Verdict on Rice remains ways off
Gaming Commission hearing wraps up with her testimony
Trainer Linda Rice testified for nearly eight hours on Wednesday but it could be a couple months before there is a final decision on whether or not she is guilty of committing “corrupt and improper acts” by receiving names of horses entered in races at New York Racing Association tracks before entries closed.
Following the end of the seven-day hearing, Rice’s attorney Andrew Turro and Rick Goodell, the associate counsel for the New York State Gaming Commission, agreed to written closing arguments. Both sides are awaiting transcripts from the hearing, and once they are received, they will have 30 days to send their statements to hearing officer Clark Petschek.
Petschek could then take up to 30 days to give his recommendation to the Gaming Commission.
The NYSGC has said that Rice could have her license suspended or revoked and could be fined as much as $25,000 for “actions inconsistent with and detrimental to the best interest of racing generally and corrupt and improper acts and practices in relation to racing.”
For most of the day on Wednesday, Rice was cross-examined by Goodell, who did his work virtually via Webex from the NYSGC office in Schenectady. Rice and her lawyer, as well as Petschek, were in an empty second-floor restaurant at Aqueduct Race Track.
Rice has admitted she received faxes
and emails with information about horses entered in races she was considering running in from former NYRA racing clerk Jose Morales Jr. It is alleged she received the information before the races were drawn, giving what many would consider an unfair advantage. Of the 75 emails Morales sent Rice, she entered her horses in 23 of the 70 races in those emails. Her horses won three of those races.
Rice, who has been training horses for 35 years and is the only woman to win a training title in New York (at Saratoga in 2009), is adamant she has done nothing wrong.
“I don’t know of any rule that I was breaking,” she said while being re-crossed briefly by Turro at the end of the hearing.
However, during Goodell’s crossexamination, he read part of a 2018 transcript in which Rice told Morales that he was “being watched” before he left NYRA in August of 2014 and became a jockey agent. In that 2018 transcript, Rice said to Goodell, “they’re watching him. Maybe we shouldn’t be doing it.”
During the cross-examination, Goodell asked Rice if, at any time during the period when she was receiving information from Morales, she had any communication from anyone at NYRA about whether or not this was an acceptable practice. “No, I did not,” she said. Goodell also regurgitated information from prior days of the hearing that Rice provided cash to employees of the NYRA racing office as well as members of the starting gate crew, referring to them as gratuities and Christmas gifts.
She said she gave gifts to the racing office after winning her Saratoga title and then after sharing the 2011 Belmont spring/summer title with Todd Pletcher. Goodell said Rice gave monetary Christmas gifts in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. Rice has said the money was not for preferential treatment from the racing office.
Rice also said on Wednesday that she had loaned money twice to Morales and doubted she would ever be paid back. Those loans totaled $1,800.
Earlier hearings had said that Rice received 75 emails from Morales between Oct. 9, 2013, to Jan. 3, 2014. Those emails included past performances of horses that could run in races that Rice was also considering running her horses in. As far as Rice knows, she said no other trainers received the emails she was getting.
“I know I was getting a lot of verbal information every day from other entry clerks, so I assumed the other trainers were as well,” Rice said. “I thought it was odd when I received the first fax, but I had been shown the same document in the racing office and I had witnessed other trainers seeing the same document in the racing office.”