Fixing in sport: ‘I don’t want to get us killed’ – How suspected cartel money corrupted Australian soccer
For the last eight months, The Athletic has been investigating the threat of fixing to the integrity of sport. In this third article in the series we look at how and why players get involved in fixing.
Also in this series:
Matthew Millar’s phone rings, early on a Sydney morning. He is a 27-year-old right-back for A-League team Macarthur FC, playing in Australia’s equivalent of the Premier League. They have a game scheduled against Sydney FC that evening.
The name on the screen flashes up: his captain, Ulises Davila. The tone on the other end is clear. Davila is stressed.
Some 10 years earlier, at the beginning of his career, Davila had been considered a rare talent. A youth international who emerged at Guadalajara, he signed for Carlo Ancelotti’s Chelsea in 2011, aged 20, becoming the first Mexican to join the club.
Though he left Stamford Bridge without making a first-team appearance, stints in the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, India, and New Zealand eventually led to a home, of sorts, in the A-League. He quickly became Macarthur’s captain, and was known as a gregarious figure who team-mates affectionately called “Uli”. In 2021, he won the Johnny Warren Medal, awarded to the A-League’s best player.
That season, however, his wife Lily began to experience seizures. She was diagnosed with Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM), a disease affecting blood flow in the brain. The only treatment was a surgery in Mexico, which doctors warned only carried a 50 to 60 per cent chance of success. Lily underwent the surgery in May 2022. It was unsuccessful.
After her death, aged 31, Davila returned to Australia, and into the arms of his Macarthur team-mates. The beaches near his home in the trendy suburb of Coogee were a frequent meeting point. Football helped. The team won the Australia Cup final later that season, with Davila named man of the match in the final.
Ulises Davila before the 2022 Australia Cup final (Jason McCawley/Getty Images)
Davila and Millar were two of the team-mates who grew close. Six months earlier, Millar himself had become engaged. On one occasion, he complained to Davila about the “astronomical” price of a wedding. In response, in text messages and phone calls as recorded — like others in this article — in the agreed facts of New South Wales court documents, copies of which were obtained by The Athletic, Davila stated he had a proposition.
“You know, this sort of thing happens all the time overseas in Europe and Spain,” Davila told him. “We’re not actually affecting the outcome of the game. It’s very… harmless.”
Millar initially declined, but later, after being approached by Davila at the gym, gave his response. It was December 7.
“OK, that’s fine,” he told his captain. “As you said, it was harmless.”
Fixing changes form with the passing clouds. The organisers can be international crime conglomerates or opportunistic chancers, its markets veering from last-minute own goals to a couple of extra throw-ins.
One element is a non-negotiable. For a fix to be bulletproof, it needs a participant able to execute the order on the pitch, whether a player or a referee. No matter how strong and wealthy the chain — from organised crime group, to middle men, to club officials — without this final link, the fix cannot be completed.
James Moller is one of the most senior anti-corruption figures in Australian sport, currently serving as head of strategy and international policy at the country’s integrity body. Back in 2013, he was part of the Victoria Police team that uncovered corruption at second division club Southern Stars, at the time the largest fix in Australian history.
His job is a sizeable one. In 2025, according to data produced by the Group of Copenhagen, an information sharing platform between national investigators, Australia had the second-most games flagged for suspicious activity (68), with only India producing more alerts (90). Twenty-seven alerts were registered in Australian youth football alone.
Though some of these numbers may be down to superior monitoring techniques used in Australia, the country’s geographical location and sporting culture makes it particularly attractive to fixers. Relatively few evening games are played worldwide on the Australian timezone, but those hours are particularly appealing to bettors in South East Asia, where investigators say the majority of these wagers originate.
“Generally people like to bet on things they can watch,” explains Moller. “There are significant volumes of wagering across South East Asia, often in our timezone, where the matches are of high quality and known for having strong integrity.
“Those volumes create incentives — if you were to corrupt a match, you want to bet as much as possible. It means we face these fixers approaching players, trying to corrupt them, and laying bets accordingly.”
It was two days since Millar agreed to Davila’s plan, a plan which, as Davila was frantically telling him over the phone, had gone awry. Davila’s associates — fronted by a Colombian only known as ‘J Col’ — were no longer happy. Market odds had changed. It would no longer be enough for three Macarthur players to receive yellow cards in that evening’s match.
J Col wanted four — and Davila needed another.
Matthew Millar in action for Macarthur FC (Brett Hemmings/Getty Images)
Who else could be recruited? Millar suggested defender Clayton Lewis, a New Zealand international, and a known gambler. “That’s a good idea,” Davila replied, soon ending the call.
The conversation would later be recorded in the agreed facts of New South Wales court documents. Millar phoned Lewis, preparing him for a call from Davila.
