Bookie Fires "Apprentice" Bets

Someone's getting fired over this one.

Offshore betting company BetWWTS.com has suspended online gambling on Donald Trump's reality hit The Apprentice 2, after it noticed a fishy betting pattern originating in New Hampshire.

The Antigua-based company froze Apprentice betting after an unusual number of $300 bets were placed on two contestants from several New Hampshire-based accounts.

Three hundred dollars is the maximum bet BetWWTS.com accepts, but most wagers made on reality shows are around $25, which makes the Apprentice-related gambling all the more suspicious, according to the bookmakers.

As for the contestants receiving the big-bucks bets? (Possible spoiler alert--stop reading if you don't want to know.) Apparently, some folks in New Hampshire think Jennifer Massey, 30, a lawyer from San Francisco and software executive Kelly Perdew, 37, from Carlsbad, California, have pretty good odds of being the final two in the boardroom.

Neither woman has any apparent ties to the Granite State, which is "really unusual," according to BetWWTS.com spokesman Kyle Fratini.

"It's really random, which makes it all the more suspicious," Fratini told E! Online Wednesday.

NBC had no comment on the situation.

It's not the first time BetWWTS.com has suspended reality show wagering after a dubious pattern has raised red flags--and it's the third time it's happened to a Mark Burnett-produced show.

In April 2003, betting was shut down on Survivor: Amazon after it was discovered that four CBS employees had placed wagers on contestants Matthew Von Ertfelda and Jenna Morasca. It turned out to be a sound bet; Morasca ended up winning, while Von Ertfelda came in second.

Survivor bets were suspended again during the Pearl Islands season, after eventual winner Sandra Diaz-Twine received a flurry of bets originating from people living close to one another in Vancouver--not far from Diaz-Twine's hometown of Fort Lewis, Washington. The bets on Diaz-Twine were placed before the show even aired, leading BetWWTS.com to suspect that something fraudulent was afoot.

In 2002, betting on the second season of ABC's The Bachelor was yanked offline after BetWWTS.com noticed a high rate of wagers on bachelorette Helene Eksterowicz originating from bachelor Aaron Buerge's hometown of Springfield, Missouri. You guessed it--Helene nabbed a proposal in the show's finale, but the couple broke up after just a few months.

"In the past, there's always been a link to the person's hometown or someone in a production company," Fratini said.

Fratini said BetWWTS.com didn't open betting on The Apprentice 2 until after the show aired and had to shut down wagers after just one week. The company is considering a policy change barring gambling on pretaped shows.

"One of the contestants, I believe it was Kelly, opened at 12-to-1 odds and [the bets] moved the line down to 4-to-1," Fratini said.

Both Massey and Perdew received 10 $300 bets each from newly-opened accounts, Fratini said.

Though Apprentice 2 wrapped filming in early summer, the finale airs live so there's no telling who the actual winner is before Trump utters his final "You're fired." However, it's apparently possible to discern who the final two contestants might be--that is, if one's possessed of the right sort of connection.

Last season, the boardroom's final two were cigar-club founder Bill Rancic and Harvard Business School grad Kwame Jackson. In the end, Trump fired Jackson and hired Rancic while an estimated 28 million viewers looked on.

Trump's reality platform was last season's breakout hit, but this season, Apprentice ratings have taken a dive, falling behind CBS powerhouse series CSI and Without a Trace.

The show recently lost a bid for Best Competitive Reality Show to The Amazing Race at the 2004 Emmy Awards.