KUALA LUMPUR: Online football gambling may be a high-tech crime, but smashing it still boils down to good, old-fashioned police work. While authorities have adequate resources to combat crime in cyberspace, it is still legwork, infiltration and intelligence-gathering that hammers the nails in the coffins of illegal Internet gaming syndicates.
Internet football gambling is expected to reach a frenzy when Euro 2008 begins next month. Even in Malaysia, where such gambling is illegal, total bets are expected to hit the RM1 billion mark, according to experts.
A cyber-forensic investigator and analyst, who wanted to be known only as Melvin, said there were two kinds of syndicates operating -- the "two-dollar" small-timers and the sharks.
"The difference between the sharks and the ikan bilis is that the sharks have money to open up businesses outside and register online payments.
"Small-timers, most of the time, have zero, or minimal, start-up fees -- which is what forces them to resort to cheaper methods such as PayPal," he said.
Melvin added that online football gambling, which has yet to reach its potential in Malaysia, was on the rise.
"In the future, even regular Joes will go online and place bets. If you noticed, cybercafes were packed during the last World Cup. Everybody was online, betting."
Curbing, tracking and nabbing online gamblers, he said, could be done in many ways.
Besides putting blacklisted sites on banned lists, website-filtering mechanisms can be put in place at cybercafes and WiFi hotspots.
"If this can be done, it will restrict people to betting from their homes, thus making it easier for them to be traced."
Another way to catch them was to observe the flow of cash from their bank accounts. If a suspect has already been identified, a backward trace -- one which if done properly can reveal the identities of the syndicate, bookies and gamblers -- can be initiated.
"When the police suspect somebody of being a bookie, they can go through their bank accounts. If the person is indeed a bookie, there will be an increase in banking activity," Melvin said.
"The origins of the money coming in can be traced. If they follow the trail far enough, it will lead to the syndicate.
"Once the syndicate is tracked, its server log file can be checked for the IP addresses that access the site. When you have that, the list of clients is there for the taking."
Syndicates, he said, were coming up with increasingly devious methods to avoid detection and backwards tracing was the best way to combat their latest tricks.
"The latest modus operandi is to tell their customers to bank in money into accounts before beginning to bet.
"They will then be given usernames and passwords to be used in the websites and when they log in, they will see that they have pre-loaded credits in their account."
But how would the authorities get hold of leads in the first place?
"The syndicates don't advertise. They don't do search engine marketing. Everything is by word of mouth by loyal customers and runners," Melvin said.
"To track them means going back to old-fashioned investigation and digging up leads from punters themselves. Most of the time, the syndicates or bookies will inform their customers what the site is."
At the end of the day though, no sole channel of evidence is likely to be enough for the police to catch their quarry.
Police cyber and multimedia crime specialist Deputy Superintendent Victor Sanjos said anybody could use the computers in a cybercafe.
"Just because a log file points to a certain computer in a cybercafe, it doesn't mean you will know who the gambler is. It still will have to come down to surveillance -- basic police work.
"That is why you need to compile evidence from various sources and corroborate them. We take all the evidence, all the information and we can build a picture of the syndicate with its members and its leaders."
Recent news reports indicate that police are getting more serious than ever in tackling illegal football gambling.
A task force comprising personnel from the Criminal Investigation Department and Commercial Crime Investigation Department will liaise with police from other countries, via Interpol, to track down these syndicates.
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