Mumbai police claim Dubai is home to online gambling servers

Pravin Patil, a senior spokesman for the Mumbai police in India, told reporters this week that internet gambling was becoming more prevalent, and that police investigations have found increasing evidence that the illegal operator servers are located in Dubai.

The police are probing the sector to find out if established international bookmaking firms are involved, he revealed

“We think Internet gambling is a trend picking up with gamblers,” Patel told the Indian Express. “Such players are difficult to trace and apprehend as they can gamble from the comfort of their homes using their computers.”

Patel said that Mumbai police investigators have also identified almost 300 internet cafes that are illegally providing Indian punters with online gambling services connected to the Dubai servers. He said that despite ISP blocking attempts on some of the illegal operations, replacements were back online within days.

The police claim that internet cafe operators act as ‘dealers’ and provide log-in IDs and passwords to gamblers for anything between 20,000-30,000 rupees (about GBP 200). Each dealer handles around 20-30 such gamblers, and bets worth up to Rs 5-6 crore annually (about 50 million rupees or GBP 500,000) are not unusual.

The Social Service Branch, in collaboration with the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell of the Mumbai Police Crime Branch, is tracking the call data records of the dealers arrested recently in Mumbai to uncover the identities of those operating these casinos from Dubai, with bookmaking firms the main suspects.

Related and similar