Three weeks after the Indian Premier League (IPL), ended this year, a fraudulent version began in a small village in Mehsana in the country’s western state of Gujarat.
A gang of scammers recently set up a fake IPL to dupe Russian punters in a betting scam.
According to a report, the gang hired nearly two dozen farmers and other unemployed youth in Molipur, donned them with Chennai Super Kings (CSK), Mumbai Indians (MI), Gujarat Titans (GT), and other IPL jerseys.
Some pretended to be umpires, and there was even someone mimicking the popular commentator Harsha Bhogle. The matches were filmed on 5 HD cameras and streamed live on YouTube, complete with fake sound effects of ambient audience cheers.
This Footage of the Fake IPL, which somehow conned people in Russia into betting on it
This whole performance was, reportedly, bait for bookies located more than 5,000 kilometres away—in Russia.
Bets came in from Moscow, Voronezh, and Tver, via a Telegram channel that the scammers had set up. They amounted to upwards of Rs 3 lakhs ($3,778), coming in through the angadias, a network of couriers who have formed an age-old parallel money-transfer system in India. This network is traditionally used by Indian traders to send cash from one state to another.
Four people have been arrested as a result of the investigation.