List of match fixing incidents

Match fixing is when the outcome of a match in organized sports has been manipulated. The reason for fixing a match includes ensuring a certain team advances or gambling. Match fixing is seen as one of the biggest problems in organized sports. This page is a list of match fixing incidents.

American football

• 2009: On May 6, a federal grand jury in Detroit indicted six former University of Toledo athletes—three each from the school's football and basketball programs—on charges of conspiracy to commit sports bribery in relation to their alleged involvement in a point shaving scheme that ran from 2003 through 2006. It is believed to be the first major U.S. gambling case involving two sports at the same college.^[1] Since then, four former Toledo athletes, including at least one not named in the original indictments, have pleaded guilty on charges related to the scheme. One of these, former Rockets running back Quinton Broussard, admitted he had deliberately fumbled during the 2005 GMAC Bowl against UTEP (a game ultimately won 45–13 by Toledo) in exchange for $500, and had been paid to provide confidential team information to one of the orchestrators of the scheme.^[2]

Association football

• In 1964, the great British football betting scandal of the 1960s was uncovered. A betting ring organized by Jimmy Gauld and involving several Football League players had been fixing matches. The most famous incident involved three Sheffield Wednesday players, including two England international players, who were subsequently banned from football for life and imprisoned after it was discovered they had bet against their team winning in a match against Ipswich Town. A similar scandal had occurred in 1915.
• 1980 Italian football scandal ("Totonero"): In May 1980, the largest match fixing scandal in the history of Italian football was uncovered by Italian Guardia di Finanza, after the spalling of two Roman shopkeepers, Alvaro Trinca and Massimo Cruciani, who declared that some Italian football players sold the football-matches for money; implicating, among others, AC Milan and Lazio. Teams were suspected of rigging games by selecting favorable referees, and even superstar Italian World Cup team goalkeeper Enrico Albertosi and future 1982 FIFA World Cup winner Paolo Rossi banned with betting on football games.^[3] Both clubs were forcibly relegated to Serie B and Milan's president, Felice Colombo, received a life ban.^[4]
• In February 1999 a Malaysian-based betting syndicate was caught attempting to install a remote-control device to sabotage the floodlights at FA Premier League team Charlton Athletic's ground with the aid of a corrupt security officer. If the match had been abandoned after half-time, then the result and bets would have stood. Subsequent investigations showed that the gang had been responsible for previously unsuspected "floodlight failures" at West Ham's ground in November 1997, and again a month later at Crystal Palace's ground during a home match of Palace's groundsharing tenant Wimbledon.^[5][6]
• The Italian Football Federation said in October 2000 it had found eight players guilty of match-fixing. Three were from Serie A side Atalanta and the other five played for Serie B side Pistoiese. The players were Giacomo Banchelli, Cristiano Doni and Sebastiano Siviglia (all Atalanta) and Alfredo Aglietti, Massimiliano Allegri, Daniele Amerini, Gianluca Lillo and Girolamo Bizzarri (all Pistoiese). The charges related to an Italian Cup first round tie between the two sides in Bergamo on August 20, 2000 which ended 1–1. Atalanta scored at the end of the first half and Pistoiese equalised three minutes from full-time. Atalanta qualified for the second round. Snai, which organises betting on Italian football, said later it had registered suspiciously heavy betting on the result and many of the bets were for a 1–0 halftime score and a full-time score of 1–1.
• In 2004, Portuguese Police launched the operation Apito Dourado and named several Portuguese club presidents and football personalities as suspects of match fixing, including FC Porto's chairman Pinto da Costa. Some of the wiretaps used as proof, deemed unusable in court, can now be found on YouTube.^[7][8]
• In June 2004 in South Africa, thirty-three people (including nineteen referees, club officials, a match commissioner and an official of the South African Football Association) were arrested on match-fixing charges.^[9]
• In the summer of 2004, Betfair provided evidence of race fixing to City of London Police that led to the arrest of jockey Kieren Fallon and fifteen others on race fixing charges. On 7 December 2007 the judge in the case ordered the jury to find Fallon not guilty on all charges.
