Since the enforcement of the movement control order (MCO) on March 18, Malaysian punters stuck at home have gravitated towards online gambling, revealed Bukit Aman’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) chief.
Huzir Mohamed said today that the police discovered this after carrying out 416 raids on gambling centres nationwide between March 18 and May 4.
He said that the raids on these “calling centres” at semi-detached houses, terrace houses, bungalows and high-end condominium units had resulted in the arrests of 1,613 people, the seizure of 1,702 gambling machines and RM398,263 in cash.
Huzir said the arrests included 865 China nationals and 732 locals. All those detained are aged between 18 and 55.
“In stamping out online gambling activities, we found that these online activities became the choice of (Malaysian) gamblers (kaki judi) during the MCO period as they could not go out.
“They conduct transactions through electronic banking and gamble online.
“With the cooperation of the MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission), we came down on 1,323 online portals suspected of promoting online gambling,” he said during a press conference at Bukit Aman Federal Police Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur this afternoon.
Huzir noted that gambling in buildings has lessened during the MCO due to active patrols by enforcement authorities and that gambling on horse racing has stopped as there are no horse races during the MCO.
Meanwhile, he said that overall crime declined significantly during the MCO period from March 18 to May 5 which only registered 5,279 cases, compared to 10,368 cases recorded during the pre-MCO period from Jan 30 to March 17 this year.
“This shows a decline of 5,089 cases or a negative of 49.1 percent, which is a significant fall, because many (people) did not go out of the house, so there was not much crime,” he said. - Mkini
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