How a small-town police officer took down tennis’ largest match-fixing ring Lalrp

BRUSSELS

The briefing befell in a convention room on the federal prosecutor’s workplace. A wierd tip had arrived from Belgium’s playing fee.

Officers had seen irregular wagers on obscure tennis matches performed around the globe. The bets had been made in small cities within the Flemish countryside. The gamblers gave the impression to be performing on inside data; they constantly received even after they guess in opposition to steep odds.

On the time, the discovering appeared mundane. However it will later assist unravel the most important match-fixing scandal within the historical past of tennis — the world’s most manipulated sport, in line with investigators and betting regulators.

Nicolas Borremans, a 45-year-old police investigator primarily based within the Flanders area of Belgium, seemed across the convention room. He might inform that none of his colleagues wished the case. Sports activities-related investigations had been usually dismissed as insignificant. This one — revolving round a couple of small wagers — was a very robust promote. However Borremans believed that the hyperlinks between sports activities playing and arranged crime had been strengthening in Belgium. And there was one thing intriguing about this set of info.

“I’ll take the case,” he informed the room.

Borremans was a tall, slender man with looking out blue eyes and a bald head who cycled 40 miles to and from work on daily basis. He was the son of a cheese vendor. Borremans joined the police pressure at 19 and labored for years in a carjacking unit. As soon as, he broke up a felony community trafficking luxurious vehicles between the Belgian port metropolis of Antwerp and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Borremans knew little about sports activities. He had by no means watched a complete tennis match. However even a cursory description of the case was sufficient for him to see how a playing operation is likely to be used to launder cash. After the 2016 briefing, Borremans returned to his workplace on the second ground of a police station in Oudenaarde, a quiet medieval city an hour from Brussels. He started diagraming what was recognized in regards to the bets in PowerPoint slides.

Inside a couple of months, he had traced the accounts of 4 males who had positioned suspicious bets in Belgium, all Armenian immigrants. Their wagers had been largely small — a couple of hundred euros every — ostensibly to keep away from scrutiny. Nearly the entire bets had been on low-level skilled tennis tournaments, the place gamers earned barely sufficient to pay for his or her journey.

Borremans secured wiretaps on the gamblers’ telephones, and a group of Armenian interpreters listened in. It grew to become clear that the gamblers had been working for somebody. They acquired detailed directions about which matches to guess on. They weren’t playing simply on the outcomes, however on particular scores for units and video games.

“We heard them obtain orders,” Borremans recalled in an interview. “Somebody would inform them, go now to the betting store and place this a lot cash on these matches.”

Borremans added extra gamblers to his diagram. “Cash mules,” he known as them. Ultimately, he would uncover 1,671 accounts at playing institutions throughout Europe. Many had been registered by working-class Armenians: mechanics, a pizza deliveryman, a taxi driver.

After months of wiretapping, Borremans started questioning whether or not his seek for the playing community’s boss was approaching a lifeless finish. The work was isolating; none of his colleagues appeared to care a lot in regards to the investigation. He made an appointment with the decide who was overseeing the case.

“I informed her, ‘If we don’t get new data quickly, we’re going to have to shut this,’” he stated.

Then, in 2017, he acquired a promising lead.

The skilled tennis tour — the Affiliation of Tennis Professionals (ATP Tour), the Worldwide Tennis Federation (ITF) and the Girls’s Tennis Affiliation collectively — had created its personal investigation unit, hiring retired officers from London’s Metropolitan Police. That unit, initially known as the Tennis Integrity Unit, was shaped partially due to pervasive allegations of match-fixing within the sport.

One of many integrity unit’s first investigators was Dee Bain. She was in her late 50s, a veteran of the London police. Not like Borremans, she was a tennis fanatic who noticed corruption within the sport creating what she known as “reputational threat.”

In 2017, Bain heard by a contact at Interpol that Belgian police had been engaged on a tennis-related case. The timing was fascinating. She was closing in on considered one of her first match-fixing targets: Karim Hossam.

Bain noticed that Hossam was taking part in in an ITF event in Tunisia. Each skilled tennis participant, together with Hossam, indicators a contract agreeing handy their telephones over to tennis investigators at any time if required. Bain had uncovered Fb messages between Hossam and one other participant a few match-fixing plan; it was sufficient proof to behave in opposition to Hossam.

Sometimes, investigators comply with their goal earlier than and through a match. When the match is over, investigators make their strategy, usually steering the participant to an workplace the place the telephone is seized and interrogators are ready.

“No one thinks they will get caught, so their messages will not be deleted,” stated Jenni Kennedy, the integrity unit’s senior director of investigations.

