ĐẮK NÔNG — Police busted an online gambling ring on the messaging app Zalo in the Central Highlands province of Đắk Nông on Wednesday.

Đắk Nông Criminal Police Division deputy chief, Senior Lieutenant colonel Bùi Văn Khẩu, said nine local people have been arrested so far. They are Phạm Ngọc Sanh, 65, Nguyễn Thị Lan, 45, Nguyễn Thị Nga, 53, Đoàn Ngọc Thông, 48, Nguyễn Thị Phương Trinh, 43, Huỳnh Thị Hồ Em, 54, Nguyễn Thiên Khương, 24, Đỗ Thị Hiền, 56 and her 28-year-old son Võ Văn Vi.

A woman is arrested and taken to the police station as part of the police raids on illegal gambling. — Photo tuoitre.vn

All were accused of gambling and organising gambling.

The gambling allegedly centres around ‘numbers’ games were bettors select numbers that are later drawn at random.

Since raids that began last week, police rounded up seven small gambling groups in different locations, seizing a total of more than VNĐ500 million (US$21,700) and several smartphones.

Investigation found those groups were in connection with each other in a big gambling ring, organising exclusively via SMS messages or Zalo.

Winning money in large amount would be transferred via bank accounts, otherwise paid directly in cash to the winners.

All data would be deleted from their smartphones once they completed the financial transactions, Khẩu said.

Police was able to retrieve back-up data from the seized smartphones, determining the amount of gambling money was around VNĐ2 billion. — VNS