I wanted to fix the mother-fucker up. It was the first time in my life that I found myself in a situation where somebody has taken my money and then made a fool out of me. I kept playing the scene at the stadium over and over in my mind.
"I can give you an additional 10-15 thousand if you want", I had told him, "you either score or you concede".
"Where's the money? Can I have it now?" he replied.
How would you feel? Either you take the money and do the job or you don't take the money, but he was just sitting there on the bench with my money in his pocket doing nothing.
"Fuck", the more I thought about it, the more I was enraged, "I'm going to put some cannabis into this mother-fucker's bag and send him to the airport, then I'll tip off the customs. Three days in a cell, then he will realize".
Finally, Murugan managed to calm me down and I returned to my room.
Fortunately, Sierra Leone was on its way to Kuala Lumpur for their first match against Malaysia. Abu Bakar was our mouthpiece to Sierra Leone and had a strong sway over all of their players. I could not approach them and speak to them directly, it had to be done through Abu Bakar because the boys respected him.
After the first fuck up, Admir, Dino and Dan all decided to come along to my meeting with Abu Bakar. None of us could afford another loss, so we spoke to him clearly.
"Look here", I said, "we need four goals, all in the second half. You can either score or concede. Since you've just landed from a long flight, it's better if you concede".
It was in that moment that Dan decided to fuck Harry up. He had been using Harry's credit facility in Europe but there was mounting rivalry between the two. Both Dan and Harry were trying to show off their power to a mainland Chinese man who was very powerful in the gambling circle. His name was Ah Kang and he ran a 'betting house': an outfit that could provide millions in credit to match-fixers for gambling purposes. Dan asked for my help in fixing Harry up; as usual I was asked to be the brain-man of the operation.
"Let's get my friend Rashid from Oman to call Harry", I told Dan.
Harry knew Rashid from the Lebanon vs Singapore match that Mega and I had fixed for him. The match had been fixed by us but we had made it look as if Rashid had done it. I called Rashid and told him to call Harry and inform him about the arrival of the Sierra Leone team to Malaysia. Rachid made the call and told Harry that he had Sierra Leone under his control. Harry, eager to capitalize from the match, asked Rashid to make arrangements to meet the players in his Kuala Lumpur hotel. The trap was now set and ready to spring into action. When Admir heard about Dan's plan to fuck Harry up, he was astounded.
"Why the fuck would we want to do that?" he asked.
"Harry's a mother-fucker", answered Dan, "I must do this. I want to teach this fucker a lesson. Let's fix him up".
Dan doesn't usually pass the wrong information to people but this time he had chosen to lure Harry into a trap and fuck him up. He wanted Harry to lose big money.
"Let's see who's the boss", said Dan, "let's see who's the Big Boss".
In order to lure Harry into Dan's trap, I needed to convince him thoroughly that he was dealing directly with the Sierra Leone team, so I sought the assistance of my friend Alassane who was African and could speak French.
When Alassane landed in Singapore from Mali in the early 90's he was just 19 years old. He was transferred to Tiong Bahru United FC, a local club, but soon proved to be a hopeless football player; he always sat on the bench. He would run and run and run during the club's training sessions; the heart was there, but the standard just wasn't. Alassane and I lived in the same neighborhood, Woodlands, and I often bumped into him at the gym. At first, when he saw me, he scuttled away. He knew that I was a fixer so, like a nice dedicated footballer, he avoided me as if I were an infectious disease. After leaving Tiong Bahru United, Alassane went on to play for other local clubs: Woodlands Wellington, Tampines Rovers and finally Gombak United, but he still spent most of his time on the bench. At one point the Gombak coach asked him to get up from the bench and warm up at the 90th minute.
"You mother-fucker", Alassane yelled in his face, "you bastard. You want me to warm up at the 90th minute? When the fuck is it that you want me to play?"
