Jockey Stanley Chin Kin-ming was jailed for 3.5 years yesterday for his role in an 'evil' race-fixing scam in which riders were paid more than $1 million in bribes.
Girlfriend Denise Yeung Ka-yee, 28, who helped Chin fix one of the races, was sentenced to two years and nine months in jail.
District Court Judge Peter Line warned sports stars of all types they would face lengthy prison terms if caught cheating.
'There have been too many recent cases of sportsmen corruptly fixing the results of contests so that money is won by fraud. The public must be sick of it,' he said.
'The message must be clear to Jockey Club riders and those minded to deal corruptly with them: if you are caught cheating you can expect no mercy and must face long sentences of imprisonment as these two defendants now do.' Chin, 25, was found guilty of two charges of conspiracy to cheat at gambling on Sha Tin races in January and March 1996. He was also convicted of six counts of offering advantages to five fellow apprentice jockeys to fix races, handing over between $30,000 and $200,000 to each of them. Chin denied all the charges.
Yeung was found guilty of conspiracy over the January race and also of offering bribes to a jockey. She had also pleaded not guilty.
Judge Line told the pair: 'You were both at the root of this evil.' Prosecutor Nicholas Adams told how Chin had asked 11 apprentice jockeys not to finish in the top three in the March 30, 1996, Sha Tin race.
