Three men were arrested after police busted an alleged illegal betting centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Hong Kong.- Police in Hong Kong have arrested three people accused of operating illegal betting on football matches<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to local media reports, those arrested, aged from 26 to 38, had taken football bets worth over HK$120m<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the raid at a hotel room in Hung Hom,\u00a0police seized HK$10m<\/strong><\/strong> in cash, betting records<\/strong>, computers, currency-counting machines, a list of phone numbers and bank documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to officers,\u00a0the operation used cash <\/strong>to make transactions difficult to trace. One of those arrested is suspected of being the mastermind of the syndicate while the other two were core members. The Standard Newspaper said they may face\u00a0up to seven years imprisonment or a HK$5m fine<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A survey has revealed that\u00a0three out of five players in Hong Kong have started to gamble more because they had more free time<\/strong>. More than two in five gambled more for entertainment and more than one in three did so because of reduced social activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Asian Racing Federation said illegal betting rose by 10 to 20 per cent during the pandemic<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and related countermeasures, the Hong Kong Jockey Club, the only operator authorised to run horse racing and football betting services, was forced to close all of its venues for periods, which could have prompted some players to choose illegal gambling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three men were arrested after police busted an alleged illegal betting centre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":20111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Hong Kong police have dismantled an illegal football betting syndicate, arresting three individuals and seizing over HK$10 million in cash and records related to HK$120 million in illicit wagers. This operation highlights the persistent challenge of illegal gambling, exacerbated by pandemic-related closures of the authorized operator, the Hong Kong Jockey Club, which may have driven player liquidity to unregulated channels.","focusai_entities":"Hong Kong Jockey Club, Asian Racing Federation, The Standard Newspaper","focusai_location":"Hong Kong, Hung Hom","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (0.9), operator_casino (0.9), payments_fraud_aml (1.0), investor_analyst (0.85), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Impact on HKJC Revenue?","query":"What is the estimated financial impact of this scale of illegal betting on the Hong Kong Jockey Club's GGR and NGR, particularly considering the reported increase during pandemic-related closures?"},{"label":"Regulatory Framework Efficacy?","query":"How will Hong Kong's regulatory bodies adapt their enforcement strategies and governance frameworks to counter sophisticated illegal betting syndicates, especially those leveraging untraceable cash transactions?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16338,439],"tags":[23911,23935],"class_list":["post-20110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-asia-news","category-legal-news","tag-gambling-regulation","tag-sportsbook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20117,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20110\/revisions\/20117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}