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

by Wilson Raj Perumal

  Dan refused to pay me for the South Africa vs Colombia match on grounds that he had lost money on the first game with Thailand and that he needed one more goal in the second with Bulgaria.

  "You fucker", I thought to myself, "each click is 20 thousand dollars and you're telling me that you needed one more goal?"

  Dan's strength was derived from the fact that nobody knew the exact figures that he was betting. He didn't report to anybody above him and I had no intention of going on a head-on collision with him because I needed his funding for my fixes. Although he wasn't gifted with half my brains, Dan thought that I would have remained his deputy for the rest of my days. Without myself and the Europeans bringing the fixed matches to his table, he wouldn't have been able to do a thing. You need talent to fix a match, something that he was not endowed with. He could speak Chinese and place bets, that's it.

  Meanwhile, Goddard was scrutinizing our matches closely for anomalies.

  "Fuck", he must have thought. "Too many penalties. Something is very wrong here".

  Ibrahim, our referee from Niger, came into the picture for the fourth match, South Africa vs Guatemala, on May 31st. I was sitting in Singapore watching the game on television and it was immediately clear that Ibrahim was there to prove himself. He started his show after less than ten minutes from kick off. There was a hand-ball; clearly outside the box.

  "No", whistled Ibrahim as he ran towards the penalty spot with an outstretched arm, "it's inside".

  The Guatemalans didn't argue: Ibrahim was the uncontested boss on the pitch and was too fucking brave; beyond believable.

  "Fuck, this guy is for real", I bounced from my seat. "He is daring".

  Final score, 5-0; again, three penalties awarded, one missed.

  After the match, Ibrahim and his linesmen were paid.

  "Here are 60 thousand dollars for you", Dan said to them.

  Sixty thousand US dollars bought you the full set of referees. Then, depending on their performance, you could choose to increase their pay to 70 or 75 thousand. Usually Ibrahim would take 45 thousand for himself and give the rest to his linesmen, who were also from Niger; Right hand and Left hand, he called them.

  I was still stuck in Singapore with my passport impounded and was thinking of a way to get out when, while walking around Little India, I bumped into my old friend Raja Morgan Chelliah. Morgan and I had spent time together in prison, so I knew him quite well. We bore a strong resemblance; so striking, that people would meet him in the street and think it was me. Morgan and I started to chat.

  "Hey Morgan", I asked, "what are you doing right now?"

  "Nothing much", he complained.

  I handed Morgan a thousand dollars for old time's sake.

  "OK", I said. "You take these one thousand dollars and try to solve your problems".

  I saved Morgan's number and was waving goodbye when it struck me.

  "Maybe I can try something".

  "Hey, wait" I called Morgan back. "Come here. You look just like me. I can give you ten thousand dollars if you apply for a passport on my behalf. Are you bold enough to do this?"

  "Sure I am", he said.

  "You'll try?" I insisted to make sure. "You dare?"

  "I will", he confirmed.

  In order to apply for a passport in Singapore you have to go to the immigration office, pick up a form, fill out all the details and affix your picture on it. Then you drop the form in a box, use your ATM card for the payment and hold on to the receipt. Three days later, you will receive a message saying that your passport is ready.

  "OK", I instructed Morgan. "This is the deal. When collection day comes, they will pay more attention to your fingerprints than to anything else. You'll be wearing shades and a cap. Once you provide them with your fingerprints, they won't care whether you are wearing shades or whatnot... You are that person, do you understand? They'll just say: 'Take your passport and go'".

  Through Raja Morgan Chelliah, I got myself a new passport; an original one issued by the Immigration Department of Singapore with his name and my face on it. There was a loophole in the system and I exploited it. I then got a set of Exclusive Sports business cards printed with my new identity on them; I didn't want some random border officer to wonder why the fuck I was carrying another person's business card. I was well aware that, the minute I skipped my appeal trial, I would become a wanted man in Singapore and I didn't want to have anything on me that could reveal my true identity.

