Three company executives from Osaka have been detained by police in a suspected $35m online casino money laundering case. [Image: Shutterstock.com]

Three men have been arrested in Osaka on suspicion of laundering around ¥4.9bn ($35m) for illegal casino operators.

Police arrested 41-year-old Yukiko Han, 40-year-old Yuya Santanda, and 40-year-old Hatsuyo Kinoshita, who are all company executives from Osaka Prefecture.

Authorities found the money paid to the three individuals’ bank accounts from around 10,000 people involved in Yous casino, an offshore gambling site. Online gambling remains illegal in Japan, even on offshore sites which operate legally in their own jurisdiction.

the payments were disguised as legitimate business revenue

From March 2022 to June 2023, over 140,000 payments were made into the three accounts. Each individual ran his own company, which had contracts with the casino operator, and the payments were disguised as legitimate business revenue.

From the ¥4.9bn, ¥2.9 billion ($20m) was returned to customers as winnings, with the remainder being a profit to the offshore operators. Of the profit, 1.5% to 2% was taken as a cut for the three suspects.