Columnists
The Big Super Bowl Heist
You know that certain people inhabit a different world when you read stories like the one in last Monday’s Globe and Mail. According to the article, the $500,000 pot from a $5,000- per-entry Super Bowl pool organized by Bay Street trading types has gone missing. An entry to the game is hotly sought after—a sign that you are running with the wolves.
There are four prizes: $50,000 for holding the winning score at the end of each of the first and third quarters; $100,000 for being in the winning position at the end of the first half; and $300,000 for the end of the game winner. No skill is brought to the game by the players; each is assigned a score in advance. But there is a one in 25 chance that you will be a winner of at least 10 times your investment, making the odds better than making money in the stock market.
Contributions to the pool were collected by someone who went from brokerage to brokerage collecting stacks of fifty hundred-dollar bills, storing them in a knapsack until the big event. Rumour has it that the funds were being kept at a house in Mississauga when they were stolen, and that the house was trashed in the process.
So the organizer went to the police, right? Well, not exactly. As one police spokesperson put it “I think we would remember that call” if the police had been notified of the theft of such a large sum. Why? Partly embarrassment. Partly wanting to keep the lid on in case the pool was illegal. And partly indifference; after all, the pot was only half a mill; each participant was only out five thousand bucks, and hadn’t really lost anything because they had their chance at the big prizes and simply didn’t win. Besides, many participants had resold portions of their stakes down to the tenth of a stake, or $500—chump change. Even the $300,000 grand prize winner is reported to have been “never angry over what played out.”
However, the looted contest has now attracted publicity, all of it the wrong kind. Who would clamour for an invitation to join in the prestigious and exclusive bettors’ club if they knew there was a possibility that their stake would vanish into thin air? Who would place money for investment with someone who allowed it to happen? And isn’t the aggregate stolen pot of $500,000 large enough by any reasonable measure to warrant a police investigation?
The organizer of the event has stepped up and offered to compensate the unlucky winners who couldn’t get paid. He has proposed to pay them a quarter of their winnings each year for the next four years, at the same time as reducing the grand prize by $100,000 each to make up the difference—thereby making everyone whole in the end and leaving no-one with frustrated expectations. And true to Bay Street form, making good on the promise is creatively financed using other people’s money.
So who made off with the money, and who tipped them off that it was available? You can insert your own joke here about Bay Street being a den of thieves and everybody therefore being a suspect: no participants were drawn from cloistered Ursuline sisters or orders of Buddhist monks. You almost hope that the thief doesn’t get caught and turns out to have been some latter day Robin Hood who steals from the rich and gives to the poor and homeless. Who knows, perhaps they could sell the movie rights in the escapade to Arnold Schwarzenegger and recover enough to compensate everyone—perhaps even turn a profit. I’m sure, it being Bay Street, that if there is a way to do so, it will be found.
It’s quite a contrast to the gaming life in the County. Here, high stakes amount to putting five bucks into the 50-50 draw and winning back $85—which custom tells you to donate back immediately to the charity holding the draw. And no one would think of stealing the pot; if they did, they’d be turned in straight away. The only property crime reported by the OPP for the County in 2019 is a theft under $5,000 at the Picton LCBO. Police arrested an 18-year-old Picton man. I doubt the same person pulled off the Super Bowl heist: the Super Bowl thief would not have chosen a bottle of liquor in Prince Edward County for his dry run.
And if you want serious big bucks betting and can’t garner an invitation to the Bay Street Super Bowl event, consider yourself fortunate. Your best bet is to head to the casinos at Belleville or Gananoque. The house almost always wins, but at least the house has cash in hand for those rare occasions when it doesn’t.
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