CSI-style probe helped smash Blackpool hoopla con

A crafty scam artist cheated Blackpool tourists out of their holiday money by running a rigged hoopla stall on the Golden Mile. But scheming Philip Williams was busted in a CSI-style probe after boffins proved his game was virtually impossible to win. Williams handed customers hoops that were too small for the blocks they were meant to get them over. His blocks were designed with sloping tops so hoops wouldn't go over them even if they were big enough. But he put larger hoops over the blocks to make it look like winning was possible.

Frustrated punters spent hundreds of pounds trying to win the stuffed toys, bottles of champagne and cash Williams offered as prizes. He charged more per throw for the biggest cash payouts. One customer, a qualified doctor, lost £1200 in a day. Williams pestered punters to keep playing and took them to a nearby cash machine to get more money when they ran out. Some tourists at the resort, which attracts thousands of Scots a year, were left so skint that they couldn't afford to get home.



Trading standards officers targeted Williams after fleeced players complained. They sent two teenage girls to play at the stall and filmed them with a hidden camera as they lost £70 without winning one prize. After ordering Williams to pay refunds to punters of between £150 and £400, the investigators seized his hoops and blocks. They also confiscated several of his champagne bottles - and found that they were all empty. The hoopla gear was sent to Dr David Lucy, a statistics expert at Lancaster University.

Dr Lucy and his team set up the game and played it for hours, before producing diagrams that showed the odds against winning were at least 2622 to one. Williams, 53, who had claimed his hoopla was a game of skill, was charged with two counts of breaking gambling laws and pled guilty. He was given a 14-week jail term suspended for a year, ordered to carry out 270 hours' community service and hit with a £2000 costs bill. Senior magistrate Julie Blackwell told the crook: "This sort of behaviour tarnishes the reputation of Blackpool."