Chinese Anti-Gambling Blitz Continues

Published: Friday, April 15, 2005 Online-Casinos.com

CHINESE ANTI-GAMBLING BLITZ CONTINUES

Shanghai police bust 28 year old ringleader

Agence France Presse reports that the Chinese war on gambling continues unabated, with fresh police raids across 22 mainland provinces this week.

The latest busts involve an online football betting organisation linked to Taiwan syndicates resulting in charges of accepting "...tens of millions of yuan" in bets on football matches at the mainland operation run out of Shanghai's Xuhui district, the Wenhui Daily reported.

Some 24 people have been implicated in the case, with police confiscating 1.03 million yuan (US$120,000) and estimating that the gang collected bets worth 90 million yuan in its year-long operation.

College graduate Yuan Min, 28, has been accused of being the ringleader and has been charged with setting up a "pyramid-like betting system."

Police confiscated the gang's computers and cars when the top four operators were arrested.

The investigation follows a central government order to clean-up the football industry after players walked out of matches and clubs threatened a boycott over rampant gambling and crooked referees in the professional Super League last year.

In January, police arrested a gang running an Internet football gambling syndicate out of Beijing which had some 96,000 punters who placed 230 million yuan in bets on football matches in a year.