  As I was busy organizing my flight from Singapore, Rosemary called me. She informed me that Brazil was going to play its World Cup warm-up friendly match against Zimbabwe in Harare.

  "I did everything that had to be done", she said enthusiastically, "I even traveled to Brazil to promote the event".

  I could not fathom the idea of Brazil actually accepting to play a match in Zimbabwe.

  "Fuck, where will you find the money to arrange a match against Brazil?" I asked Rosemary. "You don't even have a decent hotel to put the Brazilians in. How is Zimbabwe going to lure Brazil to play there?"

  I didn't take Rosemary seriously at all. What she hadn't told me was that a big company from Switzerland was managing everything for Brazil and that they were paying the bills. Then, when I read that the match was actually going to take place, it was too late because they had already picked a South African referee to officiate it.

  I called Rosemary back.

  "Since you designated a South African ref for your match in Zimbabwe", I suggested, "why don't you try to place one of your referees in South Africa: a one-to-one exchange".

  Rosemary tried but couldn't. By that time, Goddard and his colleagues were aware that something odd was happening with the referees.

  I assumed that there would be no live betting for the Zimbabwe vs Brazil match because it was taking place in Harare but I was mistaken once again. By the time I saw that live bets were on, it was too late for me to travel to Harare and dictate something to the Zimbabwean team; and this was a very big event for the Zimbabweans, so I didn't want to rain on their parade. I decided to wait until Brazil went to Tanzania for their following friendly match; by then, with my new passport, I would be in Africa to run the show myself.

  I couldn't fly directly out of Singapore because we use bio-metric passports and one has to provide his fingerprints at the airport's border control so I crossed the border with Malaysia by car. They don't ask for your fingerprints at the ground border, they just key into their computer that you are out of the country; date, time and all.

  With my new passport in hand, I flew from Malaysia to Johannesburg, South Africa, where I landed right before the fifth and last match. On June 5th, 2010, South Africa was set to play against Denmark. I did not physically attend the game at the stadium because Anthony was already there and I didn't need to show my face. I called him to be briefed on the match and he informed me that Goddard was giving him a big headache.

  "What's his weakness?" I inquired.

  "Women", said Anthony.

  "Are you asking me to change my profession, Anthony?" I asked. "I cannot turn into a pimp for Goddard's sake".

  "No, no", he answered. "Goddard is often seen with a young Thai girl".

  "You don't know who she is", I replied. "Forget the girl and try to find a way to get into his good books

  Then, right before the start of the South Africa vs Denmark match, Anthony called again.

  "Our ref has been pulled out", he cried.

  We had designated Charles, our extra referee from Tanzania, to officiate the match, but had asked him to fake an injury so that he could be replaced by Ibrahim just before kick off.

  "Just ask him to warm up", I had told Anthony, "after 30 minutes, he pulls a muscle and we put Ibrahim in".

  But on the morning of the game, Anthony did something very fucking stupid. He ordered Charles to report sick and obtain a medical certificate saying that he was unfit to officiate the match. The second the news reached the fourth official who was accompanying our t
hree refs, he called Goddard.

  "Charles is not feeling well", the fourth official said to his boss.

  Goddard saw his chance and decided to take it. As the match was about to kick off, he was speeding to the venue in his car with his own referee sitting beside him. He was literally flying.

  Goddard reached the stadium at the 11th hour; Charles had already been replaced and Ibrahim had warmed up. He was standing in the tunnel that leads to the pitch with his linesmen Right hand and Left hand by his side. The match was about to commence: floodlights on; live telecast running; anthems ready to play; the two teams lined up behind our star ref. Then, suddenly, Ibrahim was pulled out and replaced with Goddard's protege, Matthew Dyer. Once our ref was out, nothing could be done; we lost our match and one million dollars went up in smoke. We wanted three goals, instead, the match ended 1-0 in favor of South Africa. Steve Goddard mother-fucker.

