|
November 9, 2009
A Gala Bingo caller has been jailed after being found guilty of trying to cheat the bingo hall. 29 year old Christian Grant from Gateshead was caught calling numbers that matched the tickets of his two friends, a scam that resulted in the three fraudsters netting £9000 before they were caught.
The big question was of course, how did he do it? Land based bingo uses numbers generated randomly from a computer to prevent exactly such a type of fraud. So how did Christian manage to pick numbers to match the bingo tickets of his friends? Apparently bingo callers can switch bingo number generation from a random setting to a manual one and that is exactly what he did, thereby allowing him to call out any number he wanted.
This raises questions about land based bingo and just how safe and fair it is. Bingo is supposed to be all about luck and therefore everyone playing the game has a fair and square chance of winning. Unlike online bingo where the entire game is computer generated and therefore completely secure, land based bingo it would seem is not as safe as one would have thought.
Christian was caught out by a fellow Gala Bingo player who reported his suspicions to the bingo club. Perhaps Christian and his friends were too complacent with the winnings and stopped being careful. Whatever the case, Gala Bingo acted swiftly and it wasn’t long before the trio confessed to their guilt at a Newcastle Crown Court.
Christian sentenced to 9 months in prison while his friend, 28 year old Samantha Temple who has a child by him was sentenced to community service as was the third member of the group, 29 year old Nandi Ndebele.
It is a sad day indeed when one hears of such deeds being conducted in a beloved bingo hall, one can simply hope that this was an isolated case.
Written by Anna Richards for Bingostreet – bringing you the latest news in the UK bingo world.
To read previous news please check out our bingo news archive.
To subscribe to our RSS feed and recieve the news daily please click the button: 
| 
