Investigation · Dhaka · May–August 2026
In 2026 Bangladesh passed a gambling statute, froze tens of thousands of mobile-money accounts, and still found Chinese nationals running SIM-gateway floors in Dhaka apartments. This investigation puts those police operations next to the Planning Commission’s count of people already caught in online betting — and next to the cashiers advertised in Chinese to service that market.
Reporting from public briefings and published investigations. Police figures are estimates. Arrests are allegations until a court decides.
1. Why they came here
On 14 May, after detectives arrested six Chinese nationals in Turag and three Bangladeshis in Uttara, DMP Additional Commissioner (Detective) Md. Shafiqul Islam was asked why Chinese groups were choosing Bangladesh. His answer, reported by The Business Standard, was operational, not ideological: moving the proceeds digitally from Bangladesh had become “comparatively easier.” He said he would take the point to lawmakers.
The same briefing had him describing “technologically advanced Chinese nationals” who were targeting Bangladesh with advertisements. bdnews24 quoted him saying the gangs found it “easy” to entice Bangladeshis, collected through bKash and Nagad, “and immediately launder the funds abroad.” A Dhaka court gave police two days to interrogate the Chinese suspects over gambling, fraud and laundering “millions to China.”
Three months later the same officer was back at the DMP Media Centre. Detectives had taken a six-storey building in Bashundhara. The Financial Express recorded him saying many Chinese nationals were carrying out such activities in Bangladesh “under the names of different Chinese companies.” The ground-floor tenant was Bangladeshi; the rest of the building, he said, had been let to Chinese occupants. Police seized about 6,000 SIMs and gateway hardware that, he said, could take 10,000 to 12,000 more.
Police have not said every betting brand in Bangladesh is Chinese. Daily Star reporters still found Melbet-, Mostbet- and 1xBet-style agent rails. What DB has said, repeatedly, is narrower and harder: Chinese nationals are on the ground in Dhaka, they run the SIM and gateway layer, they control payment companies behind Bangladesh-facing sites, and they pick this country because the money is easy to lift.
2. The factory: SIMs, gateways, apartments
From 1 May, Shafiqul told TBS, a crackdown began because online gambling had “turned into an epidemic.” The cyber team was watching Facebook, YouTube, Telegram and fake sites for deposit-bonus ads and illegal bKash/Nagad flows. That same day they raided Uttara Sector 13 and Rupayan Housing Estate in Turag.
14 May — Uttara and Turag. Named: MA Jie, 33; Zhang Jiahao, 22; Liu Jinjie, 32; Wang Shibo, 24; Chang Tiantian, 29; James Zhu, 43; and three Bangladeshis. Seized: GSM/GPRS gateways (64-, 8- and 256-port), about 280 SIMs, laptops, 20 phones, about Tk 6.05 lakh, passports and NIDs, a Toyota. BSS: agent SIMs collected from around the country and kept live through the gateways; money moved abroad, “particularly to China.” Case under the Cyber Security Act, Ramna Police Station.
16 July — Gazipur (Tongi) and Cumilla. No Chinese national was arrested on the day. Police named a suspected overseas boss, Natan, a Chinese national, operating through Go Pay, and a local coordinator, Ariful Islam Rifat, 23, plus five others. Seized: 6,600 MFS-linked SIMs, 67 other SIMs, more than 70 phones, a laptop, a microbus. Device forensics, they said: about Tk 5 crore a day, then cryptocurrency abroad.
1 August — Bashundhara Residential Area. Named: Liu Hui Zhang, 46; Wei Yuji, 30; She Yi Ran, 42; and Jhorna Chakma Ziana, 27. Seized: 14 laptops, 16 phones, more than 6,000 SIMs, 20 gateways. One phone was wired for 12 SIMs; IMEI numbers were being changed. Claimed Tk 200–250 crore a month through a single gateway, from gambling and other illegal earnings. SMS about jobs and extra income pulled people onto links.
