In Lou Vincent's example, he has the perfect personality traits to be considered vulnerable: a troubled man with money worries parachuting in and out of foreign lands to ply his trade in the twilight of his career.
Watch: Match fixing saga
His story, according to the outpouring noted down by anti-corruption investigators, is another stereotype. From being approached to carrying out the fix to receiving the money, it is almost the classic modus operandi which players have been warned about in countless anti-corruption tutorials.
In the beginning, Vincent was a sitting duck. His battle with depression and alcohol alerted unscrupulous sorts who saw an opportunity to manipulate a human being for monetary gain. This ability by corruptors to hone in on the weak is disturbing. They search for any flaw, and fixers or bookies have been known to search social network sites for any chink in the armour.
Reading Vincent's testimony, it is clear the fixers tested him out. He was offered praise, sex, gifts and, finally, money. Often a corruptor will invite a player to his hotel room and just say "here's $20,000, take it, go and have a good time, it's because I like you as a player".
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One former fixer in India told me he had seen this on countless occasions and never had he seen a player turn it down. They were hooked.
What follows is usually something more subtle, although in Vincent's case he appears to have begun fixing relatively quickly.
The fixers will test a player out with small requests for information with big rewards. Then they will ask for something seemingly irrelevant in a game, to check their mettle.
If those tests have been passed, they will turn up the heat. You owe us now. A batsman will be pressured into batting slowly in a one-day match or a bowler will be asked to go for a certain amount of runs in a certain amount of overs. The spot-fix.
The devil is in the detail with the spot-fix. Vincent claimed he was ordered to crawl along at the crease for three-over segments. He told the henchmen that a fix would be on by changing the colour of his bat handle, stepping away when a bowler was running in or wearing a particular coloured sweat band. Black, fittingly, most of the time.
Crucially, this was to allow time for the fixer to place his bets on the vast and unregulated Indian betting system. It is a myth that you can wager on weird and wonderful outcomes in India. Bets are restricted to four markets only -- the match odds, innings runs, session runs and who will be the favourite at the innings break.
It is the session market -- also known as the bracket -- which Vincent would have been attempting to manipulate. With inside information of what Vincent had agreed to do, the fixers would have been able to make huge sums in exactly the same way that an insider trader would on a stock market.
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Bookmakers offer a runs quote for the session market -- say 65-66 in the first 10 overs of a 50-over game. That quote will change after every ball, going up or down relative to how the run rate is progressing. If you know what is going to happen, riches are almost guaranteed. If a bowler has been nobbled by a fixer, the same method is applied.
Such minute manipulation is almost impossible to prove and it is why the smart cricketers who indulge will never stray from such a specialism. How does an anti-corruption unit prove, beyond doubt, that a batsman or bowler has deliberately underperformed for what could amount to only six deliveries?
Rarely is there a money trail. Corrupt players are paid in soft assets. There have been cases of speedboats being the bounty or, as the infamous player X revealed to Black Caps skipper Brendon McCullum, Dubai property. When such money is brought back into a country following a sale, it is easier for a player to claim it as profit of his wheeling and dealing.
If a player is paid in cash, and Vincent says he was, then the hawala system will be used. The hawala system is glued by trust. Money is transferred via a network of hawala brokers, often family members, or hawaladars. But the money does not, in fact, go anywhere, either physically or electronically, and the system can be defined by the term: money transfer without money movement.
A customer will approach a hawala broker in one city and give a sum of money to be transferred to a recipient in another city. The hawala broker calls another hawala broker in the recipient's city, gives instructions of the funds and promises to settle the debt at a later date. All parties are given a code or password and at the start and end of the process.
It is understood that Vincent was told to give the serial number of a $20 note to his bookmaker, who would then pass this on to the broker. When Vincent met up with him, he would repeat the serial number and also undergo a voice recognition test.
So far, so simple.
The problem comes when players or fixers get greedy. They try to spread their net and catch more players. They want bigger returns so they attempt to rig a whole match.
Undoubtedly, this is what has led to Vincent being charged by the ECB. It is probable that there are many, many cricketers who are not that stupid.
Alas, the apple does not fall that far from the tree.
Ed Hawkins is author of the award-winning Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy. He wrote this exclusively for the Weekend Herald. Tomorrow, he writes on cricket's arcane politics in the Herald on Sunday.
