Illegal betting operators routinely use actors to impersonate their owners and executives, but none of them has ever gone as far in this respect as AC Milan’s brand new “official betting partner in Asia” sureWin and its “founder William Anderson”.
By Philippe Auclair
AC Milan has a long and not particularly glorious history when it comes to partnering with illegal Asian-facing gambling operators (*). Vwin were the first of those to associate their name with the seven-time European champions, back in 2017, and were followed by Yabo, MansionBet, Kaiyun and Leyu from 2020 onwards. As these partnerships tend to be short-lived, it came as no surprise that the rossoneri found a new “Official Regional Online Casino Partner in Asia” to team up with for the 2025-26 season, “Asia’s most trusted casino” sureWin.
Illegal and not hiding it
That sureWin is operating illegally is beyond doubt. One of their main landing pages, none of which appear to be geo-blocked in Europe, including Italy, conveniently leads its visitors to dedicated websites set up for customers in Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, all of them countries where online gambling is prohibited and, in the case of Vietnam, criminalised. As well as, bizarrely, Australia, where the operator’s name does not appear in the list of licensed interactive online gambling providers regulated by the authorities.
Visitors from Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hong Kong are also advised that mirror websites catering for their needs, in their language and their currency (sureWin also accepts crypto) will soon be available. Online gambling is also illegal in those jurisdictions.
AC Milan is not sureWin’s only partner. The company sponsored Black-Eyed Peas appearance at Singapore’s National Indoor Stadium on 25 August 2025, where some of its customers were flown for an in-person meet-and-greet with members of the American hip-hop band. Its ambassadors include Malaysian “motorsport athlete and content creator” Leona Chin, DJs like Norwegian Alan Walker and Dutchman Hardwell, K-Pop singer Daesung and Japanese porn star Taka Kato (*). The company has also supported and distributed a couple of movies in the Far East; all proof that sureWin is by no means a small operation. Its Vietnamese YouTube channel alone has 143,000 subscribers, when most other illegal operators in the region struggle to attract more than a few hundred followers to their social media platforms.
When the brand became operational is not clear. It claims to have acquired licences from the Filipino regulator PAGCOR and Curaçao e-gaming (*) in 2017 and proudly displays its certificates in one of its YouTube videos, but industry reports give 2023 as the year in which sureWin entered the Asian market.
Josimar could not find any trace of a “SUREWIN” on historic PAGCOR databases or of any company of that name operating from that Makati address today. If authentic, this certificate would be worthless anyway, as all PAGCOR licences were revoked, effective as of 1 January 2025, following a 2024 decree by President Marcos.
In any case, sureWin does not bother with claiming to be licensed anywhere any longer, or not as anyone would understand what being “licensed” means. Under the heading “Licenses”, the brand now prides itself on having been “verified” as a business by companies such as Meta and godaddy, as if a box ticked with these somehow amounted to proof that sureWin was regulated.
sureWin claiming “licenses” from Meta and godaddy on their home page.
One of sureWin’s mirror websites provides a potted history of the brand from its supposed beginnings in 2017, with 2018 given as the date of the company establishing its headquarters “in the heart of Manila” (one year after it claims to have secured a PAGCOR licence, with a corporate address in Manila’s financial quarter Makati). However, the picture chosen to show sureWin’s new Filipino hub is an exact match for a photograph of the office of an unrelated – and perfectly legitimate – outsourcing and accountancy firm called D&V Philippines.
sureWin’s “HQ Office” in Manila, as it appears on their website.
D&V Philippines office space in Manila.
Enter William Anderson
All of this will feel familiar to Josimar readers, as it comes straight out of the handbook used by every single Asian-facing operator who has ever become the partner of a leading European club. There is one thing, however, which sets sureWin aside: its “founder”, “William Anderson”, a jovial middle-aged British citizen – judging by his accent – whose smile is plastered all over the operator’s websites.
It is “William Anderson” who can be seen holding a sureWin-stamped AC Milan shirt with the Italian club’s Chief Commercial Officer Maikel Oettle in the photograph celebrating the signing of the sponsorship deal between club and operator in October 2025.
It is “William Anderson” who features in a YouTube video in which he explains that he “created sureWin with a simple intention, to provide [an] absolute safe and fair online gaming platform”.
It is “William Anderson” who proudly received the “Brand Of The Year” award on behalf of sureWin Entertainment at the HWT “International Brand Prestige Award” in 2024 and addressed the media afterwards.
Yes, you can feel the punchline coming. “William Anderson” is not the “founder” of sureWin, no more than Dean Hawkes was the CEO – or chairman – of Yabo, as Josimar found out. Hawkes (his real name, improbably), was a Shanghai-based English male model who’d been employed by Yabo when they needed someone to front “signing ceremonies” with partners such as Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Leicester City and their ambassador Steven Gerrard; but Hawkes only posed for the photographs. His face did not appear anywhere on the Yabo web pages. He was purely for show, a prop rather than an actor.
