Crown Jewel The Crown Casinos
in Perth and Melbourne, Australia, have played host to high-profile celebrities
like Tom Cruise, Kim Kardashian, and One Direction. But the most important cog
in Crown's well-oiled money machine is not its star-powered guest list.
For years, the key to the whole operation was a little-known Chinese businessman named Tom Zhou.
Nicknamed "Mr. Chinatown," Zhou's ties to China's criminal underworld helped
fuel Crown's rise to the top of the gambling world. All the while, Zhou was lining his own
pockets in an elaborate money-laundering scam sanctioned by the Chinese President himself.
Three-Headed Snake While Mr. Chinatown
was the leader of Crown's secret scheme, two other major players were involved
that are worth mentioning. Together, they make up the three-headed snake
at the center of the story that the Chinese government doesn't want you to know about.
One head is Ming Chai, an influential figure within the Chinese Communist Party who also
happens to be President Xi Jinping's first cousin. Chai followed closely
behind his cousin as he climbed up the government totem pole,
using his family connection to the future President to help bolster his career pursuits.
Chai's father was a high-ranking chief within China's Armed Police Service. After serving
as a police officer for a short while, Chai shifted his efforts to telecommunications.
He headed up multiple telecommunications firms in which the Chinese government held
substantial stakes. As the years went on, it became evident to anyone paying attention
that Chai was up to no good with his business endeavors. He was able to successfully hide
in plain sight thanks to his hookup in the President's office. He used his connections at the
highest levels of Chinese politics to facilitate corrupt business deals for his shady partners.
One of those partners was Simon Pan, another key member of the Crown Casino's aforementioned
three-headed snake. Pan was the owner of an adult entertainment establishment located
less than a mile from Crown's front doors. He and his business had been implicated in
several court cases involving organized crime and alleged human trafficking. But even still,
Pan was chumming it up with the likes of the President's cousin.
Pan's place of work may not have been the most upstanding institution on the block,
but its prime location right in Crown's backyard helped it become one of the casino's most
vital business partners. Pan was responsible for luring high rollers to gamble at Crown.
He was awarded a generous commission for his efforts. But that wasn't all.
Pan legitimized his business operations by laundering the proceeds he made off
of his adult entertainment gig through Crown's supposedly squeaky clean ledger.
Pan helped supply the cash and catch the whales,
Chai ensured the Chinese government didn't lay a finger on him and his buddies,
and then there was Tom Zhou. What exactly was Mr. Chinatown's role in all of this?
Zhou was the mastermind behind the whole operation. He was tasked with initiating
the recruitment of the deep-pocketed high rollers who came and bankrolled
the casino. His connections to the Triads, an organized crime syndicate,
made him a valuable asset to Crown. They were willing to take on dirty money and
continually enable criminal practices to pursue their growth and development.
The whole criminal enterprise is known as a Junket.
Junkets Junkets are a way
for casino owners to get high rollers to come and play at their establishment. A Junket Operator is
responsible for wooing these prolific gamblers, often by offering all-expenses-paid trips and
other VIP perks. That's what Zhou did for Crown, although he would often delegate
his work to "sub-Junkets," assistants that would willingly do the rich and powerful Zhou's bidding.
Since the Crown Casino was located in Australia, Zhou's Junket was also a clean way for Triads to
launder money outside the eyes of the Chinese government.
Traveling outside of the country to gamble was a necessary precaution for these Chinese
criminals to take. Ever since the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949,
gambling has been outlawed. All forms of gambling are illegal under Chinese law.
The same cannot be said for Australia, where gambling is 100% legal and 100%
under-regulated. Even though legislators are well aware that Money launderers abuse casino Junkets,
they've essentially given up trying to control what the casinos are doing
You wouldn't try to tame a hungry lion, would you? Of course not.
That's why Australian regulators left the subject alone for years,
allowing Zhou to carry out his illicit Junket unchecked by the government.
