HYDERABAD: A new mobile application has surfaced this year, easing the process of setting betting rates for organisers. The Telangana police are now starting to crackdown on the users of the Android mobile application that has become a favourite hunting ground for betting organisers. The new app has surfaced for the current season of Indian Premier League and has around 10 lakh free users and 50,000 premier users, across the globe, that even helps to organise betting at street level.
The application developers have also provided the users an option to become a premier member by paying just `1,000 to get faster updates of live betting rates and live scores.
“Any person can register on the app for getting live updates on the betting trends across the world and it can actually be used as a dictionary for betting. If you are a bookie, you don’t have to break your brains to fix betting rates. You can offer rates with that app, which is a new tool for this season,” said a senior police officer.
The app provides services of tracking the ball-to-ball and over-by-over fluctuations of the betting rates based on demand of favourite team and its rate, projected score for every five overs, and also number of runs that could be scored in last overs, and other details, with voice enabled service.
“It is similar to that of a share market application, which give live updates on the current trend. One can accept betting based on favourite team, guessing of runs that could be scored on each ball. A fresh organiser does not have to break his brains to fix rates,” said the police officer.
All users of the app are fresh bookies and betting organisers. What surprised the police is that the application developers also launched a paid version of the same app, offering benefit of registering with them by paying `1,000 to receive faster updates on the betting rate trends.
“Up to nine lakh users are using the app. Only first five lakh members get faster updates, rest may get slow update. Good news, we launched a paid version of app, just `1,000. It’s very fast, never get slow,” the application says.
With demonetisation coming into picture restricting anonymous deposits, the bookies and organisers learnt to be using e-wallets for money transfer. The police are also probing to track the e-wallet payments. “Betting amounts per match would cross over a crore rupees in the city. As the e-wallets have increased these days, we are also focusing on the wallet payments,” he said.
The officer said that betting does not happen on a regular phone used by the prime bookie. The bookie might be located anywhere in the country who gives a specific number for contact just a minute before the match and stops using it after match to avoid being tracked, said the officer.
The officer also shared that around 10 bookies involved in 30 cases busted by the erstwhile Cyberabad police, have fled to African countries.