The suspect committed the crime of setting up 13 online gambling platforms overseas, recruiting over a hundred people for scaled operations, and earning more than 3.8 billion yuan in gambling funds. All backend data was destroyed before the arrest, and the procuratorial authority legally intervened to guide the investigation, unraveling the evidence for conviction, and accurately identifying and recovering the illegal gains.
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 then rented venues in Malaysia and Cambodia to set up gambling platforms and arranged promotion teams to advertise on pornographic websites, QQ groups, etc., attracting gamblers to deposit and bet with "insider information, guaranteed to win". At the same time, Liu manipulated the odds on the website backend, allowing gamblers to "make a small profit" or launching activities like cashback on deposits, 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, the number of gamblers on Liu's platforms had nearly reached one million. To evade domestic investigations, Liu and others purchased a large number of 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 to legally intervene in the case.
"The gambling websites set up by the suspects had all been shut down before the incident, and all backend data was lost; the technical companies that set up 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 in charge of the case.
To collaboratively solve the investigation difficulties, the procuratorial police stationed at the case site, and the prosecutor guided the investigators to use underground banks and casino code bills as breakthrough points, gradually digging deeper into the evidence, using Liu's family relationship map to confirm the specific identities of the fugitives, creating mind maps, and clarifying the group's framework; based on the direction of capital flow, the corresponding time and space of capital transfer, and different profit methods such as dividends or compensation, distinguishing between the criminal group's illegal gains and individual illegal gains.
With conclusive evidence, Liu confessed to the crimes and actively persuaded other suspects to surrender and strive for merit. As the suspects were successively apprehended, the entire criminal group's structure and operation mode led by Liu became clearer. However, without any backend data from the gambling websites, the specific determination of the gambling funds and illegal gains remained a hurdle for the case handlers.
Solving the challenge of determining the amount involved in the case
After joint research with the investigators, the prosecutor combed through over 10,000 pages of evidence materials, identifying 1.3 million abnormal transactions, and subsequently determined the involvement of 750 class-one cards (i.e., full-function accounts with no transaction limits, suitable for cross-border remittances and large fund transfers). Subsequently, the prosecutor and investigators conducted online data forensics and fund penetration analysis, 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 fund settlement paths, 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 the audit department's report, the procuratorial authority held several joint meetings with the public security, court, and audit departments to clarify the direction of each transaction and the nature of the funds, and finally, combined with the evidence, legally determined the amount of gambling funds involved to be over 3.8 billion yuan. Among them, the main culprit Liu illegally gained more than 160 million yuan. After legal explanations and reasoning, 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 with serious circumstances, disrupting social order, and were suspected of the crime of opening casinos, concealing, and disguising the proceeds of crime. 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 the crime of opening a casino, and fined 4.2 million yuan; for the crime of opening a casino, concealing, and disguising the proceeds of crime, 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.
