16 ms·

A small-town police officer took down a large match-fixing ring in tennis

138 points by saeedesmaili 3y ago

cvccvroomvroom 3y ago
https://archive.ph/i0lx1 https://archive.ph/i0lx1
rcme 3y ago
So the lackey gets 5 years in prison, the players are let off the hook and the mafia directing and financing the operation isn’t even investigated. Is organized crime a joke in Europe? Apparently millions of dollars were being laundered through this scheme. How much illegal activity went into generating the capital?
- rurban 3y ago
  Organized crime seems more like a joke in the US. There they did nothing at all
  - vuln 3y ago
    > Organized crime seems more like a joke in the US. There they did nothing at all That just, your opinion, man.
    - rurban 3y ago
      Read the article man. It was not an opinion, nor a generalization. > Sitting across from the FBI agents, Borremans sensed that they weren’t interested in the investigation. The Americans interrogated Rivera, but that’s where the case ended. A senior FBI official said in an interview that the agency reviewed the case as a courtesy to the Belgian police, but he would not comment on the details.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Italy would like a word.
    - borroka 3y ago
      Although still present, organized crime in Italy was severely curtailed by the maxi-trials (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxi_Trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxi_Trial) of the 1990s--which followed the murders of prosecutors Falcone and Borsellino--trials that sent hundreds of mobsters and those colluding with the Mafia to hard prison for many years. Mafia, the organized crime syndicate born in Sicily and exported all over the world, was particularly affected by the maxi-trials.
      - throwmeout123 3y ago
        Not really. They just stopped killing and now have more lucrative business and habits, less in the spotlight of the public opinion.
        borroka 3y ago
        I must say that only the ill-informed could claim that the Sicilian Mafia of today is as strong and profitable as that of the 1970s and 1980s. Matteo Messina Denaro, the last head of the Mafia, recently arrested and about to die of cancer, led a life that, were it not for the nefarious consequences of his actions and role, would be considered quite ridiculous, certainly not comparable to that of the Mexican or Colombian drug lords: he had little "disposable income", lived in a small apartment, and frequented a few prostitutes, energized by Viagra. Bernardo Provenzano, who before Messina Denaro was the head of the Mafia, lived for at least a decade in a farmhouse, largely alone, communicating with his "picciotti" with "pizzini," small pieces of paper with something barely comprehensible written on them: when they arrested him, he looked like an elderly man in rough shape. The Camorra has followed a similar decline, mostly due to internal fighting in the 90s and early 2000s, while the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, is unfortunately still strong, in Italy, Spain, Central Europe, Canada, Australia and South America. The books of Gratteri on 'Ndrangheta are an interesting read. I hate organized crime as much as one can hate organized crime and "mafiosi", and I would still to this day favor and support the iron fist of Mori, the police chief sent to Sicily a hundred years ago, who used rather, let's say, energetic methods to eradicate the mafia. I would give life imprisonment to mobsters, like one gives candy to kids on Halloween. Generously. But the Mafia and Camorra are no longer as powerful as they once were. And I hope they will be even less so in the future.
- nomat 3y ago
  apparently corruption runs rampant throughout all of europe. from the banks that facilitate the laundering of funds, to the port authorities that allow boatloads of cocaine from Colombian cartels, to the criminal states like albania. DW has a video called "The cartels of Marseille" that goes into the drug side of it. but of course there is art, human trafficking, weapons dealing, etc.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
paganel 3y ago
This is just scratching the surface, if that. Just the previous weekend I heard a guy I knew talk about how he was in the stands at a women't ITF tournament match in a middle-sized city here in Romania. The "stands" is a big word according to him, there were the two players on the field, their respective coaches and a fence-like structure which separated this guy, one of the couple of spectators there, from the match itself. He was telling us how he could bet during the match for "esoteric" things like what player was going to break next and things like that, and that he made a nice chunk of money betting that the match was going to be a succession of break games. He was also telling us how both of the coaches were also on their phones throughout the match, most probably not to instant message or to post on social media. Online sports betting has ruined sports.
- janc_ 3y ago
  Most ITF players can't afford coaches to travel with them; you really need to play ATF/WTA successfully or have a rich sponsor for that... (And by "successfully", I mean you have to be top-100 , or at least close to it)
  - paganel 3y ago
    They were probably close family or something similar, which substitutes for coaching for many such players anyway.
    - janc_ 3y ago
      Or the "coaches" were self-funding... Unfortunately, the financial difficulties of being a player outside top-100 invite organized crime involvement like this...
- 3seashells 3y ago
  So jam comes, ruin bets?
lazystar 3y ago
the captcha at archive.ph is looping - ive tried two different browsers. is there another archive link please
- blamazon 3y ago
