THREE conmen have been jailed and banned from betting shops for defrauding bookmakers across the country by swapping betting slips.
The conmen, Neil Cole, 33, and father and son team Brian, 74, and Jason Haddigan, 43, defrauded betting shops by swapping betting slips which had lost for forged winners after convincing cashiers to hand over the betting slip from behind the till.
The trio conned £15,670 from Ladbrokes, William Hill and M Cook Bookmakers from June 2012 to February 2013 by visiting 31 bookmakers from Arbroath in Scotland to Newquay in Cornwall. Most of the trio’s offending took place in the North West with Chester, Ellesmere Port, Flint and Frodsham Ladbrokes targeted along with Cheshire bookmakers M Cook. Prosecuting, Jonathan Austin, told the court the frauds’ would all happen in the same way with one of the group putting in a complex tricast bet in scruffy handwriting on a horse race.  Once the race had finished one member of the group would go over claim and they had a winner.  The cashier would “quibble” with this but due to the poor handwriting the conmen could persuade the cashier to pass the slip over and then they would swap it for the fake slip through sleight of hand. Mr Austin told the court the cashiers who had been duped felt “embarrassed” and in many cases had to be interviewed by regional managers to make sure they weren’t involved in the scam, which put their employment in jeopardy. The Judge, Roger Dutton, called Brian Haddigan “an old fashioned, unrepentant professional conman” after the court heard he had 47 previous convictions for 96 offences including deceptions, frauds and thefts over a criminal career which began by going to borstal as a teenager. His son, Jason Haddigan, also had a number of convictions for deceptions, which led Judge Dutton to quip it was “like father, like son”. Cole only had one previous offence for theft in 2012, for which he received a suspended sentence at Lincoln Crown Court. Defending for Brian Haddigan, of Percy Green Place, Huntington, Cambridgeshire, Mark Shelley, told the court he had early stage dementia and his memory was beginning to fail.  Mr Shelley said Brian Haddigan’s record meant custody was inevitable but asked for any sentence to be suspended on health grounds.  He had pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and was a gambling addict who lost everything because of his addiction, which led to these crimes. Defending for Cole, Andrew McInnes, said his client was a gambling addict. He went bankrupt in 2011 because of his addiction, which Cole said cost him £1million.  Mr McInnes said Cole was “learning the ropes” from the Haddigans and was not the prime mover in the frauds.  He had also pleaded guilty, but only on the day of his trial so was given less credit. Robin Boag, defending Jason Haddigan, asked for any sentence passed to be less than 12 months so his client had the future possibility of joining his wife who lives in Utah, USA.  The court heard he had to be extradited from the USA to face proceedings and spent three months in an American jail before being flown back to the UK in January. Mr Boag said if Jason Haddigan were to get a sentence of more than 12 months he would be banned from the USA for life.  He asked the court to give him a sentence below that so he could go and live with his wife in a state where betting was banned after a 10-year exclusion order had elapsed. Mr Boag said Jason Haddigan had a gambling addiction which meant that all of the money he gained dishonestly went back to the bookmakers through other bets. He had pleaded guilty at the first opportunity. Jailing them, Judge Dutton, called the operation “persistent, ingenious and widespread”. He jailed Brian Haddigan for 14 months, taking into account his early guilty plea and his age.  Cole was jailed for 18 months as he pleaded guilty at a later date and also activated a suspended sentence.  He jailed Jason Haddigan for 14 months. All three were given five-year anti-social behaviour orders, banning them from all betting shops in the country.