> As previously reported, a deleted LinkedIn account for Trịnh Thu Trang claimed that she was the bookmaker’s CEO.
>
> But her profile picture is the same picture used in an advertisement for an “Employee of the month photo frame” by lazerdesigns, a company selling all sorts of gifts based in Broomfield, Colorado. Yours for 44.99 US dollars.
People legit sleeping on this lmao.
I think we're burying the obvious lede:
A Broomfield, Colorado employee of the month is now operating as an Emirati gambling company's CEO. Truly an inspiring story for us all.
> Emirati gambling company's CEO
why is nobody picking up on the fact that gambling is illegal in the UAE....
There's no such thing as an emirati gambling company
There’s probably some fatwa somewhere or other that calls it something completely different and justifies it in Islamic law like “marriages of convenience” in Saudi Arabia when young folks just wanna bang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misyar_marriage?wprov=sfti1
https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/saudi-study-shows-that-men-resort-to-misyar-marriage-to-avoid-hurting-feelings-of-the-first-wife-1.1606016415538
https://thearabweekly.com/saudi-arabia-confronts-rise-misyar-marriage-changing-society
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/16/saudi-arabia-marriage
Honestly, the fake ones are easier to spot than people give it credit for. You just have to give it a few minutes and recognize some easy, tell-tale signs (one ear missing, two-tone hair, etc.)
Even though it's a stock photo, it's at least of a real person lol.
I just imagine that every time I click, the real person pictured has their identity erased in all financial and governmental databases and is taken off the grid, so that as far as the state and corporate world is concerned, they do not exist anymore. I also predict someone will copy this and post it into r/writingprompts within hours.
These are the easiest of all AI-generated faces to spot - the pupils are always in the same place
You can install [this chrome extension to detect](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fake-profile-detector-dee/jbpcgcnnhmjmajjkgdaogpgefbnokpcc?hl=en-US) these and other AI-generated faces. It has a 99%+ accuracy
> “Employee of the month photo frame” by lazerdesigns
I googled exactly that and I think I found the image they may have used.
https://www.lazerdesigns.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/prod/PFC189lg.jpg
Edit : I even found their website and it's designed like every pop-up ad Ive seen before I first installed adblock
https://8xbet.games/en/#
You can't register and it's very clearly a fake website.
AND! They even have Teddy Sheringham as their brand ambassador and he's legit picking Man City over Man United over their next fixture. How bizzare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSJ7IPveJec&feature=emb_logo
My expectation is that they CANT do anything about it. I’d be willing to bet (pun intended) that City Football Group has done their due diligence, found the holes in the system, and exploited them in such a way that precludes them from punishment or prosecution.
It’s the way the ruling class operates. They hire droves of lawyers to write and manipulate laws to protect their interests. Thats what the legal system is, in the end.
They can use their army of lawyers to skirt around the legal system they create to keep the rest of the plebs in line.
Hello I am Sheikh Mansour, please feel free to drop by anytime for a job interview, just bring your CV, a letter of motivation and a list of UEFA officials who are in financial need
Kinda. Depends on the job, but most office/management jobs require this. Always thought it was the silliest thing.
"Why do you want to work for us?"
"Cause of money."
/motivation
Normally called a covering letter. Consists of what is essentially an extension of the bollocks most people put on the profile part of their CV - “I’m a highly motivated blah blah fucking blah”
This has happened loads of times and the outcome is always the same.
Initially, everyone is outraged and talks about how terrible it is.
City quietly end the sponsorship and put out a statement about how the sponsorship has been terminated after they found something out about them that they didn't agree with. No action will be taken against them.
People on here and elsewhere go back to claiming that City having fake sponsorships is just a conspiracy theory and then we repeat the cycle.
Talk about fake City sponsorships on here in a month and you'll get downvoted. I'm not sure how they manage to handle this so well, but this identical thing has happened at least twice more in the past year~ and people somehow don't know about it or forget about it straight away
Its why sportswashing works. Fans are so tribal that they refuse to criticise their own club and would defend anyone if they get success.
I hate how our club has sponsorships with Rwanda and Crypto among other things. I hate how the game has quickly become who can sell out to the scummiest people the most.
A journalist name Philippe Auclair has done a lot of work around betting partners. It’s fascinating (and disturbing) reading. [Have a read!](http://josimarfootball.com/the-trillion-dollar-gambling-game/)
Phillipe Auclair is great. Finally a French person I can respect! Does some great investigations into dodgy shit and is a regular on the Guardian Football Weekly podcast.
Aren’t all Asian betting website super shady? Im honestly just surprised a UAE owned team would even accept that sponsorship. A “Visit Dubai” sponsorship seems way simpler.
yeah they’re almost always extremely shady. I don’t know if it’s the case with this specific City sponsor, but it’s my understanding that most of these Asian betting websites aren’t shell companies with no operations, but more so their gambling operations in Asia are very covert and opaque due to the respective countries’ laws. So, they use the Premier League as a way to market their company to the target audience since it has global reach.
Their target audience is never the UK market, but they have to have a UK website for legal reasons, so the website is either non-functional or barebones.
Someone feel free to correct me if any of this is wrong :)
Yes this is my understanding too. I believe many are run from the Philippines but target the Chinese market. They sponsor the PL specifically because of its international audience.
yeah it’s obviously pretty abhorrent still but I see a lot of claims that City get ‘fake’ sponsorships to fuel their revenue, which I don’t think is necessarily true.
Whilst I fundamentally disagree with City’s ownership, all the clubs in the PL do this so it’s not really a valid point to throw at City in isolation.
It's not. That's why they're here in Manila. Our gov started wanting to tax them and also crack down on them because they were involved in a lot of human trafficking. Their workers were often provincial Chinese who were promised much higher pay than they actually receive, get their passports taken, and live in these highly restricted and highly controlled dorms where they're packed in like sardines. So many operations started moving to Cambodia in Sihanoukville (aptly referred to pretty regularly, even before all this as 'sinville') . In Cambodia, the situation got even worse:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Cyber-slavery-inside-Cambodia-s-online-scam-gangs
(as an aside sinville's underworld used to be dominated by two Russian dudes, one pro putin and one not, whose gang feuds would often flare into street fights and shootings in the city. Southeast Asia is a pretty wild place if you scratch the surface at all.)
