Gambling suspects arrested at northeast Thailand resort

Police arrested 18 gambling suspects at a resort in Thailand’s northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima yesterday. The suspects reportedly used all 10 rooms of the Lake Pine resort to operate 2 gambling websites. Officers seized 10 desktop computers, 5 notebook computers, 30 mobile phones, and 12 bank account books, according to Police Colonel Wiwat Jitsophakul from the Crime Suppression Division.

Wiwat said the raid comes after an investigation into complaints that a Youtuber, “Jah Rok’’, encouraged people to place bets online. He said the 18 suspects arrested were administrators for the 2 sites, which made at least 20 million baht in bets per month. He said the sites, biz99.bet and aladdin.bet, had about 900 million baht in circulation.

The sites operated for 4 years in Cambodia before the network started operating them in Thailand last year. The network rented the resort for 30,000 baht a month, and each administrator was paid 15,000 baht a month. Lake Pine resort is located in Pak Chong district.

Nearly all forms of gambling are illegal in Thailand. Although leaders of smaller parties are pushing to legalise online casinos, for now, online gambling remains a no-no in the country. Regular Police crackdowns and raids on gamblers and underground gambling dens are common in the country.

In March, the Thai Police Cyber Taskforce raided a Nonthaburi luxury house, where they believed 10 suspects helped facilitate gambling activities. Police said the house had been rented for 10 days. The network allegedly operated four of their websites from the house, with more than 200,000 people registered and a turnover of more than 200 million baht. The taskforce found that the house was connected to 16 other locations in Bangkok that police had raided earlier on the same day.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post