Match fixing in Hong Kong: two footballers and gambling agents received prison sentences

A Hong Kong court has sentenced two footballers and a gambling agent to 17 months in prison for bribery, match-fixing and illegal gambling in a prominent sports scandal.

The two players, Brian Fok and Luciano Silva Da Silva, and the gambling agent, Waheed Mohammad, made plans to fix the results in the 2022-2023 season to win money through illegal gambling, the city’s Independent Commission Against Corruption, which led the investigation, said in a statement on Friday.

Their actions included deliberately causing Fok’s team, Happy Valley Athletic Association, and Silva Da Silva’s team, Central and Western District Recreation and Sports Association, to lose matches, or manipulating the number of goals or corners through fraud in the second tier of the Hong Kong league.

The trio also placed illegal bets on more than 30 matches involving their teams, based on predetermined results and match-fixing schemes, the report said.

The court also heard that Fok had previously offered bribes ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 Hong Kong dollars ($1,276 to $3,828) to two other players to help manipulate results at a club in another league, but those players turned him down, the anti-corruption bureau said.

Fok received a prison sentence of seventeen months, while his two other co-suspects were each sentenced to fourteen months and four weeks.

Magistrate Peter Yu, who handed down the sentences, reprimanded the suspects for deliberately rigging matches, undermining the integrity of Hong Kong sport and the principle of fair play, the statement said.

Published on May 30, 2026