Thanks to online gambling sites, former Enron employees might be able to win back their lost nest eggs betting on the fate of their indicted former employers.
Internet gambling portal BetCRIS.com started taking wagers Wednesday on the outcome of the Enron trial, letting gamblers roll the dice on the largest fraud in corporate history.
Right now, the site is giving pretty slim odds that the government can convict former Enron chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling.
But it’s only the second week of testimony, and Skilling and Lay have yet to take the stand. Oddsmakers are also trying to draw bets into the system by promising a potentially huge payoff.
“Oddsmakers are media junkies and read everything they can; they then consider public opinion regarding the Enron case as well as the indictments against the defendants,” said Mickey Richardson, chief executive of BetCRIS. “From here, they go ‘behind the curtain’ and calculate odds.”
According to the odds posted yesterday on BetCRIS, Lay has a 1 in 50 chance of being found guilty, while odds of a Skilling conviction were even less at 100-1.
The current odds mean that betting on a guilty verdict could have a huge upside.
A $100 bet on a Skilling conviction, for instance, could turn into $100,000 if the jury returns a guilty verdict and the odds stay the same.
Gambling sites have made a name for themselves recently as the popularity of online poker and sports betting skyrockets.
Gamblers stuff cash into an account on the sites and then draw it down as they place bets.
BetCRIS generated a ton of traffic during the Martha Stewart trial and it hopes to do the same with Enron.
Lately, gambling sites have allowed betting on everything from celebrity hook-ups and breakups to political races.
Indeed, more than 40 percent of the bets placed on BetCRIS.com are on celebrities or have to do with entertainment.
Prosecutors plan to put 16 former executives of Enron on the stand in the pair’s criminal fraud trial in hopes of revealing inner workings of their scams, which are blamed for the worst collapse in business history.
Lay and Skilling claim they’re innocent of the nearly three dozen fraud charges against them, and blamed a “bunch of crooks” among middle-management for wrecking the company without their knowledge.