• 2005 Bundesliga scandal: In January 2005, the German Football Association (DFB) and German prosecutors launched separate probes into charges that referee Robert Hoyzer bet on and fixed several matches that he worked, including a German Cup tie. Hoyzer later admitted to the allegations; it has been reported that he was involved with Croat gambling syndicates. He also implicated other referees and players in the match fixing scheme. The first arrests in the Hoyzer investigation were made on January 28 in Berlin, and Hoyzer himself was arrested on February 12 after new evidence apparently emerged to suggest that he had been involved in fixing more matches than he had admitted to. Hoyzer has been banned for life from football by the DFB. On March 10, a second referee, Dominik Marks, was arrested after being implicated in the scheme by Hoyzer. Still later (March 24), it was reported that Hoyzer had told investigators that the gambling ring he was involved with had access to UEFA's referee assignments for international matches and Champions League and UEFA Cup fixtures several days before UEFA publicly announced them. Ultimately, Hoyzer was sentenced to serve 2 years and 5 months in prison.
• In July 2005, Italian Serie B champions Genoa was placed last in the division by the sporting justice, and therefore condemned to relegation in Serie C1, after it was revealed that they bribed their opponents in the final match of the season, Venezia to throw the match. His president Enrico Preziozi was banned for five years after being guilty by the sporting justice. Genoa won the match 3–2 and had apparently secured promotion to Serie A.
• Brazilian football match-fixing scandal: In September 2005, a Brazilian magazine revealed that two football referees, Edílson Pereira de Carvalho (a member of FIFA's referee staff) and Paulo José Danelon, had accepted bribes to fix matches. Soon afterwards, sport authorities ordered the replaying of 11 matches in the country's top competition, the Campeonato Brasileiro, that had been worked by Edílson. Both referees have been banned for life from football and face possible criminal charges. Brazilian supporters have taken to shout "Edílson" at a referee who they consider to have made a bad call against their team, in a reference to the scandal.
• 2008 The Fix: Book by Declan Hill alleges that in the 2006 World Cup, the group game between Ghana and Italy, the round-of-16 game between Ghana and Brazil, and the Italy-Ukraine quarter-final were all fixed by Asian gambling syndicates to whom the final scores were known in advance.^[10] The German Football Federation (DFB) and German Football League (DFL) looked into claims made in a Der Spiegel^[11] interview with Hill that two Bundesliga matches were fixed by William Bee Wah Lim a fugitive with a 2004 conviction for match-fixing.^[12]
• 2008: On October 1, it was reported that a Spanish judge who headed an investigation against Russian Mafia figures uncovered information alleging that the mobsters may have attempted to fix the 2007–08 UEFA Cup semi-final between eventual champion Zenit St. Petersburg and Bayern Munich. Both clubs denied any knowledge of the alleged scheme.^[13] Prosecutors in the German state of Bavaria, home to Bayern, later announced that they did not have enough evidence to justify a full investigation.^[14]
• 2008: On October 4, suspicious online betting on the game between Norwich City and Derby County led some to question the validity of the Football League match. Gamblers in Asia were said to have placed a large amount of money down during halftime, which raised concerns over the outcome.^[15] The inquiry by The Football Association found no evidence that would suggest the match was fixed.^[16] Derby County ended up winning the match 2–1.
• In November 2009, German police arrested 17 people on suspicion of fixing at least 200 soccer matches in 9 countries.^[17] Among the suspected games were those from the top leagues of Austria, Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Turkey, and games from the second highest leagues of Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland. Three contests from the Champions League were under investigation, and 12 from the Europa League.
• In June 2011, trials started for people allegedly involved in fixing Finnish football matches. One team, Tampere United was indefinitely suspended from Finnish football for accepting payments from a person known for match-fixing.^[18]
• In July 2011, As part of a major match-fixing investigation by authorities in Turkey, nearly 60 people suspected to be involved with fixing games were detained by İstanbul Police Department Organized Crime Control Bureau and then arrested by the court. The case did not come to a conclusion yet and the teams that are being accused of match-fixing are participating in the Turkish league currently.^[19]
• The Match fixing investigations of Norwegian Second Division saw Norway and Sweden arresting individuals in 2012, including players of Follo FK and Asker Fotball.^[20][21]
• Operation VETO, a Europol investigation announced in 2013 that identified 380 fixed association football matches in 15 countries.^[22]
• In 2013 Lebanese match fixing scandal 22 Lebanese footballers were involved which led to a lifetime ban for Ramez Dayoub.
• In December 2013, six people in Britain, including Blackburn forward DJ Campbell, were arrested for allegedly fixing football games. The arrests were made by the National Crime Agency after release of a report from FederBet, a Brussels-based gambling watchdog, an organization created by the online bookmakers to watch the flow of bets across Europe.^[23][24]

Baseball

• In 1919, gamblers bribed several members of the Chicago White Sox to throw the World Series. This became known as the Black Sox Scandal and was recounted in book and movie form as Eight Men Out.

