th<\/sup><\/a>, Macau\u2019s Judiciary Police (PJ) raided several apartments and offices in the territory. The operation ended with the arrest of four people on charges of running illegal online gambling services.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMainland Chinese police arrested one individual in the city of Zhuhai in May and tracked his associations (some of which turned out to be his family members) to Macau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The family has allegedly been running several online gambling businesses since 2016, including operations in illegal markets like the Philippines, Thailand, and China itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group\u2019s server farm was found, with the capacity to host 40 websites. Some of them were set up to look like they were hosted by legal land-based casino operators in Macau, including Galaxy Entertainment and Wynn Macau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGEG has no affiliations with any online gambling and betting sites, nor have we directly or indirectly authorized any websites and\/or related companies to carry out any form of online gambling and betting activities for or on behalf of us,\u201d Galaxy Entertainment said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This family operation is believed to have made over $12 million in illicit profits for the four members since 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
High-Value Transactions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The second illegal gambling sting by Macau authorities happened on December 30th<\/sup>. It makes the previous case\u2019s numbers look like peanuts in scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAuthorities discovered a criminal gang had installed card machines in jewellery and pawn shops designed to look like they were processing transactions from Mainland China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
High-value gamblers would use these stores, conveniently set up near casinos, to make huge purchases \u2013 and then refund them for cash value hours later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This allowed gamblers to dodge transaction taxes applied to any cash entering the special administrative region of Macau from China, as well as point of sale taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also allowed people to move money in and out of Macau\u2019s casinos without official oversight, potentially opening the door to money laundering and other shady practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Macau Police arrested 30 people across 30 raids at locations including private residences, offices, and the shops themselves. Official figures report that the criminal ring had processed over $1.78 billion in illegal transactions since it started, also in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chinese police also arrested 39 more suspects in what was a widespread enterprise. China\u2019s leadership has been cracking down massively on illegal online gambling recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As one of the only legal (land-based) gambling markets in the region, Macau\u2019s authorities clearly want to be seen as proactively helping their powerful neighbour\u2019s initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Probably partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, illegal gambling crimes are down around 80% on this time last year in the territory. However, this latest round of arrests and raids may bump that figure up as we head deeper into 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the latest updates on the hottest global gambling stories, keep checking Gambling Times<\/a>. Happy New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":804,"template":"","class_list":["post-803","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMacau Continues Illegal Gambling Crackdown, Dozens Arrested<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Macau authorities seem intent on making a statement as we go into 2021, with over 35 people arrested in December for illegal gambling-related crimes.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gamblingtimes.com\/in\/news\/macau-continues-illegal-gambling-crackdown\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Macau Continues Illegal Gambling Crackdown, Dozens Arrested\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Macau authorities seem intent on 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