By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter

Police apprehended an entertainment firm owner Monday for having allegedly run an illegal online gambling site. The man was also accused of having hired some hackers to target a rival Web site with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

According to the Guro Police Station, the 33-year-old man, identified as Lim, ran an entertainment firm during the day, but by night operated an illegal online gambling site through more than 40,000 Internet cafes nationwide since 2005.

He allegedly reaped more than 800 billion won ($65 million) in illegal gains, equivalent to 500 million won in sales per day.

In order to avoid crackdowns, the main server and the customer service center were located in China, and had multilevel structures to prevent easy access.

Lim and his fellows also created more than ten bank accounts under borrowed names, used them for less than 15 days and then discarded them for other ones.

``They have also used multiple IP addresses set up in both Korea and China to confuse the investigation teams and thus managed to carry on such illegal activities for about four years,'' a police officer said.

Lim reportedly hired ethnic Koreans in China as hackers to carry out DDoS attacks on a rival gambling site's operations three times ㅡ in January, March and May, police said.

Lim's firm holds contracts with a top celebrity and several actors, actresses and singers.

The police requested the prosecution to file for arrest warrants for Lim and one of his workers, while booking 16 programmers and other staff without detention. ``He was a perfect Jekyll and Hyde for a long time. No one really noticed his dual personality,'' a police officer said.

bjs@koreatimes.co.kr