Police: Video Gambling Ring Crushed

Federal and local authorities Thursday said they have dismantled the county’s largest Asian organized crime syndicate, a Little Saigon-based operation that supplied the majority of illegal gambling machines in the county.

In a predawn raid culminating “Operation Wildcard,” authorities arrested 15 people. The alleged gang leader, Son Thanh Nguyen, 32, was already in custody on a weapons charge. Nguyen, authorities said, masterminded a sophisticated operation that installed in cafes “stealth” video games that offer illegal gambling with the flip of a switch.

The machines are fixtures in the majority of Little Saigon’s Vietnamese cafes, according to authorities, and also proliferate in outlying cities. Gang members, they said, often preyed on merchants and threatened those who refused to allow them to set up the machines.

“I truly believe that the Little Saigon community will be a better place to live,” said FBI Supervisory Special Agent Randy D. Parsons. “The syndicate was involved in a significant amount of loan sharking, Ecstasy trafficking as well as illegal gambling.”

Local police said they are heartened by the arrests because they believe the gambling attracted other crime to the city, including loan sharking and extortion. The FBI believes the gang received more than $300,000 a year from the video machines alone, although police privately believe the number may have reached the millions.

The crackdown is part of a larger effort to curtail organized crime emanating from Little Saigon. The gang’s criminal activities, police said, were typical of other gangs whose reach extends across states, and sometimes worldwide. Westminster Police Chief James Cook said the problem is so serious that the department has an investigator in Vietnam.

“Because of the refugee settlement in our city, the Little Saigon area, the tentacles of crime from that area spread out across the country and around the world,” Cook said.

The arrests cap a one-year FBI investigation that used wiretaps and community sources to infiltrate the syndicate, most of whose members were from the Pomona Boys gang.

In addition to the gambling counts, gang members were charged with running an international trafficking ring dealing in the “club drug” Ecstasy. Nguyen was also charged with weapons possession in connection with a plot to kill rival gang members.

The investigation focused on wiretapped conversations between Nguyen and an Anaheim video game dealer allegedly used by the ring to rig regular video games with illicit electronic components. With a flip of a remote control switch, normal video games like “Pac-Man” would be replaced on the screen by illegal games of chance with names like “Dancing Dolls.”

The machines accepted quarters and bills up to $20; winners normally claimed the money from the cafe or restaurant operator because the machines do not dispense cash.

Authorities say the machines were big money makers. They say Nguyen bought them for $2,300, and each apparatus can generate as much as $150,000 annually.

A major break in the case came when FBI agents were able to build identical remote controls to activate the machines. Gambling screens switched to video games by merchants at the sight of police were quickly flipped back.

“We were able to mimic their frequency,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Marc Greenberg. “When a merchant hit remote to ‘Pac-Man,’ we would switch it back to the gambling game.”

In Little Saigon, leaders said the arrests were important to improve the community’s image and transform the area into a tourist hub.

“They’re just a few bad apples who created a very bad image to the Vietnamese community,” said Council Member Tony Lam. “They want to get rich overnight, and they should be prosecuted and punished.”

The suspects face possible five-year prison terms on the gambling charges. The drug charges also carry potential five-year terms.