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NY Racing Issues Archive

NYRA Officials Indicted

Last December, New York state police raided NYRA offices for an investigation into jockey weights. The New York Post reports this morning that NYRA officials, including suspended chief of scales Mario Sclafani, will be indicted today for falsifying jockey weights:

Sources say the indictment claims that officials failed to report the accurate weights of the jockeys before the races and lied about their weights afterward — cheating bettors out of accurate data to make well-informed wagers and allowing “people who knew of the fraud” to have a definite edge when it came to picking winners.

The sources were unable to say whether investigators uncovered hard evidence that the indicted NYRA officials profited directly from betting on “tampered” and “tainted” races.

A spokesman for Spitzer declined comment and wouldn’t reveal which officials were involved. Sources say Spitzer’s probe also targeted Sclafani’s top deputy, Braulio Baeza, a Hall of Fame jockey who won 3,140 races in a 16-year career.

More details: NYRA clerk of scales Mario Sclafani and assistant clerk of scales Braulio Baeza were indicted this afternoon in Saratoga County court on charges of falsely reporting jockey weights (Blood-Horse). The two officials, both suspended from work since January, were immediately fired by NYRA.
The 116-page indictment also names several jockeys as un-indicted co-conspirators:

The indictment alleges Sclafani and Baeza conspired with five prominent jockeys — [Jose] Santos, Robby Albarado, Herberto Castillo Jr., Ariel Smith, and Cornelio Velasquez — on 67 different occasions between June 2004 and December 2004 to allow them to ride when they weighed as much as 15 pounds over* their announced weight.

“Co-conspirator jockeys then rode horses in races and thereby caused the horses to carry in excess of five pounds over the designated weight,” the indictment alleges. “In so doing, the defendants, acting in concert with the co-conspirator jockeys, fraudulently obtained compensation from the owners for riding, and deprived bettors of hundreds of thousands of dollars by misrepresenting the jockey’s weights and thereby tricked said bettors into betting on said horses.”

According to the indictment, the jockeys (including, in addition to the five named above, Aaron Gryder, Pablo Fragoso, Jorge Chavez, and Oscar Gomez) paid Sclafani and Baeza their riding fees for the races in which their overweights were misreported.
The New York Attorney General’s office has issued a press release and the full text of the indictment.
NYRA responds to the indictment: “… NYRA has terminated the employment of former Clerk of Scales Mario Sclafani and former Assistant Clerk of Scales Braulio Baeza effective immediately. NYRA suspended Sclafani and Baeza on January 12 when the allegations first came to light and appointed Timothy D. Kelly as the Acting Clerk of Scales. Since then, the association has instituted a number of reforms, including the use of digital scales at each of its three racetracks…. In providing background to today’s announcement, NYRA President and CEO Charles E. Hayward emphasized the association’s role in initiating the investigation and its ongoing commitment to complete transparency to ensure the integrity of racing.”

Posted in NY Racing Issues on September 21, 2005

Odds & Ends

A “secret group” has sent a letter to the US Attorney’s office urging that NYRA be prosecuted:

The group, whose identity is not being disclosed, said in a letter sent by its lawyer July 21 that NYRA has continued to operate in questionable and suspect ways — despite being under the terms of a strict deferred prosecution arrangement for more than a year (Blood-Horse)

Not so very coincidentally, the unidentified group is interested in bidding on the NYRA franchise.
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I know the story of the investigation into Wild Desert’s whereabouts before the Queen’s Plate is a couple of days old, but I love this Bobby Frankel quote:

“I don’t know anything about it,” Frankel said. “They asked me to run the horse in my name in Canada. That’s what I did. That’s all I know” (Daily Racing Form)

Ok.
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This sounds familiar …

The new system, called the “FTBOA Chase to the Championship” rewards points for top-three finishes in for Breeders’ Cup races, graded stakes wins, races on Florida’s signature racing days, including the Florida Million, Florida Cup, Florida Stallion Stakes series, and Sunshine Millions, open-company stakes with purses of $40,000 and over, as well as group and listed races included in Part I of the of the International Cataloging Standards and International Statistics booklet…. The Florida-bred with the most points in each division on December 31 is deemed divisional champion (Thoroughbred Times).

Afleet Alex leads the three-year-old division and all categories overall in the new Florida standings. Just as he does in these standings.

Posted in NY Racing Issues on July 22, 2005

Shakeup at NYRA

“Charles Hayward, the president and CEO of the New York Racing Association, announced four major personnel changes Thursday intended to give the beleaguered franchise a ‘fresh approach’” (Daily Racing Form). Racing secretary Mike Lakow, chief veterinarian Dr. Celeste Kunz, and vice president of human resources and labor relations Ralph Chetcuti were fired by Hayward. Steward David Hicks retired. Hayward were circumspect in his comments on the changes:

All these people made significant contributions. Mike Lakow is one of the preeminent racing secretaries in the country. I have no desire to say anything negative about these people. The fact I fired them is the result of the evaluations of how they fit into what we’re trying to accomplish moving forward (New York Post).

Trainer Bobby Frankel, always good for an inappropriate quote, told the Post, “It’s a disgrace. They owe us an explanation. It’s like the Gestapo, they just chop your head off. It’s not right.”
Mike Lakow has been replaced by assistant racing secretary P.J. Campo. Dr. Kunz, best known for saving Charismatic after he broke down in the 1999 Belmont Stakes, was replaced by Dr. Anthony Verderosa.

Posted in NY Racing Issues on July 15, 2005

Recommendations from Friends

Friends of New York Racing is releasing its first study of the New York racing industry on Monday, and will recommend that the “three major thoroughbred racetracks should be run as a business for profit in partnership with the state, all off-track betting outlets should be folded into the enterprise, and video lottery terminals should be allowed at Belmont Park.” Friends of New York Racing estimates that replacing NYRA with such a model would attract capital investment of up to $1 billion and produce more than $6 billion for education in 10 years, in addition to assuring racing’s future in the state. How very sensible — which means, what chance in Albany? (New York Times)

Posted in NY Racing Issues on June 26, 2005

Speeding Up the Process

New York governor George Pataki is pushing a proposal to speed up the bidding process for NYRA. “In the final hours of the New York legislature’s 2005 session, a whole series of racing bills are being debated behind closed doors at the state Capitol, including a Pataki proposal to move to July 1 from Dec. 1 the date for the appointment of a nine-member panel charged with beginning the NYRA franchise bidding process.” Interesting. (Blood-Horse)
6/24 Addition: Pataki’s proposal passes. NYRA gets an oversight board, and the formation of the committee to handle the bidding process for the New York racing franchise has been moved up to July 1 from December 1.
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This opening sentence from a Los Angeles Times article says it all about Belmont’s persistent short field problem this spring:

The five horses running in today’s seventh race at Belmont Park, a $50,000 overnight handicap at six furlongs, are better than average New York breds.

Only 34 days to go until Saratoga opens …

Posted in NY Racing Issues on June 23, 2005

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