Prothom Alo’s 16 July account of the money trail is the clearest public description of the factory’s output. Sites used MFS agent accounts. Day-end surplus moved to personal MFS. Cryptocurrency bought on Binance, Bybit and Bitget. Coins sent to wallets issued by the payment companies. Joint Commissioner Syed Harun-or-Rashid: the websites are controlled from China; Bangladeshi rings work on commission.
3. The cashiers police named — and the ones sold in Chinese
Prothom Alo listed the companies behind those wallets as Go Pay (গো পে), Lucky Pay (লাকি পে), LQ Pay (এল কিউ পে), XE Pay (এক্সি পে) and Cool Pay (কুল পে). Shafiqul said the ring they had just broken worked through Go Pay. Chinese-character names were not published. No working corporate site for that Go Pay has been produced in the open record. Czech gopay.com and Canadian gopayint.com are other firms.
On Chinese B2B boards and Telegram, a second set of labels sells the same rails — bKash, Nagad, Rocket — to Chinese-speaking clients, sometimes with the trade tag BC (gambling):
- ChaoPaoPay / 超跑 — bKash 101 / Nagad 102; Telegram @ChaoPaoPay_BDT
- TigerPay / 老虎支付 — Nagad, Rocket, bKash; about 80% success; D0; “正规BC”; Telegram @Armins2025
- AGBDT / 孟加拉源头支付 — listed on PASA365: D0, USDT return, “一类bc产品”
- BANPAY / 孟加拉源頭支付 — listed on PASA365: deposit 4.5% / payout 1%; copy includes 純BC 資金
- 孟加拉支付网关-三方支付 — integrator copy for bKash, Nagad, Rocket
Police named Go Pay and four other English labels. They did not name ChaoPaoPay, TigerPay, AGBDT or BANPAY. The listings show a specialised Chinese-language market for Bangladesh MFS access. That is a parallel fact, not a finding that those four brands sat in the Gazipur ledgers.
4. How big is the harm — and why the numbers fight each other
The General Economics Division of the Planning Commission, in a report released in January 2026 and cited by The Daily Star on 19 July, put more than five million Bangladeshis as already affected by online gambling. Without intervention, GED said, the figure could pass 20 million by 2027. It valued the market at about Tk 830 crore a year, growing 4.7–6.1 percent.
BFIU’s FY 2024–25 cut, reported by The Financial Express on 18 July, is a different instrument: flows it tagged to online gaming and related prohibited activity. Debit Tk 17.15 billion, credit Tk 16.73 billion — the highest volume it had recorded. Salaried workers sat at the top (Tk 6.41 billion debit). Housewives second. Farmers and fisheries third. Students fourth: Tk 1.94 billion out, Tk 1.75 billion in. The unit said students and young people were spending savings; the activity had reached rural areas and lower-income groups, including day labourers; and some people were running accounts on behalf of others.
These figures must not be added, and they must not be treated as the same thing as the police daily estimates. GED’s Tk 830 crore is an annual market size. BFIU’s ~Tk 1,715 crore debit is a year of tagged flows. Shafiqul’s Tk 700–1,000 crore a day, if taken literally, would be hundreds of thousands of crore a year — orders of magnitude above both. He called it preliminary. The August Tk 200–250 crore a month was for one gateway and mixed gambling with other illegal earnings. The honest reading is that the state itself has not settled on a scale, while every available official source says the harm is already national.
Parliament was told on 24 June that BFIU had frozen or suspended about 55,000 MFS accounts over gambling and digital hundi. On 3 August a senior BFIU official told TBS another 14,000 were being frozen that day, after 10,000 the previous month, and that flagged NIDs would be blocked from opening new MFS accounts. Those freezes mix gambling with hundi. They are still the closest public count of how far the collection layer has reached into ordinary wallets.