Yabo “CEO” Dean Hawkes (left and third from left in above pictures) in Yabo signing ceremonies with Manchester United and Bayern Munich.
Dean Hawkes posing in an advertisement for Huawei mobile phones.
“William Anderson” does much, much more than this. But who is he?
The biggest role of his life
If you look very, very carefully, you will see someone looking uncannily like “William Anderson” appear in the background of several scenes of ITV’s mini-series The Singapore Grip, which was broadcast in the UK in September and October 2020.
Yes, this is him, sitting at the back.
He was credited, not as “William Anderson”, as but “Craig Haydon”; Craig Haydon, the actor, whose short filmography is listed on industry websites like IMDb and others.
Not much is known about Craig Haydon. He is British and has been living in Malaysia for some time, where his acting career took an upturn in recent years, with speaking roles in locally-produced films like Malbatt: Misi Bakara, in which he played the role of Colonel Lawrence, a US Ranger officer, and The Causeway. Versatility is one of the things he offers. Does he not list “professional speaker” and “corporate events” among his talents?
These talents have been put to other uses in his adopted country, Malaysia. Josimar found him used as an extra advertising office facilities in Kuala Lumpur.
As the nameless executive of a firm called Precision Data Analytics, featured in a Taiwanese business newsletter.
As “Dr James Stafford”, appearing as Conference Chairman and “Executive President” of the American Fuyou Group, on 19 May 2024, Malaysia.
As “Gerry Charles“, ” President of Trade Root International”.
But the biggest role of Craig Haydon’s life must be as the visionary founder of Asia’s “most trusted casino”, sureWin, “William Anderson”.
Honesty award
sureWin’s Rhadd Hunt with the AEEF “Honesty Award”, Kuala Lumpur, July 2025.
Remarkably, Craig Haydon is not the only actor to have been cast as an “entertainment executive” by sureWin. When the operator received the AEEF’s “Honesty Award” in Kuala Lumpur on 9 July 2025, the man who walked up to the stage of the Menara Ecoworld to receive the certificate and trophy was not “William Anderson”, but an unnamed Westerner whom Josimar has identified as Louisiana musician Rhadd Hunt, a former bass player and occasional singer for “reggae and classic funk band” Henry Turner Jr. and Flavor, who had also rubbed shoulders with Huey “Piano Smith”, a true legend of Louisiana r’n’b.
Rhadd Hunt, from Louisiana to Malaysia, pictured for The Advocate in 2023.
Rhadd Hunt (top left) appearing as “Lord Vallen” in Malaysian one-act comedy “Horace and the Killer Couch”.
According to The Advocate website, Hunt moved to “tropical Malaysia” in the early 2020s to start a new life as a voiceover artist and actor. “Hunt’s recent credits include Dr. Quinch in the Pop Up Theatre audio play “Rorschach’s Journal,” a spinoff from DC Comics’ “Watchmen.” His other audio play appearances include “Tapes of Flight 914” and “Sherlock Holmes Hollywood Kryptonite”.
Hunt’s acting career in Malaysia has blossomed since then, with speaking roles as “the grandfather” in The Heartsmith, “Randolph Baudelaire” in the TV mini-series Chasing My Unattainable Wife, East Indies governor Sir Stamford Raffles in Sandamarutham and, last but certainly not least, the President of the United States in Pei Chiek Goh’s comedy Ha Ha Ha Happy New Year. His appearance as sureWin’s representative at the 2025 “Asian Honesty Awards” is not listed on his IMDb page, however.
Josimar was not able to contact Mr Haydon and Mr Hunt directly. AC Milan were contacted for comment and forwarded Josimar’s questions to sureWin.
(*) Josimar uses the definition of “illegal betting” given by the Macolin Convention, which Italy has signed and ratified: “illegal sports betting means any sports betting activity whose type or operator is not allowed under the applicable law of the jurisdiction where the consumer is located”.
(*) sureWin also recruits ambassadors for specific countries, like Kun Khmer pugilist Prom Samnang and model VanBeToch in Cambodia.
(*) The exact same Curaçao licence number claimed by sure.win (an alternative spelling which takes visitors to the sureWin home page) also appears to have been given to another company, Newart Gaming N.V., in 2021. Following a complete shake-up of the Curaçao licensing system this year, a “SureWin B.V.” was granted a licence on 23 November 2025, valid until 23 May 2026.
(*) Rhadd Hunt is also presented in several media reports as the “CEO” of a crypto/NFT/Web3 company called “Metafilm”, a claim that Josimar has not been able to verify.
