The Goiás Civil Police began on the morning of Wednesday (9), in six states, the operation played to comply with 16 judicial measures, between arrest and search and seizure warrants, against criminal organization specializing in the manipulation of results in football matches.
According to police, the fraud has already moved at least $ 11 million unlawfully obtained, including through betting platforms.
The investigation outlined the group’s hierarchical structure, which has financiers, intermediaries and executors, involving players, coaches and leaders of clubs targeting the operation.
This is not the first operation in the state that investigates handling results in football.
In November 2023, the Goiás Public Prosecution Service (MPGO) launched the third phase of Operation Maximum Penalty, which investigates the suspicion of fraud in seven matches, between games of the 2022 Brazilian Championship and the state of Goiás and Paraíba 2023.
The MP’s investigation investigates the conduct of a criminal group that aimed to entice professional players with the offer of financial values to hold events such as yellow, red card punishment, penalty or partial score commitment in the match. The practice made it possible to its members to make profits on sports betting sites.
As a result of the previous phases of the operation, the STJD (Superior Court of Sports Justice) banned football the midfielder Marcos Vinicius Alves Barreira, known as Romário, considered one of the pivots of the manipulation scheme.
According to a report published by Global Sportradar consultancy in March 2024, Brazil led the ranking of sports matches with suspected handling.
From a universe of approximately 9,000 matches in Brazilian football in 2023, in 109 of them, or 1.21% of the total, suspected handling of results were identified.
