Biggest Crackdown on Online Gambling in China

More than 1,000 people have been arrested after Chinese police made the biggest online lottery related gambling bust in China’s history, the Public Security Department of south China’s Guangdong Province announced on Wednesday.

330 million yuan (around $54 million) was found on several bank accounts that belonged to the members of the gambling ring and according to Lu Feng, director of the general office of the public security department, this case broke multiple records for the police. Most of the accounts were frozen and 1,071 people were detained by the police in connection to gambling network that allowed people to place bets on different websites. Most of the gambling money from the accounts was not frozen because some of the transactions were done via illegal private banks.

The suspects were caught last year between June and December in operation named “221” and currently 570 suspects are being kept in detention. 15 are suspected of operating and developing sites while more than 1,000 people are suspected of renting the platforms to run gambling operations.

Mr. Lou said that the group was led by two men from Shantou, Guangdong who set up nearly 200 websites mostly using servers in Thailand. Numerous people have joined the sites to bet on the results of Chinese lotteries and 125 websites have allowed their clients to bet on the results of the national welfare lottery. Most gambling is illegal in China, except government-run lotteries, so those websites have attracted about 400,000 active members who were putting 400m yuan in bets per month.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, this is the biggest online gambling case that country has cracked. The government in China does not grant licenses to operate online gambling sites and players are not supposed to play on overseas sites either. However players always find a way to gamble on the websites that are accepting players from China.

To be clear, all forms of gambling besides lottery tickets have been prohibited since 1949 but Chinese people still have an option: they can gamble in Macau, the former Portuguese territory where all gambling is legal. However, situation in Macau is not so perfect either since the Chinese president Xi Jinping has started a campaign against corruption that kept high rollers away.

This resulted in 10 consecutive monthly falls of the gambling revenue which plummeted 39% in March this year. Numerous things can be blamed for the revenue drop including visa restriction and full smoking ban in casinos which means that smoking is no longer allowed in VIP rooms.

Photo: woxmobile.com