That May 5, 2021 there were few days left to finish the season in Group X of the Third Division of Spanish football and almost everything had already been decided.
One of the remaining matches was going to be played that same day, at seven in the afternoon, by two teams that at that time were no longer playing anything, CD Gerena and Conil CF.
The appointment was in the stadium of the first.
On the morning of that day, almost 10 hours before the match began and when the bets were three to one to whoever hit the local team with a favorable result at half-time, several people from Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz) did so in that felt by identical amounts.
When what was paid for this result fell, precisely because of those bets,
they stopped doing it and waited for it to rise again above three euros to do it a second time.
The match ended with a 3-0 local victory.
The result at the break was 1-0, thanks to a penalty goal in the 28th minute of the match.
The bettors pocketed thanks to this much 22,000 euros.
According to documents from the investigation to which EL PAÍS has had access, those apparently coordinated bets triggered the alerts of several organizations.
In the first place, from the General Directorate for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ), dependent on the Ministry of Consumption, whose Global Betting Market Research Service (Sigma), created in 2017, detected irregularities in the betting market around that meeting.
The alarms also went off in the Professional Soccer League, whose Tyche 3.0 system – which calibrates the level of manipulation on a scale that goes from one to five – detected “a large number of bets during the morning of the match on a possible local victory to rest” and, in addition, concentrated in two time slots, between 9.30 and 11.
Two days after the match, even one of the main private internet betting operators issued a report in which it was convinced that there had been an alleged match-fixing at Gerena-Conil: “The accounts [from which the gambling] won significant sums with activity outside their usual parameters.
We believe they are players or ex-players, although this is not confirmed”, this company pointed out at the time in a document that added that both accounts had also made “suspicious bets on a match played in Gibraltar”.
The complaints reached the National Police Center for Integrity in Sports and Gambling (Cenpida, attached to the Central Unit for Specialized and Violent Crime), dedicated to investigating corruption in sports.
His investigations led, at the end of June, to what was dubbed Operation Conifer, which has so far resulted in 21 detainees (12 of them active footballers) and another six people under investigation.
In the records, the Police seized 60,000 euros in cash and two vehicles.
The first estimates put the money that could be pocketed at 500,000 euros since that game in May of last year that caused the first suspicions and the moment of his arrest, although the Police point out that the network could have been operating for a long time.
According to police reports, the plot was divided into four steps.
In the "leadership" are allegedly the two alleged leaders of the plot.
One is Adrián RR, inside left of CD Rota, a team from the same group of the Third in which the first match was detected.
The second is José Miguel BL, a friend of his who trained a team in the lower categories of Atlético Sanluqueño, a club in which his father held a position until his death.
This team will play next season in the Second RFEF after having dropped in category this year.
This second ringleader had experience in the field of gambling, where he had exercised what is known in jargon as a
tipster
—betting advisor— before allegedly turning to the activity of the plot.
On the second step were the other 11 active soccer players who, according to the Police, "took advantage of their condition" to organize the matches "in different soccer teams under their influence."
Specifically, they provided "internal team information" to the leaders with whom they communicated through "encrypted" communication systems.
Among these allegedly involved there is a player from Gerena (Fermìn GS) and another from Conil (Rubén DM), the two teams that played the match that uncovered the plot.
In addition, there are several who were or had been at Atlético Sanluqueño (Francisco Javier GA, José RV, Guillermo CC, Eduard OG and Gonzalo PG);
two from the Extremadura team Montijo (Francisco Javier HG and José Ángel GM);
one more from CD Rota (Luis Alberto LM),
and another who played in the last champion of the Gibraltarian league, Lincoln Red (Marco RB).
The investigation points to fixes in more than twenty matches of the First and Second RFEF (the former Second B and Third), but also in the Gibraltar National League.
Supposedly, both the two leaders and the 11 players – footballers are prohibited from betting on matches of the category in which they play – did so through false identities or intermediaries.
To achieve the latter, the plot had two more steps in its structure.
One of them was what the Police called “identity getters”, collaborators who provided the alleged leaders of the plot with the names and surnames of third parties outside the network so that they could place bets on the internet through them.
With these identities they also opened payment gateways to channel the money.
For each of these identities, these "achievers" received 100 euros.
On the last step were the so-called
mules
in criminal jargon, people that the plot used to play in person at bookmakers and collect the prizes obtained.
In return, they received a small amount as payment.
A police report indicates that in order to avoid being detected, the plot divided these face-to-face bets to prevent the amount of the prizes from being so high that the bettor would be notified to the Treasury.
The investigations -which are now aimed at finding out if there are other players not belonging to the network involved who would have participated on time in the fixing of matches in which they participated in exchange for receiving an economic consideration- suggest that the benefits generated by the fixing were channeled towards the two alleged leaders of the plot,
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