A man who placed a £20 accumulator bet on Liverpool to win the 2019 Champions League claims he is owed £5m in winnings after a high street bookies refused to pay out. The stand-off between Darren Hope and Boyle Sports has now escalated into a row involving police, Action Fraud and the industry’s adjudicators.
To complicate matters, Mr Hope admits he has no concrete proof of his astonishing football accumulator win as he says he handed in his betting slip, reports Birmingham Live. But the long-running dispute has culminated in the electrical engineer being escorted from the Coventry turf accountants by five police officers. It came after he staged a one-man protest.
Mr Hope, who resides in a one bedroom flat in Coventry, is adamant he should be enjoying a champagne lifestyle after scooping £5 million from a European Champions League accumulator bet where Liverpool overcame astonishing odds to lift the trophy.
He claims the fortune has failed to materialise, because the bookies lost his betting slip. Mr Hope says that on May 3, 2019, he placed £20 with Boyle Sports on a wager that would conclude with Liverpool beating Spurs for the trophy.
It was a bold punt as Liverpool had already lost the first leg of their semi-final against Barcelona 3-0. The odds, he claims, were: Liverpool to beat Barcelona 4-0 at Anfield at 400 to 1. They won 4-0 at Anfield.
The accumulator he says also had Spurs to beat Ajax at 18 to 1 and for Liverpool to then beat Spurs in the final, at that stage priced at 35-1. Both predictions came to fruition.
Boyle Sports have insisted that the bet was never made - and the shop wasn't even launched when Mr Hope claimed he made his bet. But Mr Hope maintains a police log of the protest he staged inside the bookies was recorded over a month before Boyle Sports claimed it had opened a bookies there.
The Independent Betting Adjudication Service said it had looked into the case but could not pursue it any further, and the government body Action Fraud said it had been unable to assist the punter as it said with the information currently available it did not appear to be a "line of enquiry which a law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom could pursue".
Mr Hope added: "People have said I was stupid to hand over the slip, but what else was I supposed to do? At 8pm that night I got a call from Boyle Sports. The man confirmed to me I’d won, asked for my bank details, gave me a transaction number and said it would take 90 days for the money to become available. I was in very high spirits. “I waited until September 25 and looked at my bank account and the money wasn’t there.”
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