Spanish police have arrested 53 people belonging to an international organization that rigged sporting events and cheated betting shops by using state-of-the-art technology to capture match signals, AFP reports.
The group was mainly involved in match-fixing, mainly in Romania and Bulgaria, bribing athletes directly but also through betting using satellite technology that allowed them to capture images of matches several seconds in advance.
Arrested at the end of December, mostly in Madrid and Toledo, the 53 people had provided their identities or bank accounts - for a fee - so the network could place bets on various online platforms or at betting shops without attracting attention, the national police explained at a press conference in Madrid.
They were all "young people between the ages of 18 and 25, mostly men, with low or no income and with friendly ties to the rest of the criminal organization," said David Calvette, in charge of gambling control at the police.
All of these individuals worked for an organization that had been broken up several months earlier, as the authorities announced last September, with the arrest of 22 people, including the two leaders of this international gang of Romanian and Bulgarian origin that had settled in Spain.
"They were using large satellite dishes in their homes from where they captured the images captured from the field" before being mounted, allowing them to see "10 or 12 seconds" earlier what was then broadcast on television. This allowed them to 'get ahead' and submit their bets," explained David Calvet.
The organization arranged fake bets worth about 2 million euros and won 4 million "in more than twenty countries," including Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia, and Bolivia, explained Claudio Marinelli, head of Interpol's anti-money laundering unit, which was involved in the operation as well as Interpol.
Some of the money earned by the network was seized by the bookmaking houses, which trigger a mechanism if they detect suspicious bets, police said. / BGNES