Gaming Junkets are also legal in the United States. However,
casinos must follow specific statutes to prevent
the rampant criminality that you see in less-regulated countries like Australia.
Money Laundering The blueprint for
laundering money through the Crown Casino was executed perfectly by Mr. Chinatown and
his crackpot team of criminals and Presidential family members. It all
starts with the Junket operator, in this case, Zhou, who recruits his precious high
rollers to gamble at Crown. He then supplies them with a heaping helping of casino chips to play
with at various tables during their stay. This is how dirty money often enters the equation.
As we learned earlier, Australian authorities couldn't be bothered
to double-check the source of the funds used to buy these chips. If a Triad needs
money laundered, there's no better place to start than a casino. They'll make even the
dirtiest of cash spotless after it moves through their balance sheets.
Crown cashes out the money that the gambler won or left unplayed. High rollers with
criminal ties would now have a legitimate source for their previously filthy cash.
Any debts that Zhou owed to his underworld connections would be paid off through the
commission he earned from the casino for bringing the gamblers on board in the first place.
Casinos and money laundering are like peanut butter and jelly. For as long as
criminals have needed to launder money, they've used casinos to do just that,
particularly in the less regulated regions of the world such as Australia.
Lax Visas In many cases, the
high rollers Zhou lured from China required visas to enter Australia. While many of the individuals
being brought over were linked to Triads and other illicit organizations, Crown staffers
were more than happy to vouch for them to visa officials. They ensured the Australian government
that they fully trusted Tom Zhou's judgment, given their long-standing history with him.
On many occasions, these high rollers were able to receive fast-tracked visas thanks to
an emergency hotline that was set up between the Crown Casino and federal visa officials.
Mr. Chinatown If you're wondering what made Mr. Chinatown
qualified to run such a sophisticated scam spread across multiple countries, let's just say he'd had
more than enough practice. Zhou was the subject of an Interpol red notice as a consequence of
his prolific financial crimes. He laundered, defrauded, and extorted tens of millions of
dollars while heading up his criminal empire, and he was an international fugitive because of it.
He was supposed to be arrested if he ever crossed the border into another
country. But that didn't happen when he fled to Australia. What or who was protecting him?
It seems Zhou's loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party had given him a long legal leash.
It certainly didn't hurt that he was pals with the President's cousin. As part of the
Crown Junket's operation, Ming Chai promised to throw his political weight around to ensure
Zhou wouldn't be touched by the powers seeking to take him down for his crimes.
Not only did he have friends in high places, but Zhou was also closely involved in a total
of three organizations that heavily supported the Chinese Communist Party in Australia.
Zhou's loyalty and support to the party were more important
to Chinese law enforcement than bringing the mob boss to justice.
Australian Casinos Crown wasn't the only
Australian casino taking advantage of the country's
lax gambling laws. While they were certainly the first domino to fall,
people started to catch wind of other casinos taking part in similar money laundering schemes.
The Star Casino in Sydney was investigated in 2021 for apparently recruiting high rollers to clean
up their cash on the casino floor, much like Zhou and his Crown Junket. The allegations against Star
Entertainment were shocking to many, given the company's prominence within the gambling space.
Australian authorities also began examining Skycity Entertainment,
another gambling giant in the region. Executives at Skycity claimed they put an end to their
association with Chinese high rollers once Crown's misdeeds were brought to light in 2019,
and they agreed to cooperate with law enforcement's probe into their operations.
Zhou Lifestyle Zhou was living large
thanks to the fortune he was making off his Crown Junket. Mr. Chinatown had so much money
that he routinely dropped millions of dollars on luxury homes, seemingly just for the heck of it.
In 2009, he got himself a mansion in Toorak worth nearly $8 million. He bought another house around
the corner a few years later for $15 million. But that was no skin off the wealthy gangster's back.
He splurged on yet another multi-million dollar property in Central Victoria in 2016. Zhou came
up with the idea to transform the expansive cattle farm into a five-star hotel for Chinese tourists.
