Indian conmen trick wealthy Russian online gamblers out of thousands with this fake version of cricket match using construction workers as players and broadcasting it on YouTube
- Fraud Indian cricket league saw men in Gujarat hire field and set up cameras
- Players paid £4 as live stream with fake crowd noise never showed wide shot
- Elaborate hoax tricked naïve Russian gamblers who watched games on YouTube
- Police: ‘The setup was good enough to trick unsuspecting people into believing’
- Cops arrested four men, charging them with criminal conspiracy and gambling
Labourers masquerading as cricket players, clever camera angles and fake team names were all part of an elaborate hoax cricket league in western India shown on YouTube that was used to draw money from gamblers in Russia, police said on Monday.
Fashioned along the lines of the popular Indian Premier League, a group of men in the western Indian state of Gujarat hired a field, set up cameras and asked local labourers to dress up in team uniforms and play cricket.
This was then streamed on YouTube to unsuspecting betting operations in Russia, who bet on match outcomes, Achal Tyagi, the top police official in Mehsana district told Reuters on Monday.
A hokey livestream broadcast live on YouTube used fake crowd noise to appear more ‘real’
Four conmen were arrested and charged with conspiracy after setting up the fake league
‘They had umpires with walkie-talkie sets to officiate as they have in IPL and international cricket matches. The setup was good enough to trick unsuspecting people into believing it was a genuine cricket league,’ Tyagi said.
Police arrested four people in connection with the case on Friday.
Tyagi said the umpires were telling players whether to score runs or get out depending on the instructions they were given on the walkie-talkie sets received from the organisers, who in turn were receiving instructions from an accomplice in Russia on the Telegram app.
Betting on cricket is illegal in India, and the four arrested have been charged with criminal conspiracy and gambling, local officials said.
IPL, the world’s richest T20 league, was embroiled in an illegal betting scandal in 2013 which led to two-year suspensions for its Chennai and Rajasthan franchises.
The 10-team league’s popularity could be gauged from the sale of its media rights for the next five years, which fetched the organising Indian cricket board a whopping $6.2billion (£5.2billion) last month.
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