You can place this story under the weird and even weirder category.
In terms of scams, it was one of the more unique I’ve come across.
And given it’s a subject matter I’ve been researching for over two years, it certainly piqued my interest when I learned this week that someone was direct messaging people on the Voyageur’s board offering to sell them information on matchfixed games.
So, I thought, let’s have a look. I wrote a few friends and had them contact the mystery man
Below is the series of emails that followed.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
Simple enough. He’s not asking for any money. Or credit cards. Or SIN numbers. Or souls. Could it be possible this was just the latest offshoot from the ever-growing matchfixing industry? A second hand fixer who was willing to sell on his info to make a few extra bucks? It wouldn’t be the most unimaginable thing I’ve come across. But it does seem like a lot of work to solicit hundreds of people on a message board (individually, not through a bot as the V’s board administrators determined) to make $50 to $100 each time.
Who am I to tell people how they should make money though?
Still no requests for money but he’s certainly laying the groundwork for the hook or manipulation. Don’t you feel bad for the poor matchfixer who got ripped off by those dastardly criminals? They took his good, innocent tip of a fraudulent game and then never lived up to their honourable arrangement.
Would he actually send the tip though? What if it’s real? As promised it arrived the next morning.
As did another, to my other friend. Different game, different kind of bet, but there were the fixed games in their inboxes nonetheless. They wouldn't end up laying the bets. But, we would all end up tuning into our first ever Portugeuse Cup game and first ever Latvian Higher division game. Riveting stuff.
So, did they hit? Well, for a while it looked like they might. The Portuguese Cup game was actually very close to fulfilling its fixed projection. And the right Latvian team was leading for a while. In the end though, neither finished on the promised result and Richard the Matchfixer turned out to be nothing more than Richard the Scammer.
Also, Richie on the Voyageurs board, who was telling people he was from Sweden, turned out to be Richard Lorn from Poland. We grabbed 'Richard Lorn's' IP info.
IP Address: 83.7.47.44
Hostname: abfj44.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl
IP Country: Poland
IP Country Code: POL
IP Continent: Europe
IP Region: Lodzkie
Guessed City: Pabianice
IP Latitude: 51.6554
IP Longitude: 19.3456
Organization: Neostrada Plus
ISP Provider: Neostrada Plus
There are a few other places on the soccer web that Richie boy has tried his hand but still, for the effort it takes (remember they were soliciting people one by one, not using a bot), it seems like an awful lot of work to try and bilk strangers out of $50 and $100 at a time.
And what if it had hit? What if his fake fix had landed? The bets he chose were pretty standard and safe. Odds are Richard occasionally does get one right. What then?
A correspondence on how he wanted to be paid eventually gives some clue to that.
If you’ve never heard of them - Moneybookers, PaySafeCard and UKash don’t have the greatest reputation around the web. Moneybookers especially has some pretty bad reviews that include allegations of everything from attempted identity theft to allegations of actual theft.
And...
And...
In the end, like most scams, they’re just after your banking or credit card information. The proposition of fixing is probably just a simple way to weed out the desperate and dumb.
I would warn everybody off of Rich and Co. but if you’re willing to place bets on what you thought were fixed games, well, in my books you’ll get what you deserve.
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And before anyone asks, if you want to know when the matchfixing documentary I’ve been working for CBC will air, you can email me at itscalledfootball@gmail.com