▲ PC screens set up inside the office of an illegal gambling site supply and operation ring
Police have rounded up a massive ring that created and supplied illegal gambling sites handling a record-breaking 23 trillion won in stakes, the largest of its kind in South Korea.
The Chungnam Provincial Police Agency announced today (October 19) that it has apprehended 77 individuals, including members of the organization, on charges of opening illegal gambling venues, and detained 21 of them.
According to police, the suspects are accused of creating and supplying 188 illegal gambling sites and selling game money while operating from domestic and overseas locations such as Vietnam and Cambodia between March 2023 and July of this year.
Among the 77 apprehended are 25 members of the supply organization, 33 members of the site operation organization, and 19 gamblers.
Of them, 18 supply organization members and three operation organization members were placed under arrest.
Police investigations revealed that the supply organization secured casino video feeds and game money through contracts with gaming companies operating legally overseas, and then provided them to illegal gambling site manufacturing businesses.
The manufacturing businesses used these resources to build gambling sites and supplied them to lower-level operators as part of their criminal enterprise.
Notably, the manufacturing business recruited developers from major domestic conglomerates to independently develop a proprietary gambling site production program.
Investigators found that using this program allowed them to build a single gambling site in just 10 minutes.
The manufacturing business supplied the sites created in this manner to lower-level operators and collected a monthly management fee of 3 million won per site.
The lower-level operation organizations employed adult PC room owners nationwide as recruiters to draw in gamblers, operating in a structure that generated profits through the sale of game money.
Police estimated that the total money wagered through these gambling sites reached approximately 23 trillion won, marking the largest scale ever recorded.
The criminal proceeds reaped by the two primary organizations were estimated at a total of 150 billion won, which includes about 120 billion won amassed by the organization supplying casino video feeds and about 30 billion won by the gambling site manufacturer.
To evade police tracking, the suspects frequently relocated their offices between Southeast Asia and South Korea while utilizing overseas servers and messaging applications.
Police initiated an investigation into the upper-tier supply organization after apprehending lower-level gambling site operators in November of last year.
They subsequently analyzed 795 financial accounts used in the crimes along with overseas messenger chat logs to sequentially apprehend those involved.
Police also applied charges of forming, joining, and engaging in a criminal organization to 24 members of the gambling site manufacturing business.
All operations of the 188 gambling sites created and supplied by the manufacturers were shut down, and access to 408 related internet addresses was blocked.
Pre-indictment preservation measures were completed for 9.6 billion won in criminal proceeds, and relevant data was forwarded to the National Tax Service.
Authorities are pursuing Interpol red notices and the forced repatriation of 12 suspects who have fled overseas.
Kim Tae-woo, head of the Cyber Investigation Unit at the Chungnam Provincial Police Agency, stated, "This investigation has dismantled the topmost supply chain, effectively withering large-scale gambling sites. We will continue to carry out persistent crackdown operations focusing on the topmost supply chain moving forward."
(Photo provided by Chungnam Provincial Police Agency, Yonhap News)
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