Today on ESPN, ESPN the Magazine had an article about the arrest and prosecution of the "world's biggest bookie" at the 2014 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
For anyone who's been following the work of Declan Hill, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that Borneo's Paul Phua was a major player in the fixing of numerous sports as part of his role in the huge underground betting syndicates of East Asia.
Phua basically acted as a mega-bookie for top-end bettors, many of whom could not bet on events to the extent they so wished legally -- if they could actually legally bet at all!
Phua, it is alleged, had over $400,000,000 of bets on this year's World Cup, and was operating out of a villa at Caesar's Palace when he was raided and arrested four days before the Final. Ironically, his arrest would come one day after what I believe to be the largest-scaled fixed sporting event in the history of the world: The Brazilians falling 7-1 to Germany on home soil in the World Cup semifinal.
And, if you follow Hill's work, it would be hard to believe that Phua is not a major player in the fixing of sporting events, as I said before.
Click the link above and read of the work of this story, interviewing over 80 people in trying to bring together the case against Phua, and the people he hung with.
And it's that I want to bring to fore here. In giving a biography of Phua, ESPN reveals that controversial poker player/believed and accused casino card cheat Phil Ivey sprang for $2.5 million of the $50 million bail set for Phua, due to his flight risk.
The ramifications of such a prominent player in the poker ranks being involved (especially because many of these players bet on other events (either themselves if they are allowed or through "beards" (proxies) if they are not!), legally and illegally) in the United States are mind-boggling. One of the things Brian Tuohy always tries to state, often in his Twitter account, is that "it can happen here". In my own personal opinion, it would be impossible for such a huge-scaled match-fixer like Phua to operate with prominent ties in the United States without many of the other tentacles of East Asian match-fixing coming with him.
In fact, in his biography, one of the first steps into the betting syndicates was learning how to set the lines of soccer matches -- often, the bread and butter of the match-fixing for the East Asians.
Phua became involved in an 1997 English match-fixing incident called the Floodlights Affair, where three men were arrested (two of them Malaysian, all paid by Phua) to knock out the lights at a pair of Premier League matches to fix the results with respect to Phua's growing betting empire. Unlike in England, once a match reached halftime, the house rules where Phua was operating forced the result to be paid as it stood if a match were abandoned. It is believed Phua was bankrupt at the time.
(Blogger's note: Think of that in the context of the Baltimore-San Francisco Super Bowl in New Orleans, as just one example!!!)
He would use the money he won from that fix to take his empire to an unheard-of level, expanding into many fixed horse races with a prominent race-fixer from Hong Kong.
Officials believe that Phua's company, IBCBet, has a $60,000,000,000 handle in the betting underworld of East Asia, of which the company gets 1% of that rake. Phua owning 70% of the company means Phua himself is worth over $400,000,000!
He was busted by police on the day of the Euro 2004 final, but simply fined about the price of a cheeseburger to him ($8,000) and sent to the airport.
By this time, Phua had ties to the exploding casino scene in Macau (again, read the story for the extent of it!), and had no problems showing it! You would think drawing this type of attention as a known match-fixer and crook would be dangerous to him, but Phua had several bodyguards and probably an army's worth of chips to cash in if he needed them!
Then, the story moves to Phua's (and others') ties to players like Phil Ivey, starting in 2010. After the shutdown of all the poker sites on Black Friday, most of the world's professionals looking for high stakes cash games went to Phua.
Phua's associate got good enough that, by 2012, he made the final table at poker's first $1,000,000 buy-in tournament: the World Series' charity event, The Big One for One Drop. Phua himself would win a $1,600,000 prize in London on 100,000 pounds bought in.
It was now clear that the resurgence of poker, after Black Friday, was due to a massive infusion of cash from (and eventually back to!) a large-scale sports match-fixer!
In fact, in the early portion of this decade, it appears that a significant portion of table game handle was being made in Las Vegas on baccarat, and much of that illegal money.
(Blogger's Note: As a person who occasionally dabbles in Las Vegas at extremely low stakes in comparison, I can at least give a nod to the descendence of table games there. If you want stakes at my level, you're effectively playing a "video game" table instead.)
Which all leads to his arrest in Las Vegas in 2014. By this time, there was a belief that Phua was making ten figures at every World Cup. They loaded up their villas with every manner of technology to make a mint right out from under Caesar's Palace.
The arrest in Las Vegas would not be Phua's first in that World Cup: He was arrested in Macau on June 18 and perp-walked after a similar illegal book had already taken in so much money, the president of China had taken notice and wanted him stopped!!! As a result of this arrest, he is no longer welcome in Macau.
The American arrest came as a result of Caesar's Palace officials getting a look at the villas at which Phua and his associates were staying -- something which should've been obvious, realizing that there could be $10,000,000 of furnishings in the villas, and Caesar's would take periodic inspections at times which would not be intrusive to the guests!
After a failed attempt to start a similar room in London, the FBI moved in...
Phua used his US poker connections to get a high-profile attorney who argued cases before the Supreme Court! By December, Phua's associates and the hopelessly corrupt frameworks of southeast Asia were working full-tilt to free Phua, questioning ties to the organized crime syndicates with no less than the minster of home affairs in Malaysia's government.
The next major players to defend Phua are even more shocking, and might explain much of the frustration Declan Hill has had in trying to make headway against match fixing: The former secretary general and general counsel of Interpol!
The Asian match-fixers have penetrated the highest levels of Interpol, making any such policing of their actions basically impossible!!!
And Phua won, being freed when the Federal courts declared the search warrant unconstitutional.
Anyone with any idea of the scope Phua's operation -- the money involved, the match-fixing, the amount of influence curried, etc. -- would know this is the ultimate "Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Jail" moment.
I've said a number of times that I no longer believe international soccer exists anymore in most countries without these books. And, considering the number of American influences in the situation, it's clear it's here. The question then becomes whether some of these underground books (remember the big Floyd Mayweather bet on Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals (Miami-Indiana) that one year and the reverberations that had around Vegas?) are in league with the power-brokers of sports, if not the leagues themselves!!!
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