Vietnam police bust $133 mn World Cup betting rings

A helicopter flies over the stadium ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup Round of 16 match between USA and Belgium at Lumen Field in Seattle, Washington, United States, on July 6, 2026. [AFP]

Vietnamese police said Tuesday they had arrested 85 people linked to two "exceptionally large-scale" betting rings worth a combined $133 million, as the government cracks down on illegal gambling during the World Cup.

Online gambling is banned in the communist country, but lucrative illegal operations abound prompting periodic clampdowns especially during international sporting events.

The raids in late June targeted two rings with an "exceptionally large scale of operation" and a "high level of hierarchy and tight control", police in Ho Chi Minh City said in a statement.

Since October, the rings had logged an estimated $133 million in illegal transactions, the statement said.

Leaders of the rings confessed to receiving "master-level betting accounts from individuals in Cambodia... subdividing these accounts into numerous agent and member accounts to distribute to gamblers" online, it added.

Vietnam's public security ministry said last week police had dismantled 73 gambling operations across the country, arresting 346 suspects involved in illegal gambling and football betting during the first 20 days of the World Cup.

"Transaction money in these cases totalled thousands of billions of dong (hundreds of millions of dollars)", said colonel Bui Tuan Anh of the public security ministry.

Canada, Mexico and the United States are hosting World Cup matches this year, with the final match slated for July 19.