Tony Bloom Rejects Claims About Owing Former Colleague Betting Profits

Tony Bloom has filed a response to a lawsuit brought by former colleague Ryan Dudfield in the UK High Court. Bloom rejects the claim that he owes Dudfield a share of profits from his betting syndicate.

Dudfield filed the complaint last month. He believes he could be owed as much as $17.5 million, profits from bets placed on Bloom’s behalf by George Cottrell.

Dudfield was employed by Bloom’s company, Starlizard, between 2008 and 2017. After leaving the company, he entered into an agreement to keep a stake in the betting syndicate.

Bloom admits he had an agreement to share profits with Dudfield, but says this deal ended in 2022. Dudfield believed this was due to Cottrell no longer placing bets for the syndicate. However, he continued gambling through at least five betting accounts up until October last year.

Bloom Says Dudfield Agreed Not to Sue

Bloom claims Dudfield cashed out his share of the syndicate in 2022, when he was paid $182,147. However, he demanded more money. In July 2023, Bloom paid a further £60,000 ($82,000) to settle the matter. He says that at this time, they agreed there would be no further claims or legal action.

Bloom’s defense said: “The effect … of the July 2023 agreement was to settle any and all claims that the claimant may have against Mr Bloom and, accordingly, covered the claims brought in these proceedings. The instant proceedings are also brought in breach of the covenant not to sue.”

After learning that Cottrell was still placing bets on Bloom’s behalf, Dudfield took his claims to court. The case remains ongoing with Bloom’s defense filing their response to the lawsuit. A hearing will take place at a later date.

Syndicate Generates Huge Profits

After 2022, Cottrell’s bets made a profit of $2.3 million. Dudfield claims the syndicate, which includes multiple frontmen placing bets at various platforms, generates £600 million ($820 million) per year. Bloom, however, says this is an exaggeration.

Cottrell’s account showed big swings between profit and loss. In the first month, his bets lost £10 million ($13.67 million), but the account quickly rebounded into profit and was up more than $3 million after three months, according to court documents. The winnings were split between the syndicate, who took 60%, Cottrell, who took 33,% and Dudfield, who had a 7% share.

The original account was opened at Sportsbet.io and is described as a hedging account. Bloom says he only used Cottrell’s accounts at other gambling platforms after Dudfield had cashed out, so he is not owed anything. He also denied that one of the accounts was at Stake.

Other Alleged Frontman Involved in Dispute

Another alleged frontman of the syndicate, James Hopkins, placed bets on the crypto gambling platform Rollbit under the username “Stake Stinks.”

Rollbit co-founder Razer claims the account was placing bets on behalf of Bloom’s syndicate, in violation of the platform’s terms. The account generated $70 million in profits. Of this, Rollbit paid out $50 million, but has withheld the remaining $19.6 million.

Rollbit attempted to have courts publicly disclose where Hopkins was sending the money after withdrawing from his account, believing it was going to a Kraken account owned by Bloom. However, courts rejected the request. The company said it required the information for a legal case against Hopkins in Curacao, where the platform is licensed.

In a post on X, Razer was critical of Bloom and alleged that he was placing bets on soccer matches involving teams he owns. This would violate the rules of the Football Association (FA) in England, where Bloom owns Premier League team Brighton.

He posted, “This is a case against accounts which are part of Tony Bloom’s sports betting syndicate. These have ravaged through the crypto casino space over the last few years, extracting over 9-figs across several operators through all sorts of shady tactics.

“Including, but not limited to, severe violation of rules set by sport governing bodies (The FA, FIFA, UEFA etc), by placing multi-million dollar bets on teams the bettor has a controlling stake in and false representation by way of deliberately using KYC of random individuals (including convicted felons such as George Cottrell) to conceal the true source of funds (Tony Bloom).”

Cottrell was convicted of money laundering in the US and served eight months in prison. He allegedly advertised money laundering services on the dark web. He now serves as a political aide to UK politician Nigel Farage and the Reform Party. He has reportedly signed a deal to co-write a book titled How to Launder Money.

The Guardian repeated Razer’s claims in an article last month, and in response, Bloom banned reporters from attending Brighton matches.

Notably, the paper does not mention any of those claims in its latest coverage of the lawsuit against Bloom. Bloom has strongly denied placing any bets on matches involving his own team.