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New game-fixing scandal envelops baseball league

Ten people, including a professional baseball player and a coach, have been arrested for alleged involvement in a multimillion-dollar game-fixing scam, police said yesterday.

Officers in Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung and Tainan yesterday arrested Macoto Cobras second-division coach Tsai Sheng-fong (蔡生豐), La New Bears catcher Chen Chao-ying (陳昭穎), Sinon Bulls translator Cheng Yu-wei (鄭祐衛) and the alleged gang leader, Lee Chuan-lin (李權麟).

Police said Lee had made huge amounts of money with gang leaders throughout the nation by organizing illegal betting and rigging games in the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL). Lee also allegedly used Cheng as an intermediary to reach game-fixing deals with imported players before starting their contracts in Taiwan.

A Chinese-language newspaper quoted an unidentified bookie as saying that the syndicate focused on overseas players because their relatively short time in Taiwan made them susceptible to bribery.

Foreign pitchers were being paid as much as US$5,000 to throw a game, the bookie was quoted as saying.

Police also said that Chen accepted a bribe of up to NT$600,000 on July 14 to instruct the pitcher pairing with him to pitch poorly.

On July 19, Lee also allegedly arranged for someone to wine and dine a coach with the Sinon Bulls in a private club.

Police said that Lee had made threats to members of each of the six teams in the CPBL in demanding cooperation. They said some team managers may yet be implicated in the case.

The allegations are a big blow for the CPBL, which suffered a similar scandal in 1998. Gangsters and gamblers had infiltrated the sport, and the China Times Eagles was disbanded after players were convicted of gambling offenses. The following year, 18 players, one manager and two bookmakers were convicted and jailed in relation to the case.
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