In Hossam’s case, Bain and one other investigator waited on the door of his resort room for him to return from a match.

“They had been like, ‘Can we please have your telephone?’” Hossam recalled in an interview. “I simply froze.”

He instantly admitted that he had been fixing matches. He handed over his telephone. He informed interrogators he had been speaking with a match fixer named Gregory in Brussels however didn’t know a lot about him. It will develop into a standard thread within the investigation: Nearly each account of Grigor Sargsyan appeared to explain a barely totally different individual, including mistaken particulars.

“A white man with black hair, round 26 or 27,” Hossam stated, in line with a transcript of the interrogation. “He has a reference to Syria or Iran. He spends numerous time in Barcelona and drives a Mercedes.”

After the interrogation, Hossam texted his brother from one other quantity.

“They caught me in my room bro,” he wrote. “And I used to be silly I didn’t delete some issues.”

Investigators despatched Hossam’s seized telephone to an skilled to decrypt. When it got here again, Bain might see the messages that he had exchanged with a person named Gregory, together with the match fixer’s cellphone quantity. She known as Borremans and stated a Belgian match fixer had simply emerged in her investigation. He gave the impression to be primarily based in Brussels and had been working with Hossam.

“That may very well be the man I’m on the lookout for,” Borremans stated.

II

As Sargsyan’s legend permeated skilled tennis, he had one other downside to resolve: how to not get caught.

He did his finest to stay inconspicuous. He usually slept in his mother and father’ house within the gentrifying Saint-Gilles neighborhood of Brussels, the place the household had moved, although he had his personal place within the metropolis. He took shifts on the brick-storefront Polish deli the place his mother and father labored, simply beneath their house.

He additionally urged the gamers he recruited to maintain a low profile. He gave them SIM playing cards registered anonymously. He gave more-detailed directions about how gamers ought to tank their matches.

“Please ask him to not begin with a double fault,” he wrote to an middleman who had fastened a match in Casablanca, Morocco.

He instructed gamers to not flash their newfound wealth, however they didn’t all the time pay attention. One French participant, after throwing a match, filmed himself tossing a pile of money within the air at a nightclub and posted it on Instagram. Sargsyan misplaced his composure.

“I informed him, ‘You fool. Individuals are going to start out asking questions,’” he stated in an interview.

Sargsyan stayed off social media. He broke up together with his girlfriend when she began inquiring about his revenue. As soon as, when he thought his telephone was being tapped, he informed his gamers that he had “chucked it within the sea.” His mom started suspecting one thing was fallacious.

“I’m frightened about him,” investigators would later hear her say on a wiretapped telephone. “I believe he is likely to be in bother.”

As soon as she texted him: “I’m your mom and I really like you a lot. Come dwelling, my son.”

“Mom, all the pieces is okay,” he tried to reassure her.

The gamers, too, started to sense one thing was up.

One French participant, Yannick Thivant, ranked 590th on the planet, acquired 40,710 euros in 21 transfers from Armenia to his account in Skrill, a digital monetary platform. Thivant, saved as “THIV” on Sargsyan’s telephone, acquired at the very least an extra 15,000 euros in money, in line with receipts and messages obtained by Belgian investigators.

Thivant agreed to recruit extra French gamers into the match-fixing ring. However he started to see that Sargsyan, for all his appeal, may very well be tempestuous. Sargsyan lashed out when he thought his gamers weren’t adequately masking their thrown matches.

“What number of occasions do I’ve to say it,” Sargsyan wrote to him as soon as. “It’s vital that within the eyes of all they play totally.”

Sargsyan’s anger deepened when he heard about gamers leaking their plans to different fixers to earn more money.

“I’ve the concrete proof that they gave the complete data to a different individual,” Sargsyan, livid that considered one of his gamers was attempting to double-dip, wrote to Thivant. “I warned you to inform them to close up.”

Even paying these on his roster started to get difficult.

Sargsyan had begun working with Arthur De Greef, saved as “LA GRIFFE” in his telephone, who had reached a high rating of 113th on the planet. He was a member of the Belgian Davis Cup group, coached by a former Olympian. He had defeated gamers within the high 20 however largely performed lower-tier ITF and ATP Challenger tournaments as he tried to interrupt into the game’s elite tier.

However when Sargsyan mentioned leaving 4,500 euros in De Greef’s mailbox — the payoff for a thrown match — De Greef grew involved about getting caught.

“Sorry, you already know me, I’m paranoid,” he wrote in Could 2018.

Sargsyan, regardless of his personal issues, tried to reassure him.

