Lewis\u2019 former Macarthur FC team-mate and co-accused Kearyn Baccus received an identical sentence.<\/p>\n
The charges stem from the pair\u2019s involvement in a yellow-card manipulation scheme, in which they were each paid $10,000 to deliberately obtain a yellow card in a match against Sydney FC in December 2023.<\/p>\n
Police allege Lewis and Baccus were operating under the direction of the team\u2019s former captain Ulises Davila, who acted as the \u201cpoint man\u201d for a South American crime syndicate to facilitate illegal gambling on A-League matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was the captain of the team, and he was the captain of the scheme,\u201d Baccus\u2019 lawyer Bryan Wrench told the court at a hearing last week.<\/p>\n
Davila, who faces up to nine charges related to betting corruption and participating in a criminal group, is yet to enter a plea and is due to appear in court again on Thursday.<\/p>\n
At last week\u2019s hearing Lewis\u2019 lawyer Gabrielle Bashir submitted her client had already suffered significant punishment outside of the courtroom.<\/p>\n
She said Lewis had most likely lost any future ability to earn a living from football, revealing Football Australia has issued her client with a \u201cshow cause\u201d notice seeking a lifetime ban from the sport.<\/p>\n
The court also heard Lewis was in the grips of gambling addiction when he was approached by Davila about taking part.<\/p>\n
Bashir submitted to the court that the Kiwi footballer\u2019s moral culpability was at the lower end, as the 28-year-old was \u201ctargeted and exploited\u201d because he was a known gambling addict.<\/p>\n
She added there was a clear power imbalance between Davila, his former captain, and Lewis.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only was he targeted, he was asked to do it by someone who was in a position of power and influence over him,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The court heard Lewis has since been diagnosed with a gambling addiction and is undergoing treatment.<\/p>\n
\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis\u2019 former Macarthur FC team-mate and co-accused Kearyn Baccus received an identical sentence. The charges stem from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,1060,27493,6119,5213,27494,6453,111,139,69,29946,213,27499],"class_list":["post-40976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-ban","tag-clayton","tag-faces","tag-football","tag-lewis","tag-lifetime","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ruling","tag-sports","tag-spotfixing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}