Bogus Betting System Scammer Jailed For 5 years

Saturday June 1, 2013 : ‘KING OF BETFAIR' COMES SHORT
 
5 years in prison will be a chance to reflect on conning family friends out of GBP 400,000
 
Twenty-six-year-old Elliott Short, who claimed to be the King of Betfair  after convincing family friends to sink GBP 400,000 into his bogus betting system on the betting exchange was jailed for five years this week.
 
It was the end of a rich lifestyle built on fraud that saw Short chauffeured around in a Mercedes, staying at upmarket hotels, clubbing it large in London nightspots, holidaying overseas and spending big on fashionable clothes from top retailers.
 
Short boasted that he could make extremely high returns using his bogus ‘system' on Betfair, a Southwark crown court heard. But the system never worked and Betfair said Short quoted impossible figures.
 
The fraudster even managed to dupe the News of the World into running a story about his gambling success, convincing reporters he had netted more than GBP 21 million from his system. The newspaper had the embarrassment of having to subsequently publish a retraction.
 
After a jury convicted Short, Judge Peter Testar did not mince his words in condemning the fraudster, saying he had "lied shamefully through his teeth" in conning money from his victims.