  Anthony and I met in my hotel room after the match for the post-mortem and I gave him a piece of my mind. I'm usually a cool person but I cannot stand it when people think that they are smarter than me in my field. My instructions had not been carried out and I lost my head.

  "Are you a dumb fucker or what?" I shouted in his face. "I give the instructions and you follow them, you don't do your own thing. The referee is not a soldier who gets a medical certificate to avoid the battlefield. And to do so six hours before the match is like asking Goddard to get his man warm and ready to take over. How fucking stupid is that? You gave them a head start to fuck us. If he had known about it 30 minutes before kick off he wouldn't have made it there on time even if he had a helicopter in his back yard".

  From my hotel room I then called Steve Goddard.

  "I am the CEO of Football4U", I said. "How dare you pull my referee out of the game? Are you aware that we have a contract in our hands that gave us the right to designate the ref for that match? We have a legal agreement with SAFA and you do this to us? I don't think it ethical of you to pull a FIFA-accredited referee out from the field just seconds before kick off. It's totally absurd. We are going to sue you in court and that includes SAFA. We will hold you responsible for this and sue you fuckers, especially you, Steve Goddard!"

  Later, when the SAFA bubble burst and Goddard spoke to the press, he greatly exaggerated my threats. Had I really menaced to kill him, he would have gone to the police. I was in a foreign country with a passport that didn't belong to me; I wasn't so dumb as to make such threats to an old and stubborn Irishman. Had I overstepped my bounds, SAFA would have never given us another match. Instead, somebody within the South African FA probably heard the news that we were going to sue them and decided to close the matter by providing us with another friendly match: Nigeria vs North Korea.

  Meanwhile, Brazil's second warm-up friendly game was going to be played in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I tried to find a complacent referee to designate prior to the match, but my refs were all in South Africa at the time. I had some existing connections with the Tanzanian players through Danny's work during the CECAFA Cup in Kenya; I could manipulate five or six guys in the team but they needed to be instructed. Anthony and George were too busy to travel to Tanzania so I got two rookies to fly over from Singapore and run our show. One was an Indian-Singaporean called Vicky and the other a Chinese-Singaporean called Ricky. Vicky was tasked with briefing the players on what to do while Ricky was a runner and carried the money for them. Vicky and Ricky were promised 60 thousand US dollars for their trouble.

  "Concede five goals", Vicky told the Tanzanians, and they did.

  The end result of the match was 5-1 in favor of Brazil and we cashed in on the Over. Tanzania scored a single goal that cost us a lot of money because the handicap was five-ball for Brazil and the Over was 5.5. With a 6-nil we would have cleared both handicap and Over; 5-1 only won us the Over, not the handicap.

  After the game I focused my attention on the reparation match that SAFA had offered us: Nigeria vs North Korea, set to be played on June 6th, 2010. This time around I was going to be in the stadium with Anthony to oversee things directly. I did not need Dan anymore because I had enough money to place my own bets but I still gave him a call to share the information. I thought that later on I might need to use him again, so I decided to keep him in my good books.

  "Go and play this game, Dan", I told him, "it's fixed".

  "I know", said the arrogant fuck, "Alassane called me to say that the ref is the same one that officiated the Guatemala game".

  "Go and play", I ignored his comment, "there will be two goals in the second half of the match".

  Once again, Steve Goddard tried to spoil our show. He was a very obstinate old man; a big troublemaker. If it weren't for him, we would have been in cruise control in South Africa. Goddard's referee had been originally designated to officiate the match but SAFA had replaced him with ours in order to honor the contract that they had signed with Football4U. About an hour before kick off, as I stood chatting with Anthony outside the stadium, I saw his face contract and his eyes widen.

  "Goddard", muttered Anthony, "there he is".

