The total amount spent on illegal online football betting in Vietnam during the 2014 World Cup amounted to tens of millions of US dollars every day, a police report said on Friday.

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The striking figures were included in a report released by the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security at a conference on the prevention and control of gambling and gambling rings nationwide. The ministry said 14 main bankers and 63 main websites were identified during the World Cup, while adding that these websites used Vietnamese to target football bettors and gamblers in Vietnam, where football betting and gambling in any form are banned . These sites even offered advances to bettors and gamblers so that they could place bets. This practice is very dangerous, as when someone loses, the lender will use every measure, including illegal ones, to recover the debts, the report said. Major General Ho Si Tien, head of the ministry’s Social Crime Investigation Department, said a number of people in Ho Chi Minh City set up a forum called pro186.com to lure football fans into online betting and gambling. This forum drew nearly 15,000 members, who bet or gambled by using “P.coins”, a virtual money unit created by the operators of the forum. Real money would be used to pay after each bet is completed, Tien said. During the World Cup, police coordinated with other concerned agencies to block 1,450 websites and IP addresses involved in betting and gambling, he added. Tien said that police efforts helped to reduce betting and gambling by 50 percent compared to previous major football events. Lieutenant General Tran Trong Luong, head of the ministry’s General Department for Crime Prevention and Control, said police faced problems when they asked commercial and credit institutions to provide details of suspicious transactions related to illegal betting and gambling. Many banks refused to share such information, claiming that this can only be done after a criminal prosecution is issued. “From September 2013 to now, banks have only provided the details of 10 suspicious deals. This figure is too small,” Luong told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper. “Banks should be more responsible in providing police with information necessary for their investigations into online betting and gambling cases,” he added.

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