[00:01] doing stretches to tighten his muscles? The movements look perfectly natural, but in reality, that's a code word. Tying his boots in the 10th minute means, "They've already bet, the goal's coming!" Wiping away the sweat means, "The operation's canceled!" And look at this match in front of you. Thousands of people have bet real money on it, but there's a tiny [00:17] problem: this match isn't even being played! The stadium is empty! [Music] No players, no referee, no ball. This was a phantom match invented by the betting mafia to steal the bettors' money. If they can invent a whole match out of thin air, do you think it's difficult for them to concoct a scenario for your [00:33] team's match? The sports investigator is here to present you with the evidence and expose the dirty game behind the evidence and expose the dirty game behind the scenes. On April 28, 2024, a very ordinary match between two less-than-ordinary teams turns into the biggest scandal in the history of football. [00:47] The story, my friend, began... In a match in Turkey between two teams nobody's ever heard of, Ankaraspor and Nazlıspor, the game was literally like a boatman's feast. One half, no, no, one half, one half, no, no, 90 minutes, zero, zero shots on target, zero shots off [01:01] target, zero cards, zero fights. The statistics said these players weren't playing football, they were doing yoga on the pitch. Of course, you'll say, "It's normal, Captain Conan, a friendly agreement so the draw benefits everyone: Ankaraspor secures its place in the relegation playoffs and Nazlıspor stays up." But it's [01:16] secures its place in the relegation playoffs and Nazlıspor stays up." But it's that. Suddenly, betting sites discovered a flood of money being wagered on a draw this year in a match nobody even watches, a second-division game. The betting companies' systems crashed from the sheer volume of traffic and [01:30] they had to shut down the numbers. And that's when secret investigations began into the referees, who had suspicious signs, like sudden wealth. For example, in October 2025, the new president of the Turkish Football Federation, Boş, said a single sentence: "We have to clean up all these sewers." A [01:46] month later, the Turkish Football Federation was involved, and Turkey began to fall. It woke up to a wave of arrests that even prompted Netflix to change its programming. Consider these numbers to grasp the scale of the disaster: 150 referees were involved in gambling. Can you grasp the scale of the disaster: 150 referees were involved in gambling. Can you imagine? That's practically the entire refereeing team of the league! [02:01] imagine? That's practically the entire refereeing team of the league! 371 referees had VIP accounts on 371 referees had VIP accounts on betting websites. 55% of Turkish referees gambled. One of these referees was so addicted that he placed 18,000 bets in five years—that's 10 [02:14] bets a day, more than he drank water! But the disaster didn't stop with the referees. More than 1,000 players were involved in gambling, including international players from top clubs like Eren Mesut Çalhanoğlu, the left-back for the Turkish national team and Galatasaray, and Mert Yendiş, the captain of Fenerbahçe. The [02:28] penalties were piling up, and the situation was so serious that... Clubs couldn't find enough players to complete their squads, but wait, what happened before was clean play. What's coming is the real dark web. How come this mafia doesn't just pay money? They use a dirtier weapon: sexual blackmail. And the most [02:44] dangerous question is, why did the intelligence services themselves have to intervene? You're probably thinking to yourself now, "Captain Conan, that's Turkey and its problems, what's it to us?" I want to tell you that this virus isn't just in Turkey. The virus has bought a business class ticket and reached the strongest league in the [03:00] world, the English Premier League itself, or the Italian Serie A. Football, the paradise we escape to from our problems, has unfortunately become a hall of high-profile affairs, and the players we support are playing a completely different game than the one we see. Sandro Tonali was playing, intelligently [03:14] or stupidly, the role of a drug dealer, betting on his team's victory. Miller, you might say, "Well, that's a good thing, he's confident in his team." No, my friend, in the law of business, this is called insider trading; he knows the lineup. Before, we knew who was injured, who would play, who was fighting with their wife, and they brought along the [03:30] answer key. But Nicolo Feghouli, the Juventus talent, came out with a heartbreaking confession. He said he was trembling on the pitch, not from the excitement of the crowd or the nerve of the