Police bust illegal gambling ring that hired minors to attract peers

Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency said Tuesday it had uncovered a cybercrime ring accused of operating an illegal gambling website and attracting minors into gambling.

Police apprehended 35 suspects, including the ringleader in his 40s, on suspicion of operating illegal gambling websites for five years, from December 2018 to March this year. Out of the 35 suspects, 10 had been arrested as of Tuesday.

According to police officials, the criminal ring operated gambling websites out of Dubai and Bali, where international cooperation is poor and money laundering is easy to do. The criminal ring also had an organization based in South Korea, to run advertisements, manage and recruit members and manage its finances and overall operations.

During police investigations, the suspects confessed that they earned a large amount of their profits by illegally broadcasting sports events and collecting money from those betting on the outcomes of the matches.

The suspects allegedly lured in minors -- primarily middle school teenagers who ran out of money while gambling -- to use them to attract peers to their gambling websites. They reportedly promised these teenagers a portion of the money deposited into the crime ring by the users they recruited.

The teenagers operated chatrooms advertising the gambling websites and their services on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app.

During police investigations, it was found that three underage participants attracted up to 500 users from August to October 2023, and earned up to 2 million won in profit per person.

Among the 25 suspects who were not yet arrested, police officials confirmed that 12 were minors, including four middle schoolers and eight high schoolers.

As of March, police found that the suspects operated a total of five gambling websites, with one based in Korea and four based overseas. In total, the websites had around 15,000 users and handled more than 500 billion won ($381 million) in transactions.

Currently, the police have applied to preserve the 8.3 billion won that it had secured so far before prosecution to prevent the suspects from transferring, selling or using their profits before being brought to trial.

The police added that other than the 35 apprehended suspects, nine others who are based overseas are being sought in cooperation with Interpol.