South Korean Police Dismantle Illegal Online Gambling Network

The Chungnam Provincial Police Agency has broken up a network that built and supplied 188 illegal gambling websites in South Korea, sites that police say handled about 23 trillion won ($17 million) in wagers. Police described it as the largest scale ever recorded in the country.

Announcing the case on October 19, the agency said it had apprehended 77 people on charges including opening illegal gambling venues, and detained 21 of them. The sites ran on Live Casino video feeds and game money bought from gaming companies operating legally overseas, packaged into ready-made gambling platforms and sold down the chain.

A Gambling Site in 10 Minutes

Police described a two-part supply chain, a “vendor” that procured the casino video feeds and in-game currency, and a “solution” firm that built and sold the sites. The in-game currency even had a nickname, “eggs”.

The engine of the operation was the solution firm, which recruited programmers from major domestic conglomerates and had them write its own site-building program. Police found the software could turn out a working online gambling site in just 10 minutes.

A Monthly Fee for Every Site

The firm handed the finished sites to lower-level operators and charged a monthly management fee of 3 million won per site. A separate supplier signed contracts with legitimate overseas game providers for the casino video streams and the game money, and the firm resold that game money to the operators as well.

Between March 2023 and July 2026, the group worked from South Korea and from bases in Vietnam and Cambodia, according to police.

Adult PC Rooms Brought In the Players

Recruitment ran from the bottom up. The operating groups used owners of adult PC rooms across the country as recruiters to draw in gamblers, and made their profits from selling game money to them. The Kyunghyang Shinmun, one of Seoul’s national dailies, reported that police also found gang members and IT specialists from large corporations among those involved.

The Supply Chain Takes the Hardest Hit

Of the 77 apprehended, 25 belonged to the supply organization, 33 to the site operation groups and 19 were gamblers. Eighteen supply-side members and three site operators make up the 21 who were detained.

Police also applied charges of forming, joining and engaging in a criminal organization to 24 members of the site-building firm. That charge goes beyond running a gambling venue, and it is aimed at the people who wrote and sold the software rather than the players.

Kim Tae-woo, head of the agency’s Cyber Investigation Unit, said: “This investigation has dismantled the topmost supply chain, effectively withering large-scale gambling sites. We will continue to carry out persistent crackdown operations focusing on the topmost supply chain moving forward.”

795 Accounts and 150 Billion Won

The investigation began in November 2025, when police arrested a group of lower-level site operators and found leads pointing further up the chain. Investigators then analyzed 795 financial accounts used in the crimes, along with overseas messenger chat logs, to identify the people involved one by one.

The suspects made that slow going. They moved their offices back and forth between Southeast Asia and South Korea and used overseas servers and messaging apps to stay out of reach.

Proceeds Frozen and Sites Switched Off

Police put the criminal proceeds of the two main organizations at 150 billion won, about 120 billion won for the group supplying casino video feeds and about 30 billion won for the site builder. Pre-indictment preservation measures now cover 9.6 billion won. A court has already granted the order on 6 billion won held by the solution firm’s head and other managers, and a further 3.6 billion won application is under review. The case files have also gone to the National Tax Service.

All 188 sites have been shut down and access to 408 related internet addresses blocked. Twelve suspects fled abroad, and police are seeking Interpol red notices and their forced repatriation.