He Lied Like Nobody’s Business’: A Racing Con Man

He Lied Like Nobody’s Business’: A Racing Con Man and His Trail of Deception

By Ray Paulick

www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-paddock...-trail-of-deception/

Five months ago, Jonathan Pippin was living large. A small-time Ohio grifter who had convinced a handful of Twitter followers to invest in horses he didn’t own, Pippin had been working for months at hooking a bigger fish, one of the largest in all of horse racing. And so that’s how he found himself as a guest in the Southern California home of Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert and wife Jill on one of the most important racing weekends of the Santa Anita Park winter meeting, Big ‘Cap day on March 8.

How Pippin traveled from a world of bottom-level claimers at Thistledown and Mountaineer Park to the Santa Anita Handicap winner’s circle alongside Game On Dude and American racing’s most famous trainer is a tale of deceit, opportunism and unmitigated gall. It’s a bewildering story of social media gone wrong, fake email accounts, online bullying, secretly recorded tapes and voice changing machines. Those who crossed Pippin’s path of deceit included a handful of eager young horseplayers wanting to own a piece of a racehorse, Bob and Jill Baffert, prominent horse owner Maggi Moss, New York Times turf writer Joe Drape, racing publicist Kelly Wietsma, California Horse Racing Board Equine Medical Director Dr. Rick Arthur, and this writer, among others. READ MORE

eish what a story

strange how people can be conned like that. If it sounds to good to be true then it usually is.

chicken n chips wrote: strange how people can be conned like that. If it sounds to good to be true then it usually is.

100%

People read about these cons and yet still fall for it

Feel sorry for those that lost their hard earned money

I once read a comment somewhere that "you can't con a man unless he is greedy or vain.....or both"

I will never forget that and it is probably true in 90% of situations!

Buying a share in a racehorse is probably an exception though, but there were surely some signs that could have been checked easily.................lets face it ,it would be hard for some bullshitter to pop up on this forum and convince us he owned a share of a Derby runner if he didn't!!!

We would be on him like a rash..................lol