Amusement Casino Customers Are Easy to Defraud” – The Latest on Underground Gambling at After Corona.

With the deregulation of the new coronavirus in May of this year, daily life is returning. However, the COVID-19 crisis has brought about significant changes: food delivery services such as Uber Eats have become a part of daily life, and remote work has become the norm. And the impact has been felt in the underground industry as well.

One area that has changed is gambling. Underground casinos, which were mainstream before the COVID-19 crisis, are now on the decline. Instead, “online casinos,” which can be easily accessed via apps, are flourishing.

As the name suggests, online casinos are casinos that can be joined over the Internet. After registering with an overseas casino site, players can play games on the site by using deposit/withdrawal agents or point agents. This is compatible not only with PCs but also with smartphones, so you can play from any location. The casino operators also do not have a physical store, but instead use overseas servers as their base, making it a tasty business because the risk of being caught for illegal activities such as gambling is much lower.

In the past, “black market casinos,” where casino tables are placed in rented buildings and other tenants, and “black market slot machines,” where dozens of explosive slot machines with rates ranging from two to several dozen times the normal rate, known as “Type 4 machines,” were very popular. There were also “Internet casinos” that offered online casino deposits and withdrawals in the style of comic book cafes. Before Corona, there were at least 30 such establishments in the Roppongi and Shinjuku areas, but the number has been steadily declining and now only a few can be counted on one’s fingers.

Under such circumstances, a new type of casino has emerged. These are “amusement poker casinos. This is a type of arcade-like store that prohibits in-store gambling and operates with impunity after obtaining a license under the Entertainment Establishments Control Law. Many influencers and others are promoting it, and the number of celebrities who profess it as a status has skyrocketed. The COVID-19 crisis has led to a huge boom in popularity among people of all ages.

However, the underground community, smelling money in the air, has set its sights on this new source of revenue. The “pitfalls” exist in the market, which take advantage of the mentality that “since no cash is exchanged, it is legally safe.

For example, there are stores that issue “special currency or coins that can be used inside the establishment” to eat and drink. Although this is not a direct exchange of cash, it is an example of something that is practically the same as giving money, and is considered problematic by the police. There are countless other examples of “gray business.

1: They encourage gambling by offering products, etc., and then guide trustworthy customers to a separate room where illegal gambling is being conducted.

2: The store itself is legal, but the online casino is used as a pawnshop.

3：They use real money exchange using currency that can be used in certain applications or RMT (real money trade) methods on online sites.

4：Promoting the use of elementary school students and other children as players, collecting participation fees and sponsorships from their parents, and then pimping them to illegal online casinos.

These are some of the methods used to evade the law and lead to illegal gambling. All of these methods are in violation of Article 23, Paragraph 2 of the Entertainment Establishments Control Law, as they offer prizes of monetary value for winning or losing poker or casino games. Some of the operators are making tens to hundreds of millions of yen per month through these gray methods.

In response to this trend, the National Police Agency has been stepping up its crackdown. At the end of last year, it made a major announcement that it would regulate online casinos. Since the beginning of this year, the agency has been aggressively busting amusement poker parlors. On October 1, the “Anonymous Reporting Board” was set up. Since stores that engage in questionable business practices are a source of suspicion even within the same industry, many accusations have been received from concerned parties.

Even more frightening, the targets include influencers and customers who were involved in the store’s announcements. In other words, it could happen that …… you were involved in illegal activities while using the site unknowingly.

Of course, not all amusement casinos operate in the gray. Most of them follow the rules and do the right thing. But at the same time, we should not forget that there are some establishments that operate in the underground.