Karma
- Bruno@Racingwithbruno
- Jul 11
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 12
Karma Always Collects!
Sooner or later, karma knows your address.
It knows where you live.
In horse racing, I've come to believe karma is just as real as speed figures, trip notes, and the tote board. You might fool people for a while. You might catch a lucky break. You might even think you've beaten the system.
You haven't.
Time never forgets.
Neither does karma I've lived by that principle throughout my career in handicapping. Do the work. Respect the game. Stay honest with your process. Keep grinding when nobody's watching. Eventually, karma finds you.
That's a wager I'll make every time.
People can fool the public for a little while.
Karma isn't nearly that easy to fool.
Which brings me to a subject I don't enjoy discussing, but one that deserves daylight.
I'll never understand the mindset of someone who spends more energy trying to avoid paying for information than actually learning the game. Workout reports. Premium sheets. Past performances. Every day there's someone online looking for a "hookup."
It's usually the same guy who could lose a one-horse race.
Then he gets the report for free, forwards it to a few buddies, who send it to a few more buddies, and before long everybody's betting the same horse.
Then comes the punchline.
They're screaming because the horse is 6-5 instead of 4-1.
Really?
Who do you think created that?
This is a pari-mutuel game. The more people chasing the same opinion, the less value exists for everyone. You don't get to destroy the price and then complain about the price.
I've dealt with this nonsense for years and haven't been shy about going after perpretators.
One case involved a Google Drive where my products—and the work of several other handicappers—were being sold for about $125 a head. The people running it hadn't created the material. In many cases they hadn't even purchased it legitimately.
They simply took other people's intellectual property and turned it into a business.
That's not "sharing."
That's theft.
That's piracy.
Plain and simple.
What they didn't know was they had picked the wrong professional to steal from.
Before racing became my career, I worked investigations for companies including Costco, Pillsbury, and Carter Hawley Hale. I spent years learning how people commit fraud, how they cover their tracks, and—more importantly—how they eventually make mistakes. They never saw me coming.
I was good at it. I was the youngest district invesitgator at Carter-Hawley-Hale.
Funny thing is, I earned only about thirty thousand dollars a year doing that work. I moved on.
The same investigative mindset that helped me solve those cases, as i had over 1000 arrests in San Diego County and as many or more in the Los Angeles area. became one of my greatest strengths in handicapping. Racing rewarded those skills far better than corporate America ever did. Through years of hard work, those same instincts helped build a business that has generated well over half a million dollars annually.
Hard work travels.
So does karma.
That Google Drive operation eventually cost the people behind it a five-figure settlement.
Then came another operation.
Let's call this fellow "Tweedle Dum."
According to what we uncovered, he was distributing copyrighted racing products through blast emails, using his wife's email account and even his brother's printing business. One careless move exposed an entire distribution list.
I often wondered what that conversation sounded like when the legal letters started arriving.
People like that never stop to ask themselves one simple question:
Is this really worth it?
They'll borrow someone else's account, copy someone else's work, and convince themselves it's harmless.
Then they'll sit down at the windows expecting good racing luck.
Hello?
Anybody home?
The funny part is they'd explode if someone walked into their office and stole their paycheck off the desk.
They'd call the police. They'd demand justice!
Yet somehow stealing another person's work doesn't register the same way.
I'll never understand that kind of thinking.
As I write this, we're investigating another situation involving what appears to be multiple people using a single paid account.
Patterns repeat.
People get careless.
They always think they're smarter than everyone else.
Until they aren't.
The reality is simple.
While they're looking for shortcuts, I'm at my desk.
Ten hours a day.
Watching races.
Reviewing workouts.
Studying horses.
Following leads.
Doing the work.
Because that's the only shortcut I've ever found.
Work.
Eventually, effort compounds.
Eventually, the truth surfaces.
Eventually, karma knocks.
Yesterday, for us, it didn't just knock. It blew the doors off the hinges. We collected.