match, but from the fear that gangs would break his leg if he didn't pay his debts. Imagine the player you're insulting for missing a [03:45] pass; he's actually playing with a gun pointed at his head. And the list goes on. Juventus didn't have isolated cases; it was the culture in the locker room. The players would finish training and rush to their phones to bet on poker, just like you open TikTok. Even the [03:59] English Premier League, with its expensive stars and highest salaries, wasn't immune to betting. Take highest salaries, wasn't immune to betting. Take Ivan Toni, for example. This guy didn't make a mistake once or Ivan Toni, for example. This guy didn't make a mistake once or twice; the records prove he committed 232 [04:12] violations of betting rules. Can you imagine that number? It's not reckless behavior; it's a complete lifestyle. But the disaster isn't the number; the disaster is in... The type of player who bets on his team losing 13 times, yes, you [04:24] heard right. The striker who's supposed to die for the club puts his money against the club. Of course, his defense was brilliant. I'm addicted to gambling. Turning a crime into an illness was the saving grace that reduced the punishment to eight months. But the question here is, did the indebted player get better [04:39] in eight months? A player who owes money to the betting mafia can do anything on the field to pay off his debt. Anything goes. All of that is one thing, but what Lucas Paquetá and our star Granit Xhakam did is another. Here we've entered the level of the monster, spot fixing or [04:54] manipulating the situation. Paquetá, the West Ham star, is accused of getting yellow cards in four matches. The accusation is that these cards were birthday gifts for his relatives in Brazil, supposedly so they could his relatives in Brazil, supposedly so they could win money from them. Imagine the height of absurdity! The [05:08] strongest league in the world turns into a family charity so Paquetá's cousin can win £500. And the tragically funny thing is that the official sponsor of West Ham is Maran Company is basically telling you, "The theft is from within us." Keita was acquitted due to procedural errors in the investigation, [05:23] meaning his lawyer is clever, not him. Just be aware that what Granit Xhaka did before was so blatant it was almost comical. Remember the Arsenal vs. Leeds match? Of course you don't, but Xhaka stood on the ball for 20 seconds. The referee looked at him, and Xhaka looked back. It was like he was begging the referee to give him a [05:36] referee looked at him, and Xhaka looked back. It was like he was begging the referee to give him a [05:48] answer is very simple: the yellow card is the players' Bitcoin. There are three reasons, both brilliant and sinister. First, a yellow card is a discretionary decision by the referee. If I, as a player, tackled roughly, I could say I was over-enthusiastic or my timing was wrong. It's legally impossible to prove that First, a player gets a yellow [06:02] card unless I was negligent, then that's a different story. Second, the player justifies his crime to himself: "I didn't sell out my team, I just got a yellow card and we were winning 3-0. The yellow card won't affect the result." He convinces himself that he's still honest, but in reality, he took the money and sold his honor. Third, the [06:17] betting market for cards is huge, and millions can be distributed in it without anyone noticing, contrary to the results. Are you convinced now that betting exists in the strongest leagues? Now let's talk about national teams. Imagine you're the national team coach, you have an important international match, and the stadium is packed. [06:31] The match starts, and your team scores the first, then the second, then the third. A high-level performance, and the opponent literally can't run after the ball. You'd think they ate stuffed vegetables two hours before the match. This is exactly what happened on September 7, 2010. The Bahrain national team hosted the Togolese national team in [06:46] Manama. Bahrain won 3-0, but their coach came out after the match very surprised and said that the opponent was very tired. Their physical fitness is in shambles; they could never be international players. The next morning, the surprise that shook FIFA happened. The head of the Touring Union issued an official statement saying, “ [07:01] Guys, we didn’t send anyone to Bahrain at all.” We don't know the team that played yesterday at all.” We don't know the team that played yesterday . Yes, you heard correctly? A full national team of 11 players, along with the coach and technical staff, traveled, went down to the field, sang the national anthem, and played 90 [07:16] minutes. They are actually a group of extras