How Hai Phong police took down Chinese, largest ever online gambling ring in Vietnam

In May 2019 they discovered that many people were living in the Our City Urban Area in Hai Thanh Ward, Duong Kinh District in the northern Vietnamese city, and their internet traffic was unusually high.

The Our City Urban Area project was developed by Hong Kong-owned Hiep Phong Vietnam Co., which began its construction in 2010 but progressed slowly and built only a few buildings by 2019, most of them occupied by Chinese nationals.

The Our City Urban Area in Hai Phong City. Photo by VnExpress/Le Tan

Local authorities reported that only 27 Chinese nationals were registered as residents, but a police check found a lot of unregistered people staying there.

They also found that the internet connections rented by them were used to access scores of Chinese gambling, lottery and sports betting websites.

After surveillance the police had sufficient grounds to suspect a large-scale online gambling operation was going on at the Our City Urban Area with servers located abroad.

A plan to raid the place with around 1,000 officers from various agencies was drawn up.

On July 27 the raiding party was dispatched to the Our City Urban Area.

Officers stormed the buildings to control and secure the scene, and cordoned it off.

No one escaped or managed to destroy evidence or dispose of materials.

The police netted 395 Chinese nationals and three Malaysians operating hundreds of online gambling websites, offering lotteries, sports betting and card games.

The gamblers were mainly Chinese citizens, who had wagered an estimated 4.3 billion yuan (US$600 million).

Chinese nationals are busted running online gambling sites inside the Our City Urban Area in Hai Phong as police raid the venue in 2019. Photo by police

To interrogate the suspects, the task force enlisted hundreds of other officers, teachers and government officials proficient in Chinese.

The arrested individuals said they had been hired to go to Vietnam to operate the gambling websites to evade Chinese authorities.

Early on Aug. 1, after just three days of investigations, the Ministry of Public Security and Hai Phong Police handed over the 395 people and 57 boxes of evidence and documents to Chinese police at the two nations’ border in Lang Son Province.

They have a judicial assistance and extradition agreement.

Chinese authorities prosecuted and indicted 267 of the individuals.

The Ministry of Public Security said the case involved the largest amount of money ever in a gambling operation busted in Vietnam.