Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer Read online

  The first match was Singapore vs Zimbabwe. We told the Zimbabweans to lose the match by 2-nil. I don't know why the final score ended up being 4-2. I had some money of my own and was using it to place bets on the matches in Singapore. Singapore's victory was paying four dollars for every one dollar wagered. I placed between 20 to 30 thousand dollars on the match and walked away with about 100 thousand dollars in my pocket. Zimbabwe played two more matches and qualified for the semi-final, which they lost to Myanmar 3-1. I was traveling with the teams but I did not dictate the results anymore: Thana and Yap were now running the show.

  There was, however, a minor fuck up with the Lesotho team. When they had arrived in Malaysia they were still unaware of our scheme so we had to sit down with them and explain everything to the coach, players and delegation members.

  "This money is yours if you achieve the result that we want", I told them as I left a 50 thousand dollar deposit with them.

  In the first match they only managed to lose 1-0 to Myanmar. Thana's boss won some money but there were some rough edges that needed sharpening so we put all the players in a room again and spoke to them thoroughly. Then we spoke to the coach, just to make sure that there would be no more mistakes in the coming matches.

  The following match was Lesotho vs Laos in Kuala Lumpur. The Laos team, however, happened to be controlled by a Chinese-Malaysian bookie called Botak. I don't know why they called him that; 'botak' is a Malaysian term meaning 'bald head' but his hair was longer and finer than a woman's. Botak looked nothing like a Chinese as he was very tall and well-built. He had total control over the entire Laos team so Thana's boss sent Thana and Yap to speak to him before kick off.

  "Can we do something together?" they asked.

  "No", Botak replied as he brushed his hair back with his hand, "you do your thing, we'll do our thing. Let's see who is the King of Kelong".

  In Malaysian, 'kelong' is a wooden offshore fishing platform built over water. You just throw your line and catch the fish. I don't know how the term came to be associated with match-fixing.

  I was watching the match from the stands. First half, 3-1 in favor of Lesotho. Now forget all about the first half, it is redundant. Only the second half counts because the two bosses, Thana's boss and Botak, were waiting to see who would make the first move before they placed their bets. Botak spoke to the Laos team inside their changing room.

  "In the second half", he commanded, "I want a total of three goals. We can score, we can concede".

  Thana, Yap and I were in Lesotho's changing room when Thana's boss called.

  "Tell the boys not to score and not to concede anymore", he instructed.

  On that day, Pal was at his mother's funeral when he received a call from Botak. The latter had worked for Pal during the Malaysia Cup days and the two were still in touch.

  "Pal", said Botak, "Lesotho vs Laos. Go and play this game. Take Over, there will be three goals in the second half".

  Through the grapevine, Pal had come to know that I had taken the Lesotho team to Malaysia.

  "A competition between Wilson and Botak?" said Pal to a common friend who was attending the funeral. "Let's see who wins. This is a clash of the titans, let's see who is the Kelong King".

  Pal thought that the contest was between Botak and myself because he didn't know about Thana's boss; I don't know who he placed his money on.

  As the second half of the match began, the Laos back-line disappeared from the pitch. Nine players advanced to the front-line in hopes of scoring leaving just one man, at times nobody, in defense. And what did the Lesotho boys do? Since there were no Laos defenders between them and the Laos goal, they shot from 40 meters away. You should really get a recording of this match from the Malaysia FA, it's worth watching; you'll never come across a football game like this in your entire life. Lesotho was awarded a corner kick. The player brought the ball to the corner and just stood next to the flag with his hands on his hips. When the Laos players came forward hoping to score, the Lesotho players did their level best to stop them; their defense was packed. As the game progressed, Laos was getting more and more desperate to score or be scored against. The Laotian players were so angry that they began kicking our boys.

  "Either you score or you concede", they yelled. "You don't want to score and you don't want to concede. What the fuck".

