Police Raid the Scene and Make Arrests
About 300 Million KRW Seized and Preserved for Forfeiture
Business owners, employees, and customers operating illegal Hold'em pubs in the southeastern area of Seoul were caught in large numbers.
On the 5th, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Criminal Mobile Unit announced that they had arrested 88 people, including business owners, employees, and customers, for operating gambling establishments at Hold'em pubs in Gwangjin-gu, Dongdaemun-gu, Gangnam-gu, and Seongdong-gu in Seoul on charges of establishing gambling venues and gambling. Among them, three co-owners of establishment A, where the gambling amount alone reached 6 billion KRW, were detained and sent to prosecution last October. The prosecution of the remaining 85 people is also being carried out sequentially and is expected to be completed soon.
According to the police, the business owners are accused of exchanging chips for cash at illegal Hold'em pubs disguised as board game rooms and taking a certain percentage of the gambling amount as a commission. To avoid crackdowns, they recruited customers via Telegram and only allowed customers whose identities were confirmed by CCTV to enter the establishments. They also used accounts under other people's names and frequently destroyed business ledgers.
The scale of illegal gambling conducted at the three establishments was confirmed to be a total of 7.09 billion KRW. The police seized not only cash from the gambling sites but also tracked the use of the business owners' criminal proceeds, preemptively confiscating and preserving about 300 million KRW in deposits and other assets before prosecution.
Telegram promotional material used by business A to attract customers. Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency
The police began investigating after receiving intelligence while focusing on illegal Hold'em pubs and gambling issues since last year. They raided establishment A, which was operating secretly, arrested employees and customers on the spot as caught-in-the-act offenders, and uncovered past illegal operations by analyzing evidence such as bank accounts.
Among the habitual gamblers arrested were people from various professions, including self-employed individuals, office workers, professionals, and overseas Koreans, some of whom had bet tens of millions of KRW multiple times.
A police official said, "As the atmosphere of recognizing Hold'em games as a recreational culture spreads recently, many Hold'em pubs are operating nationwide," adding, "We will do our best to suppress the criminal atmosphere that promotes gambling activities through systematic crackdowns on disguised illegal gambling activities pretending to be legal."
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