Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (36 page)

"What is your
next project?" he asked. "Do you have any other matches
down the line?"

"Yes,
I do", I replied. "I can work on Trinidad and Tobago
playing against the United States in the USA on April 1
^st
,
it's a 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifier".

"Sounds good",
said Ah Kang, "let's work together on this game. How much do you
need?"

"I need about
180 thousand US dollars. Thirty thousand will go to my travel
expenses, the rest will go to my three boys on the Trinidad team. We
will pay them 40 thousand dollars each, but in the event that we need
a penalty, we will have to hand out an extra".

"Agreed",
answered Ah Kang, "but I need a 3-0 result or more".

"No problem".

"Why don't you
send somebody over here to China to see how we work", Ah Kang
proposed.

I agreed and decided
to put a friend of mine called Rajendra Prasad on a business class
flight to Xiemen, Southeast China, where Ah Kang ran his business.
I
had known Rajendra Prasad for quite a while. Before my arrest in
2002, I often patronized a nightclub on Singapore's Boat Quay called
Kilimanjaro where they played good hip hop music. Rajendra Prasad
managed the nightclub and we had become superficially acquainted.
Then, when I came out of prison in 2006, my friend Sivarajan brought
the two of us together again and we became closer. Rajendra Prasad
spoke very good Chinese, both Mandarin and Hokkien. Since I was
banned from entering China, I decided to send him over to Xiemen to
meet Ah Kang.

"Go down there
for a couple of days", I explained, "and see how their
system works".

Ah Kang's betting
house was located in an industrial area with rundown buildings and
abandoned factories quite some distance away from downtown Xiemen. He
had put ten guys together inside a dilapidated shop-house; each
sitting in front of a computer and connected to a betting site; each
of them waiting for Ah Kang to deliver his instructions. Rajendra
Prasad met with Ah Kang and returned after a couple of days telling
me that the business was legit.

Now
that
everything was set, before I traveled to the United
States, I made plans to fly to Panama City for an international
friendly match that was going to be played there between the home
team and Haiti. Just a couple weeks earlier I had received
information that Cuba had pulled out of the upcoming 2009 Gold Cup in
the United States because they were afraid of their players
defecting. It was a massive loss for me because I had already
invested in the Cuban team during the 2008 Caribbean Cup in Montego
Bay, Jamaica. Fortunately, Haiti had been drawn to replace Cuba in
the Gold Cup and I was on good terms with them as well. Since the
Haitians are French-speakers, I called Alassane to assist me.

"Hey Alassane,
how are you?" I asked. "You speak French, right?"

"Oui".

"Good. Would
you like to accompany me to Panama? I need you to talk to some
Haitians for me".

Panama
City is a very nice town: well developed, high-rise buildings and so
on. I read on the internet about their dirty past and about them
being a hub for drug-money laundering so their wealth did not come as
a surprise. Alassane and I had a thick schedule ahead of us in
Panama. First of all, we proceeded to meet
with the
presidents of the Panamanian and Haitian FAs. I didn't really open up
too much with them; I just wanted to meet them so that they would
know my face. My connection to the Haitian team was their goalkeeper,
a man called Jean. Jean helped me gather a few players in a Panama
hotel room and Alassane asked them our ordinary set of questions.

"Are you
interested in playing in Asia?" he tempted.

We often ask this
just to build a relationship, then comes the second question.

"How much are
you being paid?"

Usually these
players were paid two to three thousand dollars per month so when we
started talking about 10-15 thousand dollars per match, they got
excited. Once they bit the bait, I pulled the hook.

"Are you going
to win this match?" I asked and Alassane translated. "What
for? Might as well take some money home. Healthy money. Go back home
and put it to good use".

At that point, if
the game has got no bearing at all, the players will consider their
options carefully.

"Fuck. Might as
well", they'll say. "OK".

Done.

That's how I won the
Haitian players over to my side while in Panama. But Panama is a bad
place to host international friendlies. For some reason, matches
played in Panama are seldom put up for live betting. The same is true
of El Salvador, unless the game is aired live on television. To make
a long story short, there was no live betting for our Panama vs Haiti
fixture. We made no money but got closer to the Haitians, and the
Gold Cup in the United States was just a couple of months down the
road.

On the following day
Alassane and I flew to Nashville, Tennessee, for the USA vs Trinidad
and Tobago 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifier. Before the match, I hooked
up with the T&T boys that I had also met in Jamaica and told them
that I needed a 3-0 result. Two out of three players didn't look
convinced, only one of them sounded like he considered the mission
seriously.

"I need three
goals", I told them. "Conceding the first two will not be a
problem so just work on one additional goal for me. Please just focus
on 3-nil".

I had three,
unconvinced, back-line defenders and no goalkeeper but I decided to
take my chances nonetheless. I estimated that the United States was
going to win by at least two goals; I mean, this was my assumption,
based on my knowledge of football. All that my boys had to do was
help me get that one extra goal. Ah Kang, who was financing the fix,
didn't even ask me who my players were or what positions they played
in; he trusted that I could get the job done.

