Some have argued that Yabo (aka Yabo Sports, Yabo Group) and its many constituent brands comprise "the biggest illegal betting operation targeting Greater China." You probably haven't heard of it before, but you may have come across it unknowingly in passing, hundreds of times, if you watch European football, aka soccer in US parlance. The operation enjoys multimillion-dollar partnerships with some of the world's biggest clubs, like Manchester United and Bayern Munich.
Less visible to the public are Yabo's modern day slaves, forced to staff the debt-fueled pyramid scheme underpinning its gambling empire.
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"Often, as a culture and as an industry, we separate technical stories from real life," Dr. Renée Burton, head of threat intelligence at Infoblox, says. "But these are monumental human crimes that are occurring [in] human trafficking and money laundering. It's the most interesting research I've ever been involved with."
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On paper, Yabo Sports shut down in 2022 amid media scrutiny. But it fact it actually passed on through other brands like Kaiyun Sports. Kaiyun's logo has featured prominently on the sleeves of Aston Villa and Crystal Palace kits, or uniforms, in recent seasons, and the front of Nottingham Forest's (all England). Kaiyun reportedly also has a partnership in place with the world's biggest club, Real Madrid.
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As Burton tells it, "Essentially, they use a ton of shell companies in multiple places around the world. And then they'll come up through these white label providers in the UK, like TGP Europe, which was linked by journalists to [gambling organization] Suncity, which has been accused by the Chinese government of money laundering. So it obfuscates those [groups] which are already obfuscated. It's just this ridiculous chain of false identities."
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"So it draws people [into the sites]," Burton explains, "and they're browsing around a little bit. You've got your Manchester United logo. Then it starts popping up: these lures for you to come gamble." The sites include images of scantily dressed women and live chats with purported customer service agents. If a user stays idle for a period of time, the site might offer financial incentives, like a sliding scale of up to $1,500 free for any user who deposits up to $70,000 in a week.
"It draws you in further, and eventually you're losing. Now you're in debt, and you move into servitude. It's essentially a pyramid scheme: you have to go recruit people to gamble, then you get a portion of those people's losses to go against your debt," she says.
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A 2023 report from the Asian Racing Federation (ARF) Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Financial Crime described how Yabo betting sites are also staffed by physically imprisoned individuals:
The walled-off complexes have apartments, offices, supermarkets and other facilities, and are guarded by armed security whose job is to keep people in, according to reports in Chinese state media and elsewhere.
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According to victim testimony, staff must work 12 hours a day, six days a week and cannot leave without a ransom. Staff are sold between operators, with ransoms increasing on each occasion. Videos and photographs online in 2021 showed people being physically threatened, beaten with sticks, and struck with electric batons.
[Edit: Deleted tautology in the title.]
That's right, I corrected the title.
So you editorialized the title to make it fit the !europe theme better?
I am really on the fence about this one because it's only tangentially related to Europe.
I deleted the word 'Illegal' from my initial title 'Illegal Chinese crimes syndicate ..."