Police arrest 15 people in Orange County gambling raid

Friday, Sept. 29, 2000 | 9:10 a.m.

The 15 were rounded up in a pre-dawn raid by federal and local officials in this city's Little Saigon district. Their alleged leader, Son Thanh Nguyen, 32, was already in jail on a weapons charge.

Nguyen, authorities said, ran a sophisticated operation that used "stealth" video machines that, with the flip of a switch, could be changed from legal arcade games like "Pac Man" to video games of chance.

People playing the games of chance could deposit as much as $20 at a time.

The machines are fixtures in most of Little Saigon's Vietnamese cafes, authorities said, adding that in some instances gang members threatened cafe owners who were reluctant to install them.

The gang was believed to have made more than $300,000 a year from their operation, which authorities said was expanding outside of Orange County.

"I truly believe that the Little Saigon community will be a better place to live," FBI agent Randy D. Parsons said after the raid. "The syndicate was involved in a significant amount of loan-sharking and Ecstasy trafficking as well as illegal gambling."

The raid was part of a larger crackdown aimed at curtailing organized crime in Little Saigon.

"Because of the refugee settlement in our city, the Little Saigon area, the tentacles of crime from that area spread out across the country and around the world," said Police Chief James Cook.

The spread of crime from Little Saigon is so serious, he said, that Westminster police now have an investigator working in Vietnam to try to curb it.