Vietnam Takes Down $3.8B Crypto Gambling Ring

Vietnamese police authorities have busted a crypto gambling ring estimated at $3.8 billion based on the amount of gamblers’ money contributed. The news comes from Bloomberg, citing a report by state-owned broadcaster VTV. According to the report, this is one of the largest underhand crypto gambling operations discovered in the country, with a total of 59 suspects arrested.

Arrests were carried out by the Ho Chi Minh City police, who seized 40 laptops, 79 mobile phones, vehicles, bank cards, and a total of $130,000 in cash from the suspects. The ring operated via a third-party cryptocurrency exchange and two websites that the suspects admitted to having run.

Based on VTV’s report, the suspects would ask gamblers to register at Remitano, an overseas cryptocurrency exchange, and purchase Ethereum (ETH) or Tether (USDT), which they could then use to gamble at designated websites run by the organization.

Those are Swiftonline.live and Nagaclubs.com as per Bloomberg, citing the local source, with the websites described as “intermediaries to Evolution.com.” The arrested suspects allegedly admitted to running the operations from those two websites. Bloomberg specifically wrote:

“Subjects admitted to authorities that they organized online gambling on those sites, which were intermediaries to international betting platform Evolution.com to earn commissions. When there were a large number of players, they crashed the websites in order to appropriate money from the digital wallets, the report said”

Quote from Bloomberg 

Abuse of the Evolution Brand

This has prompted a reply from Carl Linton, who sent an email to Bloomberg responding to the new allegations against the company. 

Previously, Evolution saw its stock value lose $3 billion over an anonymous report submitted to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) in November and alleging that Evolution knowingly operated products in countries on international sanction lists. The first report, which GamblingNews.com has seen, did have certain questionable points which put its validity under question, as described in separate reporting. 

Linton denied the latest allegations and said that it was “a case of clear abuse of the Evolution brand.” He further denied any business relationship between Evolution and the mentioned websites. 

“The sites mentioned in the article are not customers of Evolution, and our games are not accessible through these sites.”

Evolution head of investor relations Carl Linton 

Linton assured that Evolution took the situation very seriously. The company has already taken steps and got in touch with the aggregator connected in the case, asking them to “take immediate actions towards their customers.” He added that Evolution “would not hesitate to make sure that our demands are fully enforced.”

Meanwhile, the gambling ring was looking for gamblers who would use crypto and made sure to dishonestly claim player funds. The suspects admitted that they would crash the websites and appropriate money from customers’ digital wallets.