Punters by Aaron Rogan

Author:Aaron Rogan [Rogan, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-09-24T12:00:00+00:00

12

Tony10

The higher-ups usually only visited the trading room during the Cheltenham Festival when the buzz of the biggest week in Paddy Power’s year electrified the cramped offices on Airton Road. Staff were gripped by fever as traders’ and risk managers’ screens filled with data showing the thousands of bets being processed every second while everyone watched the races on the televisions mounted on the walls around the room. The mid-March week was always high stakes for Paddy Power with millions spent on marketing and sweaty palms among traders who knew that a run of Irish winners could send the share price tumbling.

But this wasn’t Cheltenham. It was a supposedly normal Thursday in June 2011 with a run-of-the-mill racing itinerary at Leopardstown, Yarmouth and Haydock. Nothing to get excited about really, so there was confusion among the racing trading staff about why manager Colm Sevastopulo’s office was crammed with people from the other side of the building. Dermot Golden, the head of risk, looked tenser than usual. It was becoming increasingly clear that the visit from board members and other senior figures from the corporate side of the business was due to something serious. And it was.

Tony10 had gone missing.

Tony O’Reilly, the biggest gambler on Paddy Power’s books, had been a figure of fascination among traders because of his massive stakes on an increasingly random range of markets from Norwegian women’s football to obscure Eastern European tennis tournaments. Tony10’s modus operandi seemed to be driven only by backing the favourite in the next event that was coming up. It didn’t matter if it was televised or if the sport was covered in the Irish press – in fact it usually wasn’t.

On some days Tony10’s betting could account for more than half of the turnover on Paddy Power’s sportsbook, more than any other single gambler in the company’s client list, which was quite an achievement for the man they knew to be a post office worker with a modest home just outside Carlow town.

It was decided that alerts would be sent to shop staff with a picture of Paddy Power’s biggest customer along with an order that they contact head office immediately if he was spotted in-store. Back in Tallaght, the IT staff were told to monitor his account for any activity, and anyone in customer service or any other department who got a call from O’Reilly was told to act normally and not to spook him in any way. Under no circumstances should anyone alter or erase his account – the Gardaí had served a search warrant.

The desks for traders were arranged in a square with so little room between them that if two traders pushed their chairs out to get up at the same time they might crash into each other. The rumours of what was going on filtered out fast.

As Tony10’s reputation as a high-staking punter grew in the previous months, the fascination with him grew across Paddy Power and curious traders decided to search for the address on his account to see where he lived.

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