Police Raid Malaysian Internet Casinos Funding Islamic Mafia Wars

Kuala Lumpur senior police officials held a news conference earlier in the week, warning the public of the great dangers of playing at illegal online casinos in Malaysia. The police have stepped up the never ending war against the organized crime operated online casinos. According to police investigators, criminals donate millions of dollars to international terrorist organizations in order to receive absolution from corrupt imams.

“The gangsters know imposter imams who will grant a fatwa (religious decree) that permits the criminals, for the greater good of Islam, to break the prohibition on gambling and operation of gambling establishments,” disclosed senior police Major Azman Mohd Isa. “These are charlatans, who are perverting Islam, and are teachings the wrong interpretations of the holy Koran,” he added.

This week, police raided seven mafia operated online casinos, illegal under Malaysian gambling laws, in the country’s capital of Kuala Lampur. So far, in April alone, 24 online casinos have been shut down by the police, 32 arrests have been made and hundreds of computers confiscated. Police admitted that as soon as each online casino closes another one will open its virtual doors just as quickly.

The major obstacle faced by the police is the location of the servers if always outside Malaysian jurisdiction. The physical casino itself is often a room with computers, an internet connection and a money exchanger. The vast majority of Malaysians don’t use credit cards or banks so the online casino customers deposit the cash with a money-exchanger who is normally the only casino employee present.

The money-exchanger places a telephone call to a different location where the appropriate number of credits is deposited into an online casino account. The exchanger provides the customer with the login and password to the Malaysian internet casino. The police are now forced to spend weeks planning each raid because new technology allows the operator to remove all evidence from all computers by a single click of a button.

Major Azman Mohd Isa explains - "One online casino in Malaysia that we closed had a jackpot game with a top prize totaling RM200,000 ($66,000). If the operators had suspected our presence, they would have switched their online games server to another server to hide their gambling websites."