Alassane almost got into a fistfight with his coach and that was the end of his football career. After that scene nobody would field him and he never played professional football again. By that time Alassane had already married, had two kids and divorced. He was naturalized sometime between 2004 and 2006, thus becoming a Singaporean. Later, he joined an amateur team in Singapore's National Football League, Division 1, and that's when we became friends and started hanging out.
Alassane then set up a football academy in Singapore called 'Football For You' and was engaged by some local schools to teach football to their female students; he charged the schools 50 dollars per hour of coaching. One day I went to see him at his academy; I needed someone who could speak French.
"What the fuck are you doing?" I asked him.
"I'm coaching this school's female team", he replied while pointing at the girls on the pitch.
"I can see that. For 50 dollars an hour under the hot sun?" I taunted him. "Come on man, you can do better. Come and work with me, I'll give you a better salary".
Despite his inadequate football skills, Alassane was a resourceful guy and was the perfect choice for Dan's plot against Harry. I introduced Alassane to Dan, Admir and the others, then we dressed him up to look like the captain of the Sierra Leone team and sent him to Harry's hotel in Kuala Lumpur together with five authentic members of the squad.
"No problem, we will deliver", Alassane and the others assured Harry, "we can do this. We can easily win this game".
But that was not the plan, at least not the one that Dan had in mind. Sierra Leone delivered the perfect job: they got thrashed 4-0 by Malaysia. We recovered from our loss and Harry was fucked.
The next match of the 2008 Merdeka Cup was Mozambique against Vietnam. This time around we put the boys in a room and explained clearly what was needed of them. The players were forthcoming and Mozambique lost by four second-half goals as requested, then, during their third game against Myanmar, they went missing again. The person who was supposed to meet us to receive the instructions on the third match disappeared and stopped answering our calls; Mozambique simply didn't want to cooperate. I must admit that they gave me a really hard time. Only one of the players understood English, the rest spoke Portuguese. Most of the players were willing to cooperate but didn't want to bypass their coach because they wanted to avoid trouble once they returned home. The entire scheme was wrong from the start; it was a bad call on my part to bring Mozambique, that's all.
Sierra Leone was our chance for a comeback. In their second match they faced Afghanistan. We asked the boys to play very open football.
"You can go and win if you like", I said, "but your total goals must be four or more".
The Sierra Leonean boys were much better players than the Afghans, who made for quite a weak side and got crushed: 6-1.
In the following game, Sierra Leone had to win in order to qualify for the semi-finals. They were set to play against Nepal, and we had some of the Nepal players on our payroll as well. After the match against Afghanistan, the odds for Sierra Leone were about two-and-a-half-ball, so we needed to play three-and-a-half. I called Abu Bakar.
"Look here", I said to him, "we are going to make you win. First half, keep it 0-0, then, in the second half, we need four or five goals. It's quite simple, Nepal will let you score, no problem, so just go and score".
Nepal was already corrupt before we ever came in contact with them. We approached them through a Malaysian agent and the players came to speak with us. Nepalese are very small in size: some of these boys were slightly taller than Admir's waist and he was curiously examining them head to toe.
"You play football?" he asked.
Admir is a tall, huge man.
"Are you very sure you are a footba
ller?"
He couldn't believe that they could play football; they were too small to be true.
We had told Abu Bakar's boys not to score during the first half but, as the game kicked off, Sierra Leone leaped ahead in the first ten minutes. It seemed like they were really looking for a goal; hurting to score. I started becoming a little worried.
"Fuck", I thought, "these are not the instructions that we gave them".
After scoring the opener, at around the 20th minute, a Sierra Leone player was given a red card and sent off the pitch. Fuck. All these guys had to do was win the game 4-0 in the second half; Nepal was ready to concede. Then, in the 40th minute, Nepal equalized on a penalty and the first half ended 1-1. We had bet on both handicap and Over, but after 45 minutes both teams had already fucked us up because we had a ten-men Sierra Leone side on the pitch and Nepal had equalized.
