Officials get life bans for manipulating scores
Two Turkish tennis officials have been given life bans by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) after being found guilty of manipulating scores.
The world governing body’s Tennis Integrity Unit said Serkan Aslan and Mehmet Ulker “delayed the inputting of scores and/or fraudulently manipulated scores by inputting fictitious deuce games” at ITF Futures events in 2015.
Separately, Ulker was found to have allowed “third parties to benefit by placing bets on matches in which he was officiating”.
The ITF, which runs Grand Slam tournaments, found Ulker delayed inputting scores into a PDA device and used his mobile phone to communicate the scores of matches to a third party while officiating at a Futures tournament in Belek, Turkey in October 2015.
Both men additionally failed to comply with requests to hand their mobile phones to investigators.
The ITF Futures circuit is the entry level of professional tennis but the ban covers all events sanctioned by the ITF, the Association of Tennis Professionals and the Women’s Tennis Association.