The bet-rigging scandal roiling thoroughbred racing is the latest scam to afflict a sport once known as much for its scoundrels as its stars. There are famous cases of jockeys on the take, of fast horses being disguised as slow ones, and even highly pedigreed horses being killed for insurance money.
But the most infamous flimflam in racing -- at least in recent times -- may be one that didn't happen at all. It was the fictional con that formed the heart of the 1973 movie, The Sting.
The hit movie won seven Academy Awards, including best picture. Its ragtime soundtrack briefly revived Scott Joplin's music, and the pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford is considered one of the best acting duets in Hollywood history.
Among racing aficionados, though, it is the running of a "past-post" scam for which the film is best remembered. Betting after a race has begun, or past the time when the horses have left the starting post, is a time-honored crime.
In fact, the latest racing scandal is a variation on this theme. Christopher Harn, 29, of Newark, Del., a programmer for a company that makes most of the computer systems used by racetracks, recently pleaded guilty to digitally changing the bets of two former fraternity brothers after the races had been run. He replaced losing bets with winning ones, which would have resulted in more than $3 million in payoffs -- if he hadn't gotten caught.
When the programmer and his accomplices were charged last month, U.S. Attorney James B. Comey referred to the movie at a press conference in the federal courthouse in White Plains, N.Y.
Asked if he thought Hollywood would take an interest, Comey replied: "The movie was already made, but with much better-looking people -- Paul Newman and Robert Redford."
Comey noted the similarities between the sting at the heart of The Sting and the case he was prosecuting. Both involved taking advantage of a delay between when a race is run and when the bets are made.
Harn figured out that wagers made on the outcome of several consecutive races are stored by a computer and transmitted to a central hub for sorting only after most of the races have been run. That gave him plenty of time to break into the system with his password and electronically change the bets on the early races (his alleged confederates bet all the horses in the final races).
In the movie, the grifters played by Newman and Redford set up a faux off-track betting operation in a rented warehouse in Chicago. In 1936, the year the movie is set, off-track betting was illegal and conducted in just this way. Gamblers gathered in back rooms to wager and follow the races via a ticker news wire that transmitted results.
Because they bet among themselves, with the winners divvying up the pot, or pool, of bets, these operations came to be known as pool halls. Later, the term was applied to billiards.
The movie actually involved a scam within a scam. The victim, a mobster, was told that a Western Union employee was phoning an accomplice with the outcome of races as they were received in the telegraph office, but before they were forwarded over the wire to the pool halls. This gave the accomplice a minute or two to place a bet on the winner. That's scam No. 1.
The operation, however, was an elaborate ruse that tricked the mobster into making and losing a $500,000 bet. That was scam No. 2, the "sting."
Therein lies the biggest difference between the movie and real life. In true Hollywood style, Redford's and Newman's characters got away with their sting -- and the money. Harn could get up to 25 years in federal prison.