According to media reports, British punters have fallen victim to a scam related to a match-fixing scheme in which they gambled on friendly football matches between Ukrainian teams that the country’s football association claims never took place.
Rumour has it that British and global bookmakers offered and settled bets on the games, which were supposedly part of a four-team tournament in the last week of March 2020. These gambling companies received various match details, including results of the matches, from the official data supplier of the English Premier League (EPL) to gambling firms, Betgenius.
The company was appointed as the official live data supplier of EPL match content for bookmakers at the beginning of the current season.
For now, Betgenius claims to have also fallen victim to fraud involving a Ukrainian amateur football tournament that took place at a time when almost all major football leagues, championships and matches on the territory of Europe had been postponed and cancelled because of the coronavirus infection outbreak. As mentioned above, the country’s football association insists that such matches never took place but Betgenius claims that it has evidence that the games did take place. The company also shared it accepts that the outcome of the matches may have been subject to fraudsters arranging a match-fixing scheme.
Betgenius Claims It Has Evidence Matches Actually Took Place in March 2020
As reported by The Times, one British betting operator has confirmed that its website accepted bets on the above-mentioned matches before it was notified by the International Betting Integrity Association that the football games in question were considered suspicious. The bookmaker also shared with The Times that ghost games were probably involved and most of the betting would have taken place in Far East markets.
At first, Betgenius claimed that gambling companies could remain confident in the firm’s data supply but then agreed that the games may have been organised by a criminal group in a fraudulent manner.
The matches were called “ghost games” because British gamblers were given the chance to place bets on matches that never actually took place but, still, bookmakers received data regarding the teams involved in the games, which were not the same as the ones listed, and the outcome of the matches. However, according to the Ukrainian Football Association, the aforementioned tournament, called the Azov Cup, was never actually held as the four teams involved were put under quarantine. The country’s FA also claims that the matches were part of a match-fixing scam aimed at defrauding bookmakers and their customers.
Betgenius, however, claims that the matches had not been ghost games and it has audio and visual proof about the authenticity of the fixtures.
Information about the Azov Cup initially appeared on the FC Berdyansk’s Facebook page on March 21st, claiming it would be a round-robin event. At the time, matches were offered to sports betting companies as a data feed by Betgenius. As understood so far, four games were actually held before the fraudulent scheme was uncovered, on March 25th and 26th, and the Facebook page was deleted.
- Author
Daniel Williams
