The Internet a few years ago was hailed as the best thing since sliced bread. We are now seeing the downside of the system as terrorists, pornographers, fraudsters, hackers and other forms of pond life hiding behind a bogus name and an anonymous E mail address can now invade the lives of innocent people. Whilst their servers are ultimately responsible for the content of messages they transmit, interrogating every E mail of the millions they handle each day is an impossibility.
In the event that they were shut down it only requires ten minutes to set up a new account elsewhere. Interestingly on the news this week I heard that servers are now being required to store all E mails they transmit in the previous 365 days in order that the police can check their content. This is no doubt an anti terrorist initiative and I doubt whether investigations will go much deeper.
I am increasingly concerned at the number of fraudulent E mails that come through my mail box each day promising to make me a fortune from horseracing. These frequently number ten or fifteen a day and the majority are strapped to some unworkable scheme on Betfair. Many however follow a discernable pattern and can quickly be recognised and discarded.
How big is the problem? Search Horseracing Tipsters on Google alone and you will come up with 14600 matches. Taking into account the other major search engines I would think the problem is becoming an epidemic. Having run a profitable, open and transparent tipping service for the last ten years I have listed some of the scams below which I would suggest everybody should become conversant with and should apply to this deluge of rubbish which emanates from all over the world. I estimate that around 95% of these scheme are useless or downright fraudulent.
Firstly a few words of common sense when assessing these wonder schemes. In my business I have known many horse racing bettors and all too frequently they have a common weakness – GREED. Mention the word profits and logic flies out of the window as the mists of riches, cloud the mind. I have lost count of the number of clients who have written to me apologising for finding it necessary to cancel their subscriptions as they have blown their betting banks on some harebrained unproven system that has bled them dry. Long term profits in this business can only be achieved by following a proven working system that gently improves the profit base
For every one person that wins other persons must lose, so to suggest that allcomers can earn 30,40,50 grand a year is pure fantasy as the liquidity for such profits does not exist. Remember that only around 3% of bettors make a living from gambling and are they going to blab out their secrets? – of course not!.
Here are some of the pointers and tests to apply
Where does the E mail come from. If it comes from abroad the last two or three digits of the E mail address will give a clue as to the country of origin. Many of the frauds emanate from Central Africa, and anything that comes from America delete as under American gambling laws they have no access to Betfair and what they know about British Racing can be written on the back of a stamp.
Has the Author given his full name and possibly an address and phone number
Does he have a contact E mail address – if so E mail him and ask him to phone you – if he does not call forget it. Is there a tangible results history. Go to the Racing Post Web Site and check a few results at random from their historical data.
Here are some pointers on what to look for in the content of the scripts.
Ridiculous Headlines and Wanabee scripts – you know the sort of thing – New Betfair Plan Launches Today – Betfair Secrets Revealed – Make £10,000 a week by following ????. Would you like to tell your boss where to stick his job – Fancy a life from your villa in the sun – and so on usually followed by somebody posing with his new BMW.
How much is it – go straight to the bottom of the last page and look for words such as ” I know I should be charging £X,000 for this plan but for the next few days I will reveal the secrets to you for only £37 pounds”. If you had something that made money would you sell it for £37 pounds of course you wouldn’t. Many of the African derivatives use £37 or £39 pounds as their asking price, this probably buys a few luxuries in Zaire.
Is there a refund or Guarantee – fraudsters are only too aware that most people won’t bother to claim on a money back guarantee and write off the cost to experience. The unanswered E mail to a claim is the usual response. The exception to this is where payment is made through Click Bank. They are the Australian equivalent of Paypal but do guarantee to indemnify punters losses where guaranteed.
Testimonials – These can never be proven so should be ignored. A common mistake with these is to add them to a new product. If it is new how can there be valid testimonials?. Another error is to look at the writing styles and see if there are common grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Many of these sites are generated by the same author using different URL’s.
Bonus Gifts – Reply in the next 48 hours and we will send you entirely free 1/2/3 E books on XYZ. Who needs those as you are on the threshold of earning a fortune.
Limited Numbers – this offer is limited to the first 100 recipients. If you had 500 people queuing up to press money in your hand would you turn them down – of course you wouldn’t.
The price hike – we can only hold this price for the next 7 days whereafter it will revert to its real value of £XXX.
Exit offers- when you try and leave a site, a pop up surfaces with another sales pitch offering a discount of up to 50% for joining today. What does this do for their credibility?.
Some common scams
Backfitting – this is a process whereby somebody invents their own betting system and trawls back through past races making results fit their system. The worst example of these that I have seen was a couple of years ago, the Buswell system that came with seven years results and on paper, produced just 35 losers from 1772 selections – a SR of 98%. The filters were bizarre including – No Bets in August, – No bets on Sundays and multiple track exclusions when cross referenced to different types of horses headgear and tracks. When I paper traded it I had one qualifying bet from 48 days of tracking and that came in third – the cost £99. Backfitting is difficult to spot. If you feel a system has merit contact the author and ask for a thirty day free trial. The GENERAL RULE that applies to all tipster forecasts is IF IT LOOKS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE – THEN IT IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE – LEAVE IT ALONE
The Address List Scam – Take a list of addresses and divide it into three or four. Select a reasonable race and send one of the first four favourites to each of the separate lists as a “free selection”. When one of the horses wins follow up that leg with an offer of another three selections from the same “insider informant” for a £100. The con man now has his money and can follow up with anything in the next few days.
