A 12-year-old boy was caught red handed cheating at online poker last week when police officers raided his home in Tianjin, China. The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was reported to the authorities over a month ago by his own parents who had started to get suspicious when their son booked a trip for the whole family to Las Vegas. It didn't take long before they found out that he had earned hundreds of thousands of dollars at online poker by using a homebuilt device to cheat against other players.
Police investigators didn't take the case seriously at first, but fuel was added to the fire when several poker sites contacted them about a mysterious poker player from Tianjin who suddenly had started to win huge amounts against the top pros. The police's IT-experts started to look into the case two weeks ago and last week they finally managed to track down the IP-addresses from where the boy had been playing poker from.
Ying Sung, the head of investigations at Tianjin's police station, said in a statement, "We are happy to finally put this case to rest. We have confiscated 3,079,240 CNY (about $500,000) and the victims of this young man are soon to be repaid in full by each individual poker site. Luckily for this boy, he is too young for a prison sentence nor will he or his family receive a fine."
Ying Sung described the cheating device used by 12-year-old boy as something taken from a science-fiction movie...
"He had built a USB-based device from old computer spares and a Game Boy that allowed him to pick up different frequencies corresponding his opponents hole cards. I have never seen anything like it before. It was like something taken from a science-fiction movie. From now on, I hope that this young, bright boy will dedicate his electronics and computer skills to statutory purposes only."
