The sports world in Brazil holds its breath as details emerge of what is now popularly referred to as the “soccer mafia”: a complex group of players who recruited players in exchange for making specific plays on the field to offer playing field; from a yellow card to a penalty. So far, investigations have mainly concerned players and teams from the second tier, but alarm bells were ringing this week when Flamengo, one of the country’s biggest clubs, appeared to be quoted by some respondents.
In late January, one of the bettors in the crosshairs of the judiciary, Luís Felipe de Castro, tried to convince Argentinian side Kevin Lomónaco from Bragantino to concede a penalty in the next game of the Paulista Championship. He offered him 200,000 reais ($40,000 or 37,000 euros). To convince and encourage him to take part in betting on multiple matches, the bettor claimed to have a flamengo player: “Tomorrow we have a flamengo player, so you have to do that too for everyone to win.” […]. Come on bro, we’ll pay you the value of the operation and also what I owe you,” he told him on WhatAapp, according to O Globo newspaper.
Flamengo, with no officially charged player, isn’t the only great team named by bettors. Match-fixing program head Bruno López claimed he had been in contact with eight Botafogo players and Fluminense fired defender Vitor Mendes after he became involved in the investigation. Currently, the investigation concerns matches of the Brazilian championship of series A and B (first and second division) in 2022 and in national competitions in 2023. More than 50 players are named, 15 of whom have already been charged. In addition, ten players have been dismissed from their clubs in recent days, including Santos defender Eduardo Bauermann.
Although the front teams are dodging the scandal as best they can for the time being, everything could change in the coming weeks as the investigations continue to move forward and the Prosecutor’s Office of Goiás, where it all began, intends to bring new charges, as he did in a complaints Telephone conversation with Prosecutor Fernando Cesconetto explained. “We have several reports of content found on mobile phones, countless conversations, spreadsheets, notes… We have not yet completed the review of all this material and we still need to deepen the analysis of the banking data.” “Nothing can be ruled out,” he says.
The findings so far only relate to the period from the second half of 2022 to April of this year and could only be the tip of the iceberg. At the moment there are no referees and the only prisoners are the players. The prosecutor explains that, at least to the best of our knowledge, the players were sporadically involved in the scheme and were not the focus of the scheme, so there was no need for preventive arrests.
“A very complex system”
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The leader was López, who had a sports career management company. He worked hand in hand with his wife, but from then on it had consequences in all directions: “It’s a very complex system that has to be operated by a single person. There was order and hierarchy, division of tasks, several areas of focus,” comments the prosecutor. Some were responsible for contacting players, others for paying the deposit, others for handing over the reward, etc. On the most used portals Bet365 and Betano, they bet from different accounts so as not to arouse suspicion, and from time at times they even allowed themselves to lose some money in order to mislead. It was more than worth it, because on a good day the group was able to rake in 700,000 reais.
During the interrogations, some players asserted that they were unaware that what they were doing was illegal, such as defender Victor Ramos, who was in the Portuguesa at the time of the investigation and is now wearing the Chapecoense shirt. “I don’t know much about these things, I’m very disconnected from these things on the internet, I didn’t know that talking about gambling would create that kind of thing in my life, that turmoil, that turmoil,” he said. There is no valid excuse for the prosecutor, they knew what they were doing. “It’s not a given that someone gets money to be sent off or have a penalty imposed on their own team, it’s something intuitive,” he notes.
Just in case, clubs like Flamengo, Corinthians or Atlético Mineiro have organized talks in recent weeks to educate their players about the risks of illegal betting on the internet. The players involved may face charges of association with a criminal organization, money laundering and corruption in the sport, with penalties ranging from two to eight years in prison.
In the last few days, the topic is no longer just a purely sporting issue, but has shifted to the political side. The government is already preparing a bill that would create a regulator for online betting companies. They’ve been legal in Brazil since 2018, but the sector grew exponentially without specific rules. In addition, the Chamber of Deputies set up a parliamentary commission to investigate the matter. Deputy Felipe Carreras, who will coordinate the work, warned of the possibility of a scandal: “We have information that this goes much further, affects many more competitions and is taking root,” he told the local press.
According to him, even in the third division there are reports of rigged games, where players earning much less are exposed to the “power of temptation to engage in crime”. He believes that the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) has not acted proactively and he does not rule out that the situation will end up being similar to that in Italy in 2005, when a referee interference scandal with heavy sanctions against heavyweights like Juventus and AC ended Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio. “That is something that only the parliamentary commission and the investigation will answer in the end. But Brazilian football is sick,” he warned.
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