe in every betting shop in Ireland would be cleaned out in the morning. So there but for the grace of God go a lot of us.
That said, if staff thought for a moment that the takings weren't going to be checked, the safe in every betting shop in Ireland would be cleaned out in the morning. So there but for the grace of God go a lot of us.
a few years ago an irish post manager done his conkers with piddy power, and again nothing said nothing done at the time even though the bets and turnover was huge and the said individual was on about £30k est.that was public money stolen, and bet with that pathetic firm, and no laws in place to get funds back, even though imo they knew what was going on. the law knew afterwards what was going on but law states nothing can be done to get money back, as its the individuals right to bet with his own money even though in this case it wasnt his
he had a miracle getting a suspended sentence , very rare for any breach of trust , theft from employer not going inside.
Below, is the extraordinary case to which dukeofpuke (above) is referring. The Irish State still awaits a "Justice Payout" from Paddy Power :
ONLINE GAMBLING IS FEEDING ADDICTION
Saturday, January 05, 2013
By Michael Clifford
COULD you spot a man with a €10 million gambling habit?
Would he have an air of prosperity about him? Or would his eyes harbour that look known best to the desperate and the deranged?
The outcome of the trial of Tony O’Reilly was largely lost to festive cheer over the last few weeks, but it raises some fundamental issues about a great hidden in Irish society.
O’Reilly, from Carlow, was sentenced to four years in prison on Dec 19 for fraud to the value of €1.7m. He had been the manager of Gorey post office where, over a period of a year, he stole the money to feed a gambling addiction.
The figures are staggering, and provide testimony to both the expert connivance of an addict in feeding an addiction, and the new madness that has opened up through online gambling. Apart from that, there is also an issue around how O’Reilly’s descent went unchecked by the gambling operators.
O’Reilly is a 37-year-old father of one. He first dipped his fingers into post office funds sometime after May 2010 when his gambling began to get out of control. At the outset he took the money in the form of coins, covering his tracks by inflating the figures for coins in the office safe. Initially, he took €8,000. By September, when he went on parental leave, the figure had increased to €60,000, and by them he was forging figures on receipt dockets. By December, his problem had spiralled out of control to the point where he had taken €290,000.
He had by then graduated from coins to taking €2,000 in €50 notes from bundles of €50,000. He explained to the gardaí that taking that amount would ensure that the bundle was still wrapped “fairly tight” and it wouldn’t be obvious for some time that anything was missing.
Obviously, in the warped thinking of the addict, he must have told himself at the time that he would replace the money when his ship came in, believing that the ship loitering on the horizon was revving up to come sailing towards him.
Over the following four months another €751,000 went missing. And then, in a single month between April and May 2011, he took €319,000. After that, the amounts dropped but by Jun 15 he’d done for another €290,000.
The fraud was only discovered when an audit was carried out. On the morning that he was about to be rumbled, O’Reilly did a runner, showing up some weeks later in Belfast. He co-operated fully with the gardaí thereafter.
His sentencing hearing at Wexford Circuit Court heard that O’Reilly was regarded as a valued customer by Paddy Power, the bookmaker with which he conducted most of his online gambling.
His account was under the name ‘Tony Ten’ and had a turnover of €10m. O’Reilly was wont to lodging cash in Paddy Power shops into his online account. It’s unclear as to how many shops he utilised for this strategy, but unless he had a whole network of shops that he visited, the sums must have been huge for each lodgement. Apparently, this didn’t set any alarm bells ringing.
The bookmaker was in personal contact with O’Reilly, whom it considered a valued customer. He was brought on all expenses trips to Punchestown and the Aviva stadium.
At the sentencing hearing, O’Reilly’s barrister put it to a detective that the defendant lived in a modest house, which should have set alarm bells ringing at Paddy Powers, considering the huge turnover in his account. How could a man who lived in a modest home, with no apparent access to huge sums, be betting like an oil-soaked sheikh with time on his hands?
No alarm bells sounded in Paddy Power. O’Reilly kept gambling his way into the heart of a nightmare, for himself, his wife, his two-year-old child, their futures, his life. Everybody has personal responsibility for their actions, but it is widely accepted in society that those who are addicted to mood-altering substances or gambling are in need of help to at least grasp what they are about.