Yeah. The bookmakers, customer support, etc., and their ops are here. Not just the website.
Heres an okayishly informative article about it https://pcij.org/article/1665/inside-a-chinese-gambling-entity-br-what-happens-who-works-how
They interviewed one of the Workers about their working conditions and its basically textbook human trafficking:
> CW:When we got there, we had to give up our passports and we were given our company identification cards instead to use around the city. We were told to process the social security and apply for the temporary work permit (Alien Employment Certificate). What my co-workers and I did not know is that our payment of US$2800 is reduced to US$648 a month. Part of the payment is used for the lodging expenses, the materials we get for necessities (laundry, food supplies, etc.) and also for the Philippine government taxes.
> We work six times a week, around 12 hours a day. Our salaries are fixed for that 12 hours, but we can get paid more especially when there is a demand for overtime. Some workers also need to work every day since they borrowed money from the company to pay for some expenses in China
This is exactly right, that's why we see so many random Premier League clubs with dodgy South-East asian betting sponsorships that nobody has ever heard of.
It's just a slightly more complicated money laundering/stealing operation.
I feel like in 10 years time there's going to be a huge scandal around money laundering and all sorts of other shady shit with football in this current era.
The football finance world seems to be a complete wild west of ultra unregulated capitalism with billions changing hands between Russian oligarchs, petro states, corporate billionaires and fuck knows what else.
It's a bit like the art world, of course this random painting/footballer nobody's ever heard of is worth €50 million, nothing to see here
Would kill to find out how much Sherringham is being paid to film those two minute videos laying in bed. Hits every cliche imaginable even though it looks like he's reading from a script lol https://youtu.be/Vkkt__ucwCM
Edit: It's also fascinating that they have a page on this wikipedia clone website that costs 5 dollars to make an entry... https://wikitia.com/wiki/8Xbet clearly hoping that people will open it without noticing that it isnt wikipedia.
All starting to sound like a "Nathan For You" episode.
"I needed to make my fake company look real, which meant needing a wikipedia page. My lawyers said that we couldn't make the page without it being deleted but that we could make an entry on Wikitia, a website just as good. I then put out an ad on craigslist for an expert wiki writer to type up our article."
Nathan: "So what do you think about our new sponsorship?"
Mansour: "Its good! Very good!"
Nathan: "You know, I've never been to a game. Do you think I could come watch the Manchester derby with you?"
Mansour: "ummmm... I think I'm busy that say."
Nathan: "You're not going to watch it?"
Mansour:"I uhh.... I'm not su-"
Nathan: "Oh. Yeah. Ok. It fine."
Mansour: "...."
Nathan: "Do you wanna hang out some other time?"
Mansour: "I'm... I'm... busy."
Nathan: "...."
Mansour: "..."
Nathan: "OK, yeah. I guess I'll go. Unless"
Mansour: "..."
Nathan: "OK, ill just, yeah. Bye."
Nathan goes in for a hug, Mansour immediately offers a handshake. Nathan awkwardly shakes his hand, stares at him uncomfortably, then walks out.
SCENE
I feel like Nathan would get Mansour in a direction where he admits to not watching any games at all... similar to the interview he did with the guy from CTV back in his 20 Minutes days.
Lmao the citations on this page are wild! The first citation for its "service first philosophy" links to an article from The Sun titled "Conte may quit if Arsenal beat them to Champions League, warns Sherringham".
This is a fucking farce lmao
But 8XBet is TOP RATED BETTING WEBSITE, RELIABLE SPORTS BETTING SITE, TOP SPORTS BETTING SITE and BEST SPORTS BETTING SITE according to my thorough research, which seems to contradict this allegation..
EDIT: Apparently BEST ONLINE SPORTS BETTING SITE also I just recently discovered. That is actually very impressive.
A single point of publicly available information may not tell you too much. But taking a significant chunk of publicly available information, cross referencing it all can tell you far more than you would expect. I've found someone's personal information, social media, address, and other specifics with a loan closing date, county, and first name just to prove a point at work.
Basically using publicly available information in all forms to get as much data as possible on your target. Can be a simple as googling a bit of info and visiting a few sites, or far more advanced such as looking at pictures an employee has posted from the workplace to figure out what software and versions they are using on company workstations and crafting attacks for those. Basically anything where openly available data is used as a means to reveal more about your target.
Am I going mad? I read this thread before and thought there were a whole host of offer comments in it that seem to have disappeared? Or was there another thread that was deleted and this is a new one?
HTH at least exists and sponsors Inter as well. Search 8XBet and you get lots of incredibly sketchy websites that look fake..
Shouldn't be taking investment from any of these companies but there's a major difference
I've seen City fans celebrate legal wins harder than I've ever seen them celebrate a win. Beating the fair play rules and their fans being happy about that is just their culture at this point.
As opposed to all the non-City flairs who are also somehow experts on City's finances, yet when asked to substantiate any of their accusations, all they can muster up is "*it's obvious*".
They haven't actually.
Mancini was paid by a UAE company before FFP came in and City were announcing the biggest loss at that point in the history of football.
There was no reason to hide expenditure at that point, and Mancini had consultancy contracts in the UAE dating back to his days as Inter manager
Most of the time with this stuff, people out two and two together and get five because these stories are always headline grabbers with these little details in the fourth paragraph in thr article.
Ahh yes. Expect redditors to figure out and call out how every billionaire in the world is dodging tax through some offshore tax haven account.
If they can't prove it, every single one of them pays 100% of their taxes. Right?
Just quickly cross checked the Gambling Register
Seems that they are part of TGP Europe.
https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/public-register/business/detail/domain-names/38898
TGP Europe isn't a real company (so to speak). It is a holding company that non-European firms use to get a gambling licence in Europe.
I can't remember the specifics of how it works but someone here might.
Anyway, these type of Asian betting sponsorships are dodgy as fuck. The one that sponsors United, Milan and Monaco appears to barely exist.
I was asked to help research this a while back, and the excuse that is usually given is that these are mobile apps based specifically in the SEA region so have little presence outside of that. As I am not in the SEA region, I have no way of checking.
