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Osaka police have arrested three people on suspicion of running front companies to launder almost ¥5bn ($35.3m) in Japanese gambler funds linked to an alleged Curaçao-licensed website.
Osaka Prefecture’s police website reported last week that officers on September 11 arrested three female company managers after allegedly receiving and laundering funds from around 10,000 online gamblers.
The women are being held on suspicion of concealing criminal proceeds at three different companies. It was not immediately clear if the companies are related or if the suspects are known to one another.
The police report said the operations involved several foreign gambling websites, but in particular named Japan-facing Yous Casino, whose websites claim registration with Curaçao eGaming, the island nation’s online gambling regulator.
Curaçao eGaming’s licensee register website, however, does not recognise the URLs of various sites carrying Yous Casino logos. The registration status of Yous Casino could not be immediately verified with a regulatory spokesperson.
Jiji Press and the Asahi Shimbun also reported on Thursday (September 12) that the executives concealed the gambling sources of funds deposited into the companies’ accounts across 140,000 transactions between mid-2022 and mid-2023.
Each company reportedly maintained contracts with Yous Casino involving services and sales, but these were a “cover” for gambling operations, the reports said.
Jiji reported that ¥2.9bn of the laundered ¥5bn was returned to gamblers as winnings, ¥2bn was transferred to the casino operator or operators, and that the suspects received around ¥150m ($1m) between them, varying between 1.5 percent and 2 percent of gambling volume.
The media outlets named the suspects as Osaka-based Yukiko Han, 41, Takatsuki City-based Yuya Santanda, 40, and Osaka-based Hatsuyo Kinoshita, 40.
Kyodo News reported that the case came to light on July 22 and that police are investigating if other Japan-based individuals are involved in operations of the implicated websites.
The arrests are the latest examples of a major crackdown on online gambling interests in Japan that is targeting gamblers, payments channels and other industry-linked parties.
In August, the National Police Agency announced it was set to probe the foreign operators of Japan-facing websites to identify major players in the industry and probe their customers and remittance practices.
Police are also preparing a survey for online gamblers to better understand the underground sector, suggesting that the authorities are relying on public goodwill and a moderate response to grass-roots lawbreaking to further their investigations.
