Television has gone undercover inside the Premiership to expose the depth of corruption in the nation’s favourite sport. Panorama: Undercover: Football’s Dirty Secrets, BBC 2006
‘I’ll walk straight into the office … sit down with me dad; it’s easy.’ ibid. son of Allardyce
He [Allardyce] sometimes bumped up the commission his club paid to agents so he could get a secret cut. ibid.
‘It’s become a culture in football.’ ibid. Mike Newell
We now had a hat-trick of agents who had told us on camera it was normal for some managers to take bungs. ibid.
Allegations of tapping-up have recently centred around one club: Chelsea. ibid.
Corruption at the heart of world football. We reveal the three senior FIFA officials linked to an extraordinary list of secret payments worth around $100,000,000. Panorama: Fifa’s Dirty Secrets, BBC 2010
Big brands paid millions in good faith to put the World Cup logo on their products … TV networks paid even more … So why did ISL always win the fight for the World Cup rights? ibid.
And another World Cup in South Africa: and Jack Warner was at it again ordering $84,000’ worth of tickets from FIFA to sell to touts. ibid.
My name is Mark Daly – I’m a keen athlete and currently I’m training hard. But I’m also an investigative journalist and for more than a year I’ve been immersed in a story about drugs and athletics. Panorama: Mark Daly, Catch Me If You Can, BBC 2015
The only way I could truly understand it was to become a doper myself. ibid.
Fresh as a daisy ... I feel as though the drugs have worked. ibid.
7% ... The margins are huge. ibid.
I had received a tip-off about a famous coach with strong links to the UK ... Alberto Salazar. ibid.
This council gambled public money and lost. And local people are paying the price. This is the council officer who risked hundreds of millions of pounds. And this is the businessman who profited. We reveal how he cheated the council and spent millions on himself. Panorama: The Millionaire Who Cheated a Council, BBC 2023
Thurrock sits on the banks of the River Thames in Essex. The council has some of the most deprived areas in the UK. Now it has to make major savings. ibid.
Dodgy investments … left Thurrock with the second biggest deficit ever recorded by a local authority: £470 million. ibid.
Hundreds of millions were invested with a Hampshire-based businessman: Liam Kavanagh. ibid.
By 2020 the Conservative-led council had handed over £655 million. ibid.
Cheaters cause us outrage. Numbers Game s1e3: What Drives You Crazy? National Geographic 2013
Cheating is contagious. ibid.
Keith worked as a cheat. There he stands on the street corner, with three or four colleagues, with three or four fellow cheats; they laugh and cough (they’re always coughing) and flap their arms for warmth; they look like terrible birds. Martin Amis, London Fields
But as far as I’m concerned the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest fucking dustbin you can find, because you’ve never won any of them fairly: you’ve done it all by bloody cheating. The Damned United 2009 starring Michael Sheen & Timothy Spall & Maurice Roeves & Elizabeth Carling & Oliver Stokes & Ryan Day & Peter Quinn & Colm Meaney & Henry Goodman & Jim Broadbent, director Tom Hooper, Clough to players
In March Kolo Toure tested positive for a banned doping substance: Bendroflumethiazide. Dispatches: The Truth About Drugs in Football, Channel 4 2011
Since 2003 there have been a total of twenty-one positive tests for cocaine. ibid.
Our document also suggests a cover up at the heart of our national game. ibid.
40,421. Football has a much larger group of athletes to test than other sports. ibid.
The FA refused to tell us how frequently they test players. ibid.
Dispatches goes undercover to lift the lid on football match fixing. We reveal the story behind the conviction of match-fixers who try to infiltrate the English game. Dispatches: How to Fix a Football Match, Channel 4 2014
But why fake just the team when you can fake the entire match? You get ninety minutes of commentary and bets on a fixture that never even existed. ibid.
Global match-fixers have infected all levels of the game. ibid.
Britain’s new emissions scandal: after VW cheated pollution tests then what became known as Dieselgate, welcome to Lorrygate: we’ve uncovered cheating of pollution controls on a massive scale. Dispatches: Britain’s Diesel Scandal, Channel 4 2018
Lorries with emulators make that air quality worse. ibid.
They [hauliers] could be prosecuted in the magistrates’ court but so far none have. ibid.