  I turned to look and saw a limping old man with a stick, the only white guy among a sea of Africans, advancing hastily towards me. His head moved sideways as he tried to get a clear look at me through the crowd. The fucker probably wanted to see who the man that had threatened to sue him on the telephone was. I took a few steps back, turned around, and mixed myself amid the crowd to prevent him from getting a good look at my face.

  Goddard had missed me but hadn't surrendered. During the match, in a desperate last attempt to replace our referee with his, he approached the Nigerian delegation.

  "I don't know why these people changed the referee I had appointed for this game", he insinuated. "It's strange, don't you think?"

  I was absorbed by the match when suddenly the same Nigeria FF official that I had met in Abuja neared me.

  "Why did you change the ref?" he investigated.

  "You want to win, right?" I said between my teeth. "Just leave the ref alone".

  I could see what Goddard was trying to do. He was hoping that the Nigerians would lodge a complaint so that he could replace my ref with his.

  "OK", said the Nigerian official, "but do I get something?"

  "You mother-fuckers", I wanted to say, "I got you qualified to the World Cup, you didn't give me a single match and now you want money?"

  But I couldn't afford more trouble so I gave in.

  "Of course you get something", I sighed. "Here are three thousand dollars for you".

  "Make it five"

  "Mother-fucker. Here's your five".

  Steve Goddard kept his ref on the side of the pitch for the entire match, warm and ready, hoping to take over. But Nigeria vs North Korea was Ibrahim's show. My instructions were simple: second half, two goals. This time around Ibrahim only had to award a single penalty. The match ended 3-1 in favor of Nigeria and we won our bet.

  In the days following Nigeria vs North Korea, Japan played against Zimbabwe in another warm-up friendly match. Although we could not place our referee in that game, we had the entire Zimbabwean team on our side; the game could have been a nifty extra. Unfortunately, there were no live bets for it, so there was nothing to rig.

  In the end, Goddard didn't file any complaint and everything was hush-hush. Three of our matches had produced profits, one was uninfluential and only two had backfired. Each match was worth about 1.5 million US dollars in profit, making us walk away with a good four to five million dollars. As the final rounds of the 2010 World Cup began, Dan flew back to Singapore while Alassane remained in South Africa for a few more days, mingling about and trying to gather useful information and contacts. As for myself, I stayed in South Africa for a couple of weeks to watch a few of the World Cup matches together with George. I remember attending one of the matches in Durban, which reminded me of Singapore's Little India: the place was literally infested with Indians and Pakistanis. Durban was quite a place: beautiful town, nice weath
er; people went surfing. While the World Cup progressed, I did try to approach a couple of referees, but my attempts were unsuccessful. In one case I used Ibrahim to ask one of his colleagues if he was interested in helping us out but the ref was too afraid. In my second attempt, I approached a referee who had already worked for me and who went on to officiate two World Cup matches. I offered him 400 thousand dollars for each of his matches but, due to a previous misunderstanding, he thought that I had a loose tongue and refused my offer.

  The World Cup was also a chance to punt my freshly accumulated wealth. While in South Africa, I wagered 1.2 million Singapore dollars on Spain vs Honduras; my single largest bet on a match that I hadn't fixed. On the eve of the game, the odds were two-ball for Spain, so I placed 800 thousand dollars on them winning by three goals or above. On the day of the match, the odds had risen to 2.25 and I threw an additional 400 thousand dollars on Spain. George and I attended the game at the Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg. A fixed match is easy money because you have no pressure but, when you throw over a million on a game that you haven't rigged and you are in the stadium watching it, the adrenaline really starts pumping. David Villa played an excellent match, scoring two goals for Spain in the first hour of play. Then, around the 62nd minute, Spain was awarded a penalty; Villa walked confidently towards the penalty spot. Had he pulled a hat-trick, I would have collected 1.2 million. Fuck, Villa missed; mother-fucker. In the last half hour of the game, Villa received a through-ball near Honduras' net, but on the first touch he sent it wide, took the shot and missed. Then Fabregas had an open sitter but the first touch was poor once again, taking the angle away from him.