"TURF CROOKS"

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 1210, 7 January 1925, Page 11

"TURF CROOKS"

CAUGHT BY GIRL. BOOKMAKER CHEATED BY WHISTLING CODE. Two notorious English Turf swindlers, who have preyed upon the racing public for years, were brought to book recently. They are Arthur Montin and Charles Arthur Street, wbo were sentenced at Hereford Assizes to nine months' imprisonment for defrauding a Hereford bookmaker. Although both men bad long been known as shady characters of the Turf,, they had hitherto managed to keep out of the clutches of the law. It was through the astuteness of a girl telephone operator at the HereFord post office that the two men were brought to justice. They put up at different hotels in Hereford'and pretended to be strangers to each other, while they were engaged in a conspiracy of fraud. BARREL ORGiN TRICK. ». One of tho men obtained the results of races over the telephone, and the other placed the bets with a local bookmaker, who was induced to accept them because he thought that the backer, having been in his company all the time, could not possibly know the result. These, however, were conveyed to him by his confederate whistling according to a prearranged code—a variant of an old trick that was exploited for years by a notorious Turf crook, who arranged with an accomplice to hire a barrel organ. The two arranged that each tune of the barrel organ's repertoire indicated that a certain horse had won. Montin and Street placed winning bets with the Hereford bookmaker for over £IOOO, but a girl telephone operator overheard the results of races being telephoned to one of the men. Her suspicious were aroused, and the information she supplied led to their arrest. Montin, who is 55 years of age, and has been known as Maxmillan Matts, Arthur Williams, and many other aliases, has long been under suspicion for "back-coding" frauds. This particular swindle is worked by obtaining the result of a race, and then telegraphing bets on the horse, making it appear that the telegram was handed in before the time of the race. PREPARED TELEGRAMS. Two years ago the Turf Guardian Society investigated a case in which he was concerned. A sum of over £IOOO was obtained from bookmakers by back-coding, but when the swindle was unmasked the money was returned. A batch of betting telegrams were prepared with spaces left blank for the insertion of the name of the winning horse. - The telegrams were typewritten, and stamps were prepared with the same type and the same ink for each of the horses in the race. Arrangements' were made to obtain the result of the race over the telephone, and when it was known the appropriate stamp was selected and used. When the originals of the telegrams were 'inspected the trick was discovered, because in the haste to stamp the forms several of the impressions were smudged. Street, who is alias L. Hunt, and 53 years af age, also has a bad record. He has often been reported as a defaulter, and has run several bogus bookmaking businesses.