In Nevada the penalty for casino cheating is up to six years in prison. Underworld Inc s2e6: Las Vegas Hustle, 2015
One cheating crew is thought to have scammed $50 million from casinos worldwide. ibid.
Every years around 500 arrests are made in Vegas for cheating offences. ibid.
‘It turns out it’s all about rationalisation.’ (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies, 2015, Dr Dan Ariely
‘On the one hand we want to look in the mirror and think that we’re good honest wonderful people, on the other hand we want to benefit selfishly from being dishonest. As long as we cheat just a little bit we don’t have to pay any price in terms of the image and the way we view ourselves: we call this the Fudge Factor.’ ibid.
‘Everyone’s trading on this stuff; there’s not one person in my office who wasn’t.’ ibid. cheating trader
Over 40,000 people have participated in the Matrix experiments: nearly 70% cheated. ibid. caption
‘It’s not about the probability of being caught, it’s about the question of what is socially acceptable in our circle.’ ibid. Ariely
‘Our brain gets accustomed to lying because after a while the negative value or lying, the negative feeling, is just not there so much.’ ibid. Tali Sharot
‘And this is what I think corruption is all about: it’s not about being bad, it’s about being human.’ ibid. Ariely
‘Bankers vs Politicians: the bankers cheated twice as much.’ ibid.
‘Reminding people about their own moral fibre does change how people behave.’ ibid.
I thought I had found the perfect car … The ads sucked me in … What I didn’t know was that I was driving a killing machine … ‘Volkswagen Shares Tumble Following Emisions Allegations’ … VW had lied to me: they had pitched me a vision of my dream car that was polluting fifty times more than advertised. Dirty Money I: Hard Nox, Netflix 2018
How could a company have lied to its customers on such a massive scale? ibid.
Diesel exhaust disgorges much nastier stuff. ibid.
‘The pressure on everybody to increase sales became unbearable.’ ibid. VW executive
The cheating and how to handle it was an open secret among many executives in Germany. ibid.
‘This was a corporate culture permeated by fraud.’ ibid. lawyer
VW was forced to pay over $25 billion in fines. ibid.
They [countries] are willing to look the other way when companies cheat. ibid.
But that pursuit brought this man to this dark crumbling cave of an underground apartment and a life of desolation and despair … ‘Probably one of the most serious offences ever committed inside the ring … ‘He lost his life, he lost his career, he lost his family, he lost everything.’ Assault in the Ring aka Cornered: A Life in the Ring, HBO 2008
‘Sometimes I feel like crying … Why they did that to the gloves?’ ibid. Luis Resto
As a pro his [Luis Resto] career stalled. ibid.
1983: Billy Collins is one of those stories the boxing world loves, an undefeated Irish kid … ‘They were grooming Billy Collins to become a superstar.’ ibid.
‘Hold it! Hold it! Commissioner! All the padding’s out of the damned gloves!’ ibid. Billy’s father at end of fight
24 years after that night in the Garden, Luis Resto was still saying he didn’t know who had tampered with his gloves. ibid.
Panama Lewis was no stranger to controversy when he worked Luis Resto’s corner in June of 1983. Seven months earlier he had come under suspicion during the championship bout between Aaron Pryor and Alexis Arguello. In between round TV microphones had picked up Panama in Pryor’s ordering assistant Arty Curley to pass him the water bottle and then suspiciously clarifying which bottle he meant … ‘Give me the other bottle, I one I mixed.’ ibid.
Billy Collins junior: A fighter who didn’t know what was hitting him … Doctors diagnosed Collins with a torn iris … Now he was being told to retire … Billy’s Collins junior’s spiral came to a tragic end. ibid.
‘Panama took the gloves.’ ibid. Luis
‘Been thinking about that fight every day. Every fucking day.’ ibid.
He knew he was cheating that night in the ring. ibid.
It is a tale of almost mythic proportions: a hero who overcomes unlikely roots and a deadly disease to dominate his sport … The Armstrong story is either one of remarkable success or an astounding fall from grace or … both. The Fifth Estate: Lance Armstrong: Master of Spin, CBC 2012
In his first four attempts [Tour de France] overall his best results was 36th place. ibid.
EPO: to increase the production of red blood cells which carry oxygen throughout the body. ibid.