  It was a comedy. I was unaware of the contest between Thana's boss and Botak until after the match, when Thana informed me, so I watched the two teams play and marveled about what the fuck could be happening. The fans all thought that Lesotho didn't want to embarrass Laos, since they were already winning 3-1. When the time ran out and the final whistle was blown, the score hadn't changed: 3-1. Second half, zero goals scored; we won our bet and Botak was defeated.

  In their last match, Lesotho lost 4-nil to Malaysia, which went on to win the final. Thana's boss was very happy but couldn't express his gratitude directly to me as my cut was always channeled through Thana and Yap, who acted as a filter between him and me. This is a very dirty business, you know, people will undercut you if you let them get too close to your private dealings, so Thana and Yap were guarding their boss jealously from the competition and never introduced him to me. In the Merdeka Cup, everyone made very good money and the boss was good to all his boys. He wasn't as generous with me: Thana paid me 100 thousand Malaysian Ringgit, about 40 thousand Singapore dollars; a meager sum for such a fine and difficult job.

  "Fuck. You promised me 5 percent of the profits", I complained.

  What can I say? The Jumbojumbo policy had effected me as well.

  The 40 thousand dollars that Yap had brought to South Africa were gone. The cut we had made by marking up the price of the tickets had been divided by three and I had spent another ten thousand dollars to corrupt Jumbojumbo; there was nothing left. I gathered that if I wanted to make enough money from my fixes, I would have had to build up my own betting network.

  Since leaving prison in 2006 I had realized that the world around me had drastically changed; everything was happening over the internet.

  "Wilson", teased my friends, "we don't bet over the telephone anymore. We click directly on the website".

  "Direct on-line betting", I thought, as I got acquainted to the gambling website, "this is so much better".

  During the old days we would bet over the telephone prior to the match. There were computers and dedicated websites already but the agents would handle them for you. You would call the agent over the telephone.

  "Roma vs Lazio", he would say. "Roma half-ball, win-9".

  If I wanted to take Roma, I would offer him a better deal.

  "I win you 8.5".

  "OK".

  Then the agent would submit my bet on his website and record: Wilson, 5000, Roma. There were no live bets and you could only bet on the full 90-minute end-result. No Over-Under, only handicap. And we had a standard: the lowest an agent would pay you for a win was eight. For every ten dollars that you wagered, you would win eight dollars; that was the lowest they would go. Nowadays, the computer will bring your win down as low as four dollars for every ten dollars wagered; you take your four dollars and go. Sometimes people don't find it worth the gamble for four dollars. If you lose, you lose ten, if you win, you win four.

  By 2007, master agents were providing punters with direct access and credit on gambling websites. Your agent earned a percentage on your bets and paid a percentage to his superior. He, in turn, would hand a share to the betting company, to HQ. There was a hierarchy - senior master agent, master agent, agent - and everyone took a percentage from each bet. The only problem was that the system made the odds fluctuate a bit too much. When you first clicked on the website, the odds would be 9.5, then, after the second click, they would shrink to 9.2. That's a difference of three percent. If you placed 100 thousand dollars on a game, that difference would amount to 3 thousand dollars: the agents' commissions. The betting companies also manipulated the odds to maximize their profits. Sometimes this
made me very agitated because the odds would spread so far apart that the mother-fucking company was making money simply by playing around with the numbers. These fluctuations angered me and made me want to fix matches in order to beat the fuckers.

  In September 2007, China was hosting the FIFA Women's World Cup so I traveled there with Thana and Yap. Once again, we targeted the African teams. We approached the girls from the Nigeria women's national team. Initially we met two of them, I invited them out for a drink and we started chatting.

  "I'm a football agent", I told them. "Would you be interested in playing in Europe? Do you have a laptop? A mobile phone? Would you like me to buy you one?"

  It was a gamble but they accepted and took my presents. You see, once a player takes your gifts, you know that they aren't going to report you, then, if they don't cooperate, the laptops or mobile phones that you gave to them amount to a mere business loss; they are gone, but you are safe. I asked the Nigerian girls whether they could approach their goalkeeper and ask her to join our ranks. They tried, but the goalkeeper refused: she was clean. One of the girls came back to me and briefed me.

