There were literally dozens more of these things, all useless, worthless and not worth the flimsy paper they were printed on. At least this one was a little different: ‘I have been thrashing the British bookmakers for two years. Many of the best horses are now taking regular milkshakes.’
Thus read a letter from a racing tipster calling himself Tim ‘The Vet’ Eastman, who wrote to numerous potential clients, offering for £999 to provide them with the names of 250 horses certain to win races because their trainers have been feeding them ‘milkshakes’ designed to help improve performances by masking the presence of banned medication and drugs. Eastman, who gave a bogus address in Guildford in his letter, laughably bragged that subscribers would earn £3 million within five years, claiming that the guarantee was underwritten by a respectable financial company and making many other unsubstantiated claims for his dubious services, such as having won $18 million in the States in nine years.
He offered no reason why, should that be the case, he would feel the need to share his secrets with outsiders. Concerned that recipients of the letter could well be cheated out of potentially large amounts of cash, the Horseracing Regulatory Authority’s Owen Byrne intervened, telling anyone tempted to take it seriously that ‘it’s quite obvious it’s pure fantasy’.