Illegal bookies, loan sharks and VCD pirates team up for World Cup?? YAU MOU GAU....CHOR!!!

PETALING JAYA: Three syndicates – illegal bookies, loan sharks and VCD pirates – have formed an “unholy trinity” to cash in on the World Cup fever with a scheme to lure fans to place bets on matches.

In this alliance, the technology savvy bookies are said to be financed by money coming from the sale of pirated VCDs and DVDs while loan sharks provide financing to desperate punters, charging 3% interest for a 15-day period.

It is a win-win situation for them, said sources, as the punters will end up the losers either way.

“Even if they win, they would have to pay exorbitant amounts in interest to the loan sharks from whom they have borrowed money,” said one source.

However, the police are aware of these activities and have been keeping an eye on the illegal joint venture.

Federal police anti-vice, gaming and secret societies chief Senior Asst Comm II Sidin Abdul Karim said police were aware that bookies have started accepting bets.

In the 2002 World Cup, it was reported that RM3bil in bets were placed with illegal bookies in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.

It is also widely believed that the syndicates in these three countries are linked and even accept bets from other countries in the region.

Placing bets with local bookies is not the only avenue. Malaysian punters are now turning to the Internet to gamble with international bookmakers.

It was reported that betting firms such as Betfair and Ladbrokes received close to RM7mil in bets every week from Malaysia during the English football season.

Sources told The Star that the local betting service was being promoted by word of mouth and through runners.

Some loan sharks are even sending out flyers and leaflets advertising their services, complete with the World Cup fixtures.

To avoid detection, bookies were relying on SMS accessibility and assigning a unique code number to each game for punters to SMS their bets.

Besides the usual bet on each game, punters can also bet on the tournament winner (double payout), names of the finalists (250% payout), names of the semi-finalists and finalists in exact order (triple payout), tournament top scorer (600% payout) and the name of the winners and runners-up from five groups in exact order (500% payout).

A runner for a bookie said information on the games, such as odds, handicaps and games' updates, were obtained from the websites of major gaming companies based in Britain, China and Macau.

“These bookies cover practically every sport around the globe, but the World Cup is an especially exciting time because of all the interest it generates among punters. We are using the Asian odds published on the websites as it is less complicated than the British odds system,” said the runner.

For small-timers, the minimum bet accepted by illegal bookies is RM50, while the maximum bet per game is RM300.

“The really big fish simply open an account with the bookie and deposit a sum of money into it,” he added.

Yesterday, Seremban police busted a bookie syndicate with international links operating out of a bungalow in Sikamat.

OCPD Asst Comm Hasanuddin Hasan said three men, aged between 20 and 41, were detained during the pre-dawn raid.

He said police discovered a list of telephone numbers containing clients’ names as well as match schedules.