$39M betting ring, big on Euro 2024, busted in Da Nang

Three local men, Nguyen Van Doi, Tran Dinh Ba, both 66, and Doan Trong 59, have been identified as the ring’s kingpins in Vietnam, the police said after the arrests on Friday.

The ring is thought to have accepted bets exceeding VND1 trillion (US$39 million).

Earlier the police discovered that several individuals in Da Nang had connected with people in HCMC to regularly organize betting on football on websites such as www.viva6889.com and www.sporty88.com and began an investigation that led to the website’s operators.

The three men admitted that in August 2023 foreign bookmakers had supplied them with betting paraphernalia and given them a monthly limit of US$3 million.

The sum was then divided up among lower-level bookies.

The ring generated revenues of around US$8 million a month, the police said.

The police have seized a number of devices used for the betting, over 15,000 pages of documents and many bank savings books.

They have also frozen several billion dong in the suspects' bank accounts.

The Da Nang and HCMC police are working in tandem and expanding the investigation.