On 23 October 2026, Southwark Crown Court handed suspended prison sentences to Anthony Lee, Laura Lee and Amy Hind, who had pleaded guilty to cheating offences under section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005. The offences concerned bets on the date of the 2024 UK General Election, which then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced on 22 May 2024.
Anthony Lee received the longest term: 10 months and 2 weeks' imprisonment on each count, running concurrently and suspended for 12 months, plus 100 hours of unpaid work.
Laura Lee was given 4 months and 2 weeks, suspended for 12 months, with 40 hours of unpaid work. Amy Hind received 6 months, also suspended for 12 months, and 50 hours of unpaid work.
All three must comply with a 12-month probation requirement. A separate 12-month prohibited activity requirement bars them from using online gambling applications. The Lees were each ordered to pay £1,000 in prosecution costs, and no costs order was made against Hind.
Each defendant held, or had held, a job with the Conservative Party.
Anthony Lee was the party's Director of Campaigning and took part in confidential discussions about election timing. He used that information to place bets and passed it to his wife, Laura Lee, who was the party's Head of International and a Conservative candidate at the 2024 election. Hind, a former party employee working for the NHS at the time, placed bets after receiving confidential information about when the election would be called.
Casino.org and Yogonet, citing the court hearing, report that the Lees staked more than £2,000 on bets that would have won them about £23,000 had they gone undetected. Neither outlet says whether that figure is the total payout or the profit on top of the stake.
Those two figures allow a rough estimate of the price the bookmakers were offering. If £23,000 was the total payout, £2,000 against £23,000 is about 8.7%. If it was profit on top of the stake, £2,000 against £25,000 is about 8%. That is an implied price of roughly 1 in 11.5 to 1 in 12.5, a little shorter if the stake was well above £2,000. It is a single stake-weighted figure across all their bets combined, and it reflects the bookmakers' price including their margin, not an estimate of how likely any of the outcomes they backed actually was.
The same outlets report that Hind placed four bets and attempted three more, and that she could have received about £26,000 had all seven been accepted. Her stakes were not reported, so the same calculation cannot be made for her.
We don't know the odds or timing of any individual bet; a bet-by-bet schedule from the prosecution would settle that.
Casino.org alone reports two further details. It says prosecutors told the court that Anthony Lee placed or attempted 71 bets and that Laura Lee placed eight and attempted a ninth. It also reports that Judge Tony Baumgartner said the defendants' actions undermined public confidence in the democratic process.
Gambling Commission General Counsel Katharine Diamond called the case "significant" and "a first of its kind for the Commission".
The prosecutions are not finished. Craig Williams has pleaded guilty to cheating in relation to betting on the election date and will be sentenced at a later date. Ten other people face cheating charges over bets on the date, with trials scheduled for September 2027 and January 2028.
According to Yogonet alone, the case came to light after Ladbrokes flagged Williams as a Politically Exposed Person and referred his bets to the Gambling Commission.
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