Andres Escobar Saldarriaga (13 March 1967 - 2 July 1994), a Colombian defender, was murdered shortly after his return from the1994 World Cup, where he scored an own goal. The first of a 2-1 defeat to the USA that knocked out the Colombians at the first phase. In the most believed explanation, the Medellin drug cartel bet a large sums of money that Colombia would advance, and blamed the Medellin-born Escobar for the loss.

The Italian Football Federation said in October 2000 it had found eight players guilty of match-fixing. Three were from Serie A side Atalanta and the other five played for Serie B side Pistoiese. The players were Giacomo Banchelli, Christian Doni and Sebastiano Siviglia (all Atalanta) and Alfredo Aglietti, Massimiliano Allegri, Daniele Amerini, Gianluca Lillo and Girolama Bizzarri (all Pistoiese). The charges related to an Italian Cup first round tie between the two side in Bergamo on August 20, 2000 which ended 1-1. Atalanta scored at the end of the first half and Pistoiese equalised three minutes before full time. Atalanta qualified for the second round. Snai, which organises the betting on Italian football, said later it had registered suspiciously heavy betting on the results and many of the bets were for a 1-0 halftime score and a full time score of 1-1.

In the late 2004, the game between Panionios and Dinamo Tbilisi in the 2004-05 UEFA Cup was suspected of being fixed after the Bristish bookmakers detected an unusually high number of half time bets for a 5-2 win for the Greek side, which was trailing 0-1. As the final results ended up being 5-2, suspicions of fixing quickly emerged, but were quickly denied by both clubs, although FIFA started an investigation.

In July 2005, Italian Serie B champions Genoa was arbitrarily placed last in the division, and therefore condemned to relegation Serie C1, after it was revealed that they bribed their opponents in the final match of the season, Venezia to throw the match. Genoa won 3-2 and had apparently secured promotion to Serie A.

2006 Serie A scandal: (”Calciopoli”) In May 2006, perhaps the largest match fixing scandal in the history of Italian Serie A football was uncovered by Italian Police, implicating league champions Juventus, and powerhouses AC Milan, Fiorentina, and Lazio. Teams were suspected of rigged games by selecting favourable referees, and even superstar Italian World Cup team goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon was charged with betting on football games. Initially, Juventus were stripped of their titles in 2004-05 and 2005-06, all four clubs were barred from European club competition in 2006-07, and except Milan were forcibly relegated to Serie B. After all four clubs appealed, only Juventus remained relegated and Milan were allowed to enter the third qualifying round of the Champions League (they went on to win the tournament.) The stripping of Juventus’s title stood.

In November 2009, German police arrested 17 people on suspicion of fixing at least 200 soccer matches in 9 countries. Among the suspected games were those from the top leagues of Austria, Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia and Turkey and games from the second highest league of Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. Three contest from the Champions League were under investigation and 12 from the Europa League.

During 1999 a Malaysia-based betting syndicate was caught attempting to install a remote-control device to sabotage the floodlights at English Premier League team Charlton Athletic’s ground with the aid of a corrupt security officer. If the match had been abandoned after half-time, the results and the bets would have stood. Subsequently investigations showed that the gang had been responsible for previous unsuspected “floodlight failure” at West Ham’s ground in November 1997, and again a month later at Crystal Palace’s ground during a home match of Palace’s ground- sharing tenant Wimbledon.

In June 2004 in South Africa, thirty-three people (including nineteen referees, club officials, a match commissioner and an official of the South African Football Association) were arrested on match-fixing charges.

2005 Bundesliga scandal: In January 2005, the German Football Association (DFB) and German prosecutors launched separate probes into charges that referee Robert Hoyzer bet on and fixed several matches that he worked, including German Cup tie. Hoyzer later admitted to the allegations; it has been reported that he was involved with Croat gambling syndicates. He also implicated other referees and players in the match fixing scheme. The first arrests in the Hoyzer investigation were made on January 2008 Berlin, and Hoyzer himself was arrested on February 12 after new evidence apparently emerged to suggest that he had been involved in fixing more matches than he had admitted to. Hoyzer has been banned for life from football by the DFB. On March 10, a second referee, Dominik Marks, was arrested after being implicated in the scheme by Hoyzer, Still later (March 24), it was reported that Hoyzer had told investigators that the gambling ring he was involved with had access to UEFA’s referee assignments for international matches and Champion League and UEFA Cup fixture several days before UEFA publicity announced them. Ultimately Hoyzer was sentenced to serve 2 years and 5 months in prison.

Brazilian football match-fixing scandal: In September 2005, a Brazilian magazine revealed that two football referee, Edilson Pereira de Carvalho (a member of FIFA’s referee staff) and Paulo Jos Danelon, had accepted bribe to fix matches. Soon afterwards, sport authorities ordered the replaying of 11 matches in the country’s top competition, the Campeonato Brasileiro, that had been worked by Edilson. Both referees have been banned for life from football and face possible criminal charges. Brazilian supporters have taken to shout “Edilson” at a referee who they consider to have made a bad call againts their team, in reference to the scandal.

2008: On October 1, it was reported that a Spanish judge who headed an investigation against Russian mafia figure uncovered information alleging that the mobsters may have attempted to fix the 2007-08 UEFA Cup semi-final between eventually champion Zenit St. Petersburg and Bayern Munich. Both clubs denied any knowledge of the alleged scheme.