Taiwan Crack Cross-Border Gambling Money-Laundering Ring Involving Billions
The scheme ran for more than six years with illegal gains of roughly NT$1.59 billion.
Taiwanese prosecutors have indicted 15 people in a cross-border gambling money-laundering case that investigators say funnelled billions of New Taiwan dollars through a front company in Taichung.
According to local reporting, the group was led by a man surnamed Shen and used a self-developed third-party payment system called “SBFPAY” to process gambling deposits, withdrawals and transfers for Thai betting sites.
Prosecutors said the alleged scheme ran for more than six years and laundered about NT$4.69 billion (US$144.8 million), with illegal gains of roughly NT$1.59 billion.
Investigators also sought forfeiture of assets they say were derived from the operation, after seizing cash, cryptocurrency, property and luxury vehicles worth more than NT$290 million.
How it Started
The case began to take shape in 2023, when Thailand’s cybercrime investigators uncovered a laundering operation in Chiang Mai and passed intelligence to Taiwanese authorities.
That tip led Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau to focus on a company in Taichung’s Xitun district, which prosecutors say was used as a cover for the network’s real activity.
Police said the group recruited core members from early 2020 and rented hundreds of Thai bank accounts to break up payment flows and obscure the trail of the money.
Officers have described the company as a deliberately constructed façade, with staff manuals, work phones and computers among the items seized during raids. The indictment covers organised crime, gambling and money-laundering offences.
This comes as Macau authorities have stepped up scrutiny of suspected proxy betting after detaining two mainland Chinese men and authorities in Tokyo have uncovered an illegal poker ring operating from a luxury Shinjuku high-rise.
