James Alefantis is Facebook friends with a English football player called Michael Chopra. While he's not a superstar player he is well known by fans of the sport. Chopra is from Newcastle and even played for Newcastle football club from 2000-2006 so you could say he would be something of a local celebrity.

Alefantis went to Newcastle in 2012 when the international ping pong tournament Pongress was held at The Cumberland Arms pub. At the time Michael Chopra was playing for Ipswich football club, which is a good 5 hour train journey from Newcastle. It's possible Chopra was in town visiting family and friends though and attended Pongress where he met Alefantis.

The odd thing is that the organiser of the event Toby Lowe is FB friends with Alefantis but not Chopra. To me that seems strange because as an organiser surely having a local famous sports person like Chopra could be used to boost the publicity of the event.

Another strange thing is what could James Alefantis and Michael Chopra possibly have in common that would lead to them staying in touch through social media?

In 2011 Michael Chopra got involved with a very dangerous drug gang. They loaned him money to pay off his huge gambling debts and whn he struggled to repay them they began threatening him. Chopra told his boss at Ipswich football club and they gave him £250,000 to pay the gang off.

Mr Clegg said Chopra was worried about the debts and confirmed the club had loaned him around £250,000 towards paying them off.

"He didn't go into too much detail but he made it very clear to me he had to pay the money back," said Mr Clegg.

"I was under the impression, and made certain assumptions relating to that, that he needed to pay the money back or he would find himself in trouble."

Stories here from the BBC - Ipswich Town gave Michael Chopra £250,000 gambling loan

And from a local newspaper - Michael Chopra's gambling debts revealed at drugs trial

So a year before Chopra and Alefantis may have met at Pongress in Newcastle he owed serious money to these dangerous drug dealers that he seemed scared of. Two years later in 2014 Michael Chopra made a surprising move and joined a football team in India in Kochi, Kerala.

Kochi has a serious drug problem and in more recent times has became hub of child trafficking.

From 2015 - Kochi Drug Run

Kochi’s dark side of drug pushing and extreme abuse is a hot topic of discussion. Growing drug abuse on campuses is directly related to the party culture, changes in parent-child relationship and unbridled freedom being given to the youth, says VR JAYARAJ

Beneath the façade of the most happening city in the South, Kochi, described as the Queen of Arabian Sea in tourism brochures, is a den of sin where quotation gangs, flesh traders, land mafias, drug peddlers and potters flourish.

From 2017 - The Indian Express

88 children missing in Kerala in last 30 days. The fear that Kerala is fast turning a fertile ground for traffickers and begging racket that maim children and drive them into sex trade forces court to intervene.

But that article seems rather naive to the problem going by this story in 2016

Indian children trafficked to United States is a reality, says U.S. diplomat

“Last year, the United States issued more a million visas to Indians who were traveling to the United States and among those million, there were very likely cases of children being smuggled and trafficked into the U.S.”

According to a report by the New Delhi Television (NDTV), the children were matched with adult couples and made to pose as a family, presenting false documents at the U.S. consulate to get the required visas for their journey.

The adult couples then flew to the United States with the children, left them there and returned to India.

The suspected traffickers told police they were reuniting the children with their parents in the United States, all illegal immigrants, NDTV reported. But it quoted police officials as saying they believed the children were being sold.

Michael Chopra went to Kerala in 2014 for a year, then returned again for a shorter stint in 2016. Was he working for this drug gang he owed money to? What is his relationship with James Alefantis based on? Has India ever come up with regards to Alefantis and Pizzagate?