In Taiwan (heavy on gambling) , specially trained prosecutors watch baseball games for signs of game rigging. Professional baseball game rigging and related underground gambling have been rampant over the past two decades since Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) was launched in 1990. Over the years, some coaches and players have been detained and indicted for game rigging. In some cases, the coach instructed the pitcher and the other players on the team how to play in order to produce game results in line with the team owner’s plan. This allowed underground gambling rings to net huge winnings from their bets.

The German police is investigating 200 soccer matches for evidence of game rigging. The games include three Champions League ties, 12 matches in the Europa League, formerly the UEFA Cup, one qualifying game for the under-21 European championship. All took place this season. UEFA, the international soccer association, is involved in the investigation. By bribing players, coaches, referees and officials to influence matches, the gang is thought to have earned as much as 10 million euros (15 million dollars) in huge bets with bookmakers in Europe and Asia, primarily in China. The investigations allegedly targets around 200 individuals. 15 have been arrested thus far. More than a million euros in cash and property were seized.

Two of those arrested in Thursday included two Croatian brothers living in Berlin, Ante and Milan Sapina, who were at the centre of a match-fixing scandal that rocked Germany in 2004, newspapers said. The 2004 German scandal saw referee Robert Hoyzer jailed in 2005 after admitting receiving almost 70,000 euros (104,000 dollars) and a plasma television from the Croatian brothers to throw games.

http://financialcrimeonline.com/archives/14

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/local/tainan/2009/04/09/203655/Tainan-prosecutors.htm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091121/ts_afp/germanyeuropecrimegamblingfblger

How to get around that? In Belize a laundering scheme was uncoverd that shows how you can beat the system if you are desparate enough. A short summary; have a company that provides financial transactions use identity details of citizens that are not related to the transaction to file transactions. The paper trail will not be related to the criminals but to unknowing individuals.

The names of thousands unknowing Belize City residents were used in the alleged money laundering operation carried out by a MoneyGram subagency in Belize. Belize’s drivers license database had been compromised and the stolen ID details were used to book financial transactions. The Coye family who ran the Moneygram agency were arrested. $1.5 million in cash was seized during a search in one of their houses in December 2008. This week, the former Moneygram ‘master’ agent was arrested on money laundering charges as well.

 7News investigation shows that the Coye Moneygram Sub-Agency was linked to a company called Money Exchange International which provided a service called Instadollar to internet gamblers in Peru, Turkey, and the United States. That service was used primarily by those gambling on sporting events with what’s called a Sportsbook based in Costa Rica. A sports book allows betting on international, mostly us sporting events.

But online gambling isn’t legal in the United States so through the Instadollar service, these gamblers would be instructed to send the money to Belize using Moneygram. And this is the important part – to do so – they have to have a name to send it to – so that’s where the driver’s license database came in. Those names – from the Prime Minister to the Governor of the Central Bank were used by Instadollar and then sent to Belize.

That’s where a clerk working for the Coye’s Money Exchange International would then fill in the particulars such as the address and the license number and then sign a false signature. The volume of transactions was incredible; on some days, it would exceed $110,000.00 using dozens of names of unsuspecting Belize City residents daily.

Sources inside the investigation informed 7News that over the one and a half year period under investigation, it is estimated that the Moneygram master agent and Coye Sub-agency shared a commission of BZ$7.5 million on transactions of over BZ$35 million. That’s a broad outline of how the names were being fraudulently used – but how the database was compromised is still a mystery.

Last week, former Belize’s ‘master agent’ Fuller was arrested on money laundering charges related to his companies OMNI and FULTEC. In June, Fuller told 7News that as master-agent he had nothing to do with the operations of his sub-agency and was unaware of any suspicious activity or any inordinate volume of transactions. But the FIU’s decision to charge him suggests that they take a different view. At Omni which owned the Moneygram master agency, shareholders included Fuller and his wife, the CEO in the Ministry of Tourism Mike Singh others.

Detail: Omni was the master agent for Moneygram in Belize and Fultec Systems set up the City Council’s driver’s license system. The companies sit in the same compound and on Friday, before his arrest, the namesake of Fultec and General Manager of Omni Dean Fuller told 7News he’d be doing an internal investigation to see if there was any possibility that it could be connected to his company.

