Quote:
Originally Posted by ChicagoRy
I understand most of that. What I'm wondering is, if Phua really runs a legal gambling business (as Tom said, though I guess he didn't technically say Phua didn't also do illegal stuff), then why would Caesers even turn him in in the first place, let alone FBI jump on it heavily?
Caesers in particular... these players likely were worth millions of dollars per year in profits to the casino. You wouldn't turn them into the government lightly.
Caesars was already under pressure from FinCEN officials regarding dozens of technical money-laundering violations in connection with its marketing aimed at Asian whales. A lot of this was in the court documents connected to the case, most of which I've read. Reading between the lines, it made it a whole easier for Caesars to be overly cooperative with the feds and the NGC when they started inquiring as to what Phua's group was up to.
I agree with the other commenters that some of the total betting amounts mentioned in the story seem inflated or mistranslated, perhaps by as much as a factor of ten. Phua is incredibly rich but not quite as rich as the story might portray.
One side story the ESPN piece missed is that Phua purchased himself an international ambassadorship, as San Marino's "non-resident" representative in Montenegro. Phua tried to lean on a claim of diplomatic immunity at least once in connection to the US case and likely did as well within the related case in Macau in which he was technically deported, though you won't find that deportation officially described as such.
The Premier League match-fixing is something I wasn't aware of in connection with Phua, but after checking around, yeah, seems like. It puts him in the same low class of character as Vadim Trincher and his Russian-mob boss, Alimzhan "Taiwanchik" Tokhtakhounov, who you might remember from the New York sports-betting case and Molly's Game connections. Taiwanchik is still a fugitive from US justice on charges of fixing that infamous pairs-skating event at the Salt Lake Winter Olympics.
I'm all for sports betting being legal, but fixing or attempting to fix sports events is way over the line, and it's the type of crud that continually needs to be wiped from the scene. It was proper for this case against Phua to be dropped, even though the guy was doing exactly what the authorities claimed. Still, if there really was karma in the world, he'd be sitting in a jail cell somewhere on some other charge for all the **** he's gotten away with. He ain't no hero nor anyone worth idolizing.