The Hanoi police in Vietnam announced that after an in-depth investigation, they have successfully dismantled a gang that gambled through live streaming of the "League of Legends" game on YouTube. The gang attracted viewers to participate in gambling through live streaming of the game, involving an amount of up to 700 billion Vietnamese dong.
In November 2018, the gang leader Đặng Mạnh Cường created a gaming channel on YouTube, profiting from advertisements and viewer donations. As the number of viewers increased, Cường began organizing live gambling events.
In May 2024, Cường conspired with Trần Đức Toàn and Nguyễn Duy Thiện to organize gambling during the live streams, where viewers could participate in betting through provided links.
Cường streamed twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, with viewers participating in the gambling via bank transfers. Nguyễn Duy Thiện was responsible for tallying the betting information and calculating the winners at the end of the games, paying out the winnings via bank transfer while taking a 15% cut of the winners' prize money.
To conceal the illegal proceeds, Cường and other gang members collaborated with several accomplices, using multiple bank accounts to receive and transfer the gambling funds.
Preliminary investigations show that since May 14, 2024, the gang conducted about 65,000 transactions involving approximately 1,000 participants, with the amount involved reaching about 700 billion Vietnamese dong.
During the operation, the police seized 5 computers, 11 smartphones, and other related documents. According to the 2015 amendment to the criminal law, the actions of the gang members constitute the crime of gambling.
