Manipulation of bets on football; understand the scheme that favors gamblers

The sports news has been taken over in recent weeks by denunciations of schemes to manipulate the results of football matches to favor gamblers.

These complaints are the result of an operation by the Public Ministry of Goiás (MP-GO) called Maximum Penalty and which involves players who were in action in state championships and Series A and B of the 2022 Brazilian Championship.

bets

Currently, specialized houses offer several types of bets, in addition to the simple result of a match.

It is possible to guess, within the so-called secondary market, on different events that happen during the course of a game, such as the number of yellow or red cards, finals, corner kicks, penalty kicks, among other statistics.

The bets are made with different quotations (the so-called odds), based on which the values ​​of the prizes paid are defined.

According to the prosecutors who acted in the Maximum Penalty operation, criminal organizations bribed professional football athletes to practice certain events in official matches, such as committing penalties or receiving yellow or red cards, causing the bettors involved in the scheme to hit a previously placed bet.

denounced

MP-GO pointed out the participation of some players in the fraudulent scheme. Among them is defender Eduardo Bauermann, removed by Santos on a preventive basis. In addition to the athlete from Peixe, athletes Gabriel Tota (Ypiranga-RS), Victor Ramos (Chapecoense), Igor Cariús (Sport), Paulo Miranda (Náutico), Fernando Neto (São Bernardo) and Matheus Gomes (who played for Sergipe) ).

Nine more people (bettors and members of the criminal organization) were also named in the complaint, which, according to the MP/GO, “discloses 23 criminal facts that occurred during the matches, in which players committed to committing fouls to receive cards and to commit penalties . The criminal organization aimed to bet on the results and events induced and, in this way, obtain high gains”.

After the initial complaint, prints of bettors’ conversations that are under investigation by the MP-GO became public knowledge. In these message exchanges, the names of players who were not denounced appeared. Some were removed preventively by the current teams, such as Vitor Mendes (Fluminense), Pedrinho (Athletico-PR), Bryan García (Athletico-PR), Richard (Cruzeiro), Maurício (Internacional), Nino Paraíba (América-MG), Raphael Rodrigues (Avaí), Alef Manga (Coritiba) and Jesús Trindade (Coritiba).

schema discovery

The investigation by the Public Ministry of Goiás emerged in February, based on a complaint made by the president of Vila Nova, Hugo Jorge Bravo. On that occasion, the manager revealed that midfielder Marcos Vinícius Alves Barreira, better known as Romarinho (who had his contract terminated in 2022), accepted R$ 150,000 to commit a penalty in the first stage of the game against Sport, in Série B. Later, in April, the MP-GO expanded the scope of the investigations, starting to investigate possible irregular events in Serie A matches.

This week, the Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, ordered the Federal Police (PF) to initiate an investigation to investigate signs of manipulation of results in sports competitions, an initiative that has the support of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF). Even with the discovery of the criminal scheme, the highest entity of national football ruled out any possibility of interrupting the current edition of the Brazilian Championship and stated that it works “together with FIFA [Federação Internacional de Futebol] and other international spheres for a standard model of investigation”.

Regulation

Sports betting was established in Brazil in 2018, with the publication of Law 13,756. However, the activity still lacks regulation. On Thursday (11), the Ministry of Finance informed that it will issue a provisional measure to regularize the market in the country. The text was forwarded to the co-author ministries (Planning, Management, Health, Tourism and Sports) and will be taken to the Civil House, after evaluation and signature, before being submitted to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The text focuses specifically on the regulation of fixed odds bets, known as the bet market. According to the Treasury, based on this process, the ministries will be able to edit ordinances with rules to create mechanisms that prevent and curb cases of manipulation of results.

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