Hollywood Park Investigating Possible Fraud

Twenty-four hours after a patron tried to cash a canceled Pick Nine ticket that would have been worth $1.38 million, Hollywood Park officials said Thursday they still were investigating what is being considered an attempted case of fraud.

The investigation has thus far centered on a mutuel clerk who apparently allowed a canceled ticket to leave his window, contrary to required procedures.

The story began to unfold after the last race Wednesday, when five other patrons began clamoring for their cut of the $1,380,651.77 Pick Nine pool, following what they thought was their ninth winner on the program. Earlier in the day, those five had purchased shares of what they thought was a legitimate Pick Nine ticket from a sixth person.

When the patron who had sold the shares in the ticket attempted to cash it in, the computerized mutuel machine scanned the ticket and flashed “canceled.” At that point, the patron insisted that the track had made an error.

According to Donald Robbins, Hollywood Park’s general manager, the ticket in question, totaling $4,860 in Pick Nine combinations, had been punched up and then canceled just eight seconds later.

“A guy gave the clerk a betting card, but when the ticket total came up he said to the clerk, ‘That’s too much,’ and told him to cancel it,” Robbins said. “No money changed hands. But somehow, the canceled ticket got out.”

Mutuels manager Bobby Taylor said that it is impossible to tell a good ticket from one that has been canceled without running it through the computer scan. The procedure for canceling a ticket is for the mutuel clerk to cut or tear through the bar code, then store it for collection at the end of the day, Taylor said.

But the ticket in question was neither cut nor defaced in any way, Taylor added. Apparently, that is why the original patron was able to sell shares privately, as the day’s races progressed, without arousing suspicion. Robbins said the alleged scam raised no more than $2,500 to $3,000.

Said Taylor: “We have interviewed the clerk who handled the ticket, and we’re still not certain how that ticket got out. He said it was human error. The investigation is ongoing. And the California Horse Racing Board is involved now, as well, because we are contending the intent was to defraud.”

A local public handicapper voiced his admiration for the alleged perpetrator of the scam, in spite of its fraudulent overtones.

“Picking nine on a ticket costing less than $4,900 is quite an achievement,” he said. “He should have bought it and kept it himself.”

As it was, the best of the legitimate tickets in Wednesday’s Pick Nine were the 44 with eight winners. Each of those tickets was worth $15,279.40.