New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) raided illegal high-stakes poker rooms in Auckland which were suspected for underground gambling with predatory lending. Some of the players were so deep in debt that they had to give up their cards, houses, and, in some cases, start selling drugs illegally to pay the debt.
DIA inspectors and police recently raided nine suspected poker rooms in Albany, Botany, Epsom, Newmarket, and central Auckland, seizing tables, chips, cash, and cryptocurrency under the Gambling Act 2003. It is estimated that the total betting turnover across the venues was around NZ$5 million.
DIA’s director of gambling, Vicky Scott, said the operations targeted “high rollers” with buy-ins in the thousands of dollars and then offered easy credit once players ran out of cash.
“Once people fall behind, they don’t just lose money,” Scott told public radio, stressing that the DIA is now treating the cases as both gambling and serious-harm investigations rather than simple licensing breaches.
The entire operation is linked to Chinese criminal groups, as similar organizers, customers, and financial patterns have been identified. Scott said the DIA is seeing “predominantly Chinese organisers and participants” and that some of the rooms appear to have links to Chinese-language criminal networks already on the agency’s radar.
Scott said the DIA’s recent operations are designed to send a message that illegal bricks-and-mortar gambling will receive the same level of scrutiny as offshore sites. “These are not friendly neighbourhood games,” she said. “They are high-risk environments where people can lose everything, and where criminal groups are making serious money.”
It looks like more and more pressure is coming towards illegal gambling all over the world. We recently witnessed a similar raid in Sweden, and now we are facing raids throughout New Zealand. This could indicate that a significant amount of gambling is likely to transition online.
*News source: igamingtoday.com