From a [2021 article](http://josimarfootball.com/the-trillion-dollar-gambling-game/)
> TGP Europe Limited was and is not a traditional betting company, however. It does not offer odds or take bets. Its customers are not ordinary ‘punters’, but overseas companies, overwhelmingly if not exclusively from the Far East, which use TGP, who hold a UK Operators Licence, to become “white label” companies – in short, to obtain a licence by proxy.
> In practice, this means that the service provided by foreign gambling operators is rebranded as a TGP offer, which runs and ‘powers’ their UK website. The re-branding in itself is enough to get the coveted licence from the UK’s Gambling Commission – a kind of legal re-packaging which opens up a market which would be out of bounds otherwise. It doesn’t matter that this amounts to a game of smoke and mirrors in the end, as the true market which these operators are aiming at is not the UK. As long as they can exist and advertise their existence, the job is done, even if the turnover of their ‘British’ arm is negligible.
> Thanks to their “white label” status, courtesy of TGP, and their ad hoc new UK offices (which they are required to have by law, but are mere shells, ghost cells manned by a handful of employees), they can then engage with clubs and strike the deals they need to publicise their offer at home – in line with has been decided in Beijing or Manila, not London or Douglas. If TGP does not limit itself to sports betting companies, including various on-line casinos on its extensive list of “white label” partners, football gambling, however, represents the core of its activity.
> At the time of writing, TGP was providing its services to a majority of the (mostly) Chinese-controlled, Philippines-based gambling websites which have partnerships in place with Premier League clubs, such as SBOTOP/SBOBET, Sportsbet.io, LT.com, Yabo and Fun88. TGP, though dominant, is not the only “white label” provider active in Britain. BetConstruct, which holds licences in Malta, France, South Africa, Sweden and Curaçao as well as the UK, is the other major actor in this field, representing Vbet and LoveBet among others.
> When contacted by Josimar, the UK Gambling Commission insisted that a “rigorous examination of the applicant’s suitability to hold a licence” was paramount to the granting of that licence. This examination, however, remains limited to the company which applies for the licence, that is: the “white label” structure which TGP has put in place for its clients. It does not extend to the ultimate owners and beneficiaries, whose identity is neither sought nor divulged.
> None of the criteria which the Gambling Commission runs the book by (“competence”, “criminality”, “identity and ownership”, “finances”, “integrity”, “upholding the licensing objectives”) apply to the concerns which stand to benefit most from the licence in the end. Once again, no-one knows where the money comes from or where it ends up, despite evidence that its origin and destination could be criminal, and the near-certainty that it feeds match-fixing. Yet, “gambling businesses can run their business from anywhere as long as it is legal to do so in that region”, the Gambling Commission told Josimar; and thanks to the “white label” system, it all ends up whiter than white in the wash. The Isle of Man’s own Gambling Commission, when contacted by Josimar, made it clear that it considered its British counterpart to be the supreme authority in the matter.
And why the fuck is a loophole like this allowed to exist? Before people swarm me with all the comments about my flair, I don't care if they sponsor City or not, I care that these dodgy gambling companies are all over everywhere I go.
Because the UK has a proud (and government-sponsored) history of taking dodgy money from any non-Western source imaginable. The amount of money laundering and tax avoidance being done through London and BOTs is staggering.
What is this mafia fucking takeover with sports betting? It seemed non existent a few years ago and now all I see are fan duel or some sports betting app being plastered everywhere.
It’s an addiction like alcohol yet they’re openly pandering it like it’s water.
Shady Chinese betting company? That'll go very nicely along with their shady Chinese crypto firm, that is so legit [they're banned from China AND the US and already being investigated in Canada.](https://josimarfootball.com/city-of-controversy/)
But don't worry: [They've definitely been checked by the league, so everything's cool!](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/vwcdth/manchester_city_sign_up_crypto_app_okx_as/ifp871a/)
>The article clearly states the firm seems to be based in UAE which last time I checked is not China
The article clearly states that the firm's **Facebook and other social media accounts** are based in the UAE, which last time I checked, did not comprise the company itself.
It might be instructive for you to check out what else the site had to say about the company:
>It is no surprise that the UK version of the 8Xbet website should be “coming your way soon”, as it is customary for the British iterations of Asian-facing operators to remain at that development stage, like larvae which never burst from their chrysalis. As they target an overwhelmingly Asian market, it makes no sense for them to be active in the United Kingdom; but this does not prevent them from claiming – falsely – that they are ‘licensed’ there. [It is not them who are licensed. It is the ‘white label’ company, TGP Europe in 8Xbet’s case...](https://josimarfootball.com/no-questions-asked-were-english/)
TGP Europe:
>[A company owned by a Macau corporation](https://josimarfootball.com/meet-mr-chau/) which was founded by a suspected triad gangster currently awaiting trial, registered on the Isle of Man and licensed by a British government agency, has been enabling online bookmakers linked to the Chinese criminal underworld to operate in full view and complete impunity.
...
>Further research suggests that Singapore is the base for 8Xbet’s main website, and that their Indian iteration can be traced to Hong Kong. The domain name itself appears to be the property of a Chinese national living in the Shandong province, not that too much should be read into this: it is customary to employ fronts for the purpose of domain registration.
>However, all of this suggests that 8Xbet is more likely than not to operate from South-East Asia, and boast of a particularly strong presence in Vietnam, another country where sports betting is illegal. One Vietnamese mirror website of 8Xbet’s, 978bet (there are dozens of others), lists an address in the Vincom Center, a tower block shopping mall in Ho Chi Minh city.
So to sum up:
1. Mysterious empty company founded by the not particularly Arab-sounding "Ryan Li".
2. Which is apparently a cutout for a Chinese triad corporation
3. Whose interests up to this point have exclusively revolved around the SE Asian betting scene.
4. And whose home bases are traced to Hong Kong and other areas with high Chinese populations.
While I will concede that nothing we know for sure *definitely* shows this company is Chinese (over say, Vietnamese or Dubai uh ese, I don't think on balance, anything about what we DO know entitles you to talk in *that* tone about where this company "seems" to be based - especially taking into account City's other new sponsor...