Later that day, at 11.26am, 50 wagers were simultaneously placed with international betting platform BetPlay, all on the same outcome — for Macarthur to receive more than 3.5 yellow cards. The total stake was almost A$66,000 (£35,000; $47,000).
Football has a problematic relationship with gambling.
“It goes together like eggs and bacon,” one anonymous British player told a University of Bristol survey. That study revealed that one in six grassroots players were experiencing gambling problems — at least two in each team. Advertisements for online gambling platforms can be seen at almost every sporting event and most broadcasters and media outlets, including The Athletic, take betting sponsorship.
The grassroots level is not immune from matchfixing — Moller has heard of fifth-tier games being wagered on in Australia — but there are indications that the risks of gambling addiction may even be worse in the professional ranks.
Premier League players Ivan Toney and Sandro Tonali were both banned for almost a year for gambling on football, with each separately citing addiction, while Sporting Chance, a British clinic created to treat professional sportspeople, has stated that 60 per cent of its caseload relates to gambling problems.
In 2025, the Portuguese and Greek Football Associations commissioned a joint study, surveying over 1,400 players, and discovered gambling was rife among players. Particularly worryingly, the data demonstrated that gambling was already pervasive by the age of 16.
Just as Davila recruited Lewis, investigators are increasingly certain that fixers are exploiting addiction to target vulnerable players.
“This is the dark side of the moon,” says one senior anti-corruption figure at a European FA, speaking anonymously, like others in this piece, in order to share candid opinions. “Footballers are four times more likely to become addicted because they are competitive and obsessive in nature. And they believe they know football — it puts them in a trap.
“Fixers know their habits, where their gyms are, if there’s a problem with their families or a parent that needs medical treatment. Betting leads to addiction and addiction leads to match-fixing.”
One case in another sport, darts, demonstrates the cause and effect. Billy Warriner was banned for a decade after admitting to convincing Leighton Bennett, a former world youth champion, to deliberately lose matches in the Modus Super Series in 2023.
“I am in recovery for my severe illness which is my gambling addiction,” Warriner told the tribunal. “I felt at the time I had no other option but to try to win enough money to cover debts and bills. I am powerless over gambling and my life had become unmanageable.
“All my debts had come to head in September, Leighton was at the Modus and couldn’t qualify, so I thought, ‘He’s got nothing to lose.’ I called him using Snapchat and asked if he would mind doing this, and I would give him £2,000 ($2,700) cash. I feel really bad now because he was 17 and he’s not the cleverest of lads, I’m sure he would say that himself. I feel like I have ruined his career.”
Bennett was banned for eight years.
Back in Sydney, Macarthur won handsomely on that December evening. Millar had an early strike ruled out. Lewis’ through ball led to a red card for Sydney goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne. Their 2-0 victory was straightforward.
There were four other outcomes of note.
After half an hour, Davila was booked for deliberately delaying a restart by kicking the ball away. Seven minutes after half-time, Lewis pushed over a Sydney player. Millar, meanwhile, had been unsuccessfully trying to gain his own yellow throughout the match.
Just after an hour, another Macarthur player, unaware of the scheme, picked up his yellow for a foul. And then, with 20 minutes remaining, Kearyn Baccus, referred to by Davila in texts to J Col as ‘The Butcher’, slid into his opponent from behind.
Four yellow cards. Job complete. The total payout was A$226,941 (at the time £120,769; $162,513) — a profit of over A$161,615 (£86,000; $115,732).
Macarthur was not the first match-fixing scandal to hit Australia. Exactly a decade earlier, a scheme involving semi-professional Victorian club Southern Stars saw 10 individuals arrested, including coach Zia Younan and four players.
“Essentially, an organised crime syndicate based offshore used European and UK players to infiltrate a suburban club,” explains Moller, who worked on the case. “They recruited these players under the guise of sponsorship support, they offered them air fares and accommodation.
“But in actual fact, they wanted to fix matches week in, week out. We were proactively notified and were actually able to allow fixed matches to take place whilst monitoring them through telephones and listening devices.”
The betting almost entirely took place in South East Asia. Investigators found that several Australian players were oblivious to the fix, instead wondering why their highly-touted international recruits were unable to reproduce their form in training during matches. On another occasion, when facing a side at the top of the league, the most beneficial odds were actually on the Southern Stars to win. The imports played up to their ability. With a 1-0 victory, delivered a shock — and profits.
Eventually, with enough evidence gathered, the police struck. Gerry Subramaniam, a Malaysian named as the ringleader, was sentenced to three years in jail. The coach and players received lifetime bans.
“The syndicate would provide instructions from the fixer right up until the match,” Moller explains. “Sometimes, depending on the odds, even during the match itself.”
