A 77-year-old William Hill customer has been robbed of £15k in gambling winnings as he was preparing to leave a betting shop in Cardiff on Saturday morning. The elderly punter, who was said to be a regular customer of the Cowbridge Road East shop, had reportedly just finished counting up his winnings at the counter when two young men accosted him inside the shop and made off with the big bag o’ cash.
While a Hills spokesman told Wales Online that the firm was unable to comment on the situation while the police investigation was ongoing, he suggested that Hills would be “working with the Association of British Bookmakers to determine the right course of action,” which could include offering a reward for info leading to the thieves’ arrest. Not surprisingly, police said the elderly punter was “very distressed” by the incident.
A robbery of a different sort has left a different UK pensioner out a whopping £1m payday. The anonymous punter had placed a £1, 15-match Football Jackpot accumulator with bookies Coral, and his blood pressure must have been reaching dangerous levels after 14 of the necessary matches went his way. Then West Bromwich Albion’s Gareth McAuley spoiled the party by heading the ball into the Fulham goal in injury time, giving West Brom the equalizer and giving the old man a head start on a massive ulcer. While the unnamed punter still earned nearly £31k for his near-perfect prognostication, it’s not a bloody million, is it?
Coral were involved in another recent accumulator near-miss, and while the amount wasn’t anywhere near a million, the circumstances have left the punter a good deal more steamed. Bristol native Oshane Grant had wagered £100 on the likelihood of Argentina, France and Serbia each scoring three or more goals in their most recent World Cup qualifiers, and when each side performed as expected, the unemployed 42-year-old Grant was eager to collect his £9,250 winnings. That’s when Coral informed Grant their clerk had mistakenly offered him odds on the teams scoring four or more goals, and thus his winning wager was worth only £1.2k (the three-goal odds). A Coral spokesman said it sympathized with Grant’s dilemma, but that it had no intention of reversing its decision. That said, Coral said Grant had the right to contest their decision via the Independent Betting Adjudication Service, whose verdict Coral promised to observe.
