How Was Lucas Paquetá Cleared of Match-Fixing Charges?
Paquetá’s two-year ordeal ends with a “not proven” verdict, while Italy’s Maduka Okoye walks away from similar allegations. Suspicious betting alerts often collapse when intent can’t be nailed down
Headlines in the UK and Brazil seemed to assume the career of West Ham midfielder Lucas Paquetá was over. Yet Paquetá was cleared this week after a two-year investigation.
This may have come as a surprise, given the details of the case that had been released. The case against Paquetá centered on four matches between late 2022 and mid-2023 in which he received yellow cards. An abnormal cluster of bets on Paquetá to be booked in those specific games, many of them traced to the player’s hometown in Brazil.
The bets themselves were not huge windfalls. One wager was as small as £7 and the largest was around £400, but the pattern was suspicious enough to trigger the FA’s alarm.
Throughout this ordeal, Paquetá vehemently protested his innocence. His lawyer, Nick de Marco, wrote on LinkedIn that “this is probably one of the most important cases I have ever worked on, and one I shall never forget.”
So why was he found innocent?
The FA’s independent Regulatory Commission announced that all four spot-fixing charges against Paquetá were “not proven”. In plain terms, Paquetá was cleared of having intentionally been booked to benefit bettors. The commission did not find sufficient proof that Paquetá had sought to influence those matches improperly.
For Paquetá, this was a vindication. “Since the first day of this investigation, I have maintained my innocence against these extremely serious accusations,” he said in a relieved statement.
It’s worth noting that Paquetá did not escape all disciplinary action. The Commission found him guilty of two minor breaches of Rule F3 for not fully cooperating with the investigation. However, that is a far lesser offense in context, carrying perhaps a fine or short suspension.
“Paquetá has been cleared of spot-fixing but found to have breached the FA’s co-operation rules. That tells me the investigators couldn’t meet the evidential bar for fixing and lacked the leverage to compel fuller co-operation, despite Paquetá denying wrongdoing from day one,” said Affy Sheikh, former head of integrity services at Starlizard.
So what would have potentially been one of the biggest corruption scandals in Premier League history concluded with Paquetá exonerated.
But is this type of verdict unusual?
No. Around the same time Paquetá was enduring his ordeal in England, Nigerian goalkeeper Maduka Okoye found himself in an analogous predicament in Italy.
In March 2024, Okoye was playing for Udinese in a Serie A match against Lazio when he received a yellow card for time-wasting in the second half. A goalkeeper being booked for running down the clock is nothing extraordinary, but Italian authorities were alerted to a rush of suspicious bets specifically wagering that Okoye would get a yellow card in that match.
And similarly to Paquetá, a large number of them came from in and around Udine, the city of Okoye’s club. At odds of roughly 8-to-1, the payouts for Okoye’s booking were significant – reportedly totaling over €120,000 in winnings if all bets paid out.
By June 2025, Okoye had been formally charged with sporting fraud alongside three acquaintances who were linked to the suspicious bets. Had Okoye been found guilty, he could have been banned up for up to four years.
But, just prior to the Paquetá verdict, Okoye was also cleared of all match-fixing charges. Authorities determined that Okoye had no part in a deliberate scheme to engineer his booking.
Okoye also got off with a minor two-month ban for violating the “generic principle of fairness.” Italian media characterized this as a punishment for “illegal betting” involvement in a broad sense, rather than match-fixing. In effect, the authorities concluded that something improper had occurred around Okoye, perhaps among his friends or associates, but that he himself did not intentionally manipulate the match.
So their friends bet on them, but they didn’t know?
To an outside observer, it might strain credulity that a player’s close friends or family would bet on a very specific outcome (like a yellow card) without the player’s involvement. But the possibility of it being coincidental or done without the player’s consent had to be considered, and that was enough to introduce reasonable doubt.
In both cases, integrity monitors and prosecutors had circumstantial evidence of something fishy: betting patterns that defied normal explanation and pointed to associates of the players. What was missing, however, was the direct proof that the players knowingly colluded in those bets. No incontrovertible communications, no confessed quid pro quo, no “smoking gun”.
In the face of these serious charges, Paquetá assembled a strong defense team, led by renowned sports lawyer Nick De Marco. This team provided alternative explanations for the suspicious patterns.
One key argument was that Paquetá is naturally a combative, foul-prone player, essentially suggesting that the bets on him being booked might have been made simply because bettors knew he often gets carded, not because he was ensuring it deliberately.
To support this, his lawyers presented data showing Paquetá’s consistently high number of fouls and bookings throughout his career. They even demonstrated that he “has consistently conceded more free-kicks than his teammates,” implying a higher baseline probability of being booked in any given game. In other words, the defense contended that what the FA saw as a corruption red flag could just be a gambler’s calculation on a naturally aggressive player, rather than the result of a fix.
Perhaps most persuasively, Paquetá’s team brought in evidence about his conduct around one of the flagged games, which happened on August 12, 2023. Paquetá testified he had asked not to be played in that match because he was on the verge of a transfer to Man City and didn’t want to risk injury or any complications.
West Ham manager Moyes supported Paquetá’s claim, indicating the player was reluctant to participate in the game, a stance seemingly at odds with someone planning to get himself booked intentionally. Indeed, Paquetá did end up playing and got a yellow for persistent fouling in that match, but the context of him trying to avoid playing at all bolstered his argument that the booking was not premeditated.
What are the long-term ramifications of this?
While Paquetá and Okoye avoided being branded match-fixers, their cases highlight a number of pitfalls and issues that can arise in integrity investigations:
Cross-Jurisdictional Evidence Challenges: Paquetá’s case showed the difficulty of investigating betting activity in another country. The FA had to rely on cooperation with Brazilian bookmakers and for authorities to trace those bets to Paquetá Island. Any lapses in data sharing, privacy laws, or unavailability of witnesses abroad can leave holes in the evidence.
Extended Uncertainty and Career Impact: One major aspect “gone wrong” here was the sheer length of these processes. Paquetá’s inquiry stretched across nearly two years, severely impacting his career opportunities, including a major transfer to Manchester City, and subjecting him to public suspicion without resolution. West Ham’s management was reportedly frustrated with the FA’s slow proceedings and even considered legal action for the delay.
Alternate Explanations and Defense Strategies: Another reason these charges fell apart is that the players’ defense teams provided alternative interpretations of the events that the adjudicators found credible or at least possible. The moment you introduce reasonable doubt about why something happened, it’s hard to conclusively label it a fix.
For example, the fouls that earned Paquetá’s yellow cards (a late challenge, a shirt-pull, a handball, etc.) were argued to be products of his normal “carelessness” on the pitch. These are football actions that could happen in any game, not bizarre actions that scream of a fix. In Okoye’s scenario, a keeper wasting time when leading is a common tactic; many goalkeepers take cautions to burn seconds off the clock. So while the betting pattern made it suspicious, the act itself is routine enough that it doesn’t irrefutably prove malintent.
Partial Punishments when Full Proof Lacking: Sports authorities often use lesser charges as a fallback when full match-fixing can’t be proven. We saw the FA do this with Paquetá (charging him under F3 for non-compliance) and FIGC with Okoye (Article 4 fairness violation).
This approach can be controversial. Some argue it’s a face-saving move by authorities (“we know something was fishy, so we’ll punish something”), while others see it as just holding players accountable to professional standards even if they escape the worst charge. For Paquetá and Okoye, these lesser penalties were relatively light, but they do serve as a reminder that being on the fringe of a betting scandal can still hurt a player’s record.