Trainer Randi Persaud is under investigation by the New York State Gaming Commission and the New York Racing Association and will not be permitted to run or enter his horses at NYRA tracks for the foreseeable future, racing officials said Saturday.
“His entries have been stopped and his horses have been scratched,” Steve Lewandowski, the steward for the Gaming Commission said Saturday. “There’s an investigation going on with him.”
Lewandowski would not say what the investigation is about. During his training career, Persaud has not been suspended in New York, though he’s been fined multiple times for failure to tend to business in a proper manner.
Persaud, who turned 44 years old on Thursday, was not immediately available for comment Saturday.
Persaud had Reyana Reya Delite scratched from Friday’s fourth race at Belmont. His two entrants on Saturday, Impazible Creek in race 7 and Reyana Reya Dreams in the 10th, were scratched. Golden Sequence, entered in Sunday’s ninth race, will also be scratched.
Persaud has three wins from 39 starters at the current Belmont Park meet. Through Thursday, he was in line to earn a $9,000 bonus from NYRA’s Under-20 Claiming Challenge for trainers whose stable consists of 20 horses or less.
Since beginning his training career in 2008, Persaud has won 224 races from 3,485 starters. In 2010, he won the Queens County Stakes at Aqueduct with More Than a Reason.
Prior to training, Persaud won 99 races as a jockey from 1994 thru 2006. In 1996, he won 66 races, riding primarily at Parx.