Eliminate football betting on cyberspace

Recently, Thua Thien - Hue Provincial Police broke up a football betting ring using accounts on the agbong88.com website, arresting 9 subjects with a total transaction amount of over 3.5 million USD, equivalent to about 176 billion VND. Ho Chi Minh City Police also broke up an online football betting ring using 3 accounts logged into the ibet888 website led by Tang Van Khai, seizing 6 billion VND. Da Nang City Police broke up an online football betting ring led by Nguyen Van Trung with a betting amount of over 1 billion VND.

Most recently, Thanh Hoa Provincial Police have fought to eradicate an online football betting ring led by Vu Dinh Hieu (born in 1990), residing in Quang Cu Ward, Sam Son City (Thanh Hoa), arresting 12 subjects and seizing many related documents and exhibits. Vu Dinh Hieu confessed that people participating in the betting ring organized by Hieu often bet from 10 to 50 million VND/match, with gamblers betting up to 92 million VND/match. Online football betting is very diverse in form and scale; from spontaneous, simple, small-scale formations, to lines and gangs organizing activities between provinces and across countries, with very sophisticated tricks, with tens of thousands of participants, and gambling amounts of up to thousands of billions of VND. There are betting lines formed by professional gamblers in the country connecting with subjects, bookmakers managing betting websites, with servers located abroad, then developing football betting branches in cyberspace in Vietnam. With a passion for football, placing faith in their favorite teams, many people bet on luck, not hesitating to participate in betting on live football matches, or matches in cyberspace through illegal football websites with domain names such as da88, ta88, lucky88, oxbet, nbet, dabet... Betting participants are often given an account by the subjects with a "virtual" amount of money in advance, but when paying, participants must pay in real money. To attract "prey," betting sites are designed with Vietnamese interfaces, providing detailed instructions for bettors, from opening personal accounts at banks for transactions, to depositing gambling money through phone scratch cards, through intermediary payment gateways...

All operations are easily performed via smartphones with internet connection. There have been websites that have been detected and handled by authorities, however, these websites have been quickly restored with new domain names. According to the National Cyber ​​Security Monitoring Center under the Information Security Department (Ministry of Information and Communications), betting websites have server systems located abroad, so it is very difficult to prevent. Gambling in the form of football betting causes many consequences, negatively affecting the family economy and social order and safety. When losing bets, if participants do not have money to pay, they are often threatened and forced to pay, such as arresting people, extorting property, hiring criminals to collect debts, etc. In fact, when losing bets, participants often have the mentality of trying to win back the money they lost, and then get caught up in a spiral of debt with many other consequences. Not only falling into the situation of "ruining family" because of football betting, many people also have to face severe sentences of the law.

The Information Security Department recommends that people need to raise awareness of complying with the provisions of the law related to social evils, passion and love for football but resolutely stay away from football betting. Each person should fully recognize the good entertainment value of the "king" sport, enjoy the matches with a healthy mindset; absolutely do not participate in betting, organize betting in any form; encourage relatives and people around to raise vigilance, stay away from football betting. In case of detecting subjects showing signs of being involved in football betting, promptly report to the police to prevent.

According to the police, gambling rings and football betting organizations are still looking for ways to increase their activities while the EURO 2024 season is still going on. Therefore, along with the drastic intervention of the authorities, owners of food and beverage service establishments, coffee shops, beer bars, entertainment venues, etc. need to strictly comply with the provisions of the law on information security, not participate in betting and not assist or cover up for subjects to take advantage of organizing football betting.