  The operator of archive.today et al has certain philosophical ideas about SSL, EDNS subnets, and other topics which seem to be at odds with some providers of DNS, such as Cloudflare. A common theme of folks having issues with this recently seems to be DNS over https, commonly with Cloudflare. I think perhaps we can view the captcha loop as somewhat retaliatory.
- thedougd 3y ago
  Same. Per my sister comment all I’m doing is using Cloudflare Family for DNS.
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    That's sufficient.
- Aschebescher 3y ago
  I have the same problem for weeks now. Different browsers, deleted cookies, different IP adresses did not make it work again.
- mediumdeviation 3y ago
  https://wapo.st/3LE6zGn https://wapo.st/3LE6zGn (and part one https://wapo.st/3RhzaVk https://wapo.st/3RhzaVk)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
mdip 3y ago
Taking the immorality of all of this away for a second, you can't help but marvel a little bit at this. I don't know that "fixing sports betting with minimal hassle from the authorities" could get much more optimized than this. Consider ... (a) It's a sport[0] that, while popular enough, isn't, well,... popular enough for its spectators/gamblers to make up enough of the electorate to draw the necessary attention. (b) If I'm understanding things correctly, it's not "huge games" they're talking about. There's a "subset" of "a" that care about this. Taken together, those two minimize the interest in the sport (perhaps the minor leagues ... of hockey ... in Texas?)[1] (c) From what it appears, the players (the most important part of the equation, I'd imagine) don't get jail time. Therefore, it's a matter of finding a reasonable number of "the right kind of player" -- someone who's aging out of the sport, who's (minimal) success was such that the "cost of their reputation" was affordable to organized crime. Someone who's realistic next step in the career ladder was going to be "teaching tennis to children", soon, anyway. (d) That person is also, likely disenfranchised with the sport and is likely easy to gain loyalty from. And, of course, their celebrity is such that a player "gaining a conscience" would simultaneously remember their mortality. On the financial side, it's a matter of decentralizing some of the "people who create accounts on betting sites", "people who place bets", and "people who transfer money" down to minimal assignments per person -- the various "mules" end up making up a large part of the actual crime being committed. It has to make prosecuting something like this incredibly tedious. If "the organization" behind this could recruit enough people, their exposure to "committing an actual crime" might end up being so minimal that there's not incentive enough to get them to give up higher rungs in the organization[2]. It would require a sophisticated investigator, but it because of (a), above, it's difficult to find that investigator. There's not a lot of incentive for the betting outfits to take simple steps like "disallow betting on matches of minimal significance" or taking really any steps to solving this problem. Besides the fact that many are already operating on the fringes of legality and I wouldn't be shocked if all were run by questionable/criminal outfits/individuals, the article makes it sound like "these low level players/low level games" are optimal to the criminals. I'd imagine there's fear about encouraging the criminals to move up to more important matches. [0] It hurts to say it as it was one of the few that I played well and the few I enjoyed watching. [1] I can hear someone saying "in X country, and all countries combined, has more followers than GOD!" or something like that. I'll save you the trouble and both concede that "if you're right, I wouldn't know anyway" and that ... maybe minor league hockey really is popular in Waco ... or something. Neither was my point; only that "the people who do care", for whatever reason, don't represent a loud enough voice (or a voice the authorities care enough about) to be useful. [2] Especially against the usual "snitches get stitches" tactics.
htag 3y ago
I usually take a laissez-faire attitude towards vice, but I am strongly against sports betting because of it's inevitable impact on sport. I love the idea of the extreme meritocracy of sports and view this as threat to it's integrity.
- FarMcKon 3y ago
  The writers claim of `the extreme meritocracy of sports`is pretty amazing. Considering all the research into 'Everyone in Baseball is born in August' to the constant drum of doping scandal. Or people moving whole families, or rich buying second houses (near sky slopes) to pump their kids past the poorer competition, etc. It's pretty crazy for anyone to imagine sports as 'meritocracy' when exact birth-day, parents wealth, school district/ college wealth, etc, clearly is a HUGE driver of sports outcome (1/4 ? 1/2 ? ). And that is not tying in genetics, or cheating, or more. Scrape any 'meritocracy', and you'll find it a) by humans, b) in a culture, and underlying unfairness of the cultures still has a heavy impact.
  - mannerheim 3y ago
    That's comparable to cheating in the same way a tutor is comparable to Googling on one's phone in the exam room.
  - gramie 3y ago
    I know someone who was able to send his children to medical school in a foreign country, when they weren't accepted into schools in our country. He was able to pay ~$500,000 in tuition, plus all the living expenses, etc. Now they have graduated and are (by all accounts very fine, even superb) doctors. My kids will always earn a fraction of what they do. Hard to argue that wealth doesn't create opportunities. Oh and by the way, my father is a doctor, so you could argue that his wealth enabled my brother to make it into medical school (7 years of undergrad, multiple years of applying before being successful) in the first place.