Until quite recently, O’Reilly’s addiction would have been unlikely to have descended to the levels that it did. Gambling in shops is a somewhat public affair, and it involves the physical handing over of cash, presence in the shops to view live events, and, usually, access to the event which is the subject of the gamble.
Online does away with all that. The bet is the click of a mouse away. Sports all over the world can be accessed online, and bets placed without even getting out of bed. O’Reilly bet on the Norwegian ladies soccer team, and American football and all sorts of sports he undoubtedly knew nothing about. The wonderful world of the web facilitates this level of madness at the touch of a keyboard.
For the casual gambler, it’s a convenience. For the addict, it equips the downward spiral with a high performance accelerator gear.
The rock bottom at which an addict is faced with reality is thus a lot lower than it would have been in the old days. Reality can be kept at bay much longer when the addict can convince himself that none of this is real, because it’s online, a world away, not unlike some video game.
The bookies maintain that this brave and dangerous new world has prompted them to put in place various alert systems to spot the addict. Paddy Power has been a runaway corporate success in recent years, largely due to its adaption to the web. It claims that its checks are of a high standard, beyond the industry norms.
Yet no bells sounded for Tony O’Reilly. Nobody wondered about where Tony Ten, this guy from rural Carlow, was getting the bobs. Nobody spotted that he was the manager of a post office, and not a millionaire farmer, or net whizz kid, or a hedge fund manager relocated from Wall Street. Nobody seems to have asked too many inconvenient questions.
Governments around the world are attempting to catch up with the untamed world of online gambling. New legislation is due to be introduced by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter here in the coming months. It will contain rules for operators to ensure they promote socially responsible gambling, and beef up warning systems. So far, health professional who deal with gambling addicts, are highly sceptical about the provisions that operators are making. It remains to be seen whether these warning systems will be greatly improved to ensure that those with a problem are not facilitated. Meanwhile, O’Reilly has begun his sentence. Judge Pauline Codd pointed out that O’Reilly had suffered much, but the severity of the crime meant that a custodial sentence was necessary. She suspended one year of the four-year prison term.
In the brave new world of online gambling, this kind of case is likely to recur with greater frequency. When the lucky chance is just a click away, the real world can be shut out for long enough for a problem to descend to new levels of madness.
© Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved
ONLINE GAMBLING IS FEEDING ADDICTION
Saturday, January 05, 2013
By Michael Clifford
COULD you spot a man with a €10 million gambling habit?
Would he have an air of prosperity about him? Or would his eyes harbour that look known best to the desperate and the deranged?
The outcome of the trial of Tony O’Reilly was largely lost to festive cheer over the last few weeks, but it raises some fundamental issues about a great hidden in Irish society.
O’Reilly, from Carlow, was sentenced to four years in prison on Dec 19 for fraud to the value of €1.7m. He had been the manager of Gorey post office where, over a period of a year, he stole the money to feed a gambling addiction.
The figures are staggering, and provide testimony to both the expert connivance of an addict in feeding an addiction, and the new madness that has opened up through online gambling. Apart from that, there is also an issue around how O’Reilly’s descent went unchecked by the gambling operators.
O’Reilly is a 37-year-old father of one. He first dipped his fingers into post office funds sometime after May 2010 when his gambling began to get out of control. At the outset he took the money in the form of coins, covering his tracks by inflating the figures for coins in the office safe. Initially, he took €8,000. By September, when he went on parental leave, the figure had increased to €60,000, and by them he was forging figures on receipt dockets. By December, his problem had spiralled out of control to the point where he had taken €290,000.
He had by then graduated from coins to taking €2,000 in €50 notes from bundles of €50,000. He explained to the gardaí that taking that amount would ensure that the bundle was still wrapped “fairly tight” and it wouldn’t be obvious for some time that anything was missing.
Obviously, in the warped thinking of the addict, he must have told himself at the time that he would replace the money when his ship came in, believing that the ship loitering on the horizon was revving up to come sailing towards him.
Over the following four months another €751,000 went missing. And then, in a single month between April and May 2011, he took €319,000. After that, the amounts dropped but by Jun 15 he’d done for another €290,000.
The fraud was only discovered when an audit was carried out. On the morning that he was about to be rumbled, O’Reilly did a runner, showing up some weeks later in Belfast. He co-operated fully with the gardaí thereafter.
His sentencing hearing at Wexford Circuit Court heard that O’Reilly was regarded as a valued customer by Paddy Power, the bookmaker with which he conducted most of his online gambling.