False accounting – this type of scam is rife and goes along the lines “Last week we had winners at 5/1, 6/1, 11/4 and 3/1, what they forget to tell you is that they also tipped six other horses that lost.
Bet for us – this is a total rip off and usually commences along the lines “We are so successful with our bets that the bookmakers will no longer take our bets – when we send you our selections please put £50 on for yourself and £50 for us”. If the selection wins you are invoiced at £50 x SP for the winnings, If it loses you take the full £100 loss. Avoid these scams like the plague. Gullible punters have lost hundreds and thousands of pounds on these bets by chasing their losses. If contacted by phone sound all enthusiastic and then ask them to send you a betting bank of thee thousand pounds of their money to offset potential losses – that will be the last yoy will hear from them.
Insider information – this is the oldest scams in the business. The informer claims to have contacts in leading stables with staff whom he pays good money to, for inside information. In my experience stable staff and jockeys are among the worst tipsters in the business.
Can you believe what you read – generally no in this business. I did believe up until this week that screen shots of Betfair in E books were accurate. News reaches my desk this week that a fraudulent site is selling downloads of the Betfair grid to which the recipient can add his own runners, odds and race titles. I suppose the only defence is to check results with the Racing Post Site.
Some Noteable Failures
I recall a few years ago Lester Piggot putting up 22 successive losers before the northern based tipping service who retained him dispensed with his services.
Mel Collier who was leading tipster “Pricewise” on The Racing Post left to become a private tipster charging £1500 a year. He laid a long line of duck eggs and crawled back to the RP as a general columnist and forecaster and is still no good.
The Melchior System lost hundreds of pounds for each of its clients when they introduced their bet on six second favourites a day plan. Their staking plan was niaive as were their selections and they are no longer in business.
Colin Davey – must have the thickest brass neck in the business. Started out charging £3000 for a days seminar when he found a supposed pattern in racehorses training cycles that would produce winners. When that fell apart he became a bookie and offered his clients special terms, then went out of business after asking the clients not to bet with him. Still around sending out mail shots on the bet for us basis.
Derek Thompson – Ch 4 and ATR TV pundit, operates a daily premium rate phone line service. Punters recently writing in the Betfair Forum who have tracked his results and report losses all round
Racing Post operate a yearly tipster challenge. The winning prize is free advertising in the paper whilst they build a clientelle. Non to my knowledge have ever got past the first few months.
Sophisticated Scams
Two of the cleverest that I have been involved with laterly have been the supposed Helicopter Pilot based at Heliport 8 in Winchester High St. (which turned out to be a convenience postal address). He has defrauded people of many thousands of pounds with his scam. His glossy brochure shows a pilot exiting a helicopter with the famous Irish trainer Aiden O’Brien and other connections. The spiel reads that he is a helicopter pilot running his own charter business, who rubs shoulders with the great and the good in the horse racing business and has valuable inside information on potential winners. The helicopter in shot is not a charter aircraft but the personal runabout of JP McManus, O’Briens boss. I cannot comment further as the case is in the hands of the fraud squad as is the next case
The Guildford Vet – again another high class glossy brochure with a million pound mansion on the front. The story this time is that he is an equine specialist who treats racehorse injuries and is in the know when horses are being given remedial races to run or whether they are being sent out to win. He offers a Lay and Back service accordingly. He is not known by the British Veterinary Soc and trades from a PO Box. Guildford is of course a fairly barren area for stable activity as the centres in the south east are around Newbury and further afield Newmarket. – perhaps he likes driving.
When I get further news on these cases I will post it on our web site
What to look for from a genuine service
Positives
Do they give contactable E mail, phone numbers and addresses.
Is there a results history.
Are they well established.
Do they stand on their results and only charge a month by month fee.
Are there any early membership cancellation charges.
Are their fees reasonable
Do they have credit card / Paypal facilities
Do they have a text service
Do they have a professional web site
Do they offer any additional services
Negatives
They have “a flash” web site
They want subsciptions for three, six or twelve months in advance
They use premium rate phone numbers. Most run up a bill of £5 or more a day which amounts to around £1800 a year
In the next few days we will be adding this to our web site www.iangalbrath.com together with updating day to day information as we receive it.
Whilst visiting our site check check our results. In spite of the worst twelve months weather since Pontius was a Pilot we still managed a 75% strike rate across the board. If you would like details of our rejoin summer offers E mail me at info@iangalbraith.com . Remember our results are based on flat stakes, using a rolling bank will more than double your profits.