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  Totally agree, and I think it's odd that we went from it being illegal in most places in the US to bring able to do it instantly on our phones, anywhere and we all are just letting it happen not seeming to even care as a society
wly_cdgr 3y ago
Hero. There are very, very few things more despicable than cheating in sport. Any victory against that vile rot is to be highly commended.
- happytiger 3y ago
  Here here! How vile does one need to be to betray fair play? When this trust is broken it completely dismisses the values of hard work and playing by the rules. But are these things still valued by everyday people?
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  > very few things more despicable than cheating in sport. Why though? It's practically a victimless crime. Sport is, by definition, recreation and entertainment. If the perpetrators of sport make better entertainment via corruption of the rules or laws, then who does it hurt, really? Certainly not the spectators or the bottom line of ticket sales. I can honestly think of a lot of crimes and sins more despicable than this. I mean truly, if you need help listing or recognizing them as heinous, I don't know what to say for you.
  - wly_cdgr 3y ago
    You seem to seriously misunderstand the nature and significance of sport. Sport is one of the most sacred, meaningful, and universal rites we have as a species. It is a worshipful and passionate celebration of all our greatest virtues: courage, selflessness, sacrifice, resilience, humility, elegance, grace, and so many more. Anything that compromises the integrity of such a celebration could hardly be further from a "victimless crime"; it gravely injures us all.
    - FLT8 3y ago
      Granted, sport may at it's best exhibit some of those virtues, but it also encourages tribalism, the linking of one's identity and mental state to essentially a die roll of weekly fixture results, encourages heroicising people who while good at sport often fail to live up to hero status in other aspects of their lives, and, at least where I live, is inexorably tied through corporate deals and sponsorships with vices such as gambling and drinking. If we're being intellectually honest, it's not all sunshine and roses.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> Borremans was a tall, slender man with searching blue eyes and a bald head who cycled 40 miles to and from work every day. He was the son of a cheese vendor. Borremans joined the police force at 19 and worked for years in a carjacking unit. Once, he broke up a criminal network trafficking luxury cars between the Belgian port city of Antwerp and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Does that paragraph strike anyone else as strange being in a top tier newspaper like The Washington Post? It reads like a grade school essay where the student is trying to stuff a bunch of miscellaneous facts into a paragraph rather than the polished prose you usually see in a top tier newspaper.
- bizzybez 3y ago
  Not unusual at all for long-form journalism.
- janc_ 3y ago
  It sounds like a journalist trying to sketch a background, to make the story relatable to ordinary readers. You don't have to be a superhero to do your job well...
- cafard 3y ago
  I have been reading The Washington Post regularly for 45 years, and very little that I encounter in it surprises me. It has never seemed particularly well edited.
rootsudo 3y ago
Just amazing how much work goes into, something that isn’t really, that worthwhile. So one match fixing ring is down for the count and…. This solves what? “Repetitional risk of tennis? The only interesting thing is how cheap it is to get a player to throw a match. $40,000 high end, average 10,-15,000. Us dollars. But maybe I’m confused. Is this really a crime?
- rcme 3y ago
  Yes, it is a crime. First, the money being paid out to the fixer doesn’t appear out of thin air. There is a counterparty to the transaction that is literally being stolen from when the fixer fixes a match. But more importantly, this is likely being done to launder money. Dirty money goes to the players and clean money comes to the fixers in the form of gambling winnings.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > There is a counterparty to the transaction that is literally being stolen from when the fixer fixes a match. Not really. Almost no real persons bet on obscure low rank tennis matches... the betting companies know exactly what their role in all of this is, they won't bat an eye unless you completely screw over their financials or draw attention to them - all in all, they still make a fuckton of money. Most importantly, the "gamblers" usually hedge their bets in the case of something going wrong unexpectedly. That keeps the risk low on average for the "gamblers", the loss from the betting service's profit and taxes (aka the spread between win/loss quotas) is way cheaper than other commonly used forms of money laundering. Hell, you can launder money with gambling just fine even if you're not involved in fixing matches. Been a decade ago since I had someone explain this to me (I worked in a bar/slot machine joint, adjacent to a betting place), but in general it works by having a ton of people, immigrants from the mastermind's network, using combination bets (e.g. 4 out of 6) with "safe" bets (i.e. pay-outs just an inch above pay-in). They would get 1000€ in the morning, spend all their day at the betting place, and return the money and betting slips to account for it. Even if they'd lose a few hundred, the bosses didn't care as long as they got the slips to back it up. Cops can't do a thing as the bets are all legit and taxes been paid.
seeknotfind 3y ago
Largest KNOWN match-fixing ring in tennis.
- dang 3y ago
  Ok, we've made it just large in the title above.

