The equipment used by subjects to conduct gambling and money laundering. VNA/VNS Photo

THÁI BÌNH — The northern province Thái Bình's police have launched legal proceedings in a criminal case involving 21 individuals charged with gambling and money laundering offences.

This is a large-scale trans-national organised crime ring operating with sophisticated methods, notably introducing a new method that has appeared for the first time in Việt Nam using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to commit the crimes.

Earlier, the police identified the website 'KUBET' with servers located abroad.

This site hosted numerous gambling games for money, including a lottery, betting on football results, and 'tài xỉu' (a type of dice game).

Users accessed the site via mobile phones, created gambling accounts linked to their bank accounts in order to deposit and withdraw funds, and then selected available game types to place bets.

By the time of the raid, there were over one million gambling accounts with a total betting amount of over VNĐ1 trillion (US$39.2 million).

Expanding the investigation, the police uncovered that, in addition to gambling and organising gambling, the suspects also engaged in money laundering.

A suspect based in Taiwan (China) acted as the ringleader, linking with a domestic suspect to manage operations.

They hired individuals to open bank accounts in Việt Nam so that gamblers could deposit betting funds. The individual in Taiwan then used computers connected to pre-installed internet banking apps to conduct transactions through various bank accounts, aiming to conceal the origin of the gambling funds.

For transactions of VNĐ10 million ($392) or more, which required biometric verification, the suspects used AI-generated videos of the account holders' faces to bypass bank security protocols. That way the account holders did not need to be physically present to complete the transactions.

To date, the police has frozen over 500 bank accounts, with an estimated total of over VNĐ200 billion ($7.84 million) laundered each month.

From September 2024 to April 2025, the estimated total laundered amount exceeded VNĐ1 trillion ($39.2 million).

Officers are continuing to expand the investigation into the ring. — VNS