Finance Ministry investigators charge 4 after $244,782 appropriated in fraudulent betting scheme

The Investigation Service of Georgia’s Finance Ministry on Thursday said it had charged four individuals for fraudulent misappropriation of a “large amount of property”, planned group money laundering and abuse of position in a betting scheme.

The Service said its investigation had found the offenders had used names of various individuals and placed bets on pre-selected sports events through an online bookmaker, before altering results of the games in the company’s internal system through a member of the their group who was an authorised representative of the bookmaker, making lost bets appear as winning outcomes.

It also said the individuals had fraudulently acquired up to ₾700,000 ($244,782) from the bookmaker through this scheme, and reinvested the illicit funds into purchase of two vehicles to legalise the income.

The body added its professionals had seized the cars, as well as $52,000 of the criminally obtained cash, with the crime punishable by imprisonment from six to nine years.