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The much publicized brutal torture murders of two Chinese grad students England has touched off a major investigation spanning all the way back to China.
Xi Zhou and her boyfriend Zhen Xing Yang, both 25, suffered horrific head injuries in their flat in Newcastle's West End earlier this month. Both are alleged to have bee part of a racket that relied on the results of live Premier League football games being shown a couple of minutes later in China to beat the bookmakers.
Police investigating the murders of two Chinese students in Newcastle are hunting for the 'Mr Big' who controlled a football betting scam they were involved with, the London Telegraph reported Friday.
Internet users on UK-based Mandarin websites have identified Mr Yang as a recruitment agent for a gambling racket which relied on the results of live Premier League football games being shown a couple of minutes later in China to beat the bookmakers.
His girlfriend, Miss Zhou, was a commentator for the scam and attended a pre-season friendly between Newcastle United and PSV Eindhoven earlier this month, police revealed.
While the couple is being investigated as "minor players" in the scam, law enforcement could not understand the extent of the violence used in their murders. Yang was hacked to death and the couple's pet cat was drowned.
Mr Yang used to live in the capital and it has emerged he may have used forged documents to gain a place at Newcastle University.
Det Supt Wade told the Telegraph: "Our inquiries thus far do not reveal the couple's involvement in major criminality and their lifestyle and finances are not what could be expected of anyone involved in organised crime. What does not make sense is why someone would use such a disproportionate level of violence in this killing."
It also emerged that an unidentified man, who sub-letting a room with the Newcastle University graduates in their ground-floor flat, may hold clues to the murder.
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Alistair Prescott, Gambling911.com