  "Our goalkeeper says that you've come up to her before with the same proposal during the 2004 Olympics in Greece", she said.

  "Fuck", I replied. "I've never met any of you before".

  I was in prison during the Olympics in Greece but an Indian guy in Singapore had once told me that Pal's group had fixed the Athens games.

  "Fuck Pal", the guy had added. "He took all the money and didn't give me a penny. He just disappeared".

  Greedy fucker. The Nigerian goalkeeper must have met one of Pal's boys in Greece and thought I was him. Anyways, we bought four laptops and four mobile phones, which the two Nigerian girls shared with two of their teammates who also joined our side. Later, all four girls came to see us.

  "You have a match against North Korea coming up", I said to them. "Are you willing to lose?"

  The Nigerian girls accepted so we left 60 thousand dollars in cash with them as a deposit. I was a little pissed off at Thana and Yap at that point because they were being paid by their boss but were leaving all the work to me.

  On the following day, Nigeria was set to play against North Korea, which was giving 1.5. Thana and Yap asked the girls to lose the match by three goals so that they could clear the handicap and win additional money on Over 2.5. The game kicked off and, by the end of the first half, Nigeria was down by two goals. The Nigerian girls never managed to concede the third goal because, being two goals ahead, the North Koreans were just passing the ball around, waiting for the final whistle to blow. At the end of the match, the result was left unchanged: 2-0 in favor of North Korea; one goal short of what we had asked the girls.

  "You have to take the money back", ordered Thana. "The girls did not deliver".

  "Fuck", I said to him, "you won the handicap on the first half and on the final result; the only bet you lost is on the total number of goals scored. The girls deserve to get something".

  "This is not a good deal", I thought to myself. "I'll be losing my cut from this match as well if the players don't get paid. I've got to come up with something".

  On the next day, Thana was sent to another city on another business while Yap and I remained in the hotel with the Nigerian team and were tasked with retrieving the cash. I left Yap in the room and went downstairs in the hotel's hall where, randomly, I approached a chubby Nigerian who was with the delegation.

  "Would you like to make five hundred dollars?" I asked him.

  "Sure", he volunteered.

  "OK", I explained, "all you have to do is come to my room when I call you, knock on my door and, when I open it, say: 'I know what you guys are doing. If you are still here in five minutes I'm calling the police'. That's all. Do you understand? Here, take five hundred dollars and go".

  I returned to my room and called the Nigerian guy on his telephone: knock, knock. I opened the door.

  "Yes?"

  "I know what you guys are doing", the chubby Nigerian guy was a classy actor. "If you are still here five minutes from now, I'm calling the police".

  "Fuck", I turned to Yap. "Pack our things. We run".

  Yap was so scared that, within seconds, he disappeared from the scene and ran out of the hotel. He was literally terror-stricken; he jumped over a wall behind the hotel's compound and accidentally landed in the courtyard of a police station.

  "Why are you running?" asked the policemen.

  "Thieves were chasing me", stuttered Yap.

  As for me, I pretended to leave then stopped, walked back to the hotel and knocked on the Nigerian girls' door.

  "You can keep 40 thousand. Just give me back 20 thousand", I told them. "It's only fair, since you didn't give me the three goals that I wanted".

  I pocketed the 20 thousand dollars then, on the following day, met Thana and Yap in another city.

  "Thank God we didn't get caught", sighed Yap in relief.

  That night I flew back to Singapore and, as soon as I got home, began looking at the coming fixtures of the Women's World Cup. My eyes landed on Ghana vs Norway. Ghana was already out of contention and I knew that Norway could beat them so they made for the perfect losing side. I looked up the names of the Ghanaian team members on the internet then called their FA.