brought together by a woman's agent to fix the match result in betting offices in Asia. Okay, let's bring things closer together. Remember the friendly match between Egypt and Australia in 2010? Egypt won 3-0, and it was a dazzling performance from Hassan Shehata's generation. But if you [07:32] rewatch the goals with the eye of an investigator, not a fan, you'll notice some strange things. The third goal, in particular, was from a phantom penalty. Investigations later revealed that the Bulgarian referee for that match was part of a global match-fixing network. The bet was [07:45] that the match would have more than two goals, and he was banned for life. We thought it was an enjoyable night of football, but it turned out to be a night of international gambling. And if you remember this happening with African and Asian teams, take the heavy hitter Argentina, led by Messi, against [07:59] Nigeria in 2011. The score was 4-0 for Nigeria until the 90th minute, but the mafia had bet on an option called "more than four and a half goals," meaning there had to be five goals in that match for them to get paid. So what did they do? The match was about to end when referee Ibrahim Shaibo decided to extend stoppage time [08:15] until the fifth goal. In the 98th minute, he awarded a penalty based on some fabricated handball, which no one else saw except him and the ghosts on the field. As soon as the goal came, the match ended 4-0, and the mafia made millions. FIFA later investigated this referee and discovered that he had been making [08:30] huge financial transfers the day before these matches. I hear you saying these are just friendly matches, they're pointless. So, someone who can fix friendly matches can't be fixed in official ones? Well, what do you think about the Argentina-Netherlands match in the Qatar World Cup? The Spanish referee, Antoni Lahoz, issued 18 [08:46] yellow cards, a record number, by the way. Betting on cards in that World Cup match made fortunes. Do you think it was a coincidence? Maybe, of course, but FIFA itself suspended the tournament organizers immediately after that match. But if you think this is the ultimate level of corruption, you're being naive, because there's an even bigger monster out there. There's a [09:01] lot of hidden behind the scenes, a monster that controls who wins the league and who gets relegated. And not only that, it controls VAR itself. In the world of gambling, there's a well- known rule: the casino always wins. That is, [09:13] no matter how much the gambling players win, the casino is the one that comes out on top. When they told us that VAR was coming to end refereeing errors, we found ourselves complaining about the many stoppages. But do you think these stoppages are due to the referees' negligence or are they intentional? In a terrifying study by PetroMatrix, a [09:28] intentional? In a terrifying study by PetroMatrix, a dangerous secret was revealed: the average stoppage of play to review a goal in major leagues is 111 seconds. This time is stressful for you and makes you bite your nails, but for betting companies, it is the most important time in the match. This is the time for factory reset. The study [09:43] found that the odds of betting on betting sites change drastically before the referee draws the box and announces the decision. Do you know what this means? There is information that the VAR decision is leaked to [09:55] betting sites before it reaches you at home. How is that possible? Let me tell you how betting companies operate data scouts on the field. Their job is to send information faster than television broadcasts, which are about 10 seconds behind the actual play. So, my [10:10] friend, VAR isn't a scale of justice; it's a reset button so that whatever the decision, the betting company always wins. Now it's time to find out who the monster is behind the scenes, controlling [10:22] all of this deep web. To understand how this monster operates, we first need to divide it into two types because they're not all the same. We're facing a pyramid of crime. The first type is local gangs, like in the case of Turkey, for example. And when we say local gangs, don't think they're just a [10:37] bunch of kids on the corner. We're talking about a regional empire playing with $20 billion annually—the budget of entire countries. The threads of this game end in only one place: Northern Cyprus. The godfather of this perspective was Khalil Valli. He wasn't just a gambler; he was the de facto ruler of the [10:54] betting world. This guy was so deeply involved in the mafia that his end was exactly like a mafia movie. He was killed in 2022 in a power struggle, and his assassination opened the gates of hell between Baron Faisal Shaheen, who runs his organization from inside prison, and