Those plans never materialized, however, and he instead turned it into a hunting lodge.
Zhou didn't just indulge in opulent spending sprees. His wild lifestyle
also involved recreational drugs and other unlawful vices. Mr. Chinatown's behavior
became so erratic that he was even banned from Crown's casino grounds around 2016. He
was still able to operate his criminal Junket from afar thanks to his trusty sub-Junkets,
who performed the hands-on duties he wasn't allowed to do himself.
Private Flight Zhou's good fortune
eventually ran out. A data breach of Crown's servers resulted in sensitive emails being leaked
to the public. On top of that, the authorities received a tip about a suspicious private flight
at Coolangatta airport, which ultimately marked the beginning of the end for Mr. Chinatown.
The leaked emails essentially spelled out many
of the details regarding Crown's illegal junket operation. Tom Zhou,
Ming Chai, and Simon Pan were all implicated in the messages brought to light by the leak.
The private flight in question was scheduled to take off on August the 17th of 2016. Federal
police received an alert that a man suspected of taking part in a money-laundering scam was
preparing to board the private jet. That man was Tom Zhou, and while investigators knew
little about the Chinese businessman, they knew something wasn't right.
When police arrived at the scene and boarded the plane while it was idling on the runway,
they searched the aircraft and its passengers for suspiciously large amounts of money,
which might have indicated laundering.
They didn't find the cash, and the plane was therefore allowed to take flight as planned. But
there was something fishy about the people on that airplane. None of them were carrying cell phones
or wallets, and that included Zhou and Chai. When asked about the strange omissions from their
luggage, one passenger claimed he had only decided to leave the country that morning on a whim.
Not exactly the most convincing of explanations. These days, nobody
even leaves their house without their phone, let alone the country. It's far
more likely that Mr. Chinatown's guests were instructed to leave those particular items behind,
perhaps to avoid having their location tracked or being identified by the authorities.
Avoiding detection was of particular interest to high rollers who had just laundered money
through Crown Casino and wanted to get out of dodge as quickly and discreetly as possible.
James Packer Connection As federal investigators began
piecing together the sprawling puzzle of Crown's Junket scam,
it became obvious that the whole operation was being supported not
only by the Chinese government but also by the richest man in Australia, James Packer.
Packer is an investment mogul worth upwards of $6 billion. One of the blue-chip investments in
his portfolio just so happened to be Crown Resorts and Casinos. He dumped hundreds of
millions of dollars into Crown and eventually became the company's majority shareholder.
Packer subsequently became good friends with Tom Zhou. The Junket
Operator was allowed unlimited access to private planes and luxury hotels. He
was even gifted tickets to a concert put on by Packer's girlfriend, Mariah Carey.
Crumbling Down Crown's house of
cards soon came tumbling down. Their illegal Junket operations were found
out as a result of the data leaks, and Zhou knew he was in big trouble because of it.
He fled to Fiji but was eventually arrested and deported back to China.
What will happen to Mr. Chinatown now that he's back in his home country? No one knows for sure.
Some have speculated that Zhou will be allowed to walk thanks to his deep-rooted
Triad connections and his involvement in pro-Communist Party organizations.
The Unfit Crown The fate of the casino
Zhou left behind in Australia is a little more cut-and-dry.
James Packer was forced to step down as executive chairman. He had been closely
involved with the company's junket services, and it's likely he knew what Zhou was doing.
Crown Resorts itself was found unsuitable to hold a gambling license due to its ties
to criminal Triads in China. The worst part? They had just built a brand-new
multi-million dollar casino that they can no longer operate.
They took a gamble on a little-known businessman from China with a questionable background. While
Zhou ultimately helped make Crown a major player in the gambling industry, he also guaranteed their
eventual downfall. It's unclear whether Crown will ever fully recover from the scandal. On the other
hand, Zhou undoubtedly has enough friends in high places to help him land on his feet in no time.
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