Nghe An couple are the "underlings" of a billion-dollar online gambling ring

The Criminal Police Department (Nghe An Police) has just successfully dismantled a gambling ring using the online game with prizes Gamvip. Although newly established in Nghe An, the amount of money gambled is very large, averaging from 100 to 300 million VND per day.

The operator of this Gamvip line is Pham Van Ninh (born in 1981, residing in My Lo street, Thien Ton town, Hoa Lu, Ninh Binh), living in Hanoi and Ninh Binh.

Gambling site disguised as Gamvip.com. Illustration photo

After realizing that the online game with rewards Gamvip was very popular, Ninh came up with the idea of ​​becoming an agent of this game to earn money to spend. In September 2019, Ninh was allowed by the house to become a level 2 agent with the condition that each month the total buying and selling transactions between the agent and gamblers must reach a minimum of 1,000,000,000 Gam, otherwise it will be revoked.

All of Ninh's Gam transactions with superior agents and gamblers are calculated and divided according to the ratio set by the house. To increase sales and ensure the maintenance of his agent account, in addition to buying and selling Gam to gamblers, Ninh also expanded his agent network, attracting other subjects to become his "henchmen". Among them are the couple Nguyen Trong Hoang (born in 1991) and his wife Mai Thi Thuy Linh (born in 1992), both residing in Duc Tho hamlet, Hung Loc commune, Vinh city, owners of Kinh Game Internet store in Hung Loc commune.

Subject Nguyen Trong Hoang. Photo: Anh Quan

Faced with this situation, the Criminal Police Department (Nghe An Police) established Project 224D to combat gambling crimes, mobilizing investigators and detectives from the High-Tech Crime Prevention Team to take action. Because they both run an Internet service business, Ninh and Hoang often exchange and chat about the online gaming industry.

After learning that Ninh was expanding his network, Hoang asked to become a collaborator. During his time as Ninh's "underlings", Hoang and Linh took turns trading with gamblers via phone and social networks. The Gam transactions were compiled by the couple and sent to Ninh to earn commissions. Due to the large number of players, to facilitate the transaction process, Hoang and Linh hired more people to directly trade with gamblers. On average, each day, the subjects conducted Gam transactions with amounts ranging from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of VND. With such a scale, the amount of money that the subjects organized gambling from its inception to now could be up to billions.

After collecting and proving the criminal acts of the subjects, the Investigation Committee issued a decision to urgently arrest the subjects for the act of organizing gambling. Regarding this line, the Investigation Police Agency of Nghe An Police also arrested the subjects participating in gambling, including Tran Xuan Dai.(born 1970) and Tran Huu An(born in 1973) both residing in Ha Huy Tap ward, Vinh city. At Tran Xuan Dai's private home, the police also seized 31.02 grams of synthetic drugs, and at Tran Huu An's private home, they seized 3.23 grams of drugs.

The amount of drugs seized at the private homes of Tran Xuan Dai and Tran Huu An. Photo: Anh Quan

Recently, a series of disguised gambling lines with a scale of thousands of billions of VND such as RikVip, ManVip... have been continuously eliminated. GamVip is a similar type of gambling. This is a game on mobile devices or web browsers with Internet connection. When participating in Gamvip, players are allowed to deposit money through phone scratch cards, game scratch cards or indirectly through agents. When participating in this game, gamblers gamble with the house or with other gamblers, winning or losing is calculated by Gam points.

If players win, they can exchange virtual money for phone cards or cash. According to the announcement of the Ministry of Public Security, these games are organized for Vietnamese people to participate in gambling with many games such as Tai Xiu, card games, Jackpot, Fish Shooting... Currently, the server system containing the database of this game is located abroad, using services to hide registration information, so verification and investigation work is facing many difficulties.

The reason is that the subjects organize and form intermediary channels to buy and sell virtual currency in the game. They connect with each other through closed groups, using communication methods via encrypted Internet applications such as Zalo, Viber, Telegram, etc. Due to the large profits, many subjects in localities across the country have accepted to be intermediary agents, paying for the purchase and sale of virtual currency between players and game publishers. These agents operate under the guise of public Internet service stores that sell game cards, online game card agents, pawnshops, loans, etc.

To proactively combat this type of crime, Nghe An Police has issued an official dispatch requesting the Police of units and localities to urgently deploy solutions. In the immediate future, it is necessary to focus on doing a good job of grasping the situation, especially the activities of public Internet service providers...