The Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said they assisted in a joint international effort that cracked what it says might be the largest illegal online gambling network ever established.
CIB officials announced they raided several locations in Taiwan suspected to have connections with the gambling opertaion, which is based in China, but is thought to have had operatives in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Thailand.
A 37-year–old Taiwanese man named Huang Yu-jui (黃友瑞) was arrested, police said.
Police said Huang is suspected of providing connections for Taiwanese gamblers and also of laundering some of the profits of the people behind the online gambling platform, known as the “25U Online Gambling Network.”
In a series of operations — starting last year and concluding this month — the national police agencies of Taiwan, China, and Thailand worked together to oversee the arrests of more than 1,000 people, the majority of whom are Chinese.
CIB officials said the Chinese Ministry of Public Security contacted the bureau when its investigators discovered that a substantial proportion of the profits from the syndicate were funneled to Taiwan to be laundered.
Although most of the syndicate’s activities were in China, including Hong Kong, police said the group’s operations were “trans national,” since Internet servers were rented in Thailand and Taiwan to circumvent China’s Internet restrictions.
A CIB official said the network rented servers from Taiwan IDC, a data center and Internet business service company based in Taipei.
Thai authorities said they had arrested seven Chinese nationals in Thailand, with most of them employed by the organization as computer programmers or network server engineers.
Chinese authorities said the syndicate was led by two Chinese based in Guangdong Province’s Shantou City, one surnamed Zhang (張) and the other Wen (溫).
Under the 25U main platform, Zhang and Wen built up more than 200 subsidiary Web sites, which they rented out to individual operators who paid a monthly fee to run their own online gambling operations.
Chinese media outlets reported that each Web site was rented out for 70,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan (US$11,290 to US$16,140) per month, allowing Zhang and Wen to reap big profits.
The reports said hundreds of thousands of Chinese gamblers were placing bets on the membership-based gambling Web sites, with bets on the 25U network Web sites as a whole totaling about NT$2 trillion (US$64 billion) per month. Besides betting on the results of China’s state lottery, visitors to the Web sites could also play video poker, slot machines, bet on sports and link up to casinos in Macau.
Chinese police earlier this month said they arrested 1,063 people associated with the 25U network, and froze bank accounts belonging to Zhang and Wen.
The bank accounts contained about 330 million yuan, Xinhua news agency reported.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
ANNUAL EVENT: Two massive Pokemon balloons are to be set up in Daan Park, with an event zone operating from 10am to 6pm This year’s Taipei Floral Picnic is to be held at Daan Park today and tomorrow, featuring an exclusive Pokemon Go event, a themed food market, a coffee rave picnic area and stage performances, the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism said yesterday. Two massive Pokemon balloons are to be set up in the park as attractions, with an exclusive event zone operating from 10am to 6pm, it said. Participants who complete designated tasks on-site would have a chance to receive limited-edition souvenirs, it added. People could also try the newly launched game Pokemon Pokopia in the trial area, the department said. Three PokeStops are
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
RSS