“You are concerned an excessive amount of,” he wrote.

Later, De Greef would inform Belgian police he by no means communicated with Sargsyan. When investigators confirmed him an image of Sargsyan, De Greef stated he had by no means seen him earlier than. However in 32 messages discovered on Sargsyan’s telephone, the pair spoke with familiarity, two males whose lives revolved across the lowest rungs of the tennis tour — an immigrant from Armenia and a member of Belgium’s tennis elite.

Sargsyan advised they might trade money on the highway.

“Overseas could be higher,” De Greef agreed.

Sargsyan responded together with his itinerary.

“I’ll be in Marseille — Barcelona — Monaco.”

III

Borremans now had the match fixer’s quantity from Hossam’s telephone, the one saved beneath “Gregory.”

However when he ran the quantity, there was no title connected to it. Borremans poured by Gregory’s name data and seen that he had been talking with a German tennis participant. Borremans then noticed that, in line with the telephone’s geolocation, Gregory had left Brussels for Berlin not lengthy after the dialog.

Borremans checked flight data from that day to see whether or not any of the names from his rising checklist of Armenian gamblers appeared on the manifests.

There was one hit: Grigor Sargsyan.

Borremans wrote the title on the PowerPoint diagram, subsequent to the phrase “Maestro.”

“I used to be strolling on clouds,” he stated.

In mid-2017, Borremans launched an undercover surveillance group of 10 individuals. He wearing blue denims and a sweater, becoming a member of the group to observe Sargsyan from a distance.

They monitored Sargsyan’s actions by a telephoto lens and, in a single occasion, noticed him settle for a bag full of money that had simply arrived in Brussels from Armenia. The police tracked Sargsyan’s almost-daily journeys to Paris, the place he ducked into eating places close to the Gare de Lyon and Gare du Nord practice stations to repay his gamers.

His telephone’s search historical past would later provide a glimpse into his life and issues. Sargsyan scoured the web for references to himself and his gamers (“maestro tennis,” “match fixing tennis hossam”); he did some broader analysis into his world (“tennis corruption,” “armenian mafia”); he searched for methods to spend his new fortune (“escort geneve,” “villa hire shut port mallorca”) However, largely, he searched for brand spanking new bookmakers (“croatia betting store,” “usa betting,” “mybet Australia”).

Borremans started including the names of Sargsyan’s gamers to his diagram. The community revealed itself to be a worldwide operation. Ultimately, Borremans would depend greater than 180 gamers from greater than 30 international locations.

Community

A number of the most vital gamers had been French. Borremans knew he wouldn’t be capable of prosecute them in a Belgian court docket, so he contacted French authorities. French police launched their very own investigation, ultimately interrogating eight skilled gamers. A kind of, Mick Lescure, saved as “MIKKI” in Sargsyan’s telephone, was residing together with his mother and father on the outskirts of Paris. His tennis profession gave the impression to be over. When he was interrogated by police, he opened up.

Referring to Sargysan solely as Maestro, he described him as “a person in his thirties, of medium peak, fairly corpulent, with quick brown hair, bearded, of Center Jap look,” in line with a police transcript. “He has no notably distinguishing options.”

The officers listened as Lescure spoke of the dimensions of his involvement.

“Since 2015, I estimate that I’ve accepted to intentionally lose or manipulate the end result of 20 to 30 matches for Maestro, each in singles and doubles,” he stated.

However one other remark from Lescure was extra revealing, underscoring how Sargsyan retained his gamers’ loyalty at the same time as his community started to implode.

“He grew to become a good friend,” Lescure stated.

IV

Nearly two years after he took on the case, Borremans walked into the command middle on the police station in Oudenaarde. It was June 5, 2018.

For days, he had been assembly with police models throughout Belgium to organize for Sargsyan’s arrest and the takedown of the match-fixing community. “The intervention,” he known as it.

By then, the identical officers who initially shrugged off the case had heard about Borremans’s work. “It was unimaginable what he had finished, virtually fully by himself,” stated Man Reinenbergh, head of the Belgian police’s sports-crime unit. He had nicknamed Borremans “the bulldog.”

Borremans oversaw the operation from Oudenaarde whereas armed models throughout the nation set off to make arrests. On their checklist had been 28 individuals: 21 of them, together with Sargsyan, had been suspected of involvement in unlawful playing and paying gamers to repair matches. The seven others had been Belgian gamers, together with De Greef.

The police unit obtained to Sargsyan’s mother and father’ house at 6:30 a.m. They had been ready to interrupt down the entrance door, however one of many officers turned the deal with. It was open. Sargsyan’s father was sleeping in the lounge. His mom was asleep within the third-floor bed room.

