Breaking the black chain of cross-border online gambling (rule of law headlines)
Core reading
Since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Public Security, together with the Cyberspace Administration of China and the People's Bank of China, has carried out in-depth crackdowns on cross-border gambling, continued to strengthen crackdowns on the “funding chain”, “technical chain” and “personnel chain”, and achieved important initial results.
As of the end of September this year, public security organs across the country have established more than 8,800 cross-border gambling cases, arrested more than 60,000 suspects, eliminated more than 1,700 gambling platforms, more than 730 illegal technical teams, and more than 820 gambling promotion platforms. , Destroyed more than 1,400 illegal payment platforms and underground banks, found that the funds involved in the case exceeded trillions of yuan, and detained and frozen a large number of funds involved in the case.
Compared with general gambling crimes, what are the characteristics of cross-border online gambling crimes?
How to realize illegal profit?
How is its black crime chain constructed and operated?
What other harms are derived from this criminal form?
A few days ago, the reporter conducted interviews with several typical cross-border online gambling cases detected by the Guangdong police to reveal the black chain of cross-border online gambling crimes.
Layers of routines
The platform is stable without losing money
Gambler ten bets ten loses
How do online gambling platforms make illegal profits?
How can gamblers' money be illegally grabbed?
Different from offline physical gambling, the most intuitive thing about online gambling is to give people the illusion of "virtual".
The first is false popularity.
"Novice gamblers usually find that there are many people playing in the online gambling platform after logging into the online gambling platform. This kind of atmosphere tends to make them psychologically fall into collective unconsciousness, create a false sense of security that the law does not blame the public, and cause them to lose themselves. , Relax your vigilance, but most of the gambling companies are “robots”.” According to the police handling the case, in addition, in order to evade supervision and crackdowns, and more conveniently “pump water” and even implement fraud, online gambling uses online virtual currency as Gambling medium.
For example, in an extremely large cross-border online gambling case cracked by the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau, every time a gambler participated in a gambling, the platform, as the banker, would automatically deduct 10 "diamonds" (equivalent to RMB 1) as the gambling platform "Pumping" and "diamonds" are obtained through third-party payment or by finding "agents" (people who solicit and serve gamblers) to recharge with RMB.
"The intervention of virtual currency makes it easy for gamblers to lose the concept of capital control when they conduct online gambling, because their bets are often a series of numbers or some virtual objects. This kind of virtual feeling makes gamblers not feel so distressed even if they lose and lose again. , Thus getting deeper and deeper.” According to the police handling the case, one of the ways that online gambling platforms realize illegal profit-making is to manipulate the results of gambling in the background.
When gamblers first started gambling, they would generally let them win a little bit first. When the gamblers taste the "sweetness" and increase their investment, the criminal gang will use artificial operations in the background, change the algorithm, modify the betting results, etc. Gambling turned into fraud.
Under normal circumstances, in the process of gambling between the gambler and the banker, the win rates of both parties will continue to tend to be equal.
Even if the banker does not perform background operations, the gambler will eventually tie with the banker, but because of the uninterrupted "pumping" mechanism, the gambler's money will be constantly drained by the banker.
This is one of the reasons why the dealer makes a steady profit but does not lose, and the gambler loses ten bets.
Of course, in order to “deep bundling” the gamblers, the platform often sets some rules to give the gamblers some rebates, making it difficult for the gamblers to exit easily.
When gamblers become more and more addicted to gambling, the more they lose, the more eager they will be to recoup their costs. As a result, they will bet more and more deeply.
If a gambler wins money in an online casino and is ready to close the hand in time and apply for cash withdrawal, can he get his wish?
"For withdrawal applications, online gambling platforms will use delaying methods." The police handling the case explained that the platform often displays "website maintenance", "withdrawal channel upgrade" and other "technical" reasons and cannot withdraw cash. At this time, gamblers will often hold back. I can't help but continue the urge to gamble until I slowly lose out what I have previously "earned".
If you repeatedly apply for withdrawals, especially large withdrawals, the result is usually that the account is blocked and the website cannot be logged in. At this time, the criminals have already collected the money and fled away.
Black chain
The criminal organization is tight
Fine division of labor
387 criminal suspects were involved, the funds involved in the case were 38 billion yuan, and the funds and assets that were frozen and seized amounted to more than 100 million yuan.
This is the data related to the "July 12" extraordinarily large cross-border online gambling case cracked by Guangdong Zhanjiang police in May this year.
In June this year, the Dongguan police in Guangdong detected a huge cross-border online gambling case, with a betting turnover of 3 billion yuan and freezing of more than 100 million yuan of funds involved.
In an extremely large cross-border online gambling case uncovered by the Guangzhou police in August this year, a total of 273 persons were arrested and more than 38 million yuan in funds were seized.
The reporter's investigation found that many online gambling cases involved a huge amount of money and a large number of people involved, which exposed the general commonality of the black chain of online gambling crimes-strict criminal organization and refined division of labor and cooperation.
In general, the black chain of online gambling crime generally has four major components.
