Recently, some "employees" involved in the "7·05 Major Cross-border Online Casino Case" prosecuted by the Shiyan City Procuratorate in Hubei Province were sentenced in the first instance. The court sentenced the "employees" including Liu to fixed-term imprisonments ranging from two years to one year and four months, with suspended sentences ranging from three to two years, and imposed fines respectively.
The crime group's bosses and core members, who are shareholders, are still at large abroad and are currently being pursued. Nearly 300 agents and "employees" have been legally dealt with, and a huge cross-border online gambling crime group involving more than 1.6 billion yuan has been dismantled.
Developing a "pyramid" agent system
Creating a gambling "industry chain"
The case originated from a report received by the Shiyan City Public Security Bureau in July 2022, where the reporter claimed to have lost hundreds of thousands of yuan through the "28 Circle" gambling website. Preliminary investigations revealed that the website hosted more than ten gambling projects, featured real-time online operations, and deposit and withdrawal functions, involving a large number of people and a particularly large amount of money. The servers and registration of the website were located abroad, with registered members across the country, forming a complete online gambling industry chain, making evidence collection challenging.
By the end of 2022, the Shiyan City Procuratorate intervened legally, relying on the investigation supervision and cooperation mechanism, and established a special case team to conduct investigations. The team faced challenges such as difficulty in physical evidence collection, identification of persons, determination of gambling funds, workload, and coordination, and conducted multiple in-depth case discussions, guiding investigators in evidence collection and improving evidence step by step.
During the intervention, the Shiyan City Procuratorate learned that the reporter's direct agent had team agents above them, with up to five levels of agents, forming a "pyramid" structure. The public security authorities extracted electronic data and transaction records to systematically outline the criminal facts of more than 200 agents covering 25 provinces and cities nationwide. These agents not only directly participated in online gambling for illegal profits but also promoted gambling links through social software to attract gamblers and develop lower-level agents, thereby expanding the criminal network. Some agents earned commissions over one million yuan by "recruiting people," forming a vicious cycle of "gamblers becoming agents, and agents becoming bookmakers."
Upon review, these agents served as agents for cross-border online gambling software, developing players, members, and subordinates, and profiting from commissions, with profits ranging from tens of thousands to over three million yuan, under severe circumstances, suspected of operating a gambling house.
From July 25, 2023, to the present, the procuratorial authorities have successively prosecuted 245 agents; from August 29, 2023, to the present, the court has legally sentenced 230 people and is currently trying the remaining 15 agents.
Guiding investigations to clarify the entire crime chain
Through thorough review, the "employees'" entry and exit records, financial flows, and electronic data were examined, revealing the cross-border online gambling group—"77 Group." This group's organizational structure included customer service, resources, finance, technology, and administrative departments, forming a complete crime chain from website development and financial settlement to personnel management. The customer service team was responsible for answering gamblers' questions and offering bonus money; the resource team was responsible for finding payment channels and testing bank cards; the finance team was responsible for tallying platform deposits and withdrawals; the technology team was responsible for developing website peripherals, lottery networking systems, and chat software; the administrative department was responsible for recruitment and logistics support.
Based on these findings, the Shiyan City Procuratorate guided the public security authorities to further investigate, expanding the scope of the crackdown from agents to the five departments' "employees" of the crime group, focusing on collecting and securing evidence from the "employees'" entry and exit records, passports, bank transactions, Alipay records, backend electronic data, witness testimonies, and identification records.
Upon review, the aforementioned "employees," knowing that the "77 Group" was using the cross-border gambling platform to operate a gambling house, still provided services such as software development, technical support, financial settlement, and promotional consulting, suspected of operating a gambling house.
In December 2024 and April 2025, the procuratorial authorities prosecuted 46 "employees" in batches, and the court sentenced "employees" including Liu mentioned at the beginning of this article for operating a gambling house, with the remaining 41 "employees" still under trial.
Combining leniency and strictness in precise prosecution
Facing nearly 300 agents and "employees," thousands of case files, and thousands of audio-visual materials, and within the limited legal review period, overcoming challenges such as numerous interrogations and difficulty in summoning from other regions, the case team adopted methods such as centralized review of investigation files, verification of evidence, and determination of personnel status to advance case handling. The Shiyan City Procuratorate held several joint meetings of prosecutors, constructing a "principal-subordinate responsibility matrix" to categorize the involved personnel into core management, technical backbone, ordinary employees, and agents, precisely determining criminal responsibility gradients.
Considering that all suspects in the case reached the "serious circumstances" standard, to reflect the principle of matching crime, responsibility, and punishment, the Shiyan City Procuratorate strictly controlled the application of the law. For suspects with mitigating circumstances such as being an accessory, surrendering, and returning illicit gains, after assessing social dangerousness, they legally proposed suspended sentence suggestions. Through legal reasoning, the procuratorate facilitated the prosecution of nearly 300 agents and "employees," all of whom pleaded guilty and returned illicit gains totaling over 96.32 million yuan, with 47.08 million yuan in gambling funds frozen and turned over.
