Diamond disguise
Police in Macau have taken down an illegal money exchange operation operating out of a jewelry store inside a Cotai casino and arrested a local female employee linked to the scheme.
The Macau Daily reported Tuesday that the unnamed sales assistant allegedly facilitated almost HK$40m ($5.1m) in illegal money exchanges for gamblers.
enabled gamblers to convert funds via unregulated platforms
The side hustle enabled gamblers to convert funds via unregulated platforms in the store before going to the casino.
Media reports state that Macau’s Judiciary Police (PJ) conducted surveillance of the jewelry store on Monday morning following a tip.
Being watched
PJ officers observed the sales assistant using her mobile phone to scan a QR code presented to her by a male, mainland Chinese patron. The woman then handed the man cash in Hong Kong dollars, with the PJ agents observing the man then head straight to the casino’s gaming floor.
Under PJ questioning after their arrests, the pair revealed the woman had exchanged ¥1,726 ($249) for HK$1,800 ($230) on the day they were surveilled.
Macau police further discovered the store had run the illicit exchange since April 2025, handling almost $5.1m in unlawful transactions and generating illegal profits of around ¥1.35m ($195,000).
PJ officers also seized HK$95,400 ($12,200) in cash, mobile phones, and a laptop from the store. Macau investigators are actively tracing the store’s owner and other involved parties.
According to Hong Kong media, the PJ have handed the case to Macau’s Public Prosecutions Office for prosecution, after classifying the case under the offense of “operating illegal currency exchange for gambling purposes.”
up to five years in prison
While the maximum penalty for this offense is up to five years in prison, the suspects could also be banned from entering Macau casinos for two to ten years. The arrests come amid a global surge in enforcement action against a rising tide of digital currency fluid criminal gambling networks.
The Macau Daily cited official police data revealing that “2,314 gaming-related criminal investigations in 2025” accounted for a 62.6% year-on-year increase.
Global rise
Macau law enforcement authorities believe the spike stems mainly from the gambling-linked criminalization of currency exchange and “improvements in statistical reporting methods.”
Cryptocurrency seizures in recent months in the multimillions and billions of dollars have been reported across the world, including this week in Turkey.
Underscoring the spike was a recent study from New York-based Chainalysis revealing Chinese-speaking criminal networks laundered around $16.1bn via digital currency channels in 2025, and that Chinese networks processed approximately 20% of the world’s total $82bn dirty crypto transactions.
