Vietnamese Da Nang police recently unearthed an underground digital lottery network that had been operating for nearly half a year from deep within the countryside. On April 26, the Criminal Police Department of Da Nang Public Security Bureau urgently detained Fan Zi, Ruan Yingjun, Li Deping, and Li Riying, four organizers on the upper levels, and also detained gambler Wen Fuxie for gambling crimes. The ages of these five individuals span from the 1960s to the late 1980s. The total transaction volume of this dark chain has approached 1 billion Vietnamese dong. The breakthrough in the case came from Barren Village, Chunfu Township—on the afternoon of April 24, at around five o'clock, the criminal police team, together with the local public security, stormed the scene where 61-year-old Fan Zi was busy recording bets for gamblers, with two mobile phones storing key gambling data. This den has been operating since November 2025, hidden in rural areas far from the city center, quietly absorbing money under the regulatory radar with a closed operation and strict hierarchical division of labor. Fan Zi's role was as a bottom-level order taker, taking a 9% commission on each transaction, then passing it up the chain.
Four-level pyramid structure with 9% commission
The police's investigative results show that this network has a clear chain of account division. Fan Zi was responsible for contacting the middle leader Ruan Yingjun, recording betting information for downstream gamblers, and directly deducting 9% as a commission from the daily transaction volume. Ruan Yingjun collected betting slips from several subordinates and then transferred part of the funds to Li Deping, who then passed them up to the core organizer Li Riying. Li Riying continued operations, handing over part of the gambling funds to an unknown leader nicknamed "Xiong," from whom he received a share. The first three levels of this four-level pyramid have been uprooted by the police, but the identity of the top-level "Xiong" remains unknown, and the final flow of the funds chain is still under investigation.
At the scene, the police seized a total of 10 mobile phones, 2 motorcycles, over 100 million Vietnamese dong in cash, and related bank account funds, while also obtaining multiple key transaction records. The nature of this digital lottery is essentially an underground private lottery, with a concealed betting method that does not require physical lottery tickets, all transaction data only existing in the organizers' mobile phones and ledgers. Once these electronic records are destroyed or encrypted and transmitted to overseas servers, the difficulty for the police to reconstruct the complete flow of funds will exponentially increase.
Rural concealment and nearly 1 billion dong in volume
This gang chose to root itself in rural areas like Chunfu Township, not by chance. Far from the law enforcement dense areas of the city center, the social network of acquaintances among residents makes it difficult for strangers to infiltrate, and since the digital lottery itself does not require a physical storefront, a single mobile phone can complete the order taking and reporting, these factors combined make such dark networks more likely to survive in areas with weak regulation. However, considering the nearly half-year operation time before being cracked down and the nearly 1 billion dong transaction volume, the scale and customer base of this network have far exceeded those of temporary small gambling stalls, and there might still be a larger and untouched fund chain and customer group behind it.
PASA official website continues to track the enforcement trends of gambling in Southeast Asia and the evolution of underground gambling networks, noting that this type of underground private lottery shows a dual trend of moving from city centers to rural areas and from physical outlets to mobile terminals. The precision of the police's recent arrests benefited from the preliminary investigation's step-by-step tracking of the transaction timeline and the upward and downward flow of funds, but the escape of the top-level leader indicates that the design of the underground gambling network to resist crackdowns is also simultaneously upgrading.
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leader" gambling industry news channel: https://t.me/pasa_news
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