Two suspected criminal groups allegedly funding casino gamblers in Macau via routes involving now-outlawed unlicensed money exchange, have been broken up by the city’s Judiciary Police.
The force said in a Thursday briefing – as reported by Chinese-language media – that enforcement action on Tuesday resulted in 42 arrests.
One suspected gang – the largest – had approached would-be gaming patrons through a number of jewellery shops and pawnshops near to casinos in the city, to offer unlicensed currency exchange.
Sou Sio Keong, deputy director of the Judiciary Police, told the Thursday briefing the enforcement action was in collaboration with authorities on the Chinese mainland.
The larger gang had 33 alleged members detained in Macau: 22 Macau residents and 11 mainland residents, according to the media reports.
This group was believed to have been collaborating with an “underground bank” located in the northern district of Macau.
The Thursday briefing heard that from October 29 – the date when gaming-related unlicensed money exchange was criminalised – the larger group allegedly handled HKD590 million (US$75.9 million) in transactions, and earned over HKD20 million from that process.
The briefing was told that suspects from the larger gang had jewellery-shop business and pawnshops close to casinos, and helped members of the public from the mainland to exchange Chinese yuan into Hong Kong dollars, used for most bets in Macau casinos.
Police spokesman Mr Sou said: “They used the POS [point-of-sale] terminals of local payment institutions to help gaming patrons to swipe cards or scan a [QR] code” for shop transactions.
“After the product was sold, the gaming patron immediately got a refund in cash,” after returning the product to the shop, said Mr Sou, whose comments were aired by the Chinese-language channel of Macau public broadcaster TDM.
Mr Sou also mentioned: “To conceal these bogus transactions from police detection, these people [shopkeepers] forged their sales records.”
The suspects from the larger gang were also believed to have helped players swap Hong Kong dollar winnings back to Chinese yuan, and then to have remitted such sums to players’ respective mainland bank accounts, the senior police officer noted.
The smaller suspected gang handled an estimated HKD200 million in transactions, earning circa HKD1 million.
Of the nine arrested from the smaller alleged gang, two were actual “casino hosts”, who had allegedly turned their legitimate role to criminal ends, by introducing players to an illicit-exchange scheme.
Mr Sou said mainland police had arrested over 20 members of the second alleged gang, in the provinces of Guangdong, Fujian and Anhui.
The Macau investigation into the case started after a tip-off from the mainland authorities at the end of 2024. Investigations led the Macau police to conclude that the group had bought a car for “transporting” funds around the city for exchanging money with gamblers.