His account was under the name ‘Tony Ten’ and had a turnover of €10m. O’Reilly was wont to lodging cash in Paddy Power shops into his online account. It’s unclear as to how many shops he utilised for this strategy, but unless he had a whole network of shops that he visited, the sums must have been huge for each lodgement. Apparently, this didn’t set any alarm bells ringing.
The bookmaker was in personal contact with O’Reilly, whom it considered a valued customer. He was brought on all expenses trips to Punchestown and the Aviva stadium.
At the sentencing hearing, O’Reilly’s barrister put it to a detective that the defendant lived in a modest house, which should have set alarm bells ringing at Paddy Powers, considering the huge turnover in his account. How could a man who lived in a modest home, with no apparent access to huge sums, be betting like an oil-soaked sheikh with time on his hands?
No alarm bells sounded in Paddy Power. O’Reilly kept gambling his way into the heart of a nightmare, for himself, his wife, his two-year-old child, their futures, his life. Everybody has personal responsibility for their actions, but it is widely accepted in society that those who are addicted to mood-altering substances or gambling are in need of help to at least grasp what they are about.
Until quite recently, O’Reilly’s addiction would have been unlikely to have descended to the levels that it did. Gambling in shops is a somewhat public affair, and it involves the physical handing over of cash, presence in the shops to view live events, and, usually, access to the event which is the subject of the gamble.
Online does away with all that. The bet is the click of a mouse away. Sports all over the world can be accessed online, and bets placed without even getting out of bed. O’Reilly bet on the Norwegian ladies soccer team, and American football and all sorts of sports he undoubtedly knew nothing about. The wonderful world of the web facilitates this level of madness at the touch of a keyboard.
For the casual gambler, it’s a convenience. For the addict, it equips the downward spiral with a high performance accelerator gear.
The rock bottom at which an addict is faced with reality is thus a lot lower than it would have been in the old days. Reality can be kept at bay much longer when the addict can convince himself that none of this is real, because it’s online, a world away, not unlike some video game.
The bookies maintain that this brave and dangerous new world has prompted them to put in place various alert systems to spot the addict. Paddy Power has been a runaway corporate success in recent years, largely due to its adaption to the web. It claims that its checks are of a high standard, beyond the industry norms.
Yet no bells sounded for Tony O’Reilly. Nobody wondered about where Tony Ten, this guy from rural Carlow, was getting the bobs. Nobody spotted that he was the manager of a post office, and not a millionaire farmer, or net whizz kid, or a hedge fund manager relocated from Wall Street. Nobody seems to have asked too many inconvenient questions.
Governments around the world are attempting to catch up with the untamed world of online gambling. New legislation is due to be introduced by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter here in the coming months. It will contain rules for operators to ensure they promote socially responsible gambling, and beef up warning systems. So far, health professional who deal with gambling addicts, are highly sceptical about the provisions that operators are making. It remains to be seen whether these warning systems will be greatly improved to ensure that those with a problem are not facilitated. Meanwhile, O’Reilly has begun his sentence. Judge Pauline Codd pointed out that O’Reilly had suffered much, but the severity of the crime meant that a custodial sentence was necessary. She suspended one year of the four-year prison term.
In the brave new world of online gambling, this kind of case is likely to recur with greater frequency. When the lucky chance is just a click away, the real world can be shut out for long enough for a problem to descend to new levels of madness.
© Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved
nice to see the irish banks taking money laundering rules seriously.
heads should roll over this.
in the bookies and the bank
heads should roll over this.
in the bookies and the bank
Maybe they thought it was the other Tony O'Reilly and didn't want to spill the beans about his huge Heinz bets .
Heinz bets...
Richard Curran wrote an interesting column about this in the Indo yesterday. Apparently back in 2008 there was an Oireachtas (ie, parliamentary) enquiry into gambling regulation in Ireland. It concluded that the rules here are 'a relic of social history' and 'utterly unsuited' to what's required of them.
But as usual, six years later, we're still for the politicians to get round to doing something about it.
Richard Curran wrote an interesting column about this in the Indo yesterday. Apparently back in 2008 there was an Oireachtas (ie, parliamentary) enquiry into gambling regulation in Ireland. It concluded that the rules here are 'a relic of social history' and 'utterly unsuited' to what's required of them.
But as usual, six years later, we're still for the politicians to get round to doing something about it.
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