Meet the ‘baby-faced assassin’ gambler who won £500,000 off the bookies after backing his own horse at 100-1
YOU will do well to find a punter who has stung the bookies as sharply as Patrick Veitch.
Nicknamed the ‘baby-faced assassin’, Veitch truly made it pay with one of his own horses.
A maths boffin, Veitch used his brain to get the edge on the bookies in an ever one-sided game.
The one-time Cambridge student is believed to have won over £10million over the years. And that’s just pure profit.
Veitch often travelled to the racecourse in his private helicopter and quickly built up a collection of supercars and London flats.
But Veitch’s biggest pay day came with one of his own horses when Exponential won at Nottingham.
The horse finished last on its first start at Beverley. He was sent off at 25-1 and finished a massive 17 lengths behind the eventual winner.
But Veitch knew that wasn’t his true showing. Unfortunately for the bookies, they didn’t.
Exponential’s work at home had improved two-fold and the 100-1 price the horse opened up at was too good to turn down.
His military-men on the ground – those used up and down the country to get his bets on in black-listed bookies – quickly went to work.
The price quickly shrunk into 8-1 as the money piled on. The rest, as they say, is history.
Ladbrokes reported a loss of £160,000 and Veitch is believed to have won around half-a-million.
On the track Veitch always seemed to be in front.
But off it he faced a number of dramas.
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As you’d expect for someone in his line of ‘work’, Veitch rubbed someone up the wrong way.
He turned up on his doorstep one evening with what was described as a ‘large’ colleague demanding £70,000 cash which Veitch had supposedly made this man lose out on.
If he didn’t pay, he’d lose his legs.
But Veitch didn’t play ball, he went to ground and eventually managed to take the incident to court.
After giving evidence behind bulletproof glass, the men were eventually jailed.
These days you hear little from Veitch although he is supposedly still involved, very much behind the scenes.
And it’s characters like Veitch who keep the bookies awake at night.
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- Establishes time and monetary limits before playing
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- Never chase their losses
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