PA Racetrack Employee And Horse Trainers Indicted For Wire Fraud

Last week, federal prosecutors in the Middle District of Pennsylvania filed an indictment against a Penn National Racetrack employee and several horse trainers. 

The three trainers who were indicted and arrested are accused of wire fraud and attempted wire fraud, among other things.  In particular, the indictments allege that the horse trainers had attempted to defraud or had defrauded those wagering on thoroughbred horse races by injecting (or attempting to inject horses) with foreign substances that could affect the horses’ performance.  Based on the indictments, it appears that two of the trainers were detected injecting or attempting to inject horses but that racing officials had scratched the horses from their races.  The third horse trainer, who also owned horses, has been accused of administering foreign substances to horses racing from 2008 through February 2012.  

Prosecutors also arrested a “clocker” at Penn National Racetrack, who is tasked with recording the distances and times of each horse’s workout during training hours.  The indictment alleges that the employee “would accept money from trainers . . . to provide false workout times for the trainers’ horses by entering times that were faster than or slower than the horse actually worked, or to enter a completely false workout time for a horse that did not workout at all at the track.”  These false times were then placed in the daily racing program made available to the betting public.