After the second half kicked off, the Nepalese kept playing their normal match; it looked like they were not working towards the agreed result. Fortunately, around the 75th minute, one particularly committed player from Nepal spoke to their right-back defender and they started to move. From then on, the Nepalese paved the way for Sierra Leone's victory. Bam, Bam. The game ended 3-1. We had won the Over, but hadn't cleared the handicap. Not a heavy defeat, but I still caught hold of Abu Bakar after the match to give him a piece of my mind.
"You mother-fucker…" I hissed at him.
"I thought you were lying to me", Abu Bakar raised his shoulders, "and that you were trying to get us kicked out of the competition. That's why we scored the first goal".
"I fucking brought you here…" I continued.
"We just wanted to make sure we'd win", he insisted, "I thought you would fuck us up".
"You fucker", I concluded, "because of that one goal in the first half, you destroyed the whole fucking game for us".
When the odds on total goals are 2.5 or 3.5, they will jump every time a goal is scored. If the score is stuck on 0-0, we can continue to bet on the Over, but Sierra Leone's early opener had altered the odds. During the second half, we continued to place our bets on Over but the odds were coming down because the game could go either way. Eventually, we didn't win much from the match and we didn't pay Abu Bakar and his boys. The Nepalese players, on the other hand, were paid.
That night Abu Bakar, Admir, Dino and myself went out for dinner together in Kuala Lumpur. Admir and Dino were trying to stage a serious conversation about the match with Abu Bakar, when he suddenly exclaimed: "Hey, look at the twin towers, their light is very beautiful".
Dino stared at him.
"Fuck", he turned to me, "we are talking about match-fixing and he looks at the lights?"
Dino tried to pursue his discussion but Abu Bakar turned around once again.
"Hey", he pointed to the dark sky, "the lights have gone off".
Abu Bakar was not paying the least attention and Dino was furious.
"Fuck", he said to me as he brandished his fork, "I tell you, I'm going to stab this guy. I'm going to stab him with my fork".
"You'd better tell him to pay attention to what we're saying", Admir suggested.
But after a couple of beers, Abu Bakar's mood changed completely.
"We are here for the money", he stated with conviction.
He was transformed into a different person.
"We are here for the money", he repeated. "We must be committed to those that are paying us, we will do as you say".
"Finally this bastard has come to his senses", said Dino.
"Maybe we should intoxicate this guy before the matches", we reckoned.
After that night's dinner, we had no more problems with Abu Bakar and Sierra Leone went on to play the semi-final against Vietnam.
"We need four goals", we told them, "you can either score or you can concede".
After 30 minutes, Sierra Leone scored the opening goal. Then, during the second half, they netted another. When there were fifteen minutes left in the game, they conceded the third and fourth goal. It was 2-2, and the match proceeded into extra-time. We wanted Sierra Leone to qualify for the final but the extra-time ended nil-nil, they lost the penalty kicks and were booted out of the tournament, which Vietnam went on to win. It was a huge loss for us, because if Sierra Leone had qualified for the final, we would have had the possibility to do business all over again. Dan gave me only ten thousand dollars for the services that I had rendered during the entire tournament; peanuts. He was indebted with some loan sharks and it took him over a week to pay me my money. Although bitterly disappointed, I remained loyal to him.
After returning to Singapore, Alassane called me to tell me that he would be playing in the final of the National Football League Division 1. I wasn't busy on that night and was near the stadium so I decided to catch the match. I walked into the stadium about ten minutes from kick off and sat down. I spotted Alassane's presence on the pitch immediately because he was the tallest guy out there and wore dreadlocks on his head. Would you believe me if I told you that, for the entire first half of the match, Alassane never once touched the ball with his foot? He may have had a header or two at the most. And the mother-fucker was yelling at all of his teammates, telling them what to do. Alassane must be the stubbornest mother-fucker I've ever met in my entire life but he was a really hopeless footballer. I called Dan, Admir and Dino and they all laughed heartily when I told them that Alassane hadn't touched the ball with his legs for 45 full minutes.
