Banciao District prosecutors questioned and detained six people yesterday on suspicion of involvement in game fixing as their investigation into the Brother Elephants baseball club continued.
Tsai Cheng-yi (蔡政宜), the alleged head of a criminal gang, and three of his associates were among the six detainees. Tsai and his associates are suspected of establishing a gambling ring that placed bets on professional baseball games and recruited professional players to play poorly in order to manipulate the outcomes of games.
Two former players, Chuang Yu-lin (莊侑霖) and Huang Chun-chung (黃俊中), were also questioned and detained on suspicion of acting as middlemen between the gambling ring and players.
Chuang, a former Brother Elephants player, allegedly bribed and threatened players to perform in such a way that their team would win or lose a game by a specific margin, prosecutors said.
Elephants general manager Hung Jui-ho (洪瑞河) confirmed on Monday that prosecutors had searched the houses, dorm rooms and lockers of team members Tsao Chin-hui (曹錦輝), Liu Yu-chan (柳裕展), Wu Pao-hsien (吳保賢), Wang Jing-li (王勁力) Wang Chun-tai (汪竣泰) and Li Hao-ren (李濠任).
Prosecutors said they would question the six players today.
This is the fifth time in the past 20 years that professional baseball players from Taiwan have been investigated for throwing games.
Prosecutors launched their investigation a day after the Elephants lost 5-2 to the UniPresident Lions (統一獅) in the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) Taiwan Series championship decider.
Prosecutors were tight-lipped on details of the investigation yesterday after complaints from the Elephants and their fans that prosecutors had violated rules on revealing details of a case under investigation.
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