In what must be one of the world’s most unusual but imaginative scams, police in the Mehsana district of Gujarat, India, arrested four men last week for running a fake Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament aimed at duping Russian punters.
According to The Times of India, the men hired 21 farm labourers and unemployed youth from the local village to pretend to be cricketers, then staged fake matches in which the players would wear the jerseys of real IPL teams such as Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians and Gujarat Titans.
With umpires holding walkie talkies to communicate with the organizers, fake crowd noise pumped in and even a local commentator thrown in to mimic the voice of popular IPL commentator Harsha Bhogle, the matches were then broadcast “live” over YouTube and bets taken via Telegram in the Russian cities of Tver, Voronezh and Moscow.
A police official said the main organizer Shoeb Davda, who developed the idea with a colleague while working in a Russian pub, had hired a local farm where he installed halogen lights.
“He readied 21 farm labourers, promising them Rs400 (US$5) per match. Next he hired cameramen and bought t-shirts of IPL teams,” the official said.
“Shoeb would take live bets over the Telegram channel. He would instruct Kolu, the umpire, over a walkie-talkie to signal fours and sixes. Kolu communicated the same to the batsman and the bowler. Acting on the instructions, the bowler would deliver a slow ball, enabling the batsmen to hit it for a four or a six.”
The fake tournament reportedly reached the quarter finals before being shut down, despite the real IPL season having come to a close a full three weeks earlier. Police are continuing with their investigations.
Sports betting is illegal in India although the underground betting market remains one of the largest in the world, said to be worth at least US$45 billion annually and likely much higher. Cricket is also the national sport in a country of almost 1.4 billion people, with the Indian Cricket Board recently signing a massive US$6.2 billion IPL media rights deal for the next five years.
