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Media
Virgin employees sacked over sneaky X-Factor gambling scam
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 11 April 2011
Three employees on the tel co side of Virgin Media have been sacked after it was discovered they had used data held by the company to inform bets made on the outcome of punter votes on ‘X-Factor’.
Two of the three would monitor which ‘X’ wannabes Virgin customers were calling to vote for and, taking those figures as being representative of the wider British public, got a third employee to place bets on online betting sites. Presumably with some success.
Betting site Betfair somehow figured out what was going on, and shopped the threesome to the Gambling Commission, who said last week: “We are satisfied that the bets placed were substantially unfair as the individuals involved had inside information. We have worked closely with all the bodies involved to ensure that those individuals do not profit from their activity and that appropriate action has been taken to prevent a recurrence of such activity in the future”.
A Virgin Media spokesman said they took the matter “extremely seriously”, confirmed the employees involved had been dismissed, and added that the company had cooperated with the Gambling Commission and media regulator OfCom throughout when they both looked into the case. Mr Virgin added: “We have since introduced additional monitoring to our systems to ensure this cannot happen again”.