This is not the first cases where employees in financial institutions steal ID’s to log financial transactions to keep authorities at bay. It is one of the biggest we have seen documented publicely so far. Are you comfortable the companies that keep your personal data are doing a good job at keeping it safe? Without your knowing you could be registered as money laundering and be the subject of a dozen SAR’s……

http://www.guardian.bz/component/content/article/53-headlines/277-moneygrams-money-laundering-mess

http://www.7newsbelize.com/sstory.php?nid=14474

Earlier this month, two former Bank of China managers were sentenced in a Nevada court in the US to over 20 years in jail for defrauding the Bank of China and laundering the funds through US bank accounts and casinos in Las Vegas. The two men are accused of sending millions of dollars in illegal wire transfers from ‘their’ Bank of China to a dozen or so sham companies they controlled all over the globe. The total fraud amounted to around $485 million and was detected in 2001 by auditors of the Bank of China. Authorities say that after the Bank of China suffered more than $170 million in losses by speculating on foreign currency, one of the managers began to siphon corporate assets to mask some of the losses and to enrich himself. It probably started as a Nick Leeson, but when it seemed almost too easy to wire the money out of the bank, it (really) got out of control. During a 3 year period the bank was systematically leaking funds to shelf companies without detection.

More on laundering and gambling in this blog: click ‘gambling’ in the ‘tag cloud’.

http://financialcrimeonline.com/archives/164

http://financialcrimeonline.com/archives/12

http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/video-xu-chaofan-and-xu-guojin-going-to-jail/17802309

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/april04/042904china.htm

The discussion on crime control in numerous areas, also in gambling, is between legalizing and regulating on one hand and banning and suppressing on the other. Alcohol, drugs and gambling all score differently on these 2 options.

But crime concerns also touch upon the regulated gambling industry. The NY Times published a story today on Betfair, a UK online gambling firm. Betfair is like ebay for gamblers. Users can set their odds and match their bets with other users. It operates in 80 countries and does a lot of bets a day. That is why Betfair has a lot of data to analyze gambling behavior. During the tennis match between Arguello (ranked 87) and Davydenko (seated 4) Betfair detected irregular bets. Davydenko’s odds got longer while leading the match. More and more money came in on Arguello. Davydenko resigned with an injury, leaving underdog Arguello as winner. Betfair reported the data to ATP. A subsequent report by ATP, “Review of Integrity in Professional Tennis” recommended an investigation on 45 other suspicious matches (the tip of the iceberg according to the report) and the endorsement of an anti-corruption body for sports.

Soccer games in Europe are known to have been infested by game fixing practices. Goalies, other players and referees are have been bought to lose games (never heard of someone being bought to win…). Add baseball, boxing, basketball, football, cricket; what is the grip of organized crime on sports ? If you imagine the amount of cash you can make by influencing major games, you would say this opportunity has been seized…

Experts estimate fixed games to be 1% of total. Over 2% of US Division I football players reported to have been asked to influence the outcome of games for gambling purposes. Illegal gambling in the US only is estimated at $150 billion a year according to the NY times.

The FBI has its own ‘sports bribery program’ and focuses on fixing sports games. In the course of time, all sports seem to have been infected by game rigging criminals. And without betting, fixing games is ofcourse not very interesting from a financial point of view.

Let’s compare with the financial markets. Although you don’t know all inside details on a company, you can get a lot of details on the price of options, stock and the supply and demand on the stock exchange. This will give an indication of how the market feels about the stock price. With a real time overview of the amount of bets being placed and their odds, you could detect information asymmetry, as you could detect insider knowledge in financial markets. This could enable you to take a bet (if you can legally gambling in the country you live at least) and follow the sentiment in the market and whatever is going on at the moment…. Good luck !

If honest legal gambling is more difficult than expected; let’s forget about honest illegal gambling. And don’t play poker with your friends; they will cheat as well : ).

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/sports/othersports/25betfair.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/97/03/Chapt11.html
http://www.betfair.com/
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9507E2DF153BF93BA25752C0A961958260
http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/orgcrime/lcn/sports.htm