This Is The Most Elaborate Betting Scam,

I have heard of in years,

screen grabs from YouTube, a international network of scammers was recently dismantled after allegedly creating a fake version of India’s Professional Cricket League, it worked like this, a group coordinated by a “mastermind in Russia” allegedly created a fake version of the Indian cricket IPL, with farmers and unemployed men posing as players of teams like the Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians or the Gujarat Titans in games broadcast live on YouTube to unsuspecting betting punters in Russia. The games looked real, but the players acted on command, hitting a six, a four, or getting out as directed, 

the group behind this ingenious scam rented a field in rural Gujarat, India, and convinced local farmers and unemployed youth to don cricket jerseys of popular IPL teams and stage games for 400 rupees ($5) per match. The field was set up with boundary lines and halogen lamps, there were umpires carrying walkie-talkies just like in official IPL games, and professional cameramen filmed the action using high-resolution cameras, 

the games broadcast live on the now-deleted “IPL” YouTube channel even featured professional-looking computer-generated graphics to display scores, and they were commented by a person who could do a very good impersonation of Indian commentator Harsha Bhogle. Crowd-noise sound effects were used to add authenticity to the broadcast, and the cameramen made sure to mostly shoot close-ups of the players, avoiding showing the empty fields around the pitch, it should be pointed out that the fact is that the real IPL concluded in May and you couldn’t recognize any of the players, it was really hard to tell that the whole thing was fake, but the scam was taking place in Russia, with Russian punters who would not know all of that, bets from unsuspecting Russians came in through a Telegram channel, a mysterious mastermind would instruct players to take certain actions on the pitch in order to maximize profits, the fake Indian Professional Cricket League was playing out one of its quarter-final matches when police got a tip-off and busted the racket. Four men have been arrested in connection with the hoax, the scam was reported in Indian media, and also here, as they say in the cricket fraternity "Howzat!"