Sport
Moses Swaibu: From Crystal Palace youth team star to match-fixer
Bookmakers, usually protected and in profit thanks to margins and finely-tuned odds, were losing on National League South.
They were seeing floods of money on certain teams’ games from newly-opened accounts located all over the world – tipsters who would bet exclusively on the English sixth tier and with unerring accuracy.
More money was reportedly placed on the total goals in one November 2012 National League South game than on the equivalent market for a Champions League match involving Barcelona.
Bookmakers started refusing to take wagers on some teams, scrubbing them off the coupon. The Football Association launched an investigation into betting patterns in the division.
As the season came to a close, the fixing was an open secret in some dressing rooms. Fans were suspecting their own players, accusing them from the stands.
The situation couldn’t last. The net was closing in. Swaibu’s final Bromley fix – ensuring they lost an April 2013 fixture away to Maidenhead by two clear goals – bordered on farce.
Swaibu gave their striker a clear run on goal to score the game’s first. Into the second half, he stayed rooted to the ground as they scored again to lead 3-1. A team-mate scored in the 82nd minute to make it 3-2. Two minutes later, Swaibu held a needlessly high line, chased back aimlessly and allowed Maidenhead to make it 4-2.
An incensed team-mate who wasn’t in on the fix was sitting on the bench, telling the manager that something suspicious was unfolding in front of them.
“It was the first time it had been that blatant and obvious and I didn’t want to face the dressing room,” Swaibu says.
“I was a mouse. The bubble had popped in that moment.
“When I walked into the dressing room I couldn’t look up. It was silent, everyone looking at me.
“The only thing I could hear was the gaffer – a grown man in his fifties – weeping.
“I didn’t get in the shower, I just went straight to my car.”
Swaibu left the club two games later, at the end of the season.
He wasn’t the only fixer who realised the National League South had come under too much scrutiny.
A clutch of players left Hornchurch – another team in the league – and travelled around the world to play for Southern Stars, a lower-league team based on the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia.
Their arrival didn’t go unnoticed. Sportradar – a company hired to monitor and maintain the integrity of sports events – had suspicions. The players’ social media posts from Australia, featuring extravagant holidays in Bali and high-end nightclubs, only heightened them.
The Australian police were tipped off and the Southern Stars’ dressing room, clubhouse and even goalposts were rigged with hidden microphones.
Undercover officers posed as fans, phone calls were intercepted and bank transfers examined.
It led to a string of convictions, a clutch of leads and, ultimately, a sting operation by the National Crime Agency in south London.
By then, Swaibu could well have been out of the game, both legal and illegal.
He says he had saved up around £200,000 from fixing football.
And, at 24, playing football seemed to be over. Two short-term deals with Sutton and Whitehawk led nowhere.
“But I was addicted at this point, something was pulling me back in.”
One of Swaibu’s contacts had been tapped up by a new group of fixers – a gang trying to break into match-rigging and put together a network of players to pull it off.
Swaibu had his suspicions. The new fixers didn’t seem to know the rules. They seemed naive and inexperienced, with little idea of what was possible.
They dropped names of other match-fixers they had worked with, when discretion and secrecy were key to Swaibu’s previous bosses.
Some were also white, British and middle-aged, an unlikely profile for hi-tech gambling conspiracies, invariably leveraged from Asia.
Swaibu wanted to believe though. Because if they were new to fixing, they could be fleeced.
Swaibu says he took a photo of his local five-a-side team and told the fixers they were players in his pocket. He invited his new contacts to a League Two match between AFC Wimbledon and Dagenham and Redbridge and told them it was rigged. It would end, Swaibu said, in a 1-0 win for Wimbledon.
We’ve picked out 10 of the best Champions League goals of the week – and want you to pick your favourite.
We are getting close to the end of another County Championship cricket season, but who have been your top performers?
Surrey may be closing in on a third successive Division One title but in 2023, only one of their players featured in a team picked by you.