After recognizing Sargsyan by an open door, the officers sprinted up the steps to his room. Above the mattress was an astronaut figurine and medals from chess championships. His telephones had been on the nightstand, simply out of attain. The officers seen the gadgets instantly. One officer almost collided with Sargsyan as each raced towards the nightstand. However Sargsyan got here up quick. The officers positioned the telephones in an proof bag and put their goal in handcuffs.

“We knew our timing was good,” Borremans stated. “We knew these telephones had the knowledge we wished.”

Sargsyan was taken to a jail in Bruges, about 60 miles northwest of Brussels. Just a little over per week later, Borremans arrived to query him. They shook arms and chatted casually for a couple of minutes.

“He’s the form of man you wish to get a drink with,” Borremans stated.

Then Borremans turned to his questions. Why had Sargsyan finished this? What was his relationship to felony figures in Armenia?

“He stated nothing,” Borremans stated. “He simply smiled. You would inform that this was an individual who was not ashamed about what he had finished.”

“For him, it’s not against the law. It’s being sensible. It’s utilizing data.”

Sargsyan remained in jail for 10 months in 2018 and 2019. His sister introduced him a duplicate of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” within the unique Russian. Studying it, he mirrored on his personal crime, as soon as once more relating to himself because the hero of his personal narrative.

“Actually, it made me pleased with what I’d finished,” he stated.

He was launched upfront of his trial, which was delayed till 2023 by bureaucratic points after which the coronavirus pandemic.

Within the meantime, Borremans traveled to Miami and Los Angeles to fulfill with the FBI in regards to the alleged function of Sebastian Rivera, the Chilean coach primarily based in america, and a few U.S.-based gamers suspected of involvement within the match-fixing operation. He introduced alongside a memo from the Belgian decide assigned to the investigation.

“To the competent judicial authorities of america of America,” it started.

It named eight tennis gamers residing in america as showing to be a part of Sargsyan’s community, together with Rivera. The decide requested that Rivera’s dwelling be searched and that he be interrogated.

“Rivera seems to be a vital individual having an intense cooperation with Sargsyan,” the letter stated.

Sitting throughout from the FBI brokers, Borremans sensed that they weren’t within the investigation. The Individuals interrogated Rivera, however that’s the place the case ended. A senior FBI official stated in an interview that the company reviewed the case as a courtesy to the Belgian police, however wouldn’t touch upon the main points.

“There was no separate U.S. investigation,” stated the official, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of he wasn’t approved to remark publicly on the case.

Borremans had extra luck in Europe. Slovakian authorities raided the house of Dagmara Baskova, considered one of Rivera’s recruits. They handed her a doc explaining the costs in opposition to her.

“I requested the officers, ‘Can I am going to jail?’” she recalled in an interview. “And so they stated I might.”

She stated she lied to authorities in regards to the complete sum of money Sargsyan had paid her, claiming it was $1,500 euros a match as an alternative of 10,000, permitting her to keep away from fraud costs.

However within the interview she acknowledged that she was paid 10,000 euros for every thrown match, because the Belgian investigation confirmed.

“Everyone thinks that I’m so dumb that I offered them just for 1,500 euros,” she stated with amusing. “Nevertheless it was not for 1,500 euros.”

Baskova is now a tennis coach primarily based in Austria.

In France, authorities briefly detained and questioned 4 gamers, together with Lescure and Thivant. Thus far, none of them have been charged. Lescure is a tennis coach at an academy in Beijing, whereas Thivant performs membership tournaments throughout France. Neither participant responded to requests for remark.

Recognizing how little gamers earn on the sport’s decrease tiers, the ATP Tour final month introduced a pilot program providing a minimal wage for women and men within the high 250. The tour known as it “a big step in the direction of making certain a higher variety of gamers could make a sustainable residing from the game.”

As part of the initiative, gamers ranked between 176 and 250 could be assured $75,000 a 12 months.

“Lol nonetheless not sufficient,” wrote Australian participant Nicholas Kyrgios on X, the platform previously referred to as Twitter.

The tennis tour has in current months issued a raft of bans and suspensions. Younès Rachidi, the Moroccan participant who recruited Hossam, was banned for all times — for “the very best variety of offences by one particular person ever detected,” the tour wrote in a information launch.

“I don’t even know the place my racket is,” Rachidi stated in an interview. “The game has been ruined for me.”

