600 million illegal gambling income – investigations against offshore company in Malta

A network of criminals have apparently founded a gambling company in Malta and recruited gamblers in Italy. The fraudsters have made hundreds of casino games and sport bets available for the Italian users. Over a longer period of time, they generated income worth hundreds of millions of Euro.

The Italian Financial Police is currently investigating a larger fraudster gang. These have apparently founded an offshore company in Malta and then operated many gambling sites. They focused on gamblers from Italy, which seem to have been recruited. The gamblers had no licence for the online gambling sites, which makes their services illegal. However they still managed to generate an income reaching a three digit million amount.

Criminals use land-based gambling sector

According to reports in the Italian media, the fraudster gang have used the stationary gambling casinos to recruit customers for their illegal online casinos. More precisely the gang has taken over several betting shops and casinos. The customers there were specifically challenged to the illegal gambling sites. It is currently still questionable, whether the actual local owners have cooperated with the criminals or if they were put under pressures. In the past in Italy by infiltrating a legal casino, it had become a lucrative source of income for different Mafia groups.

As things developed, the funds of the unsuspecting gamblers were transferred to the account of the Maltese gambling company. This involves however only an offshore company. Those responsible were in Sicily during the whole period of time. Property was acquired mainly in Germany and Italy, to be able to flow the funds generated from gambling into the legal economic cycle. Just a few days ago, we questioned in an article, whether the danger of money laundering is especially high in online gambling.

Illegal gambling network generated around 600 million euro

Impressive in this case is especially the amount of income which the criminal network generated from gambling. Over a longer period of time, the group managed to make a total of around 600 million euro of gambling funds from the unsuspecting gamblers. Of course the criminal network did neither pay any income tax on this gigantic turnover, nor the betting tax due which amounted to around 30 million euro

Police investigate 23 suspects

Meanwhile, the financial police in Italy managed to get on the trail of the criminal group. Currently, according to the Italian media, they are investigating 23 suspects. The list of charges is long: Besides operating an illegal gambling site, the gang is being accused of major fraud, money laundering, whilst the two main culprits are accused of major tax fraud. Two of the main culprits seem to have been arrested several months ago because of other criminal acts. The two main culprits seem to be persons close to the clan Cosa-Nostra-Clan Santapaola-Ercolano.

Conclusion

It seems, that the Italian Finance Police, has again managed a coup against the Mafia organisations. It is however impressive and at the same time shocking, that a criminal network could operate several gambling platforms over a longer period of time, whilst making use of a Maltese offshore company and earning over half a billion euro whilst doing so. We are curious to see how the investigations will develop in the coming weeks and months and eventually who will be sentenced for these acts.

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