This year will you choose Haseeb Hameed or Alex Davies? David Bedingham or Jordan Cox? Ben Coad or Kyle Abbott?
Pick your own XI from below and we will collate all the votes before publishing an overall team of 2024 during the final round of County Championship matches, which begin on Thursday.
Just to get you started, here are the sides selected for the last two seasons:
2023: Alex Lees (Durham), Jake Libby (Worcestershire), Josh Bohannon (Lancashire), Tom Westley (Essex), James Rew (Somerset), Leus du Plooy (Derbyshire), Liam Dawson (Hampshire), Simon Harmer (Essex), Jordan Clark (Surrey), Brett Hutton (Nottinghamshire), Jamie Porter (Essex).
2022: Ben Compton (Kent), Keaton Jennings (Lancashire), Tom Abell (Somerset), Harry Brook (Yorkshire), Cheteshwar Pujara (Sussex), Ben Foakes (Surrey), Ed Barnard (Worcestershire), Simon Harmer (Essex), Toby Roland-Jones (Middlesex), Kyle Abbott (Hampshire), Matthew Potts (Durham).
Your team needs to include two openers, three middle-order batters, one wicketkeeper, one all-rounder, one spinner and three seam bowlers.
Players needed to have featured in at least six games this season to make our shortlist and all statistics are correct up to and including 12 September 2024.
Voting will close at 13:00 BST on Thursday, 26 September – during the first day of the final round of matches this summer.
Chris Sutton, Nedum Onuoha and Nicky Bandini take a look at how ‘free spirit’ Antoine Griezmann led Atletico Madrid to a win 2-1 win over RB Leipzig in the Champions League.
Gimenez’s late goal helps Atletico beat RB Leipzig
Available to UK users only.
Nedum Onuoha looks at how Bayer Leverkusen full backs Alejandro Grimaldo and Jeremie Frimpong starred in their 4-0 win over Feyenoord in the opening Champions League game.
Watch highlights of every Champions League match on iPlayer
Available to UK users only.
Chris Sutton, Nedum Onuoha and Nicky Bandini take a look at how Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya executed his “wonderful” double penalty save that halted Atalanta from taking a 1-0 lead.
Watch highlights of every Uefa Champions League game on iPlayer
Available to UK users only.
The one all-Premiership tie – and probably the least predictable – takes Dundee United to Motherwell on Friday evening in a meeting of two clubs looking to end a decades-long League Cup drought.
United have not lifted the League Cup since beating city rivals Dundee in the 1980 final, while Motherwell’s wait is even longer, having last won the trophy back in 1950, when they defeated Hibernian.
Indeed, neither side have gone beyond the quarter-finals since they last progressed to the final.
Motherwell defeated Aberdeen 3-0 seven years ago, before knocking out Rangers in the semi-finals and falling short in their bid for an Old Firm double against Celtic.
Two years earlier, United beat Hibernian on penalties after a 3-3 draw, overcame Aberdeen in the last four but also lost to Celtic in the final.
Celtic were also Well’s nemesis when the Lanarkshire side and United last reached the quarter-finals two years ago, the Glasgow visitors easing to a 4-0 win while the Tangerines were losing 2-1 in Kilmarnock.
The current sides go into Friday’s quarter-final looking to recover from top-flight defeats that ended three-game winning runs.
Stuart Kettlewell’s hosts fell 2-1 away to Aberdeen, while Jim Goodwin’s United had their impressive eight-game unbeaten sequence brought to an end by Rangers’ single-goal win at Tannadice.
Recent meetings are also no guide to Friday’s outcome considering United have spent a season winning the Championship since losing 3-2 at Fir Park in their last meeting – with United having won there a month previously.
Their knock-out meetings tend to be tight affairs too, with United winning 2-1 at Fir Park in the Scottish Cup fourth round in November 2014, while Alan Gow’s goal was enough to take hosts Motherwell through to the League Cup semi-finals in October 2010.
Another close game is in prospect under the Fir Park lights.
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