Fake Dragon Z6 Executive Exposed in Croatia Soccer Sponsorship Deal

Croatia sponsorship exposed after fake executive identified as academic

Dragon Z6 tied to opaque offshore gambling and rebranding networks

Football deals used to target illegal betting markets in Asia

When Croatia’s national soccer team signed a deal with Asian-facing bookmaker Dragon Z6 ahead of this summer’s World Cup, the operator sent along a representative, “Alexander Smith,” to sign the contract and pose for photos with players. “Alexander Smith,” aka Branko Balon, right, signing the sponsorship agreement between Dragon Z6 and Croatian National soccer team. Balon has been exposed as a stand-in, a common tactic among Asian-facing online gambling companies. (Image: Croatia Football Federation) But Smith was not a gaming executive, open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat has discovered. In fact, he wasn’t even Alexander Smith. He was a computer science lecturer and reality TV contestant from Zagreb named Branko Balon. Bellingcat investigators used the facial recognition search engine PimEyes to identify Balon, who once appeared on the Croatian cookery show Who Cooks Better for Me? and is president of the Croatian-Chinese Friendship Society. When contacted by email, Balon initially asked what the inquiry was about, but then stopped responding. Stand-Ins Not Uncommon Investigators have become vigilant around these types of contract-signing ceremonies involving unlicensed Asian-facing betting companies because the tactic of employing a fake executive is not uncommon. The publicity around such events provides a veneer of legitimacy for the site while preserving its opaque ownership structure. For instance, in 2019, Leicester City FC officials posed in front of the camera with purported Yabo Sports CEO Dean Hawkes to celebrate a new sponsorship deal, but it turned out Hawkes wasn’t a CEO at all, but a male model working in Shanghai.

A 2023 study by the Asian Racing Foundation cited reports that directly tie Yabo to forced labor camps on the Cambodia-Laos bor