Basketball

• In 1951, in the CCNY point shaving scandal, District Attorney Frank Hogan indicted college basketball players for point shaving from four New York schools, including CCNY, Manhattan College, New York University and Long Island University.
• In 1978, mobsters connected with the New York Lucchese crime family, among them Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke, organized a point shaving scheme with key members of the Boston College basketball team.
• In 1985, Tulane University (New Orleans, Louisiana) players were involved in a point shaving scheme that led to the disbandment of the program for four years.^[25]
• In 1994, a comprehensive point shaving scheme organized by campus bookmaker Benny Silman and involving players from the Arizona State University men's basketball team was uncovered with the assistance of Las Vegas bookmakers, who grew suspicious over repeated large wagers being made against Arizona State.^[26]
• In April 2011, a U.S. federal grand jury in San Diego indicted a group of 10 individuals on charges of running a point shaving scheme affecting an as yet-undetermined number of college basketball games. Three of the accused have ties to the University of San Diego's men's basketball team—one was the team's all-time leader in points and assists; another was a former player; and the third was a former assistant. Games at the University of California, Riverside, where the second indicted player also played, were also mentioned as potentially being fixed.^[27]
• On 22 January 2016, ESPN Reporter Brian Windhorst, broke the news on Bomani Jones's show,^[28] that the NBA team Cleveland Cavaliers players threw a game against Portland Trail Blazers in an attempt to get head coach David Blatt fired.^[29]

Boxing

• At the 2012 Summer Olympics, a match result was overturned and the referee was expelled from the tournament after a very controversial decision which included a boxer winning the match despite having been knocked down five times in one round, in violation of amateur boxing regulations. Under AIBA rules, both the mandatory eight count and three knockdown rule are in effect.^[30] Eleven months earlier, BBC reported on a possible bribery attempt, which could be related.^[31]

Cricket

• In 1979, Somerset deliberately declared their innings in their Benson & Hedges Cup one-day match against Worcestershire closed after only one over was completed. This plan was not motivated by gambling, but was instead meant to manipulate tie-breaking rules for Somerset's benefit and assure qualification for the quarterfinals of the tournament. Although the plan was not against the letter of the rules, it was widely condemned by both media and cricket officials, and Somerset was expelled from that year's tournament in response. For more details, see Worcestershire v Somerset, 1979.
• In 2000 the Delhi police intercepted a conversation between a blacklisted bookie and the South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje in which they learnt that Cronje accepted money to throw matches. The South African government refused to allow any of its players to face the Indian investigation unit, which opened up a can of worms. A court of inquiry was set up and Cronje admitted to throwing matches. He was immediately banned from all cricket. He also named Saleem Malik (Pakistan), Mohammed Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja (India). Jadeja was banned for 4 years. They too were banned from all cricket. As a kingpin, Cronje exposed the dark side of betting, however with his untimely death in 2002 most of his sources also have escaped law enforcement agencies. Two South African cricketers, Herschelle Gibbs and Nicky Boje, are also wanted by the Delhi police for their role in the match fixing saga. A few years before in 1998, Australian players Mark Waugh and Shane Warne were fined for revealing information about the 'weather' to a bookmaker.
• The fourth Test of Pakistan's summer 2010 cricket tour of England was alleged to have contained several incidents of spot fixing, involving members of the Pakistan team deliberately bowling no-balls at specific points to facilitate the potential defrauding of bookmakers.^[32]
• In Indian Premier League in 2013, S. Sreesanth and 2 other players were banned for fixing in the match for incidents committed during bowling.^[33]

Esports

• In 2010, several professional Starcraft players were suspected of being involved in illegal match fixing, with two people arrested and about seven gamers investigated, with two renowned gamers, Ma Jae-Yoon and By.CrocuS were confirmed as working as a broker between the bettors and the gamers.^[34]
• In January 2015, Sam "DaZeD" Marine, Braxton "swag" Pierce, Keven "AZK" Larivière, and Joshua "steel" Nissan, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive professional players from the American team iBUYPOWER, were banned for life for match fixing a game.^[35][36]

Formula 1

• 2009: In September 2009, Formula 1 driver Nelson Piquet Jr. admitted to have intentionally wrecked his race-car during the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix due to team orders. It gave an advantage to his teammate Fernando Alonso who went on to win the race. Following a lawsuit by the Renault Formula 1 team against the Piquet family, a judge ruled in Piquet's favor due to overwhelming evidence against the team; fining the Renault Formula 1 team millions, lliquidating various employees, banning the team from Formula 1 for 2 years (on suspended sentence) and various key members of Renault Formula 1 team being banned for life (which was later appealed).

NASCAR

• In the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, the 2013 Federated Auto Parts 400 was scandalized by extensive manipulation of the race results by three teams—Michael Waltrip Racing, Penske Racing, and Front Row Motorsports—in an attempt to ensure that MWR and Penske drivers would earn places in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. When the manipulation was discovered, NASCAR imposed unprecedented penalties that knocked Martin Truex, Jr., one of the intended beneficiaries, out of the Chase, and also gave Jeff Gordon, an unwitting victim of the manipulation, a 13th place in the normally 12-driver Chase.

Tennis

• On 18 January 2016, a joint Buzzfeed and BBC investigation reported alleged widespread match-fixing, which involve Northern Italian, Sicilian, and Russian betting syndicates, which included suspicious betting at major tournaments such as Wimbledon.^[37]

References