Mehsana police have revealed that though it was initially believed that two individuals in the name of Asif Mohammad, a Pakistani and Ashok Chaudhary, an Indian were behind the humongous charade of fake IPL staged to dupe the Russians through betting, the real master-mind is a Russian.
The investigations in the telegram channel have revealed that a Russian going by the name of Efimov was the main culprit. The scam worthy of a Netlflix web series had farm labourers posing as IPL cricketers, complete with a Harsh Bhogle sound-alike commentator and the crowd noise downloaded from the internet to dupe the Russians punters from the cities of Tver, Voronezh and Moscow.
Apparently, the local mastermind, Shoeb Davda who used to work in Russia and recently returned to his native near Mehsana worked in tandem with Russia-based Asif. They recruited 20 farm labourers and unemployed local youth for ₹400 per game and dressed in jerseys of IPL teams for this extensive masquerade. The scamsters appears to have full confidence in the the gullibility of the Russian punters.
Every action was orchestrated by someone from Russia who used to signal or instruct the umpire about the time a wicket should fall or a sixer would be hit. The umpire received his instructions on his walkie-talkie set. The telegram channel was used to receive bets by the Russian punters. Matches were live telecast from a Youtube channel called IPL.
Police said the set up for the match was elaborate with halogen lights and boundary lines. Cameramen ensured that the entire ground was not shown and only the close up of the players beamed. The matches which went up to quarter final stage were played in a farm leased by the scamsters who installed high-resolution cameras on the ground and used computer generated graphics to display scores on a live streaming screen.
The accused had received a first instalment of more than 300,000 rupees from the punters in Russia. The police have arrested Dawda Shoyeb Abdulmjeed, Sefi Mahamad Saqib Riyazuddin, Koli Mahamad Abubakar and Davda Sadiq Abudlmajeed.
