A former Chelsea player is one of three to be arrested over an alleged betting conspiracy plot, which saw him and his teammates pick up ‘deliberate’ yellow cards.
Ulises Davila, who was signed by the Blues in 2011, has since gone on to play for – and captain – Australian A-League side Macarthur FC, where the alleged coup has unfolded.
The Mexican, alongside teammates Kearyn Baccus and Clayton Lewis, has been arrested and brought in for questioning as New South Wales Police investigate the claims. The BBC is also reporting that a fourth player is being hunted by the authorities.
It has been alleged that at least one of the trio involved was planning to flee the country just prior to their arrest.
Suspicious Patterns
Although the investigation is at an early stage, the authorities in Sydney are reporting of an international corruption scandal worth ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’.
The trio were picked up and charged in raids in the early hours of Friday morning (May 17), after an undercover investigation – which involved the UK Gambling Commission – noted a series of suspicious betting patterns in Australian A-League games in November and December 2023.
Although details have been kept sketchy while the case is being assembled, it’s been reported that ‘yellow card manipulation’, masterminded by a figure in South America known as ‘The Instructor’, is the focal point of the investigation – with bookmakers paying out huge sums in winnings to overseas account holders who had placed the corresponding bets.
“Investigations revealed a senior player was allegedly taking instructions from a man – believed to be offshore in South America – to organise for yellow cards to occur during certain games in exchange for profit,” read a statement from the Strike Force Beaconview investigators.
Davila, now 31, left Chelsea in 2015 and embarked on a journeyman career across the globe, playing for the likes of Santos Laguna in his native Mexico and Delhi Dynamos in India. He joined Macarthur in 2021, where he has so far made 61 appearances.
The other duo at the heart of the plot have had rather less celebrated careers, with Lewis playing 19 games for Scunthorpe United in amongst stints at clubs in Australia and New Zealand.
The Fix
The details emerging allege that Davila was something of a ‘fixer’ – working for a money-man in South America and ensuring that the requisite yellow cards were earned by his colleagues, who he had personally recruited.
He has been charged with charged with ‘engaging in conduct that corrupts a betting outcome of an event’, ‘facilitating conduct that corrupts betting outcome of event’ and an additional charge of ‘participating in a criminal group.’
In one Australian A-League game between Macarthur and Sydney FC in December, Davila, Lewis and Baccus were all booked, while contests against Western United and Central Coast Mariners earlier in the season saw Baccus and Lewis both cautioned.
NSW Police have alleged that the two players working at the behest of Davila earned $10,000 per booking.
Commenting on the investigation, a spokesperson for Macarthur FC said:
“Integrity of our game is a foundation pillar and we will work closely with all relevant agencies on this matter.”
Playing the Odds
It’s only in the past couple of years that online bookmakers have begun to accept bets on ‘props’ like yellow cards.
And so it’s no surprise that the number of alleged conspiracies has increased ever since.
One investigation in 2023 centred around West Ham attacker Lucas Paqueta. A series of accounts with the Hammers’ sponsors, Betway, were opened with the maximum deposit, before a flurry of bets on the Brazilian to be booked against Aston Villa saw his odds moved to 8/11 – this is a player who had been cautioned just three times in the prior seven months. There’s no indication that Paqueta has acted fraudulently.
Former Arsenal ace Granit Xhaka also came under the microscope when he was booked for time wasting in the Gunners’ game against Leeds United in December 2021 – the FA reporting that a number of suspicious betting patterns, including one wager of £65,000, were identified. The player himself was never investigated.
It seems more likely that lower-paid players, with less to lose, are more likely to be embroiled in these scandals. One, Ciaran Brown, was investigated after he was booked in an FA Cup tie for Oxford United – a game in which he appeared to make a series of rash challenges before finally being cautioned. Brown was later cleared of any wrongdoing.
The Football Association wants gambling firms to stop offering prop markets on yellow cards: until they do, players – whether knowingly or not – will continue to come under the microscope.