1,500 Long An people gamble in Cambodia everyday TUOITRENEWS Guests leave the lobby area of the Sentosa Resorts World Casino in Singapore April 8, 2013. Reuters/Edgar Su On average, about 1,500 people from the southern Vietnamese province of Long An go to Cambodia every day for gambling at casinos set up in areas adjacent to Vietnam, local police reported.  The southern province shares a borderline of 132 km with the two Cambodian provinces of Svay Rieng and Prey Veng, where 11 casinos and 5 cockfighting arenas are operating. Of these gamblers, 500 go to the neighboring country through Binh Hiep border gate in Kien Tuong town and the rest enters via the My Quy Tay in Duc Hue District. According to a survey by Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security’s General Department of Crime Prevention and Control, about 3,600 Vietnamese people go to Cambodia for gambling everyday. The figure was recorded in a survey conducted last year at 40 casinos and 23 cockfighting places in Cambodia and 10 Vietnamese localities that border Cambodia. Gambling in any form is illegal under Vietnamese law except in casinos where only foreigners and overseas Vietnamese holding valid foreign passports are allowed. Victims Many Vietnamese gamblers from Long An have fallen victim to underground gang whose members are loan-sharks in Cambodia. One of them was 18-year-old Nguyen Huu Tinh, from the province’s Tan Hung District. Tinh in November 2011 reported to police that a casino named “Ba Quach” (“Mrs. Quach”) in Cambodia had captured him and then cut off one of his fingers after he lost US$3,000 there and his relative in Vietnam failed to repay as quickly as required by the casino. Tinh’s mother told the police that a young man came to her house and handed her a black bag containing her son’s finger and asked her to bring US$3,500 to Cambodia to pay off her son’s debt. She later brought the money to the casino and took Tinh back. Tinh said he had been captured along with about 20 others, all of whom had either ears or fingers cut off and sent by the casino to their relatives in Vietnam as a warning. In another case, in January this year, three young men, an 18-year-old, a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old went to Cambodia to gamble. After losing all money to a casino, two of them pawned themselves to get US$5,000 to continue to gamble. They were later detained by the casino’s security guards since they were unable to pay the money back. The young men were released after their families paid off their debts.