In a plain but effective Mahakal Online Book cricket betting scam involving a bogus T20 league that was recently revealed by the authorities in the village of Molipur in the Mehsana district of Gujarat, an unknown number of trusting but curious Russian residents were persistently fleeced out of their money. The victims were largely from the cities of Moscow, Voronezh, and Tver.\s”This is the first swindle I’ve ever witnessed. To make money through gambling, these folks literally cleared an area of land deep inside a hamlet and started playing a game while filming it on YouTube. Even the neighbourhood inhabitants were uninformed of this. Bhavesh Rathod, the police official in charge of investigations, said, “We know very little about the Russians who were placing bets on this game.
Arrested were fake IPL league organisers
The police apprehended four people for organising the fictitious “Century Hitters T20” league after receiving a tip, and they also seized cricket gear, high-definition cameras, and loudspeakers that were being used to transmit generic crowd noises combined with commentary.
One of the detained people, according to Rathod, “had some links there and had got them interested in wagering on cricket.” He also previously worked in a tavern in Russia.
The cricket pitch was a white carpet attached to the ground in the middle of a brown and dusty expanse of land. No zooms on the players, wide shots of the outfielders, or audience members were used in the video broadcasts of the staged games that were posted on a YouTube account with 255 subscribers.
The scam league used around two dozen locals who were paid $400 every game to appear on all teams, and it included six teams with names derived from Indian states, such as the Gandhinagar Challengers and the Chennai Fighters. It also had two referees and two organisers.
The wagers were placed using a Telegram channel, and the organisers then utilised walkie-talkies to communicate with the umpires. The game’s outcome was obviously influenced by the umpires’ instructions to the participants.
The World Must Hear This Tale of Caution
No doubt many readers will find humour in this story, but we should all take away some important lessons from it. In fact, we don’t want to end up like those Russian bettors who, while having a decent shot at winning thanks to their prior experience with online cricket betting, ultimately lost their money.
Even though the internet is full of threats of all shapes and sizes that far exceed anyone’s wildest dreams, modern technology and worldwide regulatory practise have produced methods to guarantee a secure experience for cautious users. When it comes to online gambling or putting bets on sporting events, one should first make sure the site in question has the appropriate licencing before engaging in any further activity on the site.
A simple check of a site’s licence is all that’s needed to ensure a safe gaming environment, despite the fact that the Indian online gambling industry is notorious for lacking regulatory oversight, effectively allowing all manner of shady, dishonest, and illegal gambling and betting operators access to the country’s online space.
For instance, licences issued by the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) are widely regarded as the gold standard among international gambling and betting authorities due to their stringent requirements for player protection, software integrity, compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) procedures, and reporting of suspicious activity.
Other credible and trustworthy foreign licencing authorities are the Curaçao Gaming Control Board (CGCB) and the Gibraltar Licensing Authority (GLA).
A red flag should go up if a gambling or betting website doesn’t prominently display its licencing information. The lack of user safety and responsible gaming methods may not even be the main problem on such platforms, given the possibility of entirely rigged random number generator (RNG) and return-to-player Mahakal Online Book (RTP) algorithms. Furthermore, they may participate in a variety of dangerous actions, such as preventing winners from withdrawing their funds, misusing players’ personal information and funds, and so on.
Scams like the one in Molipur village during the T20 prove that con artists would use any method they can think of to get their money. To avoid any potential issues, players should stick to sites that have been granted a licence by a respectable, well-known company.
