How The Chinese Use Illegal Online Gambling And Tether To Launder Over $1 Trillion Yuan

It has long been known that over the past decade Chinese oligarchs who wanted to bypass Beijing's capital controls and anti-money laundering firewall, would smuggle billions of dollars outside of China by using the Macau casino money-laundering infrastructure, prompting Beijing to crack down aggressively on this popular firewall loophole, with mixed success.

What is less known is that as the capital controls game of cat and mouse escalated in recent years, so have Chinese money laundering tactics and now according to Caixin, Chinese citizens launder as much as $153 billion per year with the help of online gambling and such cryptocurrency as tether, which has long been rumored to be a key driver of upside into bitcoin (the same bitcoin we said in 2015 when it was $250 would soar thanks to Chinese attempts to circumvent the capital firewall… we were right).

A migrant worker from the northern Chinese city Baoding “loaned” three credit cards under his name to friends to offset 2,500 yuan ($380) of debt he owed. He never imagined he would later be arrested for illegal sale of credit cards that were used by criminal groups to launder money for online gambling.

This arrest was part of Chinese authorities’ nationwide “Card Breaking Campaign,” an operation to crack down on illicit bank card transactions and bank card sales to combat telecommunications fraud and cross-border online gambling. The campaign aims to cut off links between mobile phone sim cards and bank cards, and users who are not the registered card holders. Also included are online payment accounts such as Tencent’s WeChat Pay and Alibaba’s Alipay.

This new type of crime has created an illegitimate industry employing 5 million to 6 million people involving information technology (IT), payment settlements and operations, according to an IT department official at the Ministry of Public Security. The complex payments and money laundering system ropes in small individual players in some of China’s remotest places like the migrant worker in Baoding who loan or lease financial credentials to offshore criminal groups, which then help illegal gamblers hide money from authorities, often using Tether.’s USDT cryptocurrency.

In the first nine months of 2020, police cracked down on 1,700 online gambling platforms and 1,400 underground banks involving more than 1 trillion yuan ($153 billion) of illegal transactions, data from the Ministry of Public Security showed. That compared with 7,200 online gambling cases in 2019 totaling 18 billion yuan.

In the cross-border online gambling chain, mobile payments play an increasingly important role. As the front-runner in mobile payments, China has been aggressively promoting payments via mobile phone scans of QR codes, a type of barcode. In China, even a street food vendor owns a unique QR code for receiving mobile payments. The convenience associated with mobile payments has also attracted criminal gambling groups.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/how-chinese-use-illegal-online-gambling-and-tether-launder-over-1-trillion-yuan

3 killed, 3 injured in ‘random’ mass shooting at bowling alley in Rockford, Illinois

At least three people have been killed and three others injured following a shooting at a bowling alley in Rockford, Illinois. Local police have one ‘person of interest’ in custody, but the situation remains ‘active.’

Local police responded to an “active shooter” situation at Don Carter Lanes on East State Street around 7:15pm, Rockford police Chief Dan O’Shea said, confirming that three people were proclaimed dead and three others were being treated at local hospitals for gunshot wounds.

The attack seemed “random” and a single suspect, believed to be acting alone, was taken into custody, without any shots fired by police, O’Shea added.

The identities of the victims and the suspect have not yet been released. Local media reports, however, said several "teenagers" we somehow involved in the incident.

Police urged residents to stay away from the scene, saying that while the shooter was in custody, it was “still an active situation and officers are continuing to clear the area.”

https://www.rt.com/usa/510821-shooting-bowling-rockford-illinois/

Gun-buying activity shatters records in 2020 amid lockdowns, riots, presidential election

FBI saw largest yearly increase of background checks in 20 years.

Gun-buying activity shattered records in the U.S. this year, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation recording both the highest number of background checks in its history and the highest increase of checks year-over-year in over two decades.

Last month was the busiest November on record for FBI background checks in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, according to the Bureau's month-by-month data. Background checks were up 40% from the prior November, with over 3.6 million checks performed throughout the month.

That number would be remarkable during any other year. Only one other month in NICS history, December 2015, has broken three million. Yet November was only the fourth-busiest month for background checks during 2020 overall. In June, the FBI recorded 3,931,607 total checks, nearly topping 4,000,000 checks in a month for the first time and handily beating the previous monthly record of 3,740,688 checks set in March.

The June record-breaker came amid widespread rioting, violence and unrest throughout the country driven by Black Lives Matter-led protests following the death in late May of black Minneapolis resident George Floyd while in the custody of police.

Escalating murder rates in cities nationwide also likely played a role, with experts pointing to the fallout from COVID lockdowns, economic shocks and crime policies as possible explanations for the rising number of killings.

Overall, the FBI has recorded 35,758,249 background checks so far this year, a provisional number that is already 26% higher than last year's total of nearly 28,400,000. That's the second-highest percentage increase in the 21-year history of the NICS. (The only larger increase came in 2000, the first full year of the program's existence, when checks increased by nearly 1,000% as the system became fully incorporated into the U.S. gun economy.)

That number is certain to grow even larger: The present total of checks in 2020 does not include December's numbers. Historical data indicate that December's checks tend to be elevated relative to the rest of the year.

Though each individual background check does not necessarily represent an individual buyer (many gun-buyers will purchase several guns in a year, while many others will fail their background check), the gun industry has reported significant first-time customer activity this year.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation reported in June that gun retailers estimated 40% of their sales during the first four months of the year went to first-time gun owners, and that nearly half of those first-time buyers were women, both notable upticks.

"The main purchase driver among the group was personal protection, followed by target shooting and hunting," the group said.

Peyton Galanti, a spokeswoman for Colonial Shooting Academy in Richmond, Va., said her organization has observed similar activity.

"Gun sales have been high and steady this entire year, even during the [COVID-19] shutdown," she said, claiming that the market has been driven by "first-time gun buyers" and "people who never thought they'd own a gun."

"Our classes have been sold out months ahead and, until about this week, range time has also been way up all year," she said.

https://justthenews.com/nation/economy/2020-shattered-records-gun-buying-activity-amid-lockdowns-riots-presidential