The first is the promoter, who is at the core of the entire black chain, and is responsible for providing start-up funds, organizing relevant personnel, and building the overall structure of the team; the second is the platform production team, which is mainly responsible for the construction of online gambling platforms and network access Operation, maintenance and other technical aspects; the third is the platform promotion team, responsible for promoting the platform, developing "agents", and soliciting gamblers; the fourth is the payment settlement team, which builds and operates some illegal payment platforms, underground money houses, etc. , Provide illegal payment and settlement, money laundering and other services for online gambling black products.
These teams have a fine division of labor and collaboration with each other, and their business contacts are basically carried out through virtual identities on the Internet, jointly building a strict online gambling crime chain.
For example, in the huge cross-border online gambling case cracked by the Guangzhou police, the criminal gang was a full-chain criminal gang integrating software development, platform operation and maintenance, network promotion, payment and settlement, and gambling agent membership.
The group is subdivided into management department (including shareholders), technical department, and customer service department.
The management department is mainly responsible for daily management. Members include shareholders, finance, and personnel. Shareholders participate in decision-making and financial management. Special personnel are designated to be responsible for accounting work. There is also a personnel management commissioner. The technical department is mainly responsible for the development, update, front-end design, and back-end of gambling software Operations and maintenance work, while also developing instant messaging software with payment functions and online shopping platforms; the customer service department is mainly responsible for promotion, development and recruitment of "agents" to attract gamblers to participate in gambling on the platform.
In addition, the group also provides supporting gambling settlement services, and the "agent" can provide gamblers with gambling funds recovery services to achieve the effective operation of the gambling platform.
The reporter found that due to the increasing supervision and crackdown on online gambling in recent years, online gambling crimes are increasingly showing a "cross-border" trend-criminal groups make extensive use of overseas website development platforms, set up overseas servers, and organize personnel to operate remotely abroad. Use self-developed communication software to exchange details of crimes to avoid police investigations.
For example, in the "7.12" case cracked by the Zhanjiang police, the initiator of the gang was in China, and the production team of the network communication remote command platform was operated overseas, and multi-level "agents" were recruited in China to attract a large number of gamblers. Participate in gambling.
Derivative hazards
Accelerate black production
Construct a payment tunnel
As a black industry chain of illegal crimes, online gambling is accompanied by a large amount of stolen money.
These stolen funds have the need to seek "safe and convenient" funding channels, and this has given birth to the black production of running sub-divided funds, and the establishment of payment channels for the stolen funds.
What is running score?
How does running sub-black production work?
"In the past, the payment method of gambling platforms was to transfer money directly to the other party's account through the payment channel, just like a bus directly pulling a car of passengers to the destination." The police handling the case said that the state now strictly supervises and requires payment. The industry must not directly or in a disguised form provide services for illegal transactions such as gambling and pornography. This is like the suspension of a bus and passengers can only take taxis one by one.
The running of black production is like a taxi system for these funds.
For example, the policeman handling the case, suppose a gambler wants to recharge 100,000 yuan to a gambling website. In the past, he transferred it directly through the payment platform. Now he needs to find 10 people or more and use the payment QR code rented by others. Converged in batches on various running sub-platforms, and finally transferred from the running sub-platform to the gambling platform. The gambling platform will transfer the gambling funds to multiple personal bank accounts controlled by underground banks. The stolen money is transferred through multi-layer bank accounts. After the transfer, they were collected into a small number of bank accounts, and the underground money houses eventually completed the "whitewashing" through illegal exchange of foreign currencies.
In this process, individuals, running sub-platforms, and underground banks who provide payment for QR codes will draw a certain percentage of commissions.
In a cross-border online gambling case detected by the Huizhou police, the police handling the case also discovered a new form of scoring mode.
"This case is the first case in the country where USDT (Chinese name TEDA Coin) was used to operate a scoring platform." The police handling the case said that the main mode of operation of the scoring platform in this case was: scoring personnel went to USDT to run scores. The platform buys USDT as a margin to participate in running points and grab orders.
The runners provide the recharge code for purchasing USDT coins to the runner platform. The runner platform gathers various rechargeable USDT recharge codes, integrates them into a USDT recharge code pool, and provides the recharge interface to the gambling platform.
Gamblers need to scan the USDT recharge code to recharge their gambling funds, that is, use RMB to purchase USDT from the running sub-platform, which will eventually cause RMB to flow to the running sub-platform.
The police handling the case said that they should be vigilant and pay attention to the new-type running sub-platform using the USDT digital currency channel.
"In essence, all running points models are carefully researched by illegal gambling websites to evade crackdowns, facilitate payment and money laundering." The police handling the case said that through running points, a large amount of stolen money from online gambling platforms can pass through these private individuals. The accounts were operated in batches, eventually "laundering" the stolen money, and because the money laundering path was hidden and scattered, it increased the difficulty of police investigation and tracking.
"The act of providing a fund settlement account for illegal funds will not only become a tool and accomplice of criminals, but also be suspected of constituting an illegal crime." The police handling the case reminded that the public must be alert to the scoring trap and pay attention to protecting personal privacy information. Lending or renting out your own identity information, payment account, etc., let alone making illegal profits.
Layout design: Zhang Fangman
Our reporter Ni Yi