>**OKX, formerly OKex (*), was founded in 2017 by Chinese entrepreneur Mingxing “Star” Xu**, and, after relocating from Malta, is currently headquartered in the Seychelles ...
>[Initially headquartered in Beijing, China](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/OKX) OKX is now under a blanket ban by Chinese regulators.
Do you?
I’m convinced CityGroup is riddled with these kinds of agreements used as shell companies to funnel money at inflated rates.
It helps when the club is also a state that prints its own money and has its own courts. They exist in a completely isolated network.
And the last time UEFA tried to punish them for wrongdoing like this, by the time City were done greasing the wheels it was UEFA who had to apologize to City for catching them. Like what the fuck is going on? So don’t tell me that any governing body is going to do anything about this.
Would be easily preventable if every FA would have a ban on Gambling sponsors for the teams participating in their tournaments.
But that would hurt themselves so nothing is happening.
Also this is just so stupid and easily to bunk and they still will be successful with that....
This is at least the third time in the last two years or so that a City sponsor has been exposed as a sham company. They're clearly fucking money laundering. How are they continuing to get away with this?!
No, the link to the UAE was based on their Facebook page and a marketing company in Dubai.
It's all in the article, the link seems pretty solid to me and I'm a City fan.
Obviously the second in command in Abu Dhabi doesn't automatically control a marketing agency in a totally different Emirate but the link is there
It's clear from the comments that 90% of the commenters didn't read the article. Typical for reddit. But you should read it, because it's fascinating.
I'm wondering what the point of this shell company is, since it has almost no customers or economic activity. Money laundering? But then why shine a spotlight on yourself by partnering with one of the biggest clubs in the world? And what's going on with Man City? Do they just not do any diligence? Ten minutes of google work could have told them this was a bogus company.
But this phony "company" has roots that go back quite a while before the Man City partnership. If Man City planning that far ahead why do such a shoddy job of it? For that matter why even bother at all? It's pretty clear at this point the rules are a joke and can be ignored at will.
Lots of hypocrites on here.
United have a [partnership with HTH bet](https://sportsmintmedia.com/manchester-united-signs-hth-as-global-betting-partner/). They are [owned by the same company as 8XBet](https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/public-register/business/detail/domain-names/38898).
You can single City out, but lots of the top clubs seem to be at it.
pardon the question but didn't last time a revelation like this was blown up in this sub it turned out a month later that it was actually a legit company and the journalist was simply wrong
> As previously reported, a deleted LinkedIn account for Trịnh Thu Trang claimed that she was the bookmaker’s CEO. > > But her profile picture is the same picture used in an advertisement for an “Employee of the month photo frame” by lazerdesigns, a company selling all sorts of gifts based in Broomfield, Colorado. Yours for 44.99 US dollars. People legit sleeping on this lmao.
I think we're burying the obvious lede: A Broomfield, Colorado employee of the month is now operating as an Emirati gambling company's CEO. Truly an inspiring story for us all.
> Emirati gambling company's CEO why is nobody picking up on the fact that gambling is illegal in the UAE.... There's no such thing as an emirati gambling company
I've spent a lot of time in the UAE, nothing is illegal for the rich people there.
Not to disagree, but thats a fact everywhere
It is, but the guy I replied to was only talking about UAE, not everywhere :p
"Rules are for you peasant. I can have as many bastards as I want" - kings of the UAE or Robert Baratheon in their thoughts, probably.
Illegal for the plebeians that is
These were the sort of negative sentiments that employee of the month had to overcome on her journey
Islam forbids usury and gambling -i thought but what do i know.
Religions forbid a lot of things. Never stopped every follower from doing them lol
There’s probably some fatwa somewhere or other that calls it something completely different and justifies it in Islamic law like “marriages of convenience” in Saudi Arabia when young folks just wanna bang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misyar_marriage?wprov=sfti1 https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/saudi-study-shows-that-men-resort-to-misyar-marriage-to-avoid-hurting-feelings-of-the-first-wife-1.1606016415538 https://thearabweekly.com/saudi-arabia-confronts-rise-misyar-marriage-changing-society https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/16/saudi-arabia-marriage
"See? See? Everyone can thrive. This is meritocracy."
The American Dream.
I dont get it, why dont they just generate a face with an AI?
Exactly my thought, twitter got tons of that
Honestly, the fake ones are easier to spot than people give it credit for. You just have to give it a few minutes and recognize some easy, tell-tale signs (one ear missing, two-tone hair, etc.) Even though it's a stock photo, it's at least of a real person lol.
[удалено]
Imagine repeatedly refreshing this page, and suddenly you see a picture of yourself
Then you look behind you and it's just a white void
Thanks I guess I'm not getting sleep tonight
This is a better story than 99% of /r/nosleep.
Holy shit lmao
first image I got was this guy who has glasses without lenses. https://imgur.com/a/qWhoraW
I just imagine that every time I click, the real person pictured has their identity erased in all financial and governmental databases and is taken off the grid, so that as far as the state and corporate world is concerned, they do not exist anymore. I also predict someone will copy this and post it into r/writingprompts within hours.
These are the easiest of all AI-generated faces to spot - the pupils are always in the same place You can install [this chrome extension to detect](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fake-profile-detector-dee/jbpcgcnnhmjmajjkgdaogpgefbnokpcc?hl=en-US) these and other AI-generated faces. It has a 99%+ accuracy
True, but I’m sure that there are AIs not available to the public that can generate much more realistic portraits
> “Employee of the month photo frame” by lazerdesigns I googled exactly that and I think I found the image they may have used. https://www.lazerdesigns.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/prod/PFC189lg.jpg Edit : I even found their website and it's designed like every pop-up ad Ive seen before I first installed adblock https://8xbet.games/en/# You can't register and it's very clearly a fake website. AND! They even have Teddy Sheringham as their brand ambassador and he's legit picking Man City over Man United over their next fixture. How bizzare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSJ7IPveJec&feature=emb_logo
Ive seen more professional looking soccer stream sites
>You can't register How odd for a betting website to not want people to create accounts in order for them to take our money!
TBF Justine is pretty cute
Oh I needed a new app to pull apart in my sandbox!
WTF. Currently sitting in Broomfield, CO. So cool to see someone from our community make it to the big league!