Lescure and Aleksandrina Naydenova, a Bulgarian participant, additionally had been banned for all times. So was Rivera, who now lives in Las Vegas, the place he affords personal tennis classes. The ban, he stated, has made it tougher to search out work. Baskova was suspended for 12 years and fined $40,000.

Each Karim Hossam and his youthful brother, Youssef, whom he introduced into the ring, had been banned for all times, too, unable to play or coach on the tour, and even attend skilled tournaments. In its 2020 ban of Youssef, the tennis integrity company stated he “conspired with different events to hold out an intensive marketing campaign of betting-related corruption on the decrease ranges {of professional} tennis.”

Youssef is on the skilled padel tennis tour alongside different members of Sargsyan’s ring. Karim coaches youth tennis in Cairo.

When the tennis tour introduced their suspensions, it made no point out of Sargsyan. The size of his community has remained a secret till now, partially as a result of the tour remains to be engaged on energetic investigations associated to the operation, lots of them led by Bain.

V

It wasn’t till late April of this 12 months that Sargsyan arrived in Oudenaarde for his listening to, together with most of the 27 gamblers and tennis gamers who had been a part of his community in Belgium.

The court docket is in a Gothic-style constructing on the financial institution of the Scheldt River. Sargsyan sat close to the entrance of the courtroom.

Mathieu Baert, a lawyer representing skilled tennis, described in his opening remarks how match-fixing “takes away the essence of the game” and invitations organized criminals into tennis.

After which he turned to Sargsyan, describing the dimensions of his community, which was bigger than every other match-fixing ring within the historical past {of professional} tennis.

“Largest in measurement, greatest in cash, and largest in variety of matches fastened and variety of gamers concerned,” Baert stated. “Greater than 181 tennis gamers are concerned; greater than 375 matches are concerned.”

Sargsyan, in a blue sweater, a blue button-down shirt and denims, sported an virtually indiscernibly sly smile.

De Greef, who had been provisionally suspended by the tour, sat on the identical bench as Sargsyan and different Belgian gamers. When he took the stand, he denied his function within the ring.

“I’ve been taking part in tennis since I used to be 5 years previous. I spent about 20 years coaching and attending to the extent I used to be at. I all the time gave all the pieces for the matches I performed,” he stated.

De Greef declined a number of interview requests. He was discovered responsible of fraud and dealing with a felony group.

When the decide known as Sargsyan’s title, he approached the bench together with his lawyer, Dimitri Margery. Neither denied Sargsyan’s function within the community. However Margery alluded to Andranik Martirosyan, the Armenian whose checking account had acquired hundreds of thousands of euros from Sargsyan’s winnings, in line with prosecutors.

“It is a man who I don’t assume has ever been heard,” Margery stated, including that Martirosyan was “a kind of pivotal determine in the entire thing.”

However Martirosyan, 35, was nonetheless in Armenia. When The Washington Put up visited his dwelling outdoors Yerevan, the Armenian capital, it was freshly renovated with beige limestone. A brand new truck sat within the driveway. His spouse stated she would ask Martirosyan if he was keen to be interviewed, however he refused. Belgian authorities informed The Put up they wished their very own case to conclude earlier than pursuing his arrest.

The decide paused after which checked out Sargsyan.

“Do you want to add something of your personal?”

“I wish to flip the web page and stay a extra simply life,” Sargsyan responded.

When Sargsyan walked out of the courtroom, a Washington Put up journalist approached him. How did he really feel in regards to the proceedings?

Sargsyan couldn’t assist himself.

“If the prosecutor knew what I do know, there could be many extra individuals on trial,” he stated.

About two months later, the decide held a sentencing listening to. This time, Sargsyan wore a black T-shirt and denims. Some members of the prosecution had been bracing for a light-weight sentence, considering the decide may see the case as unserious as a result of it concerned sports activities.

She learn the decision aloud.

“The court docket sentences Grigor Sargsyan to a … jail sentence of 5 years.”

He was convicted of main a felony group, cash laundering and fraud. Sargsyan was informed to report back to a Belgian jail on Aug. 11 to start his sentence.

Sargsyan’s expression went clean.

After court docket ended, Sargsyan returned to his mother and father’ house above the Polish deli. He had resumed work there, hauling packing containers of pickled cucumbers from the store’s entrance stoop as his mom yelled directions from inside. It was the identical job he had finished earlier than his match-fixing profession took off.

He went straight upstairs to the bed room the place the thought for his empire was born. He pulled out his telephone and started composing an e mail in regards to the verdict and what it meant for him.

“A tragic finish to this journey,” he wrote.

Sport, Set, Repair: That is half two of a two-part sequence a few match-fixing ring in skilled tennis. Learn half one right here.