Mother Nature is Time's "Person of the Year," and employees at an unnamed Time Warner PR firm have been trying to profit off this inside knowledge via online betting.

That, at least, is the accusation of Sportsbook.com, which stated in a weekend news release:

Sportsbook.com, the world's largest online sportsbook, has been forced to halt wagering on Time Magazine's Person of the Year and Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year due to suspicious betting activity. Upon further investigation by Sportsbook.com, the first and only sportsbook to offer odds on the annual designations, it appears employees of a public relations agency linked to Time Warner have used inside information to place the maximum allowable bet on this year's winners.

On the afternoon of Friday, December 2, a number of suspicious wagers, originating primarily from New York and New Jersey, were posted on Mother Nature to be named Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2005. These wagers have been traced back to e-mail addresses of a New York-based PR agency that lists Time Warner as one of its clients.

This decision followed on the heels of similarly suspicious betting activity on the 2005 recipient of Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year. Since the odds were posted on the annual designation several weeks ago, numerous wagers from the same sources for the maximum allowable bet were placed on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Later in the evening of December 2, a leak emerged that Tom Brady would, in fact, be this year's winner.