5. What it does to people
The Daily Star’s 19 July investigation did not need a Chinese passport to show the product is still on sale after the Gambling Prevention Act. Correspondents placed bets on 12 sites. Accounts opened on a mobile number. Deposits from Tk 100 through bKash, Nagad and Rocket numbers the agents named. Winnings came back in three to five minutes. One agent said the platform ran from outside Bangladesh with more than a thousand agents almost around the clock, and then offered the reporters a cut for recruiting. Meta’s Ad Library, the paper wrote, still showed at least 210 betting ads on Facebook and Instagram in the week after the law took effect. Two Facebook groups promoting World Cup bets had more than 100,000 and 124,000 followers.
A 29-year-old businessman, name withheld, told the Star he had gambled for more than a decade, introduced others, never seen anyone profit in the long run, and had sold family land and jewellery to keep going.
On 13 April in Kalabagan, police and family members told UNB, 21-year-old technical-college student Faisal Mahmud died after jumping from a high floor following a fight with his mother over money. Relatives said he had been addicted to online gambling and had been taking money from her. The autopsy, police said, would speak to cause of death. The gambling link is a family and police account, not a court finding. It sits in the same year BFIU put students fourth on its list of who is already sending money into these platforms.
DB’s May briefing described the other half of the pitch: first some “profit,” then ruin. In August the same office described SMS about jobs and extra income. The harm is not only the bet. It is the recruitment of broke students as sub-agents, the use of housewives’ and farmers’ wallets that BFIU can already see, and the conversion of a family MFS number into a node on someone else’s cashier.
6. The Bangladeshi is the part that can be thrown away
Put the three raids in a line. Chinese technicians and company cover in the apartments. Local tenants and commission agents on the lease and the SIM. Ledgers of thousands of MFS numbers. Cryptocurrency on the far side. When BFIU freezes an account, the NID is local. When CID looks for an agent, the phone is local. Natan, if he exists as described, is the person they said they were still trying to arrest in July.
A further risk is reuse. BSS on 14 May wrote of gambling, fraud “and other illegal financial activities” on the same SIM-gateway kit. The August case mixed VoIP with gambling on the same floor. That is not proof that every frozen bKash was used for drugs or smuggling. It is proof that the kit — nominee SIMs, gateways, crypto out — is not specialised. Once a person has handed over a number, they do not choose the next product.
Different “Pay” brands do not necessarily mean different networks. The questions that survive a rebrand are the SIMs, the gateway machines, the USDT wallets, the Telegram handles that issue them, and the Chinese company names on the work papers.
7. The law arrived. The cashiers did not leave.
Parliament passed the Gambling Prevention Act on 30 June. Daily Star reporters were still opening accounts in July. DB was still taking Chinese-occupied floors in August. BFIU was still freezing MFS numbers in batches. Deputy commissioner Md Tariqul Islam told the Star they knew World Cup betting would rise and that most cases now go under the new law. Knowing is not the same as reaching the people who issue the wallets.
If the next raid again ends with a local coordinator, a pile of SIMs, and a Chinese name that has already been replaced on Telegram, Bangladesh remains the jurisdiction that keeps the frozen names. The public record is already loud about the other end of the chain: payment companies police say are Chinese-controlled, crews working from Dhaka under company cover, and a Chinese-language market that sells this country’s mobile money as a product.
Sources
The Daily Star, 19 July 2026 — “Online gambling rackets thrive in plain sight”
The Financial Express, 18 July 2026 — BFIU FY 2024–25
Prothom Alo, 16 July 2026
The Daily Star, 16 July 2026
BSS, 16 July 2026
The Business Standard, 14 May 2026
bdnews24, 14 May 2026
BSS, 14 May 2026
The Financial Express, 2 August 2026
The Business Standard, 2 August 2026
The Business Standard, 24 June 2026 — 55,000 MFS accounts
The Business Standard, 3 August 2026 — 14,000 more freezes
Daily New Nation / UNB, 14 April 2026 — Kalabagan