The Federal Police launched Operation Play Rehearsed today (17), with the aim of investigating an alleged scheme to manipulate sports results in Sergipe’s men’s soccer championship, series A2, of 2022. Thirteen search and seizure warrants and four preventive arrest warrants occur in Sergipe.
According to the investigators, the manipulation involved games transmitted via virtual platforms or television. The bets covered not only the results of the games, but statistical data such as amounts of corners, laterals, sending-offs and goals against. “All this within a certain time interval”, informed the PF in a note, .
“The bet is guaranteed because certain players, coaches and managers have previously agreed with the fraudster how the result will be given. The fraudster, who acts as a recruiter, looks for technicians, managers or players who can directly influence the results, such as goalkeepers and defenders”, he details.
Still according to the PF, there is suspicion that sports leaders would have invited coaches from other states with a history of having already acted in manipulated matches. “The coaches, in turn, indicate the hiring of players with whom they have already worked and manipulated in other championships”.
According to the PF, the manipulation of sports results “is a crime in the legal system and has spread rapidly in Brazil”.
The investigators add that there are “clear indications of the activity of criminal organizations, including interstate and even international tentacles in the manipulation of sporting events in the national territory, as well as the worsening of the illegal betting market related to football, including the migration of criminal structures traditionally linked to the animal game for sports betting”.
