Vietnamese police detain online gambling mastermind

News on 1 Oct 2018

Vietnamese police have announced the arrest Sunday of Chinese-Vietnamese citizen Lam The Tai (48) who they allege is the mastermind behind a now disabled US$26.7 million illegal online football betting syndicate that operated in the central province of Thanh Hoa.

Tai was arrested along with four other unnamed accomplices amid charges that he regularly organised soccer betting on the website www.3in1bet and also helped gamblers mortgage assets, the police said.

Following a search on the five detainees’ houses the police seized around US$7,500 in cash and documents related to their investigation, claiming that an estimated $26.7 million had been funnelled through the ring this year.

Last month four members of another online sports betting ring, based in Saigon, were sentenced to seven to nine years in jail. The illegal enterprise had attracted thousands of gamblers around the country, and had transactions running to around VND622 billion ($26 million).

Local media reports note that Vietnamese are known for their love of gambling, with estimates that they spend at least US$800 million a year gambling overseas, mainly in Macau, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Official figures show that Vietnamese spent US$13 billion on the lottery between 2011 and 2015, Nikkei reported.

While the government has legalised sports betting and said it would allow people aged over 21 with a monthly income of at least VND10 million ($445) to gamble at designated casinos, online betting remains proscribed.