Nearly $900,000 in unexplained bank activity tied to Oklahoma’s Oklahoma-Bred Fund has regulators, lawmakers and racing insiders in Oklahoma City asking some very pointed questions. An independent reconciliation of the fund has exposed mismatches between bank records and agency books, and now state investigators and auditors are circling to figure out whether this is messy bookkeeping or something far more serious.
Audit finds unexplained gaps between bank and books
The independent forensic reconciliation found that between Jan. 1, 2022 and June 30, 2025, the total value of checks that actually cleared the bank was $893,112 higher than what was recorded in the Oklahoma Horse Racing Commission’s Binkley accounting system. On top of that, 65 checks, worth roughly $118,532, were coded as “cancelled” in Binkley even though they cleared the bank.
The report also flags out-of-sequence and missing checks and labels Binkley “outdated,” with minimal internal controls that “raise the opportunity for error and potential fraud,” according to Shanna Dutton’s reconciliation report.
Commission moves and a law enforcement review
Commission counsel Michael Copeland told commissioners that “a case has been opened up to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation,” signaling that this is no longer just an internal accounting headache. The commission then voted to send Dutton’s reconciliation to the OSBI and to the State Auditor and Inspector’s Office for a deeper look.
At the same meeting, commissioners signed off on plans to pursue an upgrade to a commercial account-management system and instructed staff to cooperate fully with state oversight agencies as they dig through years of records, as reported by NonDoc.
Big program, bigger political backdrop
The Oklahoma-Bred program is no small neighborhood prize pool. It distributes millions of dollars to owners and breeders each year, and Dutton’s reconciliation pegged adjusted and actual OKBred balances at roughly $9.6 million to $9.8 million as of June 30, 2025, underscoring how much is riding on getting the numbers right…