A convicted conman has revealed that he lost £4 million on roulette machines - so it’s probably for the best that he’s been banned from every betting shop in the UK.
Gambling addict Jason Haddigan was jailed and banned from bookies back in 2014.
He was found guilty of defrauding betting shops across the country by swapping losing betting slips for forged winners with the help of his dad Brian and accomplice Neil Cole.
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The trio visited 31 bookmakers and managed to con more than £15,670 from Ladbrokes, William Hill and M Cook Bookmakers between June 2012 and February 2013.
Haddigan opened up about his experiences in his 2017 book How and Why I Conned the Bookies, but ended up behind bars again in 2021.
CCTV footage revealed he’d switched a betting slip once a horse race was over and he was sentenced to 21 weeks in prison.
Haddigan has now sat down with James English and opened up about how he became addicted to gambling and ended up losing a staggering £4 million to roulette machines.
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Opening up about how his addiction began, he recalled that his father first took him to a casino when he was just 16 years old.
He said: “He introduced me to casinos and the roulette really f***ing got a hold of me.
“[I was] 16 when he first took me into a casino. You could just sign someone in then - nowadays, you've got ID and all that but you could just sign someone in.
"I think I won about £1,500 the first time I was in a casino, playing roulette.”
Haddigan’s addiction spiralled once bookmakers introduced roulette machines, promising the lure of quick cash.
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He said: “They come out into the bookmakers 15/16 years ago and when they come out that's when I have lost over £4 million on them disgusting f**king roulette machines.
"When they come out, I walked into my local betting shop and I saw this big f**king machine looking at me and I thought 'what the f**k is that?'
"I went over and it's roulette, put your money in up to £100, which I did, I had that on red and it come in red.
“I thought 'f**king hell that was handy', went up to the bird, gave her the thing, she gave me £200.
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“From that day I’ve got completely and utterly f**king hooked.”
With this in mind, it’s probably a good thing that Haddigan has now been banned from every single casino in the UK.
He described being turned away when he tried to visit a casino three years ago, telling English: “[A staff member] said to me, ‘You’re banned.’ I said, ‘Why?’ and he didn’t tell me and said, ‘We don’t have to give you a reason, and also you’re banned from every casino in the United Kingdom.’
“That’s quite good for me.”
Although, he did admit he once got around this by changing his numbers when the staff member wasn't looking...
Simon Fearn