Clearly, A-League players were corruptible too. In the run-up to Christmas in 2023, Millar’s wedding was getting closer. He was keen for payment to be made — with Davila taking at least some steps to hide the source of the funds.
“You can use my Visa card to make purchases for your wedding,” Davila had told him. “Whatever you spend, I can give you the difference in transfer.”
“I think the suit was A$1,800 (£960; $1,290), so maybe just do the rest and it is sorted,” Millar replied via message. Two weeks after the Sydney win, he retrieved Davila’s card, where it had been left under the front doorstep, and drove to nearby Bondi Junction, buying a Hugo Boss suit.
On New Year’s Day, Davila transferred him another A$8,200 (£4,364; $5,872) — completing Millar’s cut. The money went towards his wedding in May.
Others had their own arrangements. Baccus, who had been particularly itchy to be paid, texting Millar for updates on whether he had received his own cut, pretended that Davila had bought a car from him — a VW Golf.
Kearyn Baccus of Macarthur FC (Jeremy Ng/Getty Images)
Lewis asked for half his share to be transferred with the payment title of “Xmas gift”, with the other half sent to his girlfriend.
Six days before Christmas, the players involved held a party on the beach. They were joined by winger Jed Drew, a 21-year-old, who had been unaware of the scheme earlier that month. The drinks began to flow, and the stories began to emerge.
“Why didn’t you include me?” Drew asked. “I would’ve done it. Do it for me next time.”
Beau Busch is softly spoken, but steely in discussing matters of importance. The former defender is the co-chief executive of Professional Footballers Australia (PFA), the country’s player union, with the organisation directly involved in offering support during several of these cases.
He feels that policies need to be focused on preventative measures — raising how late salaries in Australia’s underfunded lower leagues are a major risk factor.
“What we know from our research is that organised crime is getting more and more sophisticated,” he explains over a phone call. “They are targeting leagues where there are players dealing with financial distress. Overlay that with an increasing incidence of gambling — and again, for players, we know that creates conditions where match fixing becomes more prevalent.”
In 2013, Southern Stars players were blackmailed into obeying instructions by having their salaries withheld. On another occasion, after they failed to lose by enough goals, their promised payment was totally scrapped.
In 2025, Western United’s Riku Danzaki pleaded guilty to deliberately receiving yellow cards in three A-League matches. He had earned around A$16,000 (£8,514; $11,458), which was handed to him in cash from suburban Melbourne locations by the friend who laid the bets.
The winger’s lawyer told the court, in mitigation, that the club “had not been paying their players on time”. Danzaki was fined and suspended from football for seven years. He has since returned to Japan.
Back at Macarthur, the success of the Sydney fix meant it was a good Christmas. Ahead of their game at Adelaide United, scheduled for January 8 2024, Davila and J Col continued to message each other.
“Do you have the centre-backs on your side?” asked J Col, with the pair mulling over whether they could guarantee that Adelaide were awarded eight corner kicks.
Emojis were used so that the match events were not discussed openly. Flags referred to corners, a banana emoji to yellow cards. At 10.30am on match-day morning, Davila ruled himself out.
Later that evening, Adelaide were awarded eight corners. Money had been left on the table. J Col’s messages grew infrequent.
The Colombian fixer did not get back into sustained contact until April, explaining to Davila that he had issues with those who had funded the previous wagers. Once again, Davila was asked to manipulate the yellow cards — with J Col wanting five bookings between both teams in the rematch with Sydney FC.
There was one issue. Davila was suspended. He called Drew, who had expressed his interest on the beach back in December, offering the youngster “at least six, six, seven K”.
“Does it have to be five yellow cards in the whole game?” asked Drew, wanting clarity on whether only Macarthur players’ bookings would count. “Can it be two from Sydney FC as well?”
“Don’t just call names man, don’t call s**t idiot,” Davila responded, appearing to worry about the openness of Drew’s response.
After Drew pulled out, the plan was aborted. That night, three yellow cards and two reds had been issued. J Col messaged Davila, angrily.
“You let go like 30k hahahahah,” Davila texted Drew the next day. “You could pay Disneyland holidays.” The pair continued to speak, Drew erasing certain messages on Davila’s instruction.
“Don’t put that shit. Just delete it bro,” Davila wrote. “You never know, maybe one day we’ll drag us… something.”
Busch believes that player education needs to improve.
“If you look at the preventative education being done in the A-League at the time, it amounted to an online video being put on in a clubhouse,” he says. “Football Australia lawyers were speaking and players were being ticked off. It wasn’t in person, it wasn’t interactive, there was no follow-up, and it was often done partway through the season rather than at the very start of preseason.
“This is at a time when sports are taking more money from gambling agencies. With that money absolutely comes a reciprocal responsibility to invest into an effective integrity process that we can have confidence in.”
