Scammer Screenshots Winning Snooker Slip, Robs Rightful Winner
After he learned that he had won £1,300 ($1,651) with a betting slip on the Snooker World Championship, 65-year-old David ‘DJ’ Gardiner was in owe.
The bettor staked £100 ($127) on Kyren Wilson to win the Crucible Crown at odds of +1200.
When Wilson eventually defeated Jak Jones on May 6, Gardiner decided to share the news of his good fortune by posting a picture of his betting slip on the World Snooker Tour’s official Facebook page.
Short-Lived Celebrations
To his despair, Gardiner learned that a scammer had beaten him to it and collected the win that was rightfully his own.
According to the worker at the Coral retail sportsbook that Gardiner visited to redeem his prize, someone else had claimed the winning betting slip just 30 minutes earlier at a sportsbook located more than 100 miles away from them.
As it turned out, the alleged scammer quickly took a screenshot of that ticket and had no problem cashing it in using the barcode in Stoke-on-Trent.
According to CCTV footage, the man scanned the slip, placed a £200 bet from it, then went ahead and cashed out the remaining £1,100.
In an interview for the Daily Mail, Gardiner said he was “mortified” but that, at the same time, he acknowledged that it was his “own fault.”
“It was probably just the excitement getting to me knowing he was about to make the final,” he further explained his gesture, referring to Wilson’s qualification, saying that he had posted the photo when the English pro snooker player “was on the brink of winning his semi-final.”
Players, Urged to Guard Their Tickets Wisely
A spokesperson for Entain, the owner of Coral, urged their customers to “keep their betting slips safe and to not share them with anyone else – either in person or online.”
The unlucky winner also used his story as a warning regarding the dangers of posting betting slips online.
“Everyone is posting pictures of their bets on Facebook,” he explained, “so people need to be aware this can be done.”
Commenting on the individual who took advantage of his naivety and presumably enhanced the image to make sure the barcode would scan properly, Gardiner called him “a clever so and so” who “must have been tech-savvy” as he “clearly knew what he was doing and must have known how the systems work.”
Gardiner, who is an army veteran, was forced to give up his limousine business when he became his now late father’s caretaker four years ago.
He was planning to use the money to get his father’s house ready to sell. He asked Coral to pay the slip as a gesture of goodwill.
However, they declined, a decision that Gardiner considered “disgraceful from a company making millions of pounds.”
Gardiner reported the incident to the police and Action Fraud, the UK’s national reporting center for fraud and cybercrime.