138 points by saeedesmaili 3y ago

https://archive.ph/i0lx1 https://archive.ph/i0lx1

rcme 3y ago

So the lackey gets 5 years in prison, the players are let off the hook and the mafia directing and financing the operation isn’t even investigated. Is organized crime a joke in Europe? Apparently millions of dollars were being laundered through this scheme. How much illegal activity went into generating the capital?

rurban 3y ago
Organized crime seems more like a joke in the US. There they did nothing at all
- vuln 3y ago
  > Organized crime seems more like a joke in the US. There they did nothing at all That just, your opinion, man.
  - rurban 3y ago
    Read the article man. It was not an opinion, nor a generalization. > Sitting across from the FBI agents, Borremans sensed that they weren’t interested in the investigation. The Americans interrogated Rivera, but that’s where the case ended. A senior FBI official said in an interview that the agency reviewed the case as a courtesy to the Belgian police, but he would not comment on the details.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Italy would like a word.
  - borroka 3y ago
    Although still present, organized crime in Italy was severely curtailed by the maxi-trials (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxi_Trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxi_Trial) of the 1990s--which followed the murders of prosecutors Falcone and Borsellino--trials that sent hundreds of mobsters and those colluding with the Mafia to hard prison for many years. Mafia, the organized crime syndicate born in Sicily and exported all over the world, was particularly affected by the maxi-trials.
    - throwmeout123 3y ago
      Not really. They just stopped killing and now have more lucrative business and habits, less in the spotlight of the public opinion.
      - borroka 3y ago
        I must say that only the ill-informed could claim that the Sicilian Mafia of today is as strong and profitable as that of the 1970s and 1980s. Matteo Messina Denaro, the last head of the Mafia, recently arrested and about to die of cancer, led a life that, were it not for the nefarious consequences of his actions and role, would be considered quite ridiculous, certainly not comparable to that of the Mexican or Colombian drug lords: he had little "disposable income", lived in a small apartment, and frequented a few prostitutes, energized by Viagra. Bernardo Provenzano, who before Messina Denaro was the head of the Mafia, lived for at least a decade in a farmhouse, largely alone, communicating with his "picciotti" with "pizzini," small pieces of paper with something barely comprehensible written on them: when they arrested him, he looked like an elderly man in rough shape. The Camorra has followed a similar decline, mostly due to internal fighting in the 90s and early 2000s, while the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, is unfortunately still strong, in Italy, Spain, Central Europe, Canada, Australia and South America. The books of Gratteri on 'Ndrangheta are an interesting read. I hate organized crime as much as one can hate organized crime and "mafiosi", and I would still to this day favor and support the iron fist of Mori, the police chief sent to Sicily a hundred years ago, who used rather, let's say, energetic methods to eradicate the mafia. I would give life imprisonment to mobsters, like one gives candy to kids on Halloween. Generously. But the Mafia and Camorra are no longer as powerful as they once were. And I hope they will be even less so in the future.
nomat 3y ago
apparently corruption runs rampant throughout all of europe. from the banks that facilitate the laundering of funds, to the port authorities that allow boatloads of cocaine from Colombian cartels, to the criminal states like albania. DW has a video called "The cartels of Marseille" that goes into the drug side of it. but of course there is art, human trafficking, weapons dealing, etc.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

