Police get tough on illegal gambling

KUALA LUMPUR: The demand for illegal gambling remains high despite constant police crackdowns, City police chief Commissioner Datuk Mazlan Lazim said.
His comment comes barely a week after he announced that district police chiefs in Kuala Lumpur will be given a month to weed out illegal gambling in their respective areas.
"With demand remaining high, so does the supply. Gamblers have resorted to two new modus operandi (MO) in their attempt to evade our personnel," he said.
He said under the first MO, gamblers would gather at quiet places or closed premises and use electronic gadgets such as tablets to gamble.
"A representative from the syndicate will distribute tablets which are topped up with credit. The whole gambling process will be under one WiFi signal and mostly portable WiFi. These syndicates have a lot of applications to gamble and at the end of the day, players pay in cash should they lose in a game," he told reporters at the KL police contingent headquarters here yesterday.
The second MO, is gambling through Android smartphones where the players can download an application from the Google Play Store and gamble from wherever they are via mobile data.
"These offenders are harder to trace as they can be anywhere because they use their own phones and internet. They gamble using applications where the username and password are provided by these syndicates," he added.
Mazlan said police have so far detained 56 people, consisting of 18 premises caretakers, nine shop assistants, 27 gamblers and two onlookers.