Police: Man staged his own kidnapping, tied rope around neck to avoid paying rigged Super Bowl squares
A New York man took extreme measures to avoid paying out a rigged, high-stakes Super Bowl squares pool that didn’t work out like he hoped, police said.
State troopers found 60-year-old Robert Brandel of North Tonawanda, New York, Wednesday in his Ford F-150 at the parking lot of a Newfane, New York Market about 30 miles north of Buffalo, NYup.com reports.
Police: Brandel found with rope around neck
Police say they found him in the backseat of his truck with duct tape around his hands and ankles and a rope around his neck that was attached to the truck’s headrest.
Brandel told police that he had picked up by two men he had been in a Super Bowl pool with two days earlier when they robbed him at gunpoint of $16,000 in supposed winnings and forced him to drive around town.
His story ended with his abductors leaving him tied up in his truck where troopers found him.
Police: Part of scheme to avoid squares payout
A police investigation found otherwise.
Police determined Brandel had run a fraudulent $50,000 Super Bowl pool in which he filled out fake names for some of the squares and hoped to hit and collect winnings.
If you’re not familiar, a squares pool is a completely random game of chance with no skill involved. The more squares one has, the more likely one is to secure a payout, which appeared to be Brandel’s strategy when filling up squares that weren’t actually accounted for.
When the allegedly rigged odds didn’t work out his his favor, Brandel’s plan shifted to concocting the kidnapping scheme, police determined.
NYup.com reports that Brandel is facing a felony first-degree scheme to defraud charge and a misdemeanor charge of falsely reporting an incident.
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