Shenzhen police announced yesterday that they were issuing red cards for illegal soccer gambling, especially Internet gambling, during the ongoing World Cup.

Wang Weidong, chief of the public order team with the city’s public security bureau, announced that 53 suspects had been caught and 260,000 yuan (US$ 36,600) in cash confiscated since the start of the World Cup.

Gambling aids including computers, cars, bank cards had also been confiscated. More than 20 million yuan of suspected gambling money in bank accounts had been frozen.

Wang said the police had beefed up Net monitoring, sent more staff on patrol and encouraged people to report gambling.

A campaign was launched Friday evening which ended with 37 suspects involved in 13 soccer gambling cases being caught. At 11 PM five suspects involved in Net gambling were caught in a Futian building.

A laptop and gambling money totaling 29,800 yuan were taken.

In another campaign, a banker's agent of an overseas soccer gambling Web site, three dealers and 11 other suspects were caught Wednesday.

Acting as agents of the overseas gambling site, they accepted gambling money from members of the site and made big profits.

The police also launched a hotline 8249-8705 and a mobile short message platform 13530819819 for tip-offs.

(Shenzhen Daily June 27, 2006)