Source: Xinhua.
Criminal groups are using the internet to run black and grey industries, opening casinos under the cover of chess and card games to seize huge profits and even threaten economic security.
Curbing cross-border gambling, especially cross-border online gambling, requires coordinated action by internet service providers, operators, third-party payment institutions and all other parties concerned.
“Running casinos” has drawn wide attention recently. According to the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, new forms of the crime are rising fast: in the first three quarters of this year, prosecutors nationwide indicted 13,329 people for crimes involving foreign or cross-border factors, of whom 1,376 were charged with running casinos, 10.32 percent and second only to illegal border crossing. Such crimes are varied, novel in method and well hidden.
Miao Shengming, head of the First Procuratorial Department of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, said these cases involve many cross-border factors: criminals lure Chinese citizens to gamble through casinos in neighbouring countries and regions, and some bettors wager enormous sums, causing large outflows of funds.
The new-style casinos are highly deceptive and hidden, with long criminal chains, many participants and clear syndication. Some gambling websites seized earlier had hundreds of thousands of registered members and reached nearly every province.
“Some dress up online chess and card software as entertainment or rebate schemes and trick people into gambling step by step,” said Peng Xinlin, deputy secretary-general of the China Criminal Law Research Association and a researcher at Beijing Normal University. Cross-border gambling syndicates typically form pyramid structures, creating a full online gambling industry chain.
“Running a casino online breaks the limits of time, space and manpower and cuts costs, so the profits are enormous,” said Liu Xiaofeng, director of Beijing Huaxiang Law Firm. Criminals use specialised division of labour and deliberately split the gambling chain, making the crime hard to detect and hard to prove. Peng added that compared with domestic, offline gambling, cross-border online gambling is increasingly hidden, smart and deceptive.
Common tactics include luring players with high bonuses or high win rates, even paying travel and hotel costs to take them abroad; rigging backends to alter odds, winning big and paying out little; and setting withdrawal thresholds so that players must reach a certain amount, then play for a certain time or number of rounds before cashing out, and usually lose everything before qualifying.
The Supreme People’s Procuratorate has ordered prosecutors handling major cross-border, syndicated and multi-region cases to strengthen coordination and crack down strictly in accordance with the law. Peng Xinlin argued that given the serious social harm and amounts involved, criminal law provisions on gambling and running casinos should be amended to increase penalties, and that judicial interpretations and guiding cases should unify the standards for applying the law.
Beyond criminal sanctions, curbing cross-border gambling calls for comprehensive governance involving internet service providers, telecom operators and third-party payment institutions, plus public legal education so that people consciously refuse to gamble abroad or online.
For ordinary people, how do you tell entertainment from gambling? “Simply put: do not be blinded by false advertising, and do not believe you can earn money while being entertained,” said Zhang Xiaojin, deputy head of the First Procuratorial Department. Download chess and card games only from official channels. Gambling software has one telltale feature: a cash-withdrawal function. If an app or game lets you withdraw cash or win valuables, do not use it, and report it to the police promptly.
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