The four men have been summonsed to appear at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on September 11.
The AFL was contacted for comment.
As reported by this masthead, suspicious bets on Brownlow Medal votes were allegedly laid on more than 10 of the 16 AFL games in which umpire Michael Pell officiated during 2022.
Police said search warrants were executed on a number of occasions in varying suburbs throughout the investigation. The maximum penalties for these offences – cheating at gambling and obtaining financial advantage by deception – is a decade in prison.
When the story broke, the AFL said there was no suggestion of match or spot-fixing and that the breach of the 2022 count did not influence the result.
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However, the fallout is severe in that it allegedly involves a match official divulging information, whereas previous betting scandals have involved players or club officials.
The AFL said in 2022 that round-by-round betting, for which markets do not open until the end of the home-and-away season, was at the centre of the investigation.
The bets ranged in size up to several thousand dollars.
Given Pell was a field umpire, he was involved in casting votes for the Brownlow Medal. He was interviewed by police when the story first broke.
Victoria Police have alleged in a statement that a person with knowledge of the voting tally distributed the information to a group of people known to them.
Warrants were initially carried at residential properties in Glenroy, Kilsyth, Oak Park, Drouin, Craigieburn and Doreen. Several mobile phones and electronic items were seized.
Police investigated how many matches potentially had votes released and the magnitude of the bets involved. Voting irregularities can be easily detected by an algorithm used by betting agencies.
PointsBet notified the AFL of the suspicious betting, prompting the AFL’s integrity unit to look at other bets on the Brownlow by those under investigation.
Pell, who began his umpiring career in the Essendon District Football League, was only promoted to the AFL field umpires list for the start of the 2022 season, having officiated in one game the previous year when he was called into action as an emergency umpire. He had also umpired a VFL grand final and an AFLW grand final. He is no longer an umpire with the AFL.
The AFL has since introduced a $250 payout limit for round-by-round betting on the Brownlow Medal to avoid a repeat of the betting scandal.
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