Police bust $90 mln gambling ring on ‘forex exchange’

A $90-million gambling ring on SFX Capital “forex exchange” with more than 18,000 participating accounts has been wiped out.

The Department of Cybersecurity and High-tech Crime Prevention has coordinated with police in some provinces to summon 32 suspects and seize Cadillac, Range Rover, BMW, Lexus, and Mercedes vehicles, the Ministry of Public Security stated on Friday.

The financial betting ring operated in the form of BO binary options through the SFX Capital exchange, led by Dao Minh Sang, 38 years old.

Players who wanted to participate in betting must register an account on the sfxcapitals website. The SFX Capital floor would provide exchange rates of 16 major forex pairs including U.S. dollar/euro, pound/U.S. dollar, U.S. dollar/JPY, U.S. dollar/CHF, AUD/U.S. dollar, and euro/pound, and pairs of digital currencies like bitcoin/U.S. dollar.

The “gamblers” would choose currency pairs to bet up or down over a unit of time, usually every 30 seconds, or three-five or 15-30 minutes.

Winners would receive an amount equal to the betting sum after deducting the floor fee of 5-10% of the bet. If the player loses, she or he loses the entire bet.

To cover up this illegal activity, Sang established three companies, SFX Capital, SFX, F.C.I, with two assistants Nguyen Xuan Hung, head of sales, and Nguyen Minh Duc, director of F.C.I.

The police determined that at the time of being dismantled, the SFX system had 18,000 betting accounts, with a total amount of gambling transactions of $90 million.

To entice players, this group provided many agents, and established expert groups to support "reading orders". The order reader usually promised to support the "gambler" to win a bet with a value of about 15-20% in an hour if the instructions are followed correctly.

In order to gain the trust of players, the executive team often drummed up their “brand” on social networks by displaying wealth, expensive cars, and high-class lifestyles.

According to the cybersecurity department, this is essentially an act of organizing gambling and gambling in cyberspace to appropriate participants’ money.

Authorities have warned people to be alert, and not be lured in by this ring.