[citation needed] Past posting was more feasible in the days before live television or radio broadcasts of sporting events.
A famous example described by magician, gaming and gambling authority John Scarne was the "Blondie Mob"— five young blonde women who cheated bookmakers in the Los Angeles area out of at least $1 million during the 1940s.
[1] The 1973 film The Sting features this technique as the basis of a successful con in 1936 played on character Doyle Lonnegan (actor Robert Shaw) in which Western Union wire transmissions were used before they were made public to place bets on races which had actually finished a few minutes earlier.
In addition, Came a Hot Friday, set in 1949 and starring Peter Bland, showed a less elaborate practice of past posting, but in this case, the ruse went wrong.
In James Joyce's Ulysses (published 1922, set in 1904), Leopold Bloom muses on the possibility of establishing a private wireless telegraph that would give him the race results from Britain faster than the standard telegram service, allowing him to make post factum bets.
This method not only allows the cheater to stealthily increase their winnings by removing bets after the outcome is known, but also to cleverly hide their actions by blending them with legitimate gameplay, making detection by casino personnel challenging.