The suspect set up 13 online gambling platforms overseas, recruited over a hundred people for large-scale operations, and earned more than 3.8 billion yuan in gambling funds. All backend data was lost before the arrest, and the prosecutorial authorities legally intervened to guide the investigation, unraveling the evidence for conviction, accurately identifying illegal gains, and recovering them.
Recently, after the prosecution by the People's Procuratorate of Donggang District, Rizhao City, Shandong Province, all 28 defendants involved in the case have been convicted.
The Gambling Trick Behind "Guaranteed to Win"
In early 2014, Liu and friends from his village discussed going to Southeast Asia to engage in the gambling industry, jointly investing 2 million yuan to "make a big move".
Liu subsequently went to Malaysia and Cambodia to rent venues, set up gambling game platforms, and arranged promotion teams to advertise on pornographic websites, QQ groups, etc., using "insider information, guaranteed to win" to attract gamblers to recharge and bet. Meanwhile, Liu manipulated the odds on the website backend, allowing gamblers to "make a small profit" or launching activities like recharge cashback, member bonuses, and birthday specials to induce gamblers to increase their investment. Withdrawal thresholds were set, requiring gamblers to reach a certain amount of gambling funds before they could withdraw, thus prolonging their gambling time.From the end of 2016 to May 2021, Liu and others moved the gambling platforms to the Philippines, rented licenses, and set up 13 online gambling platforms, adopting a corporate operation model with various functional departments, recruiting relatives and friends as management, and hiring over a hundred staff for daily maintenance.
By the time of the incident, nearly a million gamblers had been recorded on Liu's platforms. To evade domestic investigations, they purchased numerous bank cards for collecting and transferring gambling funds, and used third-party payment platforms and underground banks to transfer illegal gains.
Guided Investigation "Portraits" the Criminal Group
In May 2023, relying on the investigation supervision and cooperation mechanism, the Donggang District Procuratorate established a special team and legally intervened in the case.
"The gambling websites built by the suspects had all been shut down before the incident, and all backend data was lost; the technical companies that built the gambling websites were all overseas, making evidence collection very difficult. Moreover, the suspects all used codenames, and some fugitives were still abroad, posing significant challenges to the investigation," recalled Ji Yan, the prosecutor handling the case.
To collaboratively solve the investigation difficulties, prosecutorial officers stationed at the case site, guiding investigators to focus on underground banks and casino code bills as breakthrough points, gradually digging deeper into the evidence, using Liu's family relationship map to confirm the identities of fugitives, creating mind maps, and clarifying the group's framework; based on the direction of capital flows, the correspondence of capital flow timing and space, and different profit methods from dividends or compensation, distinguishing between the criminal group's illegal gains and individual illegal gains.
Faced with conclusive evidence, Liu confessed to the crimes and actively persuaded other suspects to surrender and seek merit. As the suspects were successively apprehended, the entire criminal group's structure and operation mode led by Liu became clearer. However, without any gambling website backend data, the specific determination of gambling funds and illegal gains remained an obstacle.
Solving the Challenge of Determining the Amount Involved
After joint research with investigators, the prosecutor sorted through over ten thousand pages of evidence materials, identifying 1.3 million abnormal transactions, and subsequently determined 750 class-one cards (i.e., full-function accounts with no transaction limits, suitable for cross-border remittances and large capital flows). Then, the prosecutor and investigators conducted online data forensics and financial penetration, analyzing the transactions of the aforementioned bank cards one by one, and using the underground bank payment settlement gray industry chain as an entry point to trace back the settlement paths of funds, screening large and abnormal transactions of the criminal group's related personnel and relatives' payment settlement accounts, clarifying the gambling payment settlement accounts and the rules for determining gambling fund amounts.
In conjunction with reports issued by the audit department, the prosecutorial authorities held multiple joint meetings with the police, courts, and audit departments to clarify the direction of each transaction and the nature of the funds, ultimately combining evidence to legally determine the amount of gambling funds involved at over 3.8 billion yuan. Among them, the main culprit Liu illegally profited over 160 million yuan. After legal explanations, Liu returned all illegal gains, and all 28 suspects pleaded guilty and accepted punishment.
Upon review, Liu and others used the internet to open casinos, severely disrupting social order, and were suspected of operating gambling houses and concealing or disguising criminal proceeds. In July 2023, the Donggang District Procuratorate legally prosecuted Liu and the other 28 suspects.
Recently, after the trial by the Donggang District Court, the main culprit Liu was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for operating a gambling house, and fined 4.2 million yuan; for operating a gambling house and concealing or disguising criminal proceeds, the other 27 defendants were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment and fined between 3,000 yuan and 1.5 million yuan respectively. The judgment has now taken effect.
