Ricky Widjaja jailed for tweaking football odds

Widjaja is a former betting trader and is known to have hacked Singapore Pools about $200,000. He did this by coming up with a conspiracy with his colleague in manipulating football odds. Yesterday he received a jail term of 4 years.

Rocky Widjaja is 26 years and agreed to 13 out of 52 counts of cheating with Thomas Tong Heng Huat who is 32 years for the use of a computer to gain access a programme known as Margin Maker 2 (MM2); this was used to cheat the Singapore Pools.

Toh Yung Cheong who was the judge to the case denied the permanent citizen to Singapore cash-bailout. The case has a pending appeal against ruling. At the same time, the court learnt that in August 2011, the two colleagues had intentions of cheating their employer through the use of the software to control the odds of the “total goals: over/under”. They intended to do this on the different leagues and football matches in international leagues.

This plan would be implemented by either of the man who on the trading rooms in Singapore Pools’ headquarter was on the shift at the time of implementation. The man who would be off shift would place their bet and his conspirator would accept the bet, before they lowered the odds a couple of minutes after.

The actions would be coordinated and a sure win would be guaranteed for them and a sure loss for the Singapore Pools. The tickets that won the bet would be claimed at different pools outlets.

The scheme went on for a long time before being unravelled until January 20th, 2012. This is when it was realized that Widjaja had gone against the staff regulations through his the bets that he placed in the outlets. The bets were between $12,000 and $38,000 and the winning would be as much as $44,000.

When Ricky’s actions were discovered, he erased his texts and a Microsoft spreadsheet that contained details to the offences. His lawyer made an impassioned plea for the pre-sentence report. She reported that her client had made a full restitution for all the money he took together with Thong’s share. Thong is currently serving a 5year-4months jail term for similar offences.

This article is published in: Sports betting scams
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