A whirlwind of short-lived Asian gambling brands have taken over European football in recent seasons. Now, a US cybersecurity firm has proof that they are nearly all one-and-the-same entity.
By Philippe Auclair
It's long been suspected that the myriad of illegal Asian-facing sports betting operators whose names appear on the shirts of Premier League clubs and their stadiums' advertising boards – often to disappear just as quickly, as they are not companies, but ephemeral brands which intend to escape detection by law enforcement agencies– are ultimately related to a handful of entities and individuals whose identity is carefully concealed. Evidence collected by Josimar has shown that the trademarks of many of these brands were owned by a single entity, Philippines-based BOE United Technology Corporation. What was missing until now was actual proof that the links between all of the brands concerned ran deeper than the registration of their trademarks, revealing as this may be. This is what a research conducted by an international team of researchers employed by US cybersecurity firm Infoblox appears to have established.
Their 68-page report, which Josimar was given exclusive access to, analysed the inner architecture of the tens of thousands of mirror websites operated by those brands and found out that, in the end, all of them were essentially one and the same. They were branches of the same tree, springing out of the same roots, a tree around which was coiled a creature they named "Vigorish Viper". That name refers to the profit ("vigorish" or "vig" for short in gambling slang) made on the back of unlucky be...
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