Police in Phnom Penh arrested 12 people on Monday during a raid on a house in Sen Sok district from which they had been running a sophisticated illegal lottery operation, officials said Tuesday.
Led by Phnom Penh Municipal Court deputy prosecutor Kham Sophary, 10 municipal minor crimes and Toek Khla commune police officers made the arrests at about 5 p.m., according to commune police chief Sok Sophal.
“[T]he municipal minor crimes police have arrested 12 people so far,” he said, adding that officers also seized nine fax machines, printing materials and stacks of lottery tickets.
“Undercover officers watched them for more than a week before moving in on them yesterday,” he said, adding that the lottery—a thriving operation attracting punters across the city—had since been shut down at the request of the municipal court.
Police refused to name the suspects, but Bun Sathya, chief of the city’s minor crimes bureau, said all of them were Cambodian citizens and that half were women.
“We arrested them because they were operating an illegal lottery that we knew about from over a month of investigating the case,” he said, adding that the 12 were still being questioned at the municipal police headquarters.
“We are still questioning them, but we will send them to the municipal court tomorrow,” he said.
Mr. Sophary, the deputy prosecutor, could not be reached.
