The Premier League’s Underbelly: A Hotbed of Scams

At the crux of this story are those football clubs. None of it would have happened if they hadn’t chosen to provide fraudsters with an incomparable platform to target victims by the tens of thousands.

One would expect Premier League FCs to conduct due diligence and lead the fight to protect their dedicated fans, who tirelessly invest their hard-earned money into them, by avoiding seedy sponsorships.

However, apparently, one shouldn’t expect that from the Premier League FCs at large. As previously mentioned, the BBC investigation revealed that 40% of Premier League clubs were sponsored by suspicious financial service providers outside the Milton Group.

When considering the involvement of scam companies associated with the criminal group and the prevalence of blatant cryptocurrency scams, it becomes evident that virtually every Premier League club is somehow connected to aiding scammers and fraudsters in exploiting their fans.

The investigation uncovered that certain companies, which have formed financial partnerships with these clubs, have a history of being fined, facing bans, or currently being investigated by authorities due to their unjust treatment of customers.

Martin Callandine, football specialist and author of The Ugly Game and Fit and Proper People, gave his pretty scalding opinion on this whole affair involving the entire Premier League:

“These schemes are almost always obvious if a few hours of due diligence are done. Club claims that, “we stopped the deal as soon as we found out” are completely inadequate.

What we have seen, IMO, is football wide negligence and, at times, deliberate turning of a blind eye.”

Joe Inwood, a BBC journalist who participated in the investigation, shared with Payment Expert his insights on the matter:

“These are companies that are offering complex financial instruments, the opportunity to speculate on the price of things like gold or bitcoin.

Often companies that do that are completely legitimate, if very risky.

However, what we’ve identified are eight companies that have sponsored PL clubs over the last few years who were not just doing something risky but doing something downright scandalous — they were tricking customers and all of them were either banned by the authorities, heavily fined or are currently under investigation.

That really is quite a large number of Premier League clubs that have had financial connections to companies, which have subsequently turned out to be doing something wrong.

They would say that the companies they’ve had interactions with are regulated. In general, these companies had regulations here in the UK. The football clubs say well, if they’re regulated, we can work with them.

But if you look at the details of what some of these companies are offering, there was one recently that was associated with Fulham that was offering 500% returns a year.

People can say well hang on a second, they may be officially regulated or not have been banned yet, but is that a reasonable claim to be making? Should a club really look a bit more in depth into the companies they are associating with? As far as our investigation found, quite often they seem not to be doing that.

While it is possible for the clubs to maintain the position that they’ve partnered with the flagged companies in a time when there were no evident instances of wrongdoings, […] not enough is being done to research such partnerships in-depth.”

TL;DR — Premier League football clubs are turning a blind eye and a deaf ear as long as they receive money, and as long as the shady nature of their sponsorships remains undisclosed.

Digging deeper into the subject of shady sponsorships and the Premier League quickly reveals that what is happening today is actually nothing new.

This has been ongoing for years.

And Manchester City almost got its own very version of Leeds’ FXVC scam.

The Premier League: a Long History of Betraying Their Fans

To summarize what’s happening with the Premier League football clubs in one sentence: they are looking for money not looking out for their fans.

Although one could readily raise ethical concerns about accepting sponsorship deals from betting companies, especially when targeting a substantial audience of young and impressionable individuals, alongside a profound gambling problem within the country.

The issue lies in major football teams earning revenue from the proceeds of fraud, and this didn’t start with crypto fraud schemes.

An outstanding example of this is the partnership and sponsorship with Binary options firms, dating back almost a decade before crypto fraud sponsorships.

The majority of football club fanbases are unaware that, despite the superficial resemblance of “Binary options” to traditional trading, they essentially involve betting against a skewed system in which winning is nearly unattainable.

In this setup, the customer’s deposit becomes the source of revenue, making it fundamentally different from actual trading.

Here are some of the most important issues linked to the scammy nature of Binary Options, which prompted Israel and Canada, among other countries, to ban them:

• Unpredictable Nature — Binary options are based on a simple “yes” or “no” proposition: whether an underlying asset’s price will be above or below a certain level at a specified time. This simplicity can create an illusion of easy profits, but the unpredictable nature of financial markets makes it extremely difficult to consistently predict price movements accurately.
• Misleading Advertising — Many binary options brokers employ aggressive marketing tactics that promise high returns with minimal risk. They often lure traders with claims of guaranteed profits, free bonuses, and easy money, which can lead people to invest without fully understanding the risks involved.
• Unrealistic Payouts — The promised payout rates for successful binary options trades are often unrealistically high, making them seem too good to be true. These high payouts can be used as bait to attract traders, even though the probability of consistently achieving such returns is very low.
• Manipulation of Trades — Some binary options brokers manipulate trades and prices to ensure that traders lose money. This can involve delaying trade executions, altering quoted prices, or using other tactics to make it difficult for traders to profit.
• High Fees and Hidden Charges — Binary options brokers may charge high fees for trading, withdrawals, and other services. Additionally, some brokers might have hidden charges that traders are unaware of until they attempt to withdraw funds.
• Cold Calls and Pressure Tactics — Scam brokers often use aggressive sales tactics, including unsolicited cold calls, to pressure individuals into depositing money and making trades. They may create a sense of urgency or fear of missing out to manipulate people into making quick decisions.
• Difficulty Withdrawing Funds — Traders have reported difficulties withdrawing their funds from certain binary options brokers. Some brokers impose strict withdrawal conditions or require traders to meet unrealistic trading volume requirements before they can access their funds.
• Lack of Transparency — Legitimate trading involves transparency regarding asset prices, trading conditions, and risks. In contrast, binary options trading can lack transparency, making it difficult for traders to fully understand the mechanics and implications of their trades.

Despite knowing that they would expose their fans to potential fraud, Southampton Football Club didn’t hesitate to sign a deal with Banc de Binary in 2016, nor did Arsenal hesitate to affiliate themselves with Markets.com.

The general attitude of most football clubs seems to be to “run with it” until the FCA or a huge backlash from the fans stops them in their tracks.

That’s how Manchester United fans saved themselves from the clutches of a crypto Ponzi scheme that Manchester United would have embraced wholeheartedly otherwise.

In the fall of 2021, Manchester City picked a new crypto partner in 3Key, despite having zero verifiable information about them! ZERO.

It was the tremendous backlash from their fans that forced Manchester City to give up on the deal.

Let’s applaud Manchester fans for standing up for themselves!

Six months later, it was revealed that 3Key was actually run by a group of German promoters who are accused of being part of a massive pyramid scheme!

Over 400 individuals worldwide, identified as victims, have jointly lodged a criminal complaint.

This complaint alleges that numerous cryptocurrency investment firms, including 3Key, were operating as fraudulent entities and were interconnected within a network of pyramid schemes.

Their objective is to pursue legal action against the individuals responsible and to recoup £45 million, which they assert represents their share of the total fraud, amounting to over £1.1 billion.

They succeeded in running a £1.1 billion fraud scheme without even being associated with Manchester City!

Can you imagine the damage it would have caused if they had succeeded and partnered up with Manchester City? The logo of their fraud scheme being seen everywhere around the world, on TV, in newspapers, on t-shirts?

Is that what football club fans deserve?

To be used as prey for frauds?

Are those football clubs so blinded by greed that they do not even hesitate to sacrifice the very people who pour all of themselves into them?

Fans are offered as lambs to wolves who do not hesitate to ruin them financially and devastate them emotionally.