He draws particular attention to the challenges faced by non-English speaking players, and whether current education has the necessary impact.
In that case, like at Macarthur, another central issue was the recruitment of inexperienced players by senior professionals. The threat of being a social pariah in the dressing room is another vulnerability — while in several historic cases, such as in Turkey and Greece, the corrupters have been club directors, who have the leverage of being able to withhold contracts.
“I think a lot of these young players are victims,” says the chief of another sport’s integrity programme, with experience in football. “Once the fixers get their teeth in, they don’t let go. And some of these players come from countries where corruption is pretty endemic, so they often couldn’t see what the problem was. It shows we don’t touch on these issues enough.”
“If you look at Ulises (Davila), going through significant distress himself 12 months earlier with the death of his wife really unexpectedly, it’s hugely traumatic for him as well,” adds Busch. “He’s got a young son. Incredibly tragic, really.”
Davila did not respond to the text that arrived from J Col on April 27.
“If we do it in the next one, you’ll get me out of a lot of trouble mate,” he wrote. “Have the people lined up for the next one no matter what.”
It was not for another few days, ahead of a knockout game scheduled for May 4, again against Sydney FC, that the pair reached their next agreement.
“The cards have been enabled again,” J Col said in a phone call. “What I’m telling the man is that the definite one is gonna be the same one we did last time, and if the first one out of all 22 is yours, there’s a hefty extra bonus for you. You understand?”
Davila initially confirmed. The financial reward was set at A$20,000 (£10,650; $14,300), to be split four ways.
Two days before the game, however, the captain sent another text.
“Mate! Mate, my friend, I don’t know what’s happening! The butcher (Baccus) wants to bail out, he’s a bit scared, not scared but he says he doesn’t know.”
Later, he follows up. “Just give me a little time to see if I can convince these people or not. I don’t want us to get killed. I don’t want to get you in trouble, like you say, and to have that cut off, to have your head cut off.”
His final verdict comes later that evening. “These guys are nervous, it’s the first final for many of them,” he messages. “So especially tomorrow, which is a knockout game, they’re a bit like NO, no…”
The fix is off. Macarthur lose the match 4-0. Their season is over.
For many players, the threat of violence appears real.
This September, in Ecuador, 31-year-old Jonathan Gonzalez was killed in a drive-by shooting after being pressured to lose a match. The game ended in a 1-1 draw.
A fellow employee at second-division Club 22 de Julio told AFP that Gonzalez was “a good kid who died because of betting”. He is the fifth Ecuadorian footballer to be fatally shot this year. A 2024 video from second division Chacaritas shows players being threatened, guns in their face, into losing matches.
The Macarthur fix was being run from neighbouring Colombia — with the winnings initially paid in Mexican pesos, indicating the likelihood of cartel involvement. J Col, in texts to Davila, blamed some of his troubles on “Peruvians”.
Two years ago, the U.S. ambassador to Ecuador, Michael Fitzpatrick, warned that links between fixing and serious organised crime were becoming increasingly established, with match manipulation an effective way to both generate and launder money. It is another reason many players opt against reporting approaches.
Last December, a raid at semi-professional Dandenong Thunder, who play in Australia’s National Premier League, brought several charges on both corruption and narcotics offences. The case is still progressing through the court system.
Separately, back in 2017, police who were investigating a drug smuggling ring uncovered further suggestions of fixing at Dandenong — after a tapped phone revealed the Thunder’s then-coach, Gianfranco Impellizzeri, promised to make tactical changes at half-time to raise the likelihood of the team losing.
Impellizzeri was spared a criminal conviction after investigators found no evidence that these tactical changes had been made. He was still sacked by Dandenong, his coaching career over.
On May 17 2024, police arrive at Davila’s home in South Coogee to arrest the A-League captain, and former Chelsea player.
Over the coming days, both Baccus, ‘the butcher’, and Lewis, the New Zealand international, are also detained. Millar and Drew are not charged by police, with neither actually receiving a yellow card during a wagered game. Both cooperated with the investigation.
“You essentially get impacted twice,” explains Moller. “You have the criminal prosecution and the sporting sanction. The match fixers might be off-shore and not successfully prosecuted. The players are the most vulnerable. It is them that suffer the consequences.”
Davila, Baccus and Lewis all separately plead guilty. The latter two both receive a two-year conditional release order, avoiding criminal conviction, but are ordered to pay back the $10,000. Both received five-year bans from Football Australia in December. They will complete 200 hours of football-related community service to reduce their ban by 12 months.
Davila, meanwhile, is awaiting sentencing. As prosecutors analyse his messages, they find J Col’s final text still on his phone, from the final failed fix.
“You let me down mate,” it reads.