Vali's followers. Each side [11:10] is fighting to inherit the leadership. Of course, you might ask yourself, "So if a player earns millions of dollars, what's the mafia going to do?" Sometimes they resort to blackmail: photos, videos, secrets— anything to hold the referee or player by the throat. In a very famous and painful incident, a compromising video of an [11:26] In a very famous and painful incident, a compromising video of an both their careers overnight. Whether the video was real or fake, as they claimed, the message was clear: "If you don't go along with us, we'll expose you." That's the local gang, so what about the [11:40] global one? This is the real monster: a global, transcontinental organization called The Syndicate. They don't play in the streets; they play the whole planet. This organization manipulates matches in Finland while sitting comfortably in... Singapore is using money to transform from China. No one can catch them because they have no [11:55] address. Their big boss is the godfather of manipulation worldwide. One person confessed to manipulating the results of more than 100 international matches and creating national teams out of thin air. Remember this name well: [12:07] Wilson Raj Peromalo. This man is the engineer of the system. He was the one who would bribe referees by plane and pay hotel bills for entire teams in exchange for a simple service on the field. But everyone is a pharaoh. The end, and Wilson Raj's end, was dramatic, just like in a Hollywood movie. In 2011, he was arrested in Finland on a [12:23] very trivial charge: a forged passport. Wilson sat in his cell, sitting with his legs crossed, waiting for the union to intervene and get him out like a hair from dough, as usual. But this time, the phone didn't ring. His partner, Dantan, who was vying for leadership, saw that he was a spent force. Not only were they left alone, but they were the ones [12:38] who reported him to get rid of him and inherit his position. And that's when Wilson decided to turn the tables. The table was set for everyone. He decided to break the Mafia's sacred code of silence and became a key witness. Wilson handed over to European investigators a treasure map, player names, account numbers, and transfer methods. His confessions caused a [12:56] wave of arrests from Hungary to Italy. Amidst these confessions emerged the great catastrophe that no one wanted to believe. In documented confessions, the man said he engineered Nigeria's qualification for the 2010 World Cup. In the decisive Nigeria-Kenya match, Wilson bought [13:12] Kenyan players to open up the defense and cause a loss. The plan worked; Nigeria qualified, and the Mafia ensured they had a full national team in the World Cup. A secret FIFA report revealed that South Africa's friendly matches before the tournament were officiated by referees affiliated with the syndicate who awarded [13:28] imaginary penalties to manipulate betting. Imagine the dreams of millions controlled by a gambler sitting in Singapore. And all of this is just one organization, like the Chinese Eric Mao or Antispina, the King of Berlin. Now we've reached the most dangerous point in the investigation. Why is what's happening dangerous for you [13:45] personally? What's happening is a real crime, far greater than turning the game we love into a spectacle. When you turning the game we love into a spectacle. When you know that women's companies sponsor more than half the Premier League teams, when you know they generate more than 1.5 billion pounds for them, when you know that some [14:00] clubs derive more than half their revenue from betting companies, do you think it's in their interest for betting to decrease and for these companies to lose? What's happening now is the normalization of gambling. We're raising an entire generation that sees [14:12] football as gambling, a generation that sees betting logos on their heroes' chests, hears analysts discussing odds of winning, and sees betting ads at halftime. In their minds, football is transformed from a source of enjoyment and passion into a betting opportunity. That's why we're seeing terrifying figures for the spread of [14:28] betting apps in the Arab world. But that's a whole other story. Betting destroys people just like drugs, and on top of all that, it turns football into a showy game, similar to professional wrestling, killing its enjoyment. Aren't Arsenal's corner kicks enough to have ruined the Premier League? If you want to [14:43] know more... How did you destroy it? Watch this episode, but don't forget to subscribe to the channel before you go watch it because the upcoming episodes are bigger and the issues are more serious. Until I see you in a the issues are more serious. Until I see you in a new episode, peace be upon you.