Chinese police busted a Cambodia-based internet scam that used the brands of Macau casinos to target online gamblers in China. According to the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department, the fraud conned more than 1,000 victims in 11 Chinese cities out of 140 million yuan (US$21.5 million). Over 1,000 officers, including 150 dispatched to Cambodia, arrested 180 suspects across China and 38 more in the Cambodian Thai-border town of Poipet.
The scam used servers in Poipet, and the brands of Macau operators Grand Lisboa, Galaxy and Venetian Macao, to host fraudulent Chinese-language casino websites, said police. Some featured human dealers filmed via live video streams. Customers were approached via promotional text messages detailing a voice-over-internet call line for customer services. Once they had completed registration, fake representatives coaxed them into transferring money into private accounts to buy chips. The criminals then allowed them to make small wins, followed by quick and easy withdrawals, to induce them into making large deposits. Further bets were then rigged for the customer to lose everything, after which all communication ceased.
The arrests made in China spanned 18 provinces, according to Chinese media. Cambodian police worked with visiting Chinese officers to detain the suspects in Poipet, said mostly to be from the province of Fujian, and then fly them back to China. Also in Poipet in early March, a similar joint operation netted over 100 Chinese nationals running a non-gambling online scam that targeted victims in China. Details of the swindle were not given. But such schemes in the past have involved perpetrators calling Chinese citizens, claiming their bank accounts have been compromised, then advising them to transfer funds into supposedly safer accounts.
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