Chinatown Vegas com
China Smashes Online Betting Ring
Amid the current hype and flutter on the World Cup, an online betting ring which is worth an estimated 1 billion yuan (US $125 million) was decisively smashed by Chinese authorities recently in the southern mainland province of Sichuan.
World Cup fever is currently extremely hot in China despite the country's absence in the event. In fact, observers have said that it was the thriving World Cup fever that the betting ring was getting loads of money from.
A company in Hong Kong had reportedly designed a website for the online betting game and it was being run in disguise in Sichuan.
Police have already detained more than 20 suspects belonging to the syndicate which had reportedly received bets totaling over 1 billion yuan from July 2005 only.
An estimated 2,000 individuals across China had signed up to place their bets online.
Gambling has long been illegal in mainland China, ever since the Communists took over in 1949. Even after government's strong crackdown on gambling, particularly illicit soccer betting, a good number of online gambling sites were still accessible to the Chinese.
These online gambling sites have been able to get through the country's strict Internet censors reaching a total of 30,000 or more sites.