A Taiwanese man was arrested in Vietnam for allegedly operating an illegal gambling website, which had been cracked by local law enforcement recently, Vietnamese media reported Thursday.
The Taiwanese man, identified by Vietnamese police as Chiu Hao-cheng, and 23 Vietnamese, alleged to be accomplices, were detained on suspicion of involvement in one of the biggest illegal gambling networks ever cracked in the country, according to the Vietnam-based news site dantri.com.vn.
In a widespread operation, Vietnamese police seized some 30 trillion Vietnamese dong (US$1.29 billion) after tracking down more than 4,000 people across several provinces, who were allegedly working for the gambling website, the report said.
Citing police, the report said the server for the massive gambling network was located in another country.
Chiu and 13 of the Vietnamese suspects have been indicted on charges of “organizing gambling activities,” while the other 10 Vietnamese have been charged with gambling, according to the report.
The illegal online gambling operation was cracked after Vietnamese police launched raids in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Khanh Hao Province, followed findings that hundreds of thousands of people had wired money to an account belonging to a group that was under investigation on suspicion of engaging in gambling activities with the use of digital currencies, the report said.
(By Flor Wang)