'Blackening the name of every agent' - industry body hits out over alleged fraud

The actions of a bloodstock agent who allegedly defrauded a syndicate out of thousands of pounds have been strongly condemned by the Federation of Bloodstock Agents (FBA), which said on Wednesday that it would “happily work with a plan for licensing” agents if a “practical solution” could be found.

The denouncement of Gary Woods of Empire International Bloodstock comes as the Bloodstock Industry Forum (BiF), a cross-industry group set up in 2019 to maintain and improve confidence in the buying and selling of bloodstock in Britain, revealed that it had received a separate complaint regarding the agent from another syndicate last month.

In the first case, Woods, 39, is alleged to have repeatedly misled a syndicate and failed to use the funds they paid to him for their intended purposes, including allegedly failing to inform the owners that their horse had died in a training accident until after he had collected £6,000 in training fees which were supposedly going to be lodged with France Galop to complete the syndicate’s registration.