A staff member of one of the British leading bookmakers who acquired more than £40,000 himself from a gambling scam could be facing an imprisonment sentence.
The former Coral worker Gavin Thomson, who worked at the company’s betting shops in Dundee and Forfar, found a certain malfunction in the gambling operator’s computer system which allowed users to place bets after sports events finished. Thomson took advantage of the system’s failure, coming up with a scheme which eventually brought him a total amount of £40,300.
He gave friends so money to go into the operators’ betting outlets and place wagers on events he already knew the result of. The fraud was carried out in a period of less than three months. Eventually, the Coral staff member admitted the fraud.
At the court’s hearing, it became clear that he was earning an amount of up to £1,000 per a single shift by running the scam. As mentioned above, the fraud brought Thomson more than £40,000. the 27-year-old Thomson pleaded guilty to two charges of fraud which took place in the period from October 2015 to January 2016. Dundee Sheriff Court, Alastair Carmichael put off the sentence until September 2018 due to social work background reports and released the accused on bail.
Thomson Suffered from a Problem Gambling Issue
According to Saima Rasheed, a fiscal depute, Mr. Thomson who worked as an assistant of the betting shop’s manager, became aware of the system’s failure in the summer of 2015 and decided to take advantage of the glitch, asking both customers and friends to make bets with the operator on his behalf.
Ms. Rasheed explained that an audit of payouts made at the Forfar branch of the Coral brand was carried out by a regional risk assessor in January 2016. At the time of the inspection, it was discovered that a problem with the computer system, which allowed bets to be made on sports events after they have already been brought to an end, had appeared. The audit found that the problem appeared when changing the sports type at the time when a bet was input on to the system.
The risk assessor who was carrying out the check discovered a total of 64 bets placed after the events ended which had been processed by Mr. Thomson. The loss registered at the Forfar branch amounted to a total of £17,500. In addition, a further 55 bets placed after certain sports events had taken place were discovered at the Dundee branch of the operator, with the scam costing the shop a total of £22,800.
The former staff member of Coral was suspended by the company in January 2016 and was later questioned by the police. As explained at the court hearing, Thomson had been suffering from a gambling addiction which started at the time when his daughter was born. Thomson eventually explained that he found the system’s flaw and thought he had found an easy way to get some money back, as he was going through a tough period of gambling.
The fiscal depute noted that Thomson confessed he had found the glitch and used it to his advantage, and that he had also involved some Coral customers in the scam.
- Author
Daniel Williams
