Crime | Police dismantle illegal gambling scheme

The Public Security Police Force (PSP) has dismantled an illegal gambling scheme involving betting on Mahjong, a tile-based game similar to the western card game Rummy, and detained the main suspect.
According to the PSP spokesperson during yesterday’s joint press conference by the police forces, the police received a complaint from a resident of an apartment building that claimed that someone was operating an illegal gambling scheme in a neighboring apartment.
On June 2, around 11 a.m., the PSP deployed officers to the address and, following the sound of the tiles shuffling, reached an apartment where they found four people between 60 and 70 years of age playing mahjong at a table.
After questioning the people, PSP found that one of them was the apartment tenant and was exploiting gaming activities.
Players said that besides gambling money which would go to the winner of the game, each player had to play a fee of 10 patacas to the table owner for each game at the table.
Further inspection of the drawers used by the players to hold their belongings yielded a total of 1,400 patacas stored in different compartments.
The 60-year-old male tenant from the mainland confessed to the PSP that he had been operating the activity since February this year, making a profit of approximately 3,000 patacas each month.
According to evidence by the police, on June 2 until the time he was stopped by the PSP, the man had made a profit of 80 patacas.
While questioning the suspect, the PSP also found that the man’s daughter, residing in Macau, had rented the apartment for her father’s use since he would frequently have to stay in Macau due to the travel restrictions imposed between the mainland and Macau to combat the Covid-19 outbreak.
The man also said that his daughter was not aware of the gambling. He was presented to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on June 3 accused of operating an illegal gambling activity.