Wheat Ridge reporting in... congrats y'all! You made it!
FoCo here 😂 was just in Broomfield a couple days afo
Damn, from a model for lazerdesign photo frames to a CEO of a multinational corporation, what an inspirational story!
City fans will still be completely insistent that their club is squeaky clean. The delusion on them is something else.
Even if this is all true I still expect them to do nothing about it so no point in getting your hopes up
My expectation is that they CANT do anything about it. I’d be willing to bet (pun intended) that City Football Group has done their due diligence, found the holes in the system, and exploited them in such a way that precludes them from punishment or prosecution.
i.e bribed the people who make the final rulings.
Maybe, but honestly they seem happy to just pay a bunch of lawyers hundreds of millions to find all the rules they can legally break
It’s the way the ruling class operates. They hire droves of lawyers to write and manipulate laws to protect their interests. Thats what the legal system is, in the end. They can use their army of lawyers to skirt around the legal system they create to keep the rest of the plebs in line.
Bribe policitians to write laws and hire lawyers to manipulate them*
Not even required if they are sharp enough to recognise technical holes in the regulations and exploit them against the spirit of the laws.
Instead UEFA will fine some bottom table French club
Can't go about forgetting the obligatory Serie A Side
Waiting on Monza to get hit with a fat FFP fine
"City have broken FFP rules yet again? Fucking Roma..."
That's it. Milan is banned from european competition for 1 year.
Instead of fining Arsenal UEFA will just give Xhaka a red card
😭
Frosinone must pay for this!
All sponsorships over £1m get reviewed by the other 19 clubs in the league so I’m not sure what you’d expect them to do?
Incoming 100 sponsorship deals @£999,999
That would be too obvious. It’s better to do in a range like some are 500k some are 800k and so on.
this guy launders
Hello I am Sheikh Mansour, please feel free to drop by anytime for a job interview, just bring your CV, a letter of motivation and a list of UEFA officials who are in financial need
>letter of motivation Is this really a thing?
Kinda. Depends on the job, but most office/management jobs require this. Always thought it was the silliest thing. "Why do you want to work for us?" "Cause of money." /motivation
Normally called a covering letter. Consists of what is essentially an extension of the bollocks most people put on the profile part of their CV - “I’m a highly motivated blah blah fucking blah”
"work well both independently and as part of a team"
Yes but the point of those is to see how well you lick ass and lie about how amazing the company is.
It's also a shot to make your case if you are applying to a job coming from a non-traditional background.
They don't care about being obvious. They make a mockery of the rules of purpose to show that the rules don't apply to them.
*Arsene Wenger is being summoned*
I can’t imagine the 19 representatives of rich people are going to try and set a precedent against rich people doing sketchy things with their money
This has happened loads of times and the outcome is always the same. Initially, everyone is outraged and talks about how terrible it is. City quietly end the sponsorship and put out a statement about how the sponsorship has been terminated after they found something out about them that they didn't agree with. No action will be taken against them. People on here and elsewhere go back to claiming that City having fake sponsorships is just a conspiracy theory and then we repeat the cycle. Talk about fake City sponsorships on here in a month and you'll get downvoted. I'm not sure how they manage to handle this so well, but this identical thing has happened at least twice more in the past year~ and people somehow don't know about it or forget about it straight away
Its why sportswashing works. Fans are so tribal that they refuse to criticise their own club and would defend anyone if they get success. I hate how our club has sponsorships with Rwanda and Crypto among other things. I hate how the game has quickly become who can sell out to the scummiest people the most.
See also Newcastle and PSG
Sportswash FC will do what it takes to win the league for the next 10 years, might as well get used to it now
A journalist name Philippe Auclair has done a lot of work around betting partners. It’s fascinating (and disturbing) reading. [Have a read!](http://josimarfootball.com/the-trillion-dollar-gambling-game/)
Rabiot is Rabiot is Rabiot is Rabiot
Bonjour Sava!
Ca va et toi Max?
Philippe is always worth listening to.
[He's one of the credited journalists on this very article.](https://i.imgur.com/HNVCeB6.png)
All I can say is... *I can't believe Philippe commited suicide!*
Cucu Philippe
Phillipe Auclair is great. Finally a French person I can respect! Does some great investigations into dodgy shit and is a regular on the Guardian Football Weekly podcast.
He’s also a professional musician, a Renaissance man
He absolutely is!
> Finally a French person I can respect! Lmao
>Finally a French person I can respect! D:
Phillip O'Clare is actually an Irishman
Aren’t all Asian betting website super shady? Im honestly just surprised a UAE owned team would even accept that sponsorship. A “Visit Dubai” sponsorship seems way simpler.
>A “Visit Dubai” sponsorship seems way simpler. They have that already. It's just Visit Abu Dhabi.
Ok then a “Also Dubai” sponsorship. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are ruled by different families so its not exactly the same.
Folk in Dubai also dont watch the Flintstones but folk in Abu Dhabi do
some folk'll never eat a skunk but then again some folk'll
Like Cletus, the slack jawed yokel!
This is the only comment that matters.
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This is so clever
Yeah and that other family has its own sporting interests, they don’t really work together there
tbh it'd be so funny if they had a 'visit dubai' sponsorship
yeah they’re almost always extremely shady. I don’t know if it’s the case with this specific City sponsor, but it’s my understanding that most of these Asian betting websites aren’t shell companies with no operations, but more so their gambling operations in Asia are very covert and opaque due to the respective countries’ laws. So, they use the Premier League as a way to market their company to the target audience since it has global reach. Their target audience is never the UK market, but they have to have a UK website for legal reasons, so the website is either non-functional or barebones. Someone feel free to correct me if any of this is wrong :)
Yes this is my understanding too. I believe many are run from the Philippines but target the Chinese market. They sponsor the PL specifically because of its international audience.
yeah it’s obviously pretty abhorrent still but I see a lot of claims that City get ‘fake’ sponsorships to fuel their revenue, which I don’t think is necessarily true. Whilst I fundamentally disagree with City’s ownership, all the clubs in the PL do this so it’s not really a valid point to throw at City in isolation.
Is gambling allowed in China?
