An Online Gambling Criminal Has Been Arrested At the Australian Open
Added: January 25, 2014
We have just heard some news that a UK man has been arrested at the Australian open, for trying to rig online gambling bets at an online casino from court side. Now, how was this person trying to fix his bets at an online casino from court side at the Australian open? Well, you kind of have to admire the ingenuity of it, and the fact it couldn’t have been easy to do. What this online gambling criminal was doing, was sending messages to a friend who was sitting at a PC, logged in to an online casino. These messages, coming as they were from court side, gave the person logged in to the online casino an advantage, as the TV broadcast lagged behind the messages a little. So the person placing bets at the online casino was actually running ahead of the odds. Clever stuff, but of course, entirely illegal!
Deputy Commissioner Ashton, tells us just how this scheme worked, by saying that, “”A bet is able to be placed before the legitimate bookmaker is able to close off their betting on that particular incident, so trying to beat the (TV) signal back to the relevant bookmaker. The delay can be seven to ten seconds, which doesn't sound like much but in terms of putting large bets on and a volume of bets, that's a long time.”
The man was using a specially designed device that was hidden within the lining of his clothes, to send these signals back to his friend logged in to an online casino somewhere close by. Significant effort must have been put into building this device, so these people must have been planning this, and possibly doing this kind of thing, for quite some time.
Tennis Australia has stated that it operates a policy of zero tolerance when it comes to things like match fixing and transmitting sensitive information that could affect betting. So this UK fellow and his friend, doing what they were from court side at the Australian Open, whilst logged in to an online casino, and attempting to get better odds on their online gambling wagers than they should have, were definitely in breach of this policy.
Nice to see the authorities stepping in so quickly to deal with this issue, and also nice to see that they understood the implications of it, as well as the technology used to pull it off.