Shanghai police cracking down on online gambling gangs

September 29, 2022 China Crime & Legal

Shanghai police have arrested more than 800 people so far this year for gathering people to take part in online overseas gambling, local police said on Wednesday.

A total of 80 gambling platforms, 47 gambling-promotion platforms and 27 money-laundering businesses have been taken down, with more than 170 million yuan (US$23.53 million) in assets seized or frozen by the police.

In a case charged by Minhang District police officers, a gambling service gang with more than 40 members was taken down in July.

The gang used their account on overseas gambling websites to provide gambling services, such as making bets on behalf of their customers.

They also ran a computing room to operate their overseas websites accounts and money flow, according to the police.

Minhang police received a local resident’s report in March, then spent four months investigating how the gang operates its business in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces.

In another case, police officers in Baoshan District rounded up 150 suspects as they operated an online casino and provided livestreaming gambling services. In this case, gang members used cameras in the overseas casinos to show real-time gambling operations for synchronicity.

The gang was taken down in the July as well.

After the COVID-19 outbreak, gamblers have increasingly moved to online gambling instead of traveling overseas, and it is getting more difficult for police to track the flow of money, said Zhuang Liqiang, an official at the Shanghai Public Security Bureau.

Police officers have issued reminders that gambling is illegal on the Chinese mainland, people should stay away from gambling and shrug off the lies of overnight wealth from gambling.