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the profile of a football match-fixer

Good piece from today's Daily Telegraph, detailing the grubby career of a Singaporean who wasn't interested in fair football matches....

Wilson Raj Perumal: the convicted match-fixer who ran international empire yards from Wembley

To those who met him in Wembley, Rajamohan Chelliah seemed like any other respectable foreign businessman with a healthy interest in football.

Described as “humble”, “polite” and “smartly dressed”, the 45 year-old did nothing to alert the suspicion of his landlord, his neighbours or many of his friends during his seven-month stay in London.

But the quiet Singaporean was in fact Wilson Raj Perumal, a convicted match-fixer on the run from the police, who was busily masterminding an international empire from his one-bedroom flat in the shadow of Wembley Stadium.




One thing is fairly clear from the article, but conveniently not mentioned - the easiest matches to manipulate are the small-fry ones where players aren't earning much and are prepared to listen to anyone waving a bit of cash. Trying such a scheme on the elite levels of football will cost huge sums of money and the media profile of those games would ensure that questions were raised immediately.

It's following my mantra for punting - the lower the profile of the sport/league/event you follow, the more chance you have of beating other punters & bookmakers. However I choose to do it by doing the hard yards of research instead....

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