Betfair is under pressure to hand tens of thousands of pounds to the victim of a fraudster and gambling addict, after appearing to miss multiple opportunities to stop the “VIP” customer betting with stolen money.
Andrew Morford, a former finance manager, was given a two-year suspended sentence on Wednesday, after admitting a £340,000 fraud against his former employer, carried out between May 2019 and February 2024.
In sentencing remarks, Judge Silas Reid described Morford’s gambling addiction, which led to him losing more than £1m on Betfair’s platform, as a “very significant mitigation factor”.
The betting exchange, part of the £28bn global gambling corporation Flutter Entertainment, appears to have overlooked signs of Morford’s downward spiral, according to documents seen by the Guardian, failing to act even after a staff member raised concerns internally.
Now, Morford’s former employer and a campaign group that works with gambling addicts who commit crimes are calling on Betfair to hand over the money it made from him.
Morford began using Betfair in 2005 and asked the company to bar him from gambling with it on several occasions, including a request for a permanent exclusion in 2008.
However, he was allowed to gamble again after opening an account as “Andy” instead of “Andrew”.
He self-excluded from this second account in 2010 but reversed the decision in 2012, going on to lose a net £659,000 over five years, mostly on football and horse racing.
His gambling was so heavy that he was rewarded with the status of VIP, a seemingly prestigious label that typically refers to someone who loses a lot of money.
He was assigned a “VIP manager” who offered free hospitality at cricket matches, the Cheltenham festival and Ascot, according to internal company documents listing his interactions with staff members.
One such engagement was labelled “whale catcher” in the records, an apparent reference to the industry slang term “whale”, describing gamblers who rack up big losses.
Eventually, Betfair closed Morford’s account in 2017 because of what a spokesperson described as “concerns about his betting activity”.
But Morford simply opened an account in the name of his father, Gordon, going on to lose more than £600,000, including more than £120,000 in one five-month period of 2018.
Despite the scale of the losses, Betfair labelled the account as the “low end of medium risk” in internal documents.
Betfair is a betting exchange rather than a bookmaker, meaning Morford lost money to fellow gamblers who took the other side of his bets.
But the company takes a commission from the winning party on each bet. Betting records indicate Betfair may have made £200,000 commission on bets that Morford lost between 2018 and 2024, overlapping significantly with the period of his fraud.
Internal documents suggest Betfair also missed several opportunities to identify that Morford was using his father’s account.
In August 2022, he signed an email to “Gordon’s” VIP manager using his own name.
Then, in March 2023 he made the same mistake. This time, an employee ran the name through the company’s records, finding Morford’s history of self-exclusion.
“I have not actioned or made any changes to the customer account but feel it necessary to raise my concerns with you as evidence suggests this customer has circumvented his exclusion in the past,” they said.
Despite this, no action was taken at the time.
Morford would go on to deposit more than £550,000 and lose tens of thousands of pounds until Betfair finally shut down his account amid concerns over his identity.
His employer, the charitable housing organisation Co-operative Development Services (CDS), uncovered his fraud in 2024.
CDS filed a successful £575,000 civil claim against Morford, which he partially paid using his £100,000 pension and his 50% stake in the home he shares with his wife and daughter, worth £110,000.
Another gambling company with which Morford lost money, SpreadEx, agreed to provide a further £45,000 to CDS.
Betfair has so far declined to help make redress, raising questions over whether the gambling firm should keep the commission it made.
“Sadly, Andrew Morford’s case is not an isolated one,” said Jacqui Bell, criminal justice services director of GamLearn,” a charity that works with gambling addicts who have committed crimes.
“We’re supporting over 50 people in near-identical situations.”
She said that evidence gathered by the charity showed “repeated failures by UK-licensed operators and substantial losses retained despite clear evidence of gambling harm”.
In a victim statement submitted to court, CDS appeared to take aim at gambling operators including Betfair. It said that several gambling companies had “profited considerably from this” and questioned whether they had done enough to prevent it.
Betfair hinted that it would consider handing the money it made from Morford to his victim, saying: “We have an established divestment process, to which this case will be subject to once criminal proceedings have completed.”
A spokesperson added that Betfair took player safety seriously and had complied with its regulatory obligations, as well as handing information about Morford’s case to the Gambling Commission.
The company said Morford had “impersonated his father on multiple calls with our teams, including safer gambling interactions where he reassured us that he was in control of his spending, and provided documentation in his father’s name”.
