{"id":777027059,"date":"2025-05-29T09:57:06","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T12:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=777027059"},"modified":"2026-04-21T22:29:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T01:29:42","slug":"macau-sees-rise-in-gaming-related-crime-in-q1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/macau-sees-rise-in-gaming-related-crime-in-q1","title":{"rendered":"Macau sees rise in gaming-related crime in Q1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The rise was partly attributed to new legislation, which criminalises unlicensed money exchange for gambling purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Macau.- The Judiciary Police (PJ)<\/strong> in Macau has reported that\u00a0gaming-related crimes rose by 61.5 per cent\u00a0year-on-year to\u00a0567 in the first quarter of the year. The rise was partly attributed to the new legislation criminalising illicit money exchange<\/a>, which entered into force in October. The PJ said there were\u00a0132 cases of illegal currency exchange for gambling, accounting for over 60 per cent of the year-on-year increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police said they solved 157 cases relating to money exchange, which involved 251 arrests. The number of arrests was actually down by 80.6 per cent from 1,292 people in the same period in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
The Secretary for Security, Mr Wong Sio Chak, chairs a press briefing on crime figures and enforcement statistics recorded in the first quarter of 2025. Photo:
Government Information Bureau (GCS).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The PJ also recorded 152 fraud cases, up 100 per cent in year-on-year terms. Fraud accounted for 26.8 per cent of cases recorded in the first quarter. Other offences included usury (51), theft (46) and violations of casino exclusion orders (21). In total, the PJ initiated 3,289 criminal investigations, a decrease of 260 compared to the same period in 2024. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

See also: <\/strong>Macau police open upgraded anti-fraud centre<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rise was partly attributed to new legislation, which criminalises unlicensed money exchange for gambling purposes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":26498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Macau's Judiciary Police reported a 61.5% year-on-year increase in gaming-related crimes to 567 cases in Q1, primarily driven by 132 cases of illegal currency exchange following new legislation. Fraud cases also doubled to 152, contributing significantly to the overall rise in illicit activities within the gaming sector. Despite the increase in cases, arrests for money exchange were down 80.6% compared to the same period in 2024.","focusai_entities":"Judiciary Police (PJ), Mr Wong Sio Chak, Government Information Bureau (GCS)","focusai_location":"Macau","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (0.9), payments_fraud_aml (1.0), investor_analyst (0.8), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Impact of New Legislation","query":"What specific enforcement challenges have emerged from the new legislation criminalizing illicit money exchange, given the significant increase in reported cases but a substantial decrease in arrests?"},{"label":"Operational Risk Mitigation","query":"How are Macau's licensed gaming operators adapting their internal controls and security protocols to mitigate the heightened risks associated with increased fraud and illegal currency exchange activities?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16338,439],"tags":[29,229,225],"class_list":["post-777027059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-asia-news","category-legal-news","tag-casino","tag-gambling","tag-legislation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777027059","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=777027059"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777027059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777027085,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777027059\/revisions\/777027085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777027059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777027059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777027059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}