Bloodstock agent Woods at centre of new fraud allegations from owners' syndicate

The bloodstock agent Gary Woods has been accused of defrauding a second group of owners by allegedly failing to pass on the proceeds of two horses he sold privately on their behalf last year.

The Racing Post revealed this month that Woods, 39, the founder of Empire International Bloodstock, had been accused by a syndicate of withholding news of its horse's death until thousands of pounds in training fees had been sent to the agent, supposedly for the purposes of registering the syndicate with the French regulator France Galop. The funds were allegedly never used for that purpose and have yet to be returned.

A second syndicate has now come forward with further allegations about Woods, who has been reported to Action Fraud, the UK's national reporting centre for fraud, and 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.