£2m loss gambler on drugs charges

Feb 21 2008 The Journal

A COMPULSIVE gambler who is suing William Hill for more than £2m in the High Court is on bail for firearms and drugs charges, police have confirmed.

Greyhound trainer Graham Calvert, 28, claims the bookmakers allowed him to place bets when he had twice asked them to close his account – a process known as “self-exclusion” – as he battled with gambling addiction.

A Northumbria Police spokeswoman said Mr Calvert is on bail awaiting trial.

“Graham Calvert, 28, of Sedgeletch Road, Sedgeletch, in Houghton has been charged with firearms offences and associated drugs offences and is scheduled to appear at Newcastle Crown Court on a date to be fixed,” she said.

Mr Calvert wants William Hill to pay back £2.1m in losses accrued between June and December 2006 on the grounds that they failed in their “duty of care”.

During that period he alleges the bookies allowed him to open two new accounts and to make bets totalling around £3.5m. He lost around £347,000 when he backed the USA to win the 2006 Ryder Cup.

His solicitors, Newcastle-based Ward Hadaway, say the case is a crucial test of the betting industry’s social responsibility policies. Anneliese Day, representing Calvert, told Mr Justice Briggs that William Hill should be held liable because it failed to operate its own policy.

This was designed to protect problem or pathological gamblers which make up just 0.8% of the 25% of the population who place bets.

She said: “What in fact occurred was that William Hill actively monitored and manipulated the claimant’s gambling disorder in order to gain as much revenue for their business as possible.”

She said Mr Calvert was hoping to establish in law for the first time that bookies do owe a duty of care in his circumstances.

“On the facts of the claimant’s case, not only were his requests for self-exclusion incompetently implemented – in contrast to all the other major bookmakers who the claimant asked to exclude him and who adhered to this request – but William Hill also negligently sought to encourage the claimant to go on betting sprees of hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time, with greater and greater sums of money and in circumstances strictly controlled by them to ensure maximum revenue.”

She said the scale of her client’s gambling was “staggering“ – during periods of mania when he placed huge multiple bets in the space of a few hours.

Miss Day said her client, who ended up borrowing money to fund his habit, was an accomplished greyhound trainer who ran the family business from a farm in County Durham.

He was once “comfortably well-off” and had been involved in gambling for most of his life.

Miss Day said she would be calling psychiatrists to give evidence during the five-day hearing to describe how Mr Calvert had become a “pathological gambler” which is recognised as a mental disorder.

Cross-examined by Justin Fenwick QC, Mr Calvert agreed his case was that he had never gambled because of financial needs and he did it for the “buzz’’. He agreed he had given evidence lodged in court that between 2000 and 2005 he made £50,000 a year profit from gambling.

He said: “I didn’t get involved in any sport I did not know about until telephone gambling came in and that is when it became a problem.

“On the courses I would stake a maximum of £1,000 and I was betting on the sport I knew about.

“But then the bookmakers started placing a limit on my bets on greyhounds so I started betting on other sports.

“I realised I had a problem and I tried to ban myself from doing it. I was dealing in obscene amounts of money.”

His gambling finally came to an end in 2006 “because I had no access to money”, he said.

He said that since then he had given up gambling completely.

The case continues.