The plot thickens in the William Hill Online walkout, with the story line now including conspiracy and the involvement of Israeli intelligence officers.

Last week, the great majority of the staff at the Tel Aviv office of internet sportsbook giant William Hill Online walked off the job in response to chief marketing officer Eyal Sanoff’s resignation; added to this were employees’ general fears that plans are in the works to shut down the operation in favor of relocating the business to the United Kingdom or Gilbraltar.

Chasing this were walkouts at a William Hill office in Bulgaria and a related Playtech location in Manila. The labor situation was such that company CEO Ralph Topping himself joined COO Jim Mullen in Tel Aviv in an attempt to mollify the situation.

And then when things got really interesting. According the London-based Telegraph, the Tel Aviv outlet refused Topping and other higher-ups access to its computer records. William Hill then recruited “ex-Israeli intelligence officers to go through the systems,” only to find plans in place to form a new online sportsbook service. Superfluous employees on the payroll were also discovered, including “a rabbi, fish feeder and hairdresser.”

Some seven managers were dismissed from the company, and the Telegraph story reports that Mullen and William Hill Online CEO Henry Birch will be employed in Tel Aviv “for the next few months with a brief to change the culture of the business there,” clearly a necessary step at this point … unless in fact Hill will actually shut down the office.