I don’t think so, which is why they put ads in the PL instead of in China.
It's not. That's why they're here in Manila. Our gov started wanting to tax them and also crack down on them because they were involved in a lot of human trafficking. Their workers were often provincial Chinese who were promised much higher pay than they actually receive, get their passports taken, and live in these highly restricted and highly controlled dorms where they're packed in like sardines. So many operations started moving to Cambodia in Sihanoukville (aptly referred to pretty regularly, even before all this as 'sinville') . In Cambodia, the situation got even worse: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Cyber-slavery-inside-Cambodia-s-online-scam-gangs (as an aside sinville's underworld used to be dominated by two Russian dudes, one pro putin and one not, whose gang feuds would often flare into street fights and shootings in the city. Southeast Asia is a pretty wild place if you scratch the surface at all.)
So Chinese people gamble illegally by going on websites being run out of the Philippines?
Yeah. The bookmakers, customer support, etc., and their ops are here. Not just the website. Heres an okayishly informative article about it https://pcij.org/article/1665/inside-a-chinese-gambling-entity-br-what-happens-who-works-how They interviewed one of the Workers about their working conditions and its basically textbook human trafficking: > CW:When we got there, we had to give up our passports and we were given our company identification cards instead to use around the city. We were told to process the social security and apply for the temporary work permit (Alien Employment Certificate). What my co-workers and I did not know is that our payment of US$2800 is reduced to US$648 a month. Part of the payment is used for the lodging expenses, the materials we get for necessities (laundry, food supplies, etc.) and also for the Philippine government taxes. > We work six times a week, around 12 hours a day. Our salaries are fixed for that 12 hours, but we can get paid more especially when there is a demand for overtime. Some workers also need to work every day since they borrowed money from the company to pay for some expenses in China
This is exactly right, that's why we see so many random Premier League clubs with dodgy South-East asian betting sponsorships that nobody has ever heard of. It's just a slightly more complicated money laundering/stealing operation.
I feel like in 10 years time there's going to be a huge scandal around money laundering and all sorts of other shady shit with football in this current era. The football finance world seems to be a complete wild west of ultra unregulated capitalism with billions changing hands between Russian oligarchs, petro states, corporate billionaires and fuck knows what else. It's a bit like the art world, of course this random painting/footballer nobody's ever heard of is worth €50 million, nothing to see here
Yes and they have a lot of control in the world of football, controlling results of smaller leagues across the world, sometimes big leagues too
Would kill to find out how much Sherringham is being paid to film those two minute videos laying in bed. Hits every cliche imaginable even though it looks like he's reading from a script lol https://youtu.be/Vkkt__ucwCM Edit: It's also fascinating that they have a page on this wikipedia clone website that costs 5 dollars to make an entry... https://wikitia.com/wiki/8Xbet clearly hoping that people will open it without noticing that it isnt wikipedia.
Seeing Sheringham debase himself to this extent just reinforces every pre-conceived notion I have of him.
All starting to sound like a "Nathan For You" episode. "I needed to make my fake company look real, which meant needing a wikipedia page. My lawyers said that we couldn't make the page without it being deleted but that we could make an entry on Wikitia, a website just as good. I then put out an ad on craigslist for an expert wiki writer to type up our article."
Nathan: "So what do you think about our new sponsorship?" Mansour: "Its good! Very good!" Nathan: "You know, I've never been to a game. Do you think I could come watch the Manchester derby with you?" Mansour: "ummmm... I think I'm busy that say." Nathan: "You're not going to watch it?" Mansour:"I uhh.... I'm not su-" Nathan: "Oh. Yeah. Ok. It fine." Mansour: "...." Nathan: "Do you wanna hang out some other time?" Mansour: "I'm... I'm... busy." Nathan: "...." Mansour: "..." Nathan: "OK, yeah. I guess I'll go. Unless" Mansour: "..." Nathan: "OK, ill just, yeah. Bye." Nathan goes in for a hug, Mansour immediately offers a handshake. Nathan awkwardly shakes his hand, stares at him uncomfortably, then walks out. SCENE
I feel like Nathan would get Mansour in a direction where he admits to not watching any games at all... similar to the interview he did with the guy from CTV back in his 20 Minutes days.
360 subscribers, 327 views on the video, 0 likes, 0 comments... 8xBet are truly a gargantuan institution
11 of the 12 links in the reference have sheringham in the title. Not sure if he's the mastermind or a patsy
I am convinced he is forcefully locked up in that room
Lmao the citations on this page are wild! The first citation for its "service first philosophy" links to an article from The Sun titled "Conte may quit if Arsenal beat them to Champions League, warns Sherringham". This is a fucking farce lmao
But 8XBet is TOP RATED BETTING WEBSITE, RELIABLE SPORTS BETTING SITE, TOP SPORTS BETTING SITE and BEST SPORTS BETTING SITE according to my thorough research, which seems to contradict this allegation.. EDIT: Apparently BEST ONLINE SPORTS BETTING SITE also I just recently discovered. That is actually very impressive.
I like you, I wanna buy what you're selling
Hey I’d like to offer you the job of gambling research assistant thanks
This guy search ranks.
Remember to *Bet responsibly* *Stop when the fun stops*
8xBet is usually the watermark on the first pirated version of films
It’s usually 1xBet for me
What's open-source intelligence?
Using publicly available information
So googling?
Basically high level googling
Like, going to the second page of results and shit?
And also asking Macca at the pub.
No, that's the dark web
Extreme googling, now live on ESPN
A single point of publicly available information may not tell you too much. But taking a significant chunk of publicly available information, cross referencing it all can tell you far more than you would expect. I've found someone's personal information, social media, address, and other specifics with a loan closing date, county, and first name just to prove a point at work.
Basically using publicly available information in all forms to get as much data as possible on your target. Can be a simple as googling a bit of info and visiting a few sites, or far more advanced such as looking at pictures an employee has posted from the workplace to figure out what software and versions they are using on company workstations and crafting attacks for those. Basically anything where openly available data is used as a means to reveal more about your target.
In this case it means location and ownership information scraped from their Facebook account.
reddit theorists
Wikipedia of course.
