Jury shown ‘trail’ of phone records and account details
By coming third on the 2/1 favourite Goodwood Spirit during an evening race in August 2004, the jockey made nearly £30,000 for Miles Rodgers, the court heard.
Using a telephone chart, details of a text message, a Racing Post race card and a chart of Betfair account details, Jonathan Caplan QC explained to the trial how the conspiracy was allegedly carried out.
It is claimed that Rodgers, alleged to be at the centre of the conspiracy, “laid the horse” — that is, bet on it to lose — on the online betting exchange Betfair.
He laid a total of £117,000 on Goodwood Spirit, winning about £30,000 when it lost, Mr Caplan claimed.
“The prosecution alleges that Mr Rodgers’s confidence to lay the horse for that amount of money came from the mobile telephone contact he had with others in the conspiracy — in this case Mr Fallon through the intermediary Philip Sherkle.”
Jurors were shown a mobile phone chart which allegedly detailed a 17-second call at 11.43am on August 14, 2004, from Sherkle’s mobile to Fallon.
Another call from Sherkle to Fallon, lasting one minute and 28 seconds, followed at 12.04pm, the jury was told.
There was then a text message from the jockey’s mobile to Sherkle at 12.08pm, followed by a text from Sherkle to Rodgers a minute later.
The latter message, recovered from Rodgers’s mobile, read “6.55 no 4 n”.
Mr Caplan said that “6.55” referred to the time of the race at Goodwood while “no 4” referred to the number on the race card in the Racing Post that morning — not the number on the stall — and “n” meant “non-tryer”.
It is alleged this was the same message Fallon had sent to Sherkle a minute before, forwarded to Rodgers.
