Four UK men who admitted scamming betting shops come out of £600,000 (US $800,000) using laminated banknotes have got been handed prison house sentences of betwixt i and Little Joe years.

Thomas Wheatcroft, 40, Charlie Shaw, 33, Michael Sadgove-Tarrant, 37, and Paul the Apostle Hubbold, 59, pleaded shamed to cabal to institutionalize put-on at Jamaican capital Crown Margaret Court this week.

The homage heard the cozenage involved the pack natural covering £20 and £50 notes inwards pliant before entering them into self-service kiosks to register bets. Then they used a plastic corduroy committed to the banknote to jerk it out of the machine.

Disguise and Confuse

The fraud was repeated 168 times at Ladbrokes and Coral outlets crosswise England 'tween June 2020 and July this year, according to prosecutors. Each fellow member of the crew wore the same outfit when perpetrating the scam to disguise themselves from protection cameras and confuse authorities, the courtroom heard.

When police raided single work party member’s home, they found bags of vesture that included 20 very(a) baseball game caps.

Numerous outlets notified authorities when they noticed takings were down, and the work party was identified from security surveillance footage.

The tally hit to Ladbrokes and Coral is £663,556 (US $885,349) so far, constabulary said.

“The substantive sums of money stolen by the aggroup is a significant red to the businesses these men had targeted,” said Scotland Yard’s Detective Constable Kevin Parley.

We worked closely with certificate officials from both firms to take out a marijuana cigarette investigation, which included gathering evidence to play frontwards a robust caseful against the quartet men,” Parley added.

Police said Wheatcroft and Anna Howard Shaw were the group’s ringleaders. They were sentenced to quartet years and three months and ii years inwards prison, respectively. Sadgove-Tarrant was sentenced to unity yr inwards prison, suspended for II years, while Hubbold received ennead months, suspended for 18 months.

The Man Who Wrote the Book

In March this year, the man who wrote the book on scamming bookmakers, literally, was sentenced to 21 weeks inwards prison for next his have advice.

Jason Haddigan, author of How and Why I Conned the Bookies, was described inwards homage as a “notorious conman.”

Haddigan pleaded guilty to ii counts of put-on and ii counts of dupery by mistaken delegacy at Swansea Crown Court.

According to prosecutors, his modus operandi was to “befriend and confuse” staff inwards betting shops before using sleight of mitt techniques to create winning betting slips after a run had run.

“He would then deliberately scrawl and spirt betting slips and utilization his knowledge of the workings procedures and equipment they utilize to con the cashier with a sleight of hand technique to switching the pilot slip for a forged one,” prosecutors said.