Haolong bet-routing allegations: the pay stays, but the boss must change?

The money can stay the same, but the boss must change. An insider supplement about Haolong describes Dato Ben's alleged method of bringing agents under his control in blunt terms: send the bets to him, or potentially face pressure from raids.

The sharpest contrast lies in those words: “the money stays the same.”

Agents still serve customers and collect bets. Their immediate remuneration may not even fall. But they are being told to change the answer to a fundamental question: who receives the business they bring in? Their income may look unchanged while their right to choose a business partner shifts first.

In the old market described by this account, underground four-digit betting operators in different areas had their own territories and upstream principals. Agents dealt with customers; bookmakers took the business further up the chain. Different routes led to different destinations. Agents were not necessarily fully independent, but at least they did not all submit bets to a single name.

Those destinations are precisely what Dato Ben is alleged to want to change.

Existing partners and recipients would have to give way to new arrangements. Agents could keep collecting bets, but would have to recognise a different boss behind them. In this alleged arrangement, business stays at the existing counter while decision-making concentrates above it.

“Unchanged pay” therefore sounds reassuring, yet becomes a glaring contrast in this story: the money may be the same, but the business may no longer be theirs to arrange.

And if they refuse?

The same insider supplement claims that Dato Ben would use police and government action to raid operators who would not compromise. The material does not provide a complete account of a specific agent going from refusal to pressure. But the alleged method is clear: consolidate business by directing the bets, and narrow the space for refusal through enforcement pressure.

Payment is placed on one side; the possible cost of losing the ability to operate is placed on the other. In this account, “accepting the arrangement” means more than comparing which principal pays better. Agents must also weigh whether they can keep their original business route at all.

A betting slip is thin. The relationships they are being asked to surrender carry far more weight.

Move from Haolong to local operations, and underground gambling takes on another shopfront.

Another insider passage discusses “horse-machine shops” hidden inside snooker halls: computer-based betting, with Dato Ben named as the boss behind the scenes. The earlier pressure point was the destination of betting slips; here, premises, equipment and the people facing customers also matter.

In August 2024, @Sg265alibaba identified a blue shopfront in Simunjan as a 265 / Alibaba online gambling venue. In November that year, a Miri complaint listed Pujut, Kg Lusut, Taman Tunku and Permyjaya when discussing local JOL shops.

Listing locations does not automatically establish their upstream relationships. The submissions do not explain, shop by shop, who receives the income, who arranges operations or how bets are routed. Haolong's alleged centralised arrangement cannot simply be pasted onto the door of every JOL shop.

The Sarawak cockfighting material takes the story to another kind of operation.

In October 2024, the channel collected cockfighting footage, handwritten accounts and related submissions. One pointed to Lachau, Sri Aman, described participants from Miri and Kuching, and listed competition dates and session arrangements.

The accounts contain chicken weights, nicknames and numbers. Their units and meanings are not individually explained, so large figures cannot simply be turned into business revenue. But the records already make “cockfighting” more than a label: someone must arrange pairings, schedule sessions and keep the accounts.

Betting slips, shopfronts and competitions put different activities on display, with different gateways behind them. For Haolong, the question is who receives the bets; for machine gambling and JOL, it is premises and operating arrangements; for cockfighting, it is participants, sessions and organisation. Writing them all as one management chain may feel decisive, but it would turn unconnected relationships into asserted facts.

The most troubling part of the Haolong storyline does not need “the country's biggest” to give it weight.

According to the insider account, agents can keep working and receiving payment. Only the recipient of their bets, and the boss they recognise, must follow instructions. If even refusal could expose the existing business to pressure, that betting slip represents more than a wager being handed over.

It also represents the room to say “no.”