Technology has made it easier for Singaporeans to gamble – and be cheated – online. In 2019, $874,000 was lost to illegal online betting websites and app scams. But, Singapore is on top of this. The new Gambling Regulatory Authority will be set up next year.
Closer to home, enforcement officers and engineers are also working on solutions to combat illegal online casinos. One of them is HTX engineer Ms Tan Wei Lin.
Wei Lin, who received her 1st Class Honours in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Nanyang Technology University, is part of the team at the Trials and Experimentations Programme Management Centre (PMC) which worked on the online casino hunter.
Wei Lin presenting to Home Affairs Ministers of State Dr Faishal Ibrahim and Mr Desmond Tan during their visit to HTX in October 2020 (Photo: HTX)
The online casino hunter is an artificial intelligence (AI) bot that combines text and image analytics with search engines and web-crawling technologies, to search the world wide web for online casino websites that are targeting at Singapore internet users. Superior to standard search engines like Google – which may turn up irrelevant or insufficient results – the casino hunter aims to find as many online Singapore casino websites as possible.
The tool which I developed had successfully found websites of affiliated casino syndicates based on an input logo image. We are currently looking to extend the tool's capabilities to other applications.
The online casino hunter is able to extract quality results from a far wider field as it deploys AI, text and image analytics. With this technology, enforcement agencies can now detect unknown illegal online casino websites faster and more effectively, at a click of a button. The tool is used by Singapore Police Force, as well as the Gambling Regulatory Unit in the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Said Wei Lin, “The tool which I developed had successfully found websites of affiliated casino syndicates based on an input logo image. We are currently looking to extend the tool's capabilities to other applications.”
The AI bot crawled numerous websites and swiftly detected illegal online casino websites targeting Singapore, along with their potentially affiliated syndicates. These detections provided fresh leads to the enforcement agencies for further investigations.
For the development of the online casino hunter, Wei Lin was awarded the Minister for Home Affairs Operational Excellence Award (OE) award 2020. Wei Lin credits the award to the unique team she is in - the Trials and Experimentations PMC.
“Despite coming from a different field of engineering, I am grateful that my Director, Dr Gee Wah, and my supervisor, Dr Terence Tan, were confident I could rise to the challenge and deliver. They were very supportive and mentored me closely to help me learn and overcome the difficulties I encountered during the project. I am also thankful to our intern, Tan Jin De, for his contribution to the project,” says Wei Lin.
Dr Ng Gee Wah, Dir TEPMC and Wei Lin in discussions for enhancements to the OCH. (Photo: HTX)
On winning the award just five months into the job, Wei Lin says “This win is a wonderful start to my career in HTX and has certainly exceeded my expectations.”
The OE awards are presented to outstanding officers from the Home Team Departments and partnering agencies in recognition of their professionalism and proficiency while mounting keynote operations.