The
match kicked off and the US went ahead with Jozy Altidore: one-nil.
Then Jozy scored a second goal: two-nil; we needed just one more. In
the 90
^th
minute, Altidore took yet another
shot from the edge of the box, not an irresistible effort, but the
goalie fumbled and let the ball slip below his arms and into the net.
The T&T goalkeeper was not on my payroll but the way he conceded
Jozy Altidore's third personal goal made it look like he was. I was
happier than Altidore for the hat-trick he pulled. We won our bet and
Ah Kang was content with my achievement. Since the maximum amount of
cash that one can carry into the USA is 100 thousand US dollars, I
was 30 thousand dollars short and couldn't pay all three T&T
players after the match. I promised them that the remaining money
would be delivered in Trinidad and Tobago soon enough.

When I returned to
Singapore from the US, Bee Hoon visited me and gave me 100 thousand
Singapore dollars on behalf of Ah Kang: my slice of the pie. On the
following day, Dan called Murugan.

"I heard that
Wilson fixed a game for Ah Kang in the USA", he said in a bitter
tone.

When
a match is fixed, other betting houses will find out that there was
one large-scale winner. Dan had probably gathered the information
about me in the market and was not too happy with my progress.
I
was to learn at my expense that Dan doesn't like others to supersede
him, be more successful or make more money than he his making. He
will be your very best friend when you are down but, when you are up,
he will start to turn against you and attempt to poison your
relationships with others, especially if these are profitable or
potentially profitable contacts.

As
soon as the money was in my hands, I made arrangements for a good
friend of mine to travel to the Caribbean and settle the outstanding
debt with the T&T player
who
had not received his share. My runner
this time was a dear friend named Shanker. Danny, Shanker and myself
were best childhood friends; there had always been a good chemistry
between us. I gave Shanker 30 thousand dollars and bought him a
ticket to the UK; from there he was supposed to travel to Trinidad
and Tobago but he didn't. He boarded the flight to the UK then went
missing. I later learned that he had a series of unsettled debts with
loan sharks and that he used my money to pay off his creditors.

"Mother-fucker",
I said to Danny. "Shanker took off with my 30 thousand. He
betrayed our friendship for 30 thousand fucking dollars. That's what
I was worth to him, he took my money and ran off with it. What should
I do now?"

It was like telling
the pot that the kettle is black, because Danny had taken off with
three times that much money in 1996 after the Atlanta Olympics.

"Wilson",
said Danny, "call him and ask him to come back".

"And give him
another chance? Fuck you Danny", I said to him. "I'm not
going to do that. If you mention this guy again, I'm going to lose
your friendship too".

The business
relationship with Ah Kang paved the way for my return to Syria. By
then Ah Kang trusted me completely and I didn't have any more
problems with up-front cash. He would just ask: "What's next?"

"I can go to
Syria and do some league matches there".

"Is that
possible?" asked Ah Kang. "Dan lost three consecutive games
with you in Syria".

"The reason we
lost", I argued, "is because we had no cash in hand to show
the players".

"OK", he
seemed convinced. "How much money do you need?"

"I need to
bring 100 thousand US dollars with me and show them to the players".

This time around I
wanted to carry the money with me to have the upper hand, throw my
weight around and show the boys what was on the table for them to
take.

"OK, you'll get
your money", said Ah Kang. "Go and do what you have to".

As expected, with
the cash on the table, the Syrian guys were really moving. I had a
local man named Samir running the show for me in Syria. He and I had
been introduced by the Syrian national team player whom I had met on
my first trip to Damascus. Samir had lots of connections in the
football milieu and was able to coordinate everything for me. He
linked me to two teams over which he had good, solid control. One was
Al Wahda FC, a Damascus team, the other was al-Nawair SC from Hama;
five or six of their players were on board, the very best of the lot.

I have to thank the
betting companies for their hard work and professionalism. They were
able to offer on-line gambling for leagues anywhere from Azerbaijan
to Yemen and, thankfully, for the Syrian Premier league. Samir and I
planned every detail ahead of the Syrian matches: one goal in the
first-half, two goals in the second. One-two, this was our system,
because the odds for the Over/Under were usually 2.5 and the handicap
was often half-ball or one-ball. With one goal in the first-half and
two in the second, we could clear both hurdles. Samir would sit in
the stands and whistle to the boys on the pitch when the time was
ripe to concede a goal. The goalkeeper would then turn to look at us
and nod; he knew exactly what to do. With the money on the table, the
goals were flowing accordingly. It did not matter how soft the shot
or the header was, so long as it was on target, the ball would land
inside the net.

First match, second
match, third match: everything was cruising according to our plan; we
were doing extremely well in the Syrian Premier league. The scores
were so perfect that they earned me the nickname 'King of Syria' back
in Singapore. I was earning between two to three hundred thousand
Singapore dollars every week only from the Syrian games.
Since
the volumes on the matches were very small, I couldn't bet on my own
on the internet; I needed Ah Kang and his betting house to get the
kind of volumes that I desired and make it worth the fix.
Everything
was perfect; I was making money, had enough cash to fix my own
matches and had become my own boss. I didn't need Dan anymore and he
was becoming increasingly jealous of me. We seldom spoke and I never
called him for my fixes.

I worked incessantly
with Ah Kang, accomplishing more and more games. I organized
tournaments and friendly fixtures in Syria, Bahrain, Egypt or
anywhere I anticipated that there would be betting. Through some
French speaking African contacts of mine I arranged for Congo to play
in Jordan and in Bahrain. I paid for their airline tickets and
accommodation and flew them over. Unfortunately, there was no betting
on these matches.