Betting coup

TAKEN FROM THE IRISH INDEPENDENT TODAY 23 JUNE ’10
“Classic gamble proves a winner”
Team scoop €200,000 in old school betting coup.

It was an astonishing gamble that went off like clockwork. A fleet of drivers were deployed to lay bets at more than 100 different bookies in an elaborate betting coup that landed up to Eur200,000.
The masterminds won the six-figure sum by paying a massive team to each back the winning horse with small stakes of €200 each, at long odds of as much as 14/1.
And last night, the Irish Bookmakers Association reluctantly saluted the audacious gamble, admitting: “It’s a classic. They did nothing illegal.”
Businessman Douglas Taylor, the joint-owner of the horse at the centre of the plan, is understood to have reaped a share of the rewards.
“That should pay for the wedding,” said Kilcock-based Mr Taylor after his horse ‘D Four Dave’ romped home in Kilbeggan on Monday night.
He has enjoyed a successful week, having only tied the knot last Saturday.   
Mr Taylor is the managing director of recruitment company MCR, which is understood to have been in bringing together the people power to pull off the plan. Up to 200 agency workers arrived to betting shops at 6.55pm on Monday evening, when an alarm on a watch sounded the signal to place the bets on ‘D Four Dave.’
They were given strict instructions to be at the counter before the alarm went off.
They were told to tell staff they would take the odds available, which were as high as 14/1 before later falling to 5/1.
The horse’s win under jockey Mark Walsh just minutes later, hit some of the leading national bookmakers for big money, thanks to the carefully orchestrated wagers. Because relatively small €200 wagers were all placed at the same time, just moments before the 7pm Hurley Family Handicap Hurdle, the punters were also able to avail of favourable odds.
If big money had been laid on the horse earlier in the day then the bookmakers would immediately have become wary and slashed odds on the horse.
But instead, the sophisticated gamble was landed in style, as drivers were dispatched by to more than 100 bookmakers counties Dublin and Kildare. They were accompanied by agency workers who had been given an envelope containing instructions to pull off the audacious coup.
A note said “Dear employee. Enclosed you will find (1) A completed betting slip for the betting shop you have been sent to. (2) €200 in cash for which you need to place the bet. (3) A watch set to go off at 6.55pm.” Mark Costello, Deputy Editor of the Irish Field Magazine, which broke the story said it was still a massive gamble that could have backfired. “Kilbeggan wouldn’t be seen as the best place to execute a gamble like that—there were a number of fallers during the race. Anything could have happened,” he said. “This was just an old-fashioned coup. They havn’t broken any law.” 
From today’s Indo p9.
The original report, I gather, said on some bookies shops the employee handed in the note; arising some suspicions and in another shop, one guy seemed nervous and attracted attention….
Tuesday’s Indo’s Kilbeggan report mentions “two significant gambles” in its report mentioning that our boyos’ desperate run had brought their horse from 14/1 in the morning into 5/1. It was Conor O’Dwyer’s second win of the season. I’d be curious what price did he open on the course. He paid Eur8.10 on the Tote (7/1). But another race assisted our bookies, a 33/1 shot won the second race, a hurdle, which had a 4/5 fav plus a 13/8 shot, Befair layers had a 93% book on that race alone on those two.   
Talk about high-risk! I make it twenty grand forked out—and if it went wrong?! You had nothing back. Were they SO sure about this horse?
Nice when it works but all for NOWT if the horse doesn’t perform.   
(Anyone know what maximum stake an off-course shop will take? I thought an SP office would NOT take a €200 stake.)