Three former college fraternity brothers executed what is considered the largest betting scandal in American sports history, netting over $3. 1 million at the 2002 Breeders Cup by exploiting a critical flaw in the horse racing betting system. The scheme was masterminded by Chris Harn, a senior computer programmer at Autotote, a company that processed approximately 65% of North America’s horse racing wagers at the time. Harn, a Drexel University graduate and member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, had high-level security access to the systems he helped design.
The plot began when Harn discovered uncashed winning tickets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in his company’s computer system. Since Autotote employees were disqualified from wagering and Harn was a familiar figure at racetracks, he enlisted the help of two fraternity brothers to cash the tickets without raising suspicion. Harn first approached his former roommate, Glenn DaSilva of New York. DaSilva slipped duplicate tickets with serial numbers from unclaimed winners into betting machines at New York-area racetracks, collecting about $6,000 within a month.
The friends split the winnings, and DaSilva used his share to fund a lavish lifestyle across Los Angeles, Miami, and Las Vegas. Concerned about being tracked when the original ticket owners showed up to claim their winnings, Harn developed a more ambitious plan targeting the Ultra Pick Six at the Breeders Cup, the richest day in American horse racing. The bet requires picking the winners of six consecutive races, making it extremely difficult to hit. Harn discovered a critical flaw in Autotote’s operations: a half-hour delay between the end of the second or fourth race and when live wagers were forwarded to company headquarters in Newark, Delaware.
This window allowed him to manipulate bets after race results were known but before they were officially recorded. The group selected Catskill Off-Track Betting Corporation in Pomona, New York, as their target because it had weak security, did not require bettors to be physically present to open accounts, and did not maintain transaction history files or audio recordings of phone bets. Harn enlisted another fraternity brother, Derrick Davis of Baltimore, to open an account and place the wagers. On October 3, 2002, the partners conducted a dry run at Balmoral Park, netting $80,000 on a Pick Four wager.
Two days later, they repeated the pattern at Belmont Park, winning $100,000 on a Pick Six jackpot. Both test runs went undetected. On October 26, 2002, the Breeders Cup World Thoroughbred Championships were held at Arlington Park in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Though Harn was not scheduled to work that day, he entered his office at Autotote under the guise of working and remotely ejected the backup tape at Catskill before the first race to cover his tracks.
As the fourth race went underway, Harn hacked into the system and altered Davis’s original bet to reflect the actual winners of the first four races. For the final two races, he employed a tactic known as “betting the wheel,” selecting every horse in each race to guarantee a win. Davis’s initial bet of $1,152 won a staggering $3,638,121. 60 in total winnings before taxes, plus an additional 108 consolation tickets worth $466.
25 each. Two of the four horses Davis selected were significant long shots: Volponi won the Classic at 43-to-1 odds, and another long shot paid $54 to win. The nature of the bet drew immediate attention. Most savvy bettors spread their selections to increase winning chances, but Davis selected only one horse for the first four races and played the same ticket six times over.
Unusual factors included that all bets were placed through a small operation like Catskill, and Davis opened his account only the week before the race, with the winning tickets being his first bets. Tom Santola, the New York State Wagering Board’s audits director, was alerted by the head of the OTB where Davis’s tickets were purchased about a peculiar wagering combination that had surfaced weeks prior. The OTB executive was referring to DaSilva’s Pick Six win at Belmont. Investigators discovered that both winners had shared the same address years earlier at the Drexel University fraternity house, where Harn also lived.
The New York Racing Association launched a full investigation and ordered Arlington Park and Catskill not to pay out Davis’s winnings. The New York State Police, FBI, and the U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York joined the investigation.
Autotote was approached and immediately suspected an inside job, leading to questioning of all employees in Newark. Investigators quickly discovered that Harn was in the office on the day of the race despite not being scheduled to work. They found that he had the password and access to the system and had tapped into the system to alter Davis’s ticket after the first four races. Harn was fired after failing to provide a plausible explanation for his actions.
Authorities seized computers from Autotote and Harn’s house while subpoenaing his phone records, discovering numerous call exchanges between Davis and Harn, as well as witnesses who saw Harn logged into the Catskill website while on the phone. The most damning evidence was an email Harn sent to DaSilva on October 25, the day before the Breeders Cup, asking DaSilva to send checks of $6,500 and $225,000 to pay off Harn’s car loan and second mortgage. Bob Bork, president of Sam Houston Race Park, expressed concern about the scam’s impact, calling it “a little scary” and “obviously a huge concern for everyone in the business. ” A source from the National Thoroughbred Racing Association called it an isolated case but acknowledged uncertainty about what else might be found.
On November 12, Harn, Davis, and DaSilva were each charged with one count of wire fraud in White Plains, New York. U. S. Attorney James Comey portrayed the scheme as a “21st century version of The Sting.
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Facing up to seven years in prison and separation from his wife and young daughter, Harn entered guilty pleas and confessed everything. He admitted to rigging the Breeders Cup bet, the test runs with DaSilva, and revealed the scheme to cash bogus tickets using serial numbers from unclaimed winning tickets. On November 20, Harn pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and computer fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He admitted to rigging the Breeders Cup, Balmoral, and Belmont bets, and admitted to fraudulently collecting $992,500 through his duplicate ticket scheme.
On December 11, DaSilva pleaded guilty to similar charges but claimed he didn’t know Davis was part of the scheme and never participated in the Breeders Cup bet. The next day, Davis pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and gave up all claims to the money. On March 20, 2003, Harn was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison. Davis received 37 months, and DaSilva received 2 years.
DaSilva and Harn were ordered to pay back $189,000 in restitution, while Davis and Harn were asked to return $155,000. The $3. 1 million payoff was eventually split among 78 people who had correctly picked five of the six races, each receiving $39,000 plus their $4,600 consolation prizes. The National Thoroughbred Racing Association formed a technology task force to examine how to protect the parimutuel system.
The group hired Ernst & Young to evaluate tote security and implemented measures including software to scan all wagering pools involving multi-race wagers, installation of software to record all wagers through telephone accounts, and review of winning simulcast wagers involving multiple-leg bets by relevant racing organizations. Years later, DaSilva granted an exclusive television interview to discuss his role in the scheme that rocked the betting world, marking the first time a principal player in the scandal agreed to such an interview.