paganel 3y ago

This is just scratching the surface, if that. Just the previous weekend I heard a guy I knew talk about how he was in the stands at a women't ITF tournament match in a middle-sized city here in Romania. The "stands" is a big word according to him, there were the two players on the field, their respective coaches and a fence-like structure which separated this guy, one of the couple of spectators there, from the match itself. He was telling us how he could bet during the match for "esoteric" things like what player was going to break next and things like that, and that he made a nice chunk of money betting that the match was going to be a succession of break games. He was also telling us how both of the coaches were also on their phones throughout the match, most probably not to instant message or to post on social media. Online sports betting has ruined sports.

janc_ 3y ago
Most ITF players can't afford coaches to travel with them; you really need to play ATF/WTA successfully or have a rich sponsor for that... (And by "successfully", I mean you have to be top-100 , or at least close to it)
- paganel 3y ago
  They were probably close family or something similar, which substitutes for coaching for many such players anyway.
  - janc_ 3y ago
    Or the "coaches" were self-funding... Unfortunately, the financial difficulties of being a player outside top-100 invite organized crime involvement like this...
3seashells 3y ago
So jam comes, ruin bets?

lazystar 3y ago

the captcha at archive.ph is looping - ive tried two different browsers. is there another archive link please

blamazon 3y ago
The operator of archive.today et al has certain philosophical ideas about SSL, EDNS subnets, and other topics which seem to be at odds with some providers of DNS, such as Cloudflare. A common theme of folks having issues with this recently seems to be DNS over https, commonly with Cloudflare. I think perhaps we can view the captcha loop as somewhat retaliatory.
thedougd 3y ago
Same. Per my sister comment all I’m doing is using Cloudflare Family for DNS.
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  That's sufficient.
Aschebescher 3y ago
I have the same problem for weeks now. Different browsers, deleted cookies, different IP adresses did not make it work again.
mediumdeviation 3y ago
https://wapo.st/3LE6zGn https://wapo.st/3LE6zGn (and part one https://wapo.st/3RhzaVk https://wapo.st/3RhzaVk)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