I remember that I once asked Alassane: "If I allow you to train for three solid months, would you be able to mark Kaka out of a match?"
"Yes", he said.
Kaka was one of the best players in the world at the time.
"This guy is totally insane", I thought.
At one point Alassane even approached Dan to get him into a team in Greece which the syndicate was thinking of buying.
"I'll go and play there", Alassane volunteered, "I can totally do this job. A perfect job".
"Alassane, you don't have the standard to play in Greece", I told him.
Out of all the guys, Admir was the only decent footballer. Alassane told me that he had brought him along once for training at a local club.
"Hey", he exclaimed, "this fucker can play. He is good".
Dan was the worst player of us all. Whenever there was a match, he would play in goal. He didn't know anything about football. He didn't know what a square pass, a diagonal pass and a byline were, he only knew the odds. He could call the shots by staring at the screen before him: if the website said 2.5, he'd call for 3 goals, but he never would know how to plan a strategy to get the goals scored.
CHAPTER VIII
The betting house
In early November 2008, Fadi, my contact with the Lebanese players, called to inform me that Lebanon was going to participate in the AFC Under-19 Championship to be played in Saudi Arabia. Fadi explained that he had a few Lebanese players in mind who could be willing to do business with us. I told him to fly to Dammam, Saudi Arabia and speak to the footballers before the match. I also caught a flight to Dammam, where I joined Fadi. Just a few hours before Lebanon's first group stage match against North Korea, Fadi instructed the Lebanese players to lose by a four-goal margin, which they did, delivering the perfect job.
Two days later, Lebanon was facing China in their second match of the championship and we were attacking the odds which, instead of increasing, began to plunge rapidly. This meant that somebody else was collecting on the other end and that China was also doing business. Once again, we found ourselves engaged in a match-fixing competition with another boss. I soon received a call from Dan; he was in Singapore and had also noticed the unusual fluctuation in the odds.
"What the fuck is going on?" he asked in an anxious tone. "The Chinese are also doing business".
Lebanon was ahead by one goal by the end of the first half but, although our players were giving way, the Chinese hesitated to attack and score the equalizer. Then, during the second half, one Chine
se boy, a young reserve player, came in from the bench and reversed the entire match; he ran out onto the pitch and helped China score twice as our Lebanese players slipped and fell every which way. Our boys were so dedicated to the cause that they persisted in their atrocious performance until they had conceded the third goal that we needed. The young Chinese substitute must have been unaware of the fixing on his side and, thanks to him, the match ended 3-1 in favor of China.
After the AFC Under-19 Championship I planned to travel to Chile to watch the FIFA Under-20 Women's World Cup. I decided to stop in Brazil on my way there because I was curious to see one of the homelands of football. When I arrived in Sao Paulo, I realized how fucked up Brazil really was. It was not the kind of place where you would want to go to for a holiday; it was fine and safe during daylight hours but you could not venture outside at night without being accompanied by a local. I could not leave my hotel after dusk; everything looked dangerous out there so I just sat in my room and watched the football matches on television. Fluminense or Flamingo was playing, I do not remember which. I had 30 thousand dollars worth of credit on my on-line account and it was obvious from kick off that both teams were going for an Over. I placed every single dollar that I owned on Over until my line of credit was completely sapped. I was not mistaken; the final result was favorable. After years of watching football matches, my reading of the game had greatly improved. I noticed that I could pick the winning side by simply watching the performance of the teams during the first few minutes of play. When wagering on top-league football, a correct prediction is harder to achieve, but, as the technical abilities on the pitch decrease, my chances of picking the right result increase exponentially. After the first win I continued punting on the following match then on the next yet. Soon my 30 thousand dollars had multiplied to 300 thousand. From there, I just kept gambling until the credit on my account had reached 2.5 million dollars; the largest win that I have ever achieved without fixing matches. I was ecstatic. My agent soon received a call from the betting company's boss.
Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer Page 20
