Taiwanese and Chinese security forces jointly busted an Internet gambling ring Tuesday, shutting down a betting website that collected as much as NT$100 million (US$3.334 million) through a third-party payment process, according to Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB).
The website operator sold gambling chips and points that can be used to exchange with those offered by various other Internet gambling websites and even converted into cash, a spokesman for the team said.
Through the website, online gamblers could bet on hundreds of games by just printing out payment slips at convenience stores. The online gambling website’s operator is in Taiwan, while its mainframe was established in Canada and its customer service center is in China. The operational model was adopted to avoid detection by the police, the spokesman added.
It is the first time the CIB has cracked an online gambling ring by collaboration with China’s Online Information Security Bureau through a cross-Taiwan Strait crime-fighting and legal assistance mechanism.
The CIB team coordinated with police authorities in Taoyuan and Keelung, leading to the arrest of four people for Internet Gambling and a batch of account books and computer equipment.