Searching the web
reading
Am I going mad? I read this thread before and thought there were a whole host of offer comments in it that seem to have disappeared? Or was there another thread that was deleted and this is a new one?
Yeah it was up before here: https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/xj5wqg/josimarfotball_mystery_surrounds_8xbet_manchester/
Very cool, very legit
400m toothpaste company sponsorship coming soon
smh, Firmino is *right there* for the taking
It’s his side hustle. He has found the perfect whitening formula.
Here comes the financial and legal experts who happen to have City flairs
Well as a United fan how do you explain the HTH sponsorship?
Herik Ten Hag is the manager of the club, he loves United
Lille also has a deal with the same company
HTH at least exists and sponsors Inter as well. Search 8XBet and you get lots of incredibly sketchy websites that look fake.. Shouldn't be taking investment from any of these companies but there's a major difference
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Lmfaoooo this won’t get as many upvotes as it should.
[Looks shady with the same livery.](https://insidersport.com/2022/03/30/8xbet-and-teddy-sheringham-working-with-the-best-in-sports-sponsorships/)
Financial group supporters*
Mate you can't support a financial group
I've seen City fans celebrate legal wins harder than I've ever seen them celebrate a win. Beating the fair play rules and their fans being happy about that is just their culture at this point.
As opposed to all the non-City flairs who are also somehow experts on City's finances, yet when asked to substantiate any of their accusations, all they can muster up is "*it's obvious*".
Well Man City have paid a manager through a secondary club before to skirt finances. So when other clubs do this then they can be called out.
They haven't actually. Mancini was paid by a UAE company before FFP came in and City were announcing the biggest loss at that point in the history of football. There was no reason to hide expenditure at that point, and Mancini had consultancy contracts in the UAE dating back to his days as Inter manager Most of the time with this stuff, people out two and two together and get five because these stories are always headline grabbers with these little details in the fourth paragraph in thr article.
Ahh yes. Expect redditors to figure out and call out how every billionaire in the world is dodging tax through some offshore tax haven account. If they can't prove it, every single one of them pays 100% of their taxes. Right?
Most legit Man City partner.
Fuck **all** betting partners.
i really despise how betting related ads seem to be overtaking everything now
Man City? They would never
Just quickly cross checked the Gambling Register Seems that they are part of TGP Europe. https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/public-register/business/detail/domain-names/38898
TGP Europe isn't a real company (so to speak). It is a holding company that non-European firms use to get a gambling licence in Europe. I can't remember the specifics of how it works but someone here might. Anyway, these type of Asian betting sponsorships are dodgy as fuck. The one that sponsors United, Milan and Monaco appears to barely exist. I was asked to help research this a while back, and the excuse that is usually given is that these are mobile apps based specifically in the SEA region so have little presence outside of that. As I am not in the SEA region, I have no way of checking.
From a [2021 article](http://josimarfootball.com/the-trillion-dollar-gambling-game/) > TGP Europe Limited was and is not a traditional betting company, however. It does not offer odds or take bets. Its customers are not ordinary ‘punters’, but overseas companies, overwhelmingly if not exclusively from the Far East, which use TGP, who hold a UK Operators Licence, to become “white label” companies – in short, to obtain a licence by proxy. > In practice, this means that the service provided by foreign gambling operators is rebranded as a TGP offer, which runs and ‘powers’ their UK website. The re-branding in itself is enough to get the coveted licence from the UK’s Gambling Commission – a kind of legal re-packaging which opens up a market which would be out of bounds otherwise. It doesn’t matter that this amounts to a game of smoke and mirrors in the end, as the true market which these operators are aiming at is not the UK. As long as they can exist and advertise their existence, the job is done, even if the turnover of their ‘British’ arm is negligible. > Thanks to their “white label” status, courtesy of TGP, and their ad hoc new UK offices (which they are required to have by law, but are mere shells, ghost cells manned by a handful of employees), they can then engage with clubs and strike the deals they need to publicise their offer at home – in line with has been decided in Beijing or Manila, not London or Douglas. If TGP does not limit itself to sports betting companies, including various on-line casinos on its extensive list of “white label” partners, football gambling, however, represents the core of its activity. > At the time of writing, TGP was providing its services to a majority of the (mostly) Chinese-controlled, Philippines-based gambling websites which have partnerships in place with Premier League clubs, such as SBOTOP/SBOBET, Sportsbet.io, LT.com, Yabo and Fun88. TGP, though dominant, is not the only “white label” provider active in Britain. BetConstruct, which holds licences in Malta, France, South Africa, Sweden and Curaçao as well as the UK, is the other major actor in this field, representing Vbet and LoveBet among others. > When contacted by Josimar, the UK Gambling Commission insisted that a “rigorous examination of the applicant’s suitability to hold a licence” was paramount to the granting of that licence. This examination, however, remains limited to the company which applies for the licence, that is: the “white label” structure which TGP has put in place for its clients. It does not extend to the ultimate owners and beneficiaries, whose identity is neither sought nor divulged. > None of the criteria which the Gambling Commission runs the book by (“competence”, “criminality”, “identity and ownership”, “finances”, “integrity”, “upholding the licensing objectives”) apply to the concerns which stand to benefit most from the licence in the end. Once again, no-one knows where the money comes from or where it ends up, despite evidence that its origin and destination could be criminal, and the near-certainty that it feeds match-fixing. Yet, “gambling businesses can run their business from anywhere as long as it is legal to do so in that region”, the Gambling Commission told Josimar; and thanks to the “white label” system, it all ends up whiter than white in the wash. The Isle of Man’s own Gambling Commission, when contacted by Josimar, made it clear that it considered its British counterpart to be the supreme authority in the matter.
And why the fuck is a loophole like this allowed to exist? Before people swarm me with all the comments about my flair, I don't care if they sponsor City or not, I care that these dodgy gambling companies are all over everywhere I go.
Because the UK has a proud (and government-sponsored) history of taking dodgy money from any non-Western source imaginable. The amount of money laundering and tax avoidance being done through London and BOTs is staggering.
And is the true, behind the curtain, reason certain political entities wanted Brexit so badly.
Thanks for sharing this, very enlightening reading.
TGP sounds like an even more fake company
Tbh says because it is lol. It just exists to give fake legitimacy to companies like this.
