Big Money in Vietnamese Sportsbetting

Friday April 5, 2013 : VIETNAMESE SPEND BIG MONEY ON INTERNET SPORTS BETTING
 
Foreign servers provide huge virtual gambling dens for Vietnamese punters
 
Tens of millions of dollars are bet online on sports in Vietnam every day officials claimed at a recent conference on cyber security, reports the Thanh Nien news service.
 
Tran Van Hoa, deputy head of the Ministry of Public Security's High-Tech Crime Fighting Department, revealed that online betting operations are organised in multiple stages with “close cooperation” between local agents and foreign bookies, making for increasingly complex organisations and difficult investigations.
 
He said the bookies provide and manage gamblers' accounts and transact money through local agents, bank accounts, and unofficial channels. In some cases, local agents receive money to pay gamblers, Tran said, adding that the volume of bets placed every day topped tens of millions of dollars.
 
Tran also discussed the increasing rate and tempo of cyber-attacks, especially on banks and government agencies, where the Vietnam Information Security Association has shown that 78 percent of government websites are vulnerable to cyber-attack.
 
Leading content security software service Trend Micro said Vietnam has the largest number of compromised servers in the world – 394 – attacked mostly from China. Russia followed with 34 servers and India with 19.