Deputy Home Minister says it is an uphill battle against online gambling

KUALA LUMPUR: This is currently no effective way to block online gambling servers or to deal with some 700,000 dubious prepaid mobile phone accounts that may be used by syndicates, says Deputy Home Minister Datuk Mohd Azis Jamman.

He said that new measures are needed to plug the loopholes in enforcement against online gambling.

"Online gambling servers are located abroad and these are identified by their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

"When the police or the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) block an IP number, gambling operators can change it in a split second," he said when answering a question raised by Khoo Poay Tiong (PH-Kota Melaka) in Parliament on Monday (Nov 12).

Mohd Azis also told lawmakers that it was difficult for authorities to crack down on online gambling using mobile phone apps.

"It was previously mentioned by the Communications and Multimedia Minister (Gobind Singh Deo) that there are some 700,000 dubious prepaid mobile phone accounts.

"This makes it hard for authorities to gather information as the gambling operators are operating underground," he said.

He added that it was hard also to prove online gambling when no physical transaction of money takes place.

"When they are caught, they say it's just an online game as no money is involved," he said.

He said the police are currently looking at ways to effectively deal with these problems.

Earlier, Mohd Azis told lawmakers that police had received 973 reports on illegal gambling activities since July this year.

He 456 reports led to successful raids, 260 were baseless or false reports, while 253 merited further investigations.