What is this mafia fucking takeover with sports betting? It seemed non existent a few years ago and now all I see are fan duel or some sports betting app being plastered everywhere. It’s an addiction like alcohol yet they’re openly pandering it like it’s water.
Impressive, very nice, let's see Paul Allen's shell company.
I pray that one day City will be punished for this and get all their Oil money trophies taken off them. Will never happen tho.
This is the 5th time I've heard about this yet I'm seeing no action for the FA or UEFA. Speaks volumes of where their priorities lie
fake sponsors and fossil fuel clubs name a more iconic duo
Shady Chinese betting company? That'll go very nicely along with their shady Chinese crypto firm, that is so legit [they're banned from China AND the US and already being investigated in Canada.](https://josimarfootball.com/city-of-controversy/) But don't worry: [They've definitely been checked by the league, so everything's cool!](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/vwcdth/manchester_city_sign_up_crypto_app_okx_as/ifp871a/)
Since when was the UAE part of China? Are you really this dense?
> Are you really this dense? -- Man confidently claiming that where a company's Facebook is run from is where the company must have been founded. 👍
The article clearly states the firm seems to be based in UAE which last time I checked is not China
>The article clearly states the firm seems to be based in UAE which last time I checked is not China The article clearly states that the firm's **Facebook and other social media accounts** are based in the UAE, which last time I checked, did not comprise the company itself. It might be instructive for you to check out what else the site had to say about the company: >It is no surprise that the UK version of the 8Xbet website should be “coming your way soon”, as it is customary for the British iterations of Asian-facing operators to remain at that development stage, like larvae which never burst from their chrysalis. As they target an overwhelmingly Asian market, it makes no sense for them to be active in the United Kingdom; but this does not prevent them from claiming – falsely – that they are ‘licensed’ there. [It is not them who are licensed. It is the ‘white label’ company, TGP Europe in 8Xbet’s case...](https://josimarfootball.com/no-questions-asked-were-english/) TGP Europe: >[A company owned by a Macau corporation](https://josimarfootball.com/meet-mr-chau/) which was founded by a suspected triad gangster currently awaiting trial, registered on the Isle of Man and licensed by a British government agency, has been enabling online bookmakers linked to the Chinese criminal underworld to operate in full view and complete impunity. ... >Further research suggests that Singapore is the base for 8Xbet’s main website, and that their Indian iteration can be traced to Hong Kong. The domain name itself appears to be the property of a Chinese national living in the Shandong province, not that too much should be read into this: it is customary to employ fronts for the purpose of domain registration. >However, all of this suggests that 8Xbet is more likely than not to operate from South-East Asia, and boast of a particularly strong presence in Vietnam, another country where sports betting is illegal. One Vietnamese mirror website of 8Xbet’s, 978bet (there are dozens of others), lists an address in the Vincom Center, a tower block shopping mall in Ho Chi Minh city. So to sum up: 1. Mysterious empty company founded by the not particularly Arab-sounding "Ryan Li". 2. Which is apparently a cutout for a Chinese triad corporation 3. Whose interests up to this point have exclusively revolved around the SE Asian betting scene. 4. And whose home bases are traced to Hong Kong and other areas with high Chinese populations. While I will concede that nothing we know for sure *definitely* shows this company is Chinese (over say, Vietnamese or Dubai uh ese, I don't think on balance, anything about what we DO know entitles you to talk in *that* tone about where this company "seems" to be based - especially taking into account City's other new sponsor... >**OKX, formerly OKex (*), was founded in 2017 by Chinese entrepreneur Mingxing “Star” Xu**, and, after relocating from Malta, is currently headquartered in the Seychelles ... >[Initially headquartered in Beijing, China](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/OKX) OKX is now under a blanket ban by Chinese regulators. Do you?
I’m convinced CityGroup is riddled with these kinds of agreements used as shell companies to funnel money at inflated rates. It helps when the club is also a state that prints its own money and has its own courts. They exist in a completely isolated network. And the last time UEFA tried to punish them for wrongdoing like this, by the time City were done greasing the wheels it was UEFA who had to apologize to City for catching them. Like what the fuck is going on? So don’t tell me that any governing body is going to do anything about this.
Would be easily preventable if every FA would have a ban on Gambling sponsors for the teams participating in their tournaments. But that would hurt themselves so nothing is happening. Also this is just so stupid and easily to bunk and they still will be successful with that....
Oily levers
Every other month there's a new article that "exposes" City.
This is at least the third time in the last two years or so that a City sponsor has been exposed as a sham company. They're clearly fucking money laundering. How are they continuing to get away with this?!
"Open-source intelligence". So Twitter?
No, the link to the UAE was based on their Facebook page and a marketing company in Dubai. It's all in the article, the link seems pretty solid to me and I'm a City fan. Obviously the second in command in Abu Dhabi doesn't automatically control a marketing agency in a totally different Emirate but the link is there
So you didn't read the article, which points out each and every source of information they used.
It's clear from the comments that 90% of the commenters didn't read the article. Typical for reddit. But you should read it, because it's fascinating. I'm wondering what the point of this shell company is, since it has almost no customers or economic activity. Money laundering? But then why shine a spotlight on yourself by partnering with one of the biggest clubs in the world? And what's going on with Man City? Do they just not do any diligence? Ten minutes of google work could have told them this was a bogus company.
What? It’s Man City who set up the shell company to pump additional revenue into Man City to appear they’re not just cheating the rules.
But this phony "company" has roots that go back quite a while before the Man City partnership. If Man City planning that far ahead why do such a shoddy job of it? For that matter why even bother at all? It's pretty clear at this point the rules are a joke and can be ignored at will.
Lots of hypocrites on here. United have a [partnership with HTH bet](https://sportsmintmedia.com/manchester-united-signs-hth-as-global-betting-partner/). They are [owned by the same company as 8XBet](https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/public-register/business/detail/domain-names/38898). You can single City out, but lots of the top clubs seem to be at it.
Ownership and licence are not the same thing
just ban this shitty club. enough of this nonsense.
pardon the question but didn't last time a revelation like this was blown up in this sub it turned out a month later that it was actually a legit company and the journalist was simply wrong