{"id":141131,"date":"2025-09-16T12:36:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T12:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/141131\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T12:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T12:36:07","slug":"gang-posed-as-detectives-to-con-horse-racing-scam-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/141131\/","title":{"rendered":"Gang posed as detectives to con horse racing scam victims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One woman, who had lost about \u00a320,000 in a gambling fraud several years earlier, ended up paying the gang more than \u00a382,500 after meeting them in Birmingham, the judge said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A 79-year-old man, who had also lost about \u00a320,000 in an earlier scam, gave the fraudsters \u00a36,680, while a woman was &#8220;pressured&#8221; into paying them more than \u00a321,000, the court heard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A fourth victim, who had lost \u00a3183,000 in a horse racing scam, met the fraudsters at the Belfry Hotel in Sutton Coldfield but was &#8220;suspicious&#8221; and refused to give them any money, &#8220;despite persistent attempts&#8221; to get her to do so, the judge said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Call and Palmer would sometimes arrive in a Bentley loaned to them by Ratcliffe, who was jailed for 14 years in January 2024 for drug offences and a further two years three months in February this year for cheating the public revenue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;That car gave the appearance of success and wealth thereby encouraging the victims to participate by increasing the level of trust placed in the perpetrators,&#8221; Judge Laird said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One woman, who had lost about \u00a320,000 in a gambling fraud several years earlier, ended up paying the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-141131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}