An Australian man has avoided prison time for his role in a coordinated insider betting scheme that exploited confidential umpire voting information for the Australian Football League’s prestigious Brownlow Medal, a plot that earned the group more than $100,000 in illegal profits over two seasons.
William Forde, 36, was handed an 18-month community corrections order Wednesday at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, which requires him to complete 250 hours of unpaid community work. Forde entered guilty pleas last week to six corruption and illegal gambling-related charges connected to the scheme, which ran through the 2021 and 2022 AFL seasons.
The plot centered on Forde’s decades-long childhood friendship with Michael Pell, a former AFL umpire who has been accused of leaking confidential, round-by-round Brownlow Medal voting details to Forde in advance of the public vote announcement. The Brownlow Medal, awarded annually to the AFL’s best and fairest player over the regular season, is determined by votes cast by on-field umpires after each game, and the vote tallies for individual games are kept secret until the awards night, making pre-count betting a popular market for Australian sports bettors.
Prosecutor Greg Buchhorn told the court that Forde recruited third parties to open betting accounts and place wagers under their own names, concealing his identity and connection to Pell. The bets targeted specific matches that Pell had officiated, with the group placing large stakes on the exact players Pell had awarded three votes to — the highest possible vote for a single game. The scheme generated roughly A$40,750 in illegal profits during the 2021 season, and another A$60,345 in 2022, adding up to a total of more than A$101,000 in ill-gotten gains. Buchhorn noted that the full breakdown of how profits were split between Forde, Pell, and other co-conspirators remains unclear, but confirmed the total profit amount is well-documented.
In handing down the sentence, Magistrate Siobhan Whittle emphasized that Forde’s offense was serious, sophisticated, and organized, stretching across two full playing seasons. She rejected the defense’s argument that the conduct amounted to ordinary gambling that spun out of control, noting that the only risk the group faced was being caught by authorities. Whittle also outlined the elaborate steps the group took to avoid detection, including passing handwritten notes about voting details, using unregistered burner phones to communicate, and consistently using proxy bettors to avoid drawing attention from bookmakers or law enforcement.
Whittle did note that there were mitigating factors that justified a non-custodial sentence: she accepted that Forde has expressed genuine remorse for his actions, and she took into account significant delays in the court process as well as Forde’s cooperation with police investigators. She added that the sentence is intended to send a clear deterrent message to other potential actors who might consider exploiting insider information for illegal sports betting gains.
Pell and two other co-accused men have not entered guilty pleas, and are scheduled to appear for a committal hearing later this month. That hearing will determine whether there is sufficient evidence to send their cases to a full criminal trial.