mdip 3y ago

Taking the immorality of all of this away for a second, you can't help but marvel a little bit at this. I don't know that "fixing sports betting with minimal hassle from the authorities" could get much more optimized than this. Consider ... (a) It's a sport[0] that, while popular enough, isn't, well,... popular enough for its spectators/gamblers to make up enough of the electorate to draw the necessary attention. (b) If I'm understanding things correctly, it's not "huge games" they're talking about. There's a "subset" of "a" that care about this. Taken together, those two minimize the interest in the sport (perhaps the minor leagues ... of hockey ... in Texas?)[1] (c) From what it appears, the players (the most important part of the equation, I'd imagine) don't get jail time. Therefore, it's a matter of finding a reasonable number of "the right kind of player" -- someone who's aging out of the sport, who's (minimal) success was such that the "cost of their reputation" was affordable to organized crime. Someone who's realistic next step in the career ladder was going to be "teaching tennis to children", soon, anyway. (d) That person is also, likely disenfranchised with the sport and is likely easy to gain loyalty from. And, of course, their celebrity is such that a player "gaining a conscience" would simultaneously remember their mortality. On the financial side, it's a matter of decentralizing some of the "people who create accounts on betting sites", "people who place bets", and "people who transfer money" down to minimal assignments per person -- the various "mules" end up making up a large part of the actual crime being committed. It has to make prosecuting something like this incredibly tedious. If "the organization" behind this could recruit enough people, their exposure to "committing an actual crime" might end up being so minimal that there's not incentive enough to get them to give up higher rungs in the organization[2]. It would require a sophisticated investigator, but it because of (a), above, it's difficult to find that investigator. There's not a lot of incentive for the betting outfits to take simple steps like "disallow betting on matches of minimal significance" or taking really any steps to solving this problem. Besides the fact that many are already operating on the fringes of legality and I wouldn't be shocked if all were run by questionable/criminal outfits/individuals, the article makes it sound like "these low level players/low level games" are optimal to the criminals. I'd imagine there's fear about encouraging the criminals to move up to more important matches. [0] It hurts to say it as it was one of the few that I played well and the few I enjoyed watching. [1] I can hear someone saying "in X country, and all countries combined, has more followers than GOD!" or something like that. I'll save you the trouble and both concede that "if you're right, I wouldn't know anyway" and that ... maybe minor league hockey really is popular in Waco ... or something. Neither was my point; only that "the people who do care", for whatever reason, don't represent a loud enough voice (or a voice the authorities care enough about) to be useful. [2] Especially against the usual "snitches get stitches" tactics.

htag 3y ago

I usually take a laissez-faire attitude towards vice, but I am strongly against sports betting because of it's inevitable impact on sport. I love the idea of the extreme meritocracy of sports and view this as threat to it's integrity.

FarMcKon 3y ago
The writers claim of `the extreme meritocracy of sports`is pretty amazing. Considering all the research into 'Everyone in Baseball is born in August' to the constant drum of doping scandal. Or people moving whole families, or rich buying second houses (near sky slopes) to pump their kids past the poorer competition, etc. It's pretty crazy for anyone to imagine sports as 'meritocracy' when exact birth-day, parents wealth, school district/ college wealth, etc, clearly is a HUGE driver of sports outcome (1/4 ? 1/2 ? ). And that is not tying in genetics, or cheating, or more. Scrape any 'meritocracy', and you'll find it a) by humans, b) in a culture, and underlying unfairness of the cultures still has a heavy impact.
- mannerheim 3y ago
  That's comparable to cheating in the same way a tutor is comparable to Googling on one's phone in the exam room.
- gramie 3y ago
  I know someone who was able to send his children to medical school in a foreign country, when they weren't accepted into schools in our country. He was able to pay ~$500,000 in tuition, plus all the living expenses, etc. Now they have graduated and are (by all accounts very fine, even superb) doctors. My kids will always earn a fraction of what they do. Hard to argue that wealth doesn't create opportunities. Oh and by the way, my father is a doctor, so you could argue that his wealth enabled my brother to make it into medical school (7 years of undergrad, multiple years of applying before being successful) in the first place.
iancmceachern 3y ago
Totally agree, and I think it's odd that we went from it being illegal in most places in the US to bring able to do it instantly on our phones, anywhere and we all are just letting it happen not seeming to even care as a society

wly_cdgr 3y ago

Hero. There are very, very few things more despicable than cheating in sport. Any victory against that vile rot is to be highly commended.

