AHMEDABAD, India –
Workers masquerading as cricketers, clever camera angles and fake team names were all part of an elaborate West Indies cricket league shown on YouTube and used to lure money from players in Russia, police said on Monday.
Modeled on the popular Indian Premier League, a group of men rented a field in the western Indian state of Gujarat, set up cameras and asked local workers to dress in team uniforms and play cricket.
This was then streamed on YouTube to unsuspecting betting shops in Russia betting on match results, Akhal Tyagi, the top police officer in Mehsana district, told Reuters on Monday.
“They had referees with walkie-talkie devices to officiate, as they have done at IPL and international cricket matches. The setup was good enough for unsuspecting people to believe it was a real cricket league,” Tyagi said.
Police arrested four people in connection with the case on Friday.
Tyagi said referees told players whether to score runs or fold depending on instructions they received on organizers’ walkie-talkie sets, which in turn received instructions from an accomplice in Russia via 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 that resulted in a two-year suspension of its Chennai and Rajasthan franchises.
The 10-team league’s popularity can be gauged from the sale of its media rights for the next five years, which netted the organizing Indian Cricket Board a whopping $6.2 billion last month.
Reporting by Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad; Additional reporting by Amlan Chakraborty; Writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Editing by Hugh Lawson