Chinese media reported that 218 suspects have been arrested by the Guangdong police for allegedly operating illegal online casinos and using the names of some of Macau’s major gambling operators in a bid to attract the attention of a larger customer base.
The police said that this has been the biggest Internet scam in many years now. Reportedly, players were lured to the illegal online casinos via messages on their mobile phones. As a result, more than CNY140 million ($21 million) were scammed from over 1,000 victims from a number of cities across China.
Police officers were first notified about the matter in March 2015. Two illegal gambling websites were later on discovered. Among other things, those used the names of popular Macau-based casinos to attract more players, with Grand Lisboa, the Venetian Macao, and Galaxy being few of those.
First complaints came from the city of Foshan in the Guangdong province. The Guangdong police said in a briefing that the casino websites offered players a number of gaming products, with some of those featuring live dealers filmed via video streams. Gambling customers were asked to deposit money into designated accounts in order to be able to buy gaming chips and play the games offered. Here it is also important to note that the websites featured only versions in Chinese so they were clearly targeting gambling customers from Mainland China.
The online casinos were hosted by servers located in the Cambodian town of Poipet as suspects wanted to avoid potential investigation, the Guangdong police explained. On March 1, raids were carried out in Poipet, during which a number of Chinese citizens were arrested. They were reportedly flown back to Mainland China on March 12.
On Wednesday, local media reported that 38 of those arrested in Cambodia were wanted in China for allegedly providing illegal online gambling services and transferring funds, fraudulently obtained from the provision of illegal online casino options.
More than 1,000 police officers took part in the massive crackdown, making arrests across 18 provinces around Mainland China. Core suspects arrested by both the Poipet and the Guangdong ends of the major operation were said to have been based in the Fujian province.
