Busting an international gambling ring with hundreds of thousands of billions of dong

The leader of the gambling ring is Tran Tuan Thanh (born 1988), residing in Cau Giay district, Hanoi city, and his accomplices organized gambling andgambleon the Game B29.win page. Notably, Thanh is the Director of ITBTZ Company, specializing in the field of communications. On Facebook, Thanh is famous for being a rich young master, who drives luxury supercars, lives in mansions, drives cars...

Director of media company Tran Tuan Thanh with a rich, royal life.

In addition, this gambling line has millions of gamblers participating. The ring leaders attract gamblers by advertising and marketing on the internet through websites, clips, and Facebook of famous people to hire for advertising.

The Criminal Police Department has prosecuted and detained 12 defendants for "organizing gambling", all in Hanoi, including: Tran Tuan Thanh (born 1988), Bui Dinh Thang (born 1993), Bui Hong Thanh Minh (born 1989), all residing in Cau Giay district; Le Duc Do (born 1990), Nguyen Van Hieu (born 1987), all residing in Thanh Xuan district; Nguyen Tuan Dung (born 1985); To Quang Nguyen (born 1994), all residing in Ba Dinh district; Dinh Van Hieu (born 1992), Dinh Cong Hung (born 1990), all residing in Hoang Mai district; Lai Thi Quynh Anh (born 1993), residing in Ba Dinh district; Trieu Huy Dung (born 1993), residing in Thanh Tri district; Pham Duy Duc (born 1992), residing in Bac Tu Liem district.

On Facebook, Thanh often brags about going abroad and shopping in big downtown areas.

Prosecuted 3 defendants for "gambling" including: Dinh Hoang Son (born 1996), Ha Van Minh (born 1989), both residing in Bac Tu Liem district; Dao The Anh (born 1984), residing in Long Bien district. Of which, Son and Minh were released on bail and prohibited from leaving their place of residence.

According to documents from the Ministry of Public Security's Investigation Police Department, around 2016, through social relationships, Tran Tuan Thanh became acquainted with Doan Tran Viet (the subject being investigated) and Nguyen Van Hieu. Thanh and Hieu met and discussed the field of information technology and telecommunications networks to combine business. At this time, Thanh was working in the field of communications, so he asked Hieu to do technical programming (freelance). Around August 2019, Viet called Thanh and said he needed to find someone good at programming to build games on the internet, so he asked Thanh to find someone to help. Around November 2019, Thanh made an appointment to meet Doan Tran Viet and Hieu to discuss building an online game site. At work, Hieu would discuss with Thanh, and Viet would pay Hieu and the technical team monthly (because Viet did not know about technical programming).

Defendant Dinh Van Hieu and defendant Nguyen Van Hieu.

To build the game site, Hieu directly recruited the defendants including: Dinh Cong Hung; Lai Thi Quynh Anh; Dinh Van Hieu; Bui Dinh Thang; Le Duc Do to work at the office; and Thanh introduced the defendants including: Bui Hong Thanh Minh; Nguyen Tuan Dung; To Quang Nguyen; Trieu Huy Dung to work in the technical team. Hieu was the one who went online to download the game code and game platform to work with the technical team to build and complete the small games. During the period from November 2019 to the end of March 2020, Hieu and the technical team completed the game, put it on the Internet to operate under the name B29.win and launched the game B29.win.

In May 2020, through Viet's previous introduction, Thanh met a person named Peter (name unknown) to discuss running ads for B29.win (from August 2020 to May 2021). Thanh's job is to directly choose the website, the location to place ads on the website; negotiate prices with website owners and payment information to send to a person named Peter to make payments to website owners and report back to Thanh so that Thanh can report back to website owners and place ads on the websites. Thanh effectively monitors the B29.win Game, the website owners Thanh has contacted such as thuckhuya.net, thedo.tv, thiendia.com, gos.com... to run ads for B29.win. Advertising payments to website owners are made every 3 months, paid by bank transfer or bitcoin. During the process of advertising for the game B29.win, Thanh benefited 800 million VND.

Regarding the defendant Bui Hong Thanh Minh, who manages the representative bank accounts of the game B29.win to receive money to buy game points from gamblers (called the first layer of accounts), Minh transfers 2 to 3 times a day from the first layer representative account to other bank accounts (the second layer), then Minh continues to transfer money from the second layer account to the bank accounts used to pay the winnings and losses to gamblers (the third layer). Minh is the person assigned to manage and use the phone to install the banking application and the phone to receive the OTP code to transfer money to the account layers. During the process of participating in the gambling organization on the game B29.win, the defendants Hieu, Minh and the group of technical staff benefited from 15 million VND to 80 million VND/month.

In this gambling ring, the only woman is Lai Thi Quynh Anh. Around July 2019, Quynh Anh was asked by Hieu to use an account provided by the technical team to test games such as Slots, Sic Bo, Bau Cua, Porke... to test and check whether the games work normally or not. If there are errors, Quynh Anh will report back to the technical department to fix them before putting the game into operation. This defendant's job is to check the operating system and check for system errors for each game. Every month, Quynh Anh is paid from 12 to 13 million VND by Hieu. During the process of checking the B29.win Game, Quynh Anh benefited about 200 million VND. Also according to the Criminal Police Department, on the online gambling game B29.win, there are many different forms of gambling (Slot) such as: Sic Bo, fish shooting, card games, dice, Porke, lottery...

During the investigation, this gambling ring had millions of gambling accounts, 600 bank accounts to receive money for gambling; 40 gambling agents both domestically and abroad such as Korea, Japan, Cambodia... To avoid being monitored by the police, this group placed servers abroad but all activities were run in Vietnam, renting a secret office with the trick of impersonating a media company...

According to investigators, the way to gamble on the game B29.win is very sophisticated. After successfully registering a membership account, gamblers will deposit money into their account through the following methods: Phone card top-up, bank account top-up, momo wallet top-up. After that, customers will receive points corresponding to the amount of money deposited into their membership account and choose other forms of gambling to participate in betting. If they win, they can convert points into money and withdraw money through their bank account.

As a result of searching the offices and private homes of the suspects, the police seized over 28 billion VND and 320,000 USD. The total amount of money involved in gambling is about 35 billion VND. However, the police identified this gambling and gambling organization line with hundreds of thousands of billions of VND; 3 cars (Porsche, Landrover, Mercedes), various types of phones, a large number of desktop computers, laptops, bank cards and technical equipment serving the activities of organizing gambling and gambling.