  "I'm a football agent", I said. "I happen to be in China and I want to meet your head of delegation for future reference. Where is your team staying?"

  "They're lodged in this hotel".

  The FAs would usually facilitate an agent's task by providing him with all the details that he needed. Unless, of course, you were in the USA or in the UK, where they don't give out that kind of information for security reasons. I looked up the hotel, called the reception and asked them to put one of the senior players on the telephone.

  "I'm a football agent", I said. "I'm looking for players and this and that"; same scheme.

  "Look here", I told her, "you are out of the competition already and you've got a useless game coming up. You're going to lose against Norway anyways and you'll just go home penniless. Why not make 75 thousand dollars on this match?"

  "We can discuss that", answered the girl.

  "How many girls do you have on the team that can be convinced?" I asked.

  "Maybe four".

  "Why don't you go and get one or two more", I wanted to make sure. "Just get as many as possible".

  "OK", she said. "I will do that".

  I got a friend of mine called Sivarajan to book two tickets to Shanghai and we flew together back to China. I had known Sivarajan for a good 15 years and had decided to use him in my business. From Shanghai, we traveled to the city of Hangzhou, where the Ghana delegation was staying. We booked a room in their same hotel and started walking around the premises, trying to identify the girl that I had spoken to on the telephone. As I chatted with Sivarajan in the hotel's hall, I sensed that there was something sinister going on. The ambiance was not right. Some of the people there were looking at me like: "Who is this guy?"

  When Sivarajan and I went up to our room, two Chinese men in plain clothes followed us upstairs and, as soon as we were inside, proceeded to knock on our door. I opened it.

  "Can we see your passports?" they asked. "What are you doing in China?"

  They were undercover police officers.

  "One of the girls must have spilled the beans", I thought.

  "I'm a football agent", I said as I handed them my World Wide Events and Sports International business card. "I'm here to watch football. The Women's World Cup, you know".

  "I don't think that you are here for that purpose", one of the officers stated. "I want you to tell me the truth about why you are here".

  "I am here to watch the games and to evaluate potential candidates for transfers into the clubs that I represent", I said. "But if you know something different, then why don't you tell me what other reason I'm supposedly here for".

  "No", said the policeman with a grimace, "you tell me". />
  "I'm here to watch football", I repeated. "This is what I know. If you know more than I do, then you tell me".

  The conversation was not going anywhere.

  "Look, we know why you're here", the Chinese policeman finally said. "Now you pack your things and leave this place immediately. Where did you come from?"

  "Shanghai".

  "You go back to Shanghai now. Then we want you out of the country".

  The officers took pictures of our faces and of our passports then, as we were followed closely by more undercover policemen, we boarded a train from Hangzhou to Shanghai. From Shanghai, we hopped on the first available flight to Singapore and were finally out of China and able to breathe. Ghana lost their match against Norway 7-2 and I thought to myself: "These stupid girls blew 75 thousand dollars away just like that".

  A few months went by and I just couldn't keep my mouth shut with Thana.

  "Remember the Nigeria game and the guy that came to knock on our door saying that he would call the police?" I laughed. "That was a hoax. But make sure this stays between you and me. Don't tell Yap".

  Thana must have eventually told Yap, because two years later I received a call from him.

  "Was that a hoax?" he asked.

  "Fuck", I said. "Of course not, man".

  After the end of the Women's World Cup in China I read news that the Agribank Cup, an Under-23 tournament, was going to take place in November in Vietnam and I thought that Zimbabwe would be the perfect team to play in the competition. By then I had realized that it was much easier to deal with Africans than with anybody else: when the money is on the table, they become different people; they listen to you.

  The Zimbabwean players had returned from the 2007 Merdeka Cup in Malaysia with new TVs, laptops, clothes and all, attracting the attention of one of the Zimbabwe FA's high-ranking executives called Rosemary. She immediately jumped on the bandwagon.

  "This is harvesting time", Rosemary thought; she fetched my contact from one of her colleagues and called me to do business.