Online Gambling, Casinos, Poker and Sports Betting Magazine

Chinese Man Jailed for Online Gambling

A precedent has been set in China after a Beijing native was jailed for one year and fined 10,000 yuan for his involvement in online betting around the 2010 World Cup.

In the first case of conviction for online gambling, Beijing’s Dongcheng District People’s Court passed the sentence on 20-year-old Zhao Yan for assisting others in betting on matches during the showpiece football tournament, according to reports.

The China Daily revealed that police arrested Zhao at an internet café in March this year after it was discovered that he was acting as the middle-man for an overseas gambling website and had collected over 7 million yuan in sports bets from clients.

“This is the first verdict on online soccer gambling pronounced in Beijing,” said Judge Di Qicheng on handing out Zhao’s sentence, indicating that the results of the case would set a legal benchmark for any subsequent gambling trials in the country.

Online gambling is, of course, expressly forbidden in China, although the government’s hard-line stance on casino and sportsbetting has lead to a lot of trade going through illegal overseas operators who are both unlicensed and unregulated.