Tamil Nadu: Illegal online gambling racket busted, nine arrested
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Police in Tamil Nadu’s Kallakurichi busted an online gambling racket and arrested nine persons from a hideout in Krishna Nagar Wednesday. Based on a tip-off, the police arrested the gang who were conducting illegal betting through the ‘1X Bet’ application.
The arrested were identified as M Manikandan (27), G Chandrasekhar (27), A Krishna Moorthy (27), R Gokul Nath (24), K Manivel (27), K Aravindh (24), R Prakash and R Balaji (23).
Speaking to indianexpress.com, Kallakuruchi DSP Rajalakshmi said all the nine accused were engineering graduates who were involved in online gambling during the period of lockdown to earn money.
“Manikandan, the mastermind behind the entire operation, had rented a house in Krishna Nagar. He had previously worked in the 1X Bet app in some city and decided to implement it here in Kallakurichi. He had somehow contacted the owner, who is reportedly in Russia, and got access to the website. The owner had reportedly agreed to provide Manikandan some amount as commission in return for more customers. The rest of the eight members, who were arrested, were looking for a job and came in contact with Manikandan and operated from a house in Krishna Nagar for the past eight months. Per month, the gang had been gaining up to Rs 30 lakh as profit. They had purchased SIM cards using fake IDs and destroyed it once they completed a transaction,” the DSP said.
She added that there were several sports and gaming activities on the website and to enter itself, the customers had to shed a certain amount. “If 1,000 people are participating in a game only one would win. The gang had programmed the application in such a manner that even the winner could be decided by them. Initially, the gang made sure the customers win small profits like Rs 2,000-3000 from their betting amount and later, when the customers decide to bet a huge amount, the members made sure the customers lost all the money. The gang had been getting huge profits from the money invested by the customers,” she added.
All the nine accused were remanded to judicial custody. The police seized Rs 20 lakh cash, laptops, monitors, fingerprint scanners, 30 mobile phones, 400 SIM cards, a car and a motorbike from the accused.
