The management of betting company SportPesa seems to have failed in taming fraudsters using their platform to con unsuspecting gamblers. Calls by gamblers to the company to put into place mechanisms to bar scammers pretending to work for the company have proven futile.
The scammers use different phone numbers and are said to have hacked into the SportPesa system through the aid of crocked SportPesa Company IT department employees. The scammers send SMS to gamblers using known SportPesa phone numbers. In some cases, scammers even go to the extent of photoshopping the SportPesa website to make it look real. The main aim of photoshopping is to convince people they are dealing with SportPesa. Once they retrieve your number from the system, they send you bets which they claim are sure bets. They claim they have insiders working with SportPesa who always manipulate the bets from their customers to match the wrong bets.
One scammer sent the following SMS to a gambler who sadly fell into the trap and lost thousands of shillings, “Hi just an explanation of what happens behind the scenes, I deal with a guy who works with SportPesa, winning is possible if you deal with him. He will manipulate the system so that the bet goes through, very simple.”
There are also several websites claiming to be having tips on SportPesa fixed matches. One such site is Prima Fixed Matches. Match fixing related to gambling is a problem in many sports. According to Sportradar, a company that monitors the integrity of sports events on behalf of sports federations, as many as 1% of the matches they monitor are likely to be fixed. So, you’ve just been sent an email, text message, or a message through social media and it’s from someone you’ve never heard of claiming they know a fixed game, but they’ll only share it for a price, a company official said.
They claim that “Our team of dedicated professional soccer analysts and teams who finance match fixing have a task to choose the club that cooperates to be bribed. Since our 8 years of experience, these sources give the greatest guarantee of victory because they cooperate directly with the clubs and can easily motivate the players to set the game”
Another site, “Best Fixed Matches” also claims to have SportPesa fixed matches. On their website, they claim that “With an already established betting network, and with reliable information from our collaborators we can provide you with info about fixed matches from 4 continents, including Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia”.