A fake cricket league streaming fake games complete with fake crowd noise? Get your bets in!
Acting on a tip-off, police in Mehsana district of Gujarat last week arrested four men for staging the tournament and accepting bets through social media app Telegram from punters from three cities in Russia. Bhavesh Rathod, the officer investigating the case, said one of the four men had worked in a pub in Russia and "had some contacts there, and had got them interested in betting in cricket". …
Most of the betters were based in Moscow, Voronezh and Tver, police said. To give the games a more authentic feel, a running commentary spiked with crowd sounds downloaded from the internet was blasted through speakers placed near the ground.
Raw data on the graph of 21st-century madness.
