Phnom Penh Municipal Court is today slated to charge dozens of people arrested in Phnom Penh on Friday for their involvement in an illegal virtual football gambling ring.

On Friday, 67 were arrested by anti-terrorism police in a coordinated bust across three locations.

The group includes five Vietnamese nationals, five Thai, six Chinese, seven Indonesians, 14 Malaysians and 30 Cambodians, according to Brigadier General Kirt Chantharith, spokesman for the National Police.

“They were arrested [after] police raided their rental villas in Boeung Keng Kang 1 commune … while they were playing online soccer gambling,” he told the Post.

Chantharith said that the ongoing police investigation revealed the Cambodians were not complicit in the gambling activities but only employed by the foreigners as cooks, drivers and cleaners.

“According to the police investigation, the 30 Cambodians were not related [or involved] with the foreign nationals’ activities, so we will write and request the court to release them,” he said.

The entire group has been detained at the Ministry of Interior for questioning before being sent to court today.

A police officer working for the Ministry of Interior’s Anti-Terrorism Department, who asked not to be named, told the Post yesterday that anti-terrorism police had been tipped off by local police on August 29, leading the court to grant a warrant permitting the raid on three separate rented villas.