happytiger 3y ago
Here here! How vile does one need to be to betray fair play? When this trust is broken it completely dismisses the values of hard work and playing by the rules. But are these things still valued by everyday people?
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
> very few things more despicable than cheating in sport. Why though? It's practically a victimless crime. Sport is, by definition, recreation and entertainment. If the perpetrators of sport make better entertainment via corruption of the rules or laws, then who does it hurt, really? Certainly not the spectators or the bottom line of ticket sales. I can honestly think of a lot of crimes and sins more despicable than this. I mean truly, if you need help listing or recognizing them as heinous, I don't know what to say for you.
- wly_cdgr 3y ago
  You seem to seriously misunderstand the nature and significance of sport. Sport is one of the most sacred, meaningful, and universal rites we have as a species. It is a worshipful and passionate celebration of all our greatest virtues: courage, selflessness, sacrifice, resilience, humility, elegance, grace, and so many more. Anything that compromises the integrity of such a celebration could hardly be further from a "victimless crime"; it gravely injures us all.
  - FLT8 3y ago
    Granted, sport may at it's best exhibit some of those virtues, but it also encourages tribalism, the linking of one's identity and mental state to essentially a die roll of weekly fixture results, encourages heroicising people who while good at sport often fail to live up to hero status in other aspects of their lives, and, at least where I live, is inexorably tied through corporate deals and sponsorships with vices such as gambling and drinking. If we're being intellectually honest, it's not all sunshine and roses.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

> Borremans was a tall, slender man with searching blue eyes and a bald head who cycled 40 miles to and from work every day. He was the son of a cheese vendor. Borremans joined the police force at 19 and worked for years in a carjacking unit. Once, he broke up a criminal network trafficking luxury cars between the Belgian port city of Antwerp and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Does that paragraph strike anyone else as strange being in a top tier newspaper like The Washington Post? It reads like a grade school essay where the student is trying to stuff a bunch of miscellaneous facts into a paragraph rather than the polished prose you usually see in a top tier newspaper.

bizzybez 3y ago
Not unusual at all for long-form journalism.
janc_ 3y ago
It sounds like a journalist trying to sketch a background, to make the story relatable to ordinary readers. You don't have to be a superhero to do your job well...
cafard 3y ago
I have been reading The Washington Post regularly for 45 years, and very little that I encounter in it surprises me. It has never seemed particularly well edited.

rootsudo 3y ago

Just amazing how much work goes into, something that isn’t really, that worthwhile. So one match fixing ring is down for the count and…. This solves what? “Repetitional risk of tennis? The only interesting thing is how cheap it is to get a player to throw a match. $40,000 high end, average 10,-15,000. Us dollars. But maybe I’m confused. Is this really a crime?

rcme 3y ago
Yes, it is a crime. First, the money being paid out to the fixer doesn’t appear out of thin air. There is a counterparty to the transaction that is literally being stolen from when the fixer fixes a match. But more importantly, this is likely being done to launder money. Dirty money goes to the players and clean money comes to the fixers in the form of gambling winnings.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > There is a counterparty to the transaction that is literally being stolen from when the fixer fixes a match. Not really. Almost no real persons bet on obscure low rank tennis matches... the betting companies know exactly what their role in all of this is, they won't bat an eye unless you completely screw over their financials or draw attention to them - all in all, they still make a fuckton of money. Most importantly, the "gamblers" usually hedge their bets in the case of something going wrong unexpectedly. That keeps the risk low on average for the "gamblers", the loss from the betting service's profit and taxes (aka the spread between win/loss quotas) is way cheaper than other commonly used forms of money laundering. Hell, you can launder money with gambling just fine even if you're not involved in fixing matches. Been a decade ago since I had someone explain this to me (I worked in a bar/slot machine joint, adjacent to a betting place), but in general it works by having a ton of people, immigrants from the mastermind's network, using combination bets (e.g. 4 out of 6) with "safe" bets (i.e. pay-outs just an inch above pay-in). They would get 1000€ in the morning, spend all their day at the betting place, and return the money and betting slips to account for it. Even if they'd lose a few hundred, the bosses didn't care as long as they got the slips to back it up. Cops can't do a thing as the bets are all legit and taxes been paid.

seeknotfind 3y ago

Largest KNOWN match-fixing ring in tennis.

dang 3y ago
Ok, we've made it just large in the title above.