Humans love quick money.
Get-rich-quick schemes have been siphoning money from both learned and illiterate Kenyans at an arming rate.
But none is more ruthless than the sports betting craze sponsored by Betika, SportPesa, Odi Bets, Betway, Bet Mozzart Bet Kenya and others.
Both young and old Kenyans are glued to their phone screens be it in matatus, homes and even at the workplaces.
Cyber businesses were saved by sports betting before CBC came to pass.
But have you ever wondered why a betting firm which makes millions or not billions of money every day needs an influencer?
If you go to Twitter, you’ll see many of the gambling influencers signed up to different bookmarker firms such as SportPesa, Betika, Odi Bets and Betafriq.
They extravagantly share screenshots of their winning bets every passing hour.
This is called baiting.
Soon, droves of other Kenyans will drool at the massive profits that these influencers make and sign up for the betting company that has been advertised to them.
Apart from a jackpot, a multi-bet is the best way to make more money from small stakes.
UmojaNews.com has found out that because these companies make millions per day, they often have a target before the day starts.
Let’s say, that company X wants to make Sh200 million profit today (this doesn’t mean that don’t always make profits. Because they do anyway, they just now place monetary targets). It then sends an influencer who they hire to screenshot some winnings, some are photoshopped carefully, but others are just true.
At the beginning of the day, the influencer will screenshot good bets to stake, then it will be a win after win till about afternoon.
In the afternoon, the same influencer will share a stake with a link, and this is where their commission comes from. Since he/she has been on a winning streak, the jovial people he/she has managed to make a win since morning will be happy to place a new bet since the day is going on well. And it will be huge stakes.
After 2 hours, the influencer will just post, ‘we try again another time’, most often it will look innocent but it is not.
The stake was okay but gambling firms usually do something to the match. They look at the spreadsheet of that particular bet that has been placed by millions waiting for a windfall and decide to call officials and the criminal mafias of the match-fixing underworld to sabotage just one match and they end up with all that profit.
This circle repeats.
But to hook more, the influencer will share one good odd game (2+) which will be a sure bet as is always and people will win, however, not many will place their bets due to fear of what had happened in the afternoon as explained above.
Never mind, the influencer will wake up in the morning time to repeat the process once again and more and more will get back to placing their stakes and also losing as the bookmarking firms deem fit.
When the ‘afternoon’ deal doesn’t work, due to uncooperative match officials etc and the company ‘loses’ money. They usually engage in underhand tactics by changing clients’ stakes. This has been observed in Betika and the records are out there online for all to see.
The role of witchcraft
Football has been bedevilled by tales of witchcraft in match-fixing.
In 2015, Gor Mahia and Yanga FC accused each other of using witchcraft. There were reports that K’Ogalo refused to use the main entrance since they had received information of Yanga FC having placed “Juju” there.
The tales do not stop there.
Businessworld has a lot of underdealing beyond natural.
At SportPesa for example, it is not automatic that you’ll receive money if you have sent it to them wrongly. They don’t have a reversal policy.
Despite having a policy in their fine print that one person should not open more than one account, SportPesa will force you to open an account to withdraw the money sent wrongly.
As per insiders, they refuse to refund money that has been sent erroneously because of the belief that that will make them lose money in their shady business.
“The owners believe in witchcraft, the companies might appear modern, but the driving force is withcraft even human sacrifices”, an insider confirmed.
Does this explain why they don’t do refunds? Umoja News asked
“Yes” the insider responded.
