Japanese Police Officer Indicted for Unlicensed Horse Racing Betting at Online Casino

Japanese public prosecutors have indicted a 35-year-old police lieutenant on suspicion of habitual gambling on horse races on unregistered online casino sites.

Horse racing is legal in Japan, with associated betting worth up to $25 billion per year. However, gamblers can only place bets on races via the official Japan Racing Association infrastructure. Bets must be placed at JRA Racecourses or at permit-holding bookmakers named WINS, which offer off-track betting on paper slips.

Bettors can also use virtual betting slips on their smartphones, which they must then scan at designated ATM-like machines known as UMACA in Japan. Online casinos, by contrast, are illegal in Japan. Accessing them from Japanese territory is a criminal offence.

Prosecutors say the lieutenant, a member of the Okinawa Prefectural Police force, placed scores of bets on the unlicensed site between April 2024 and April 2025.

They said he topped up his balance by 9.75 million yen (over $62,000).

“At first, I didn’t realize what I was doing was illegal,” the man told investigators, the Japanese newspaper Ryukyu Shimpo reported. “I later learned about its [illegality] from the news and other sources. But I couldn’t stop myself.”

Japanese Police: Horse Racing Addiction Probe

The prefectural police issued the man a six-month suspension order, but he voluntarily submitted his resignation later that day.

Police charged him with two separate offences: habitual gambling and violations of the Horse Racing Act. But prosecution officials decided to indict him only on the first charge.

A prefectural police probe reportedly found that the suspect made a total of 33 transfers to the online casino sites “during working hours.”

The site reportedly offered bets using more attractive odds than those provided by the JRA.

The probe also found that the man had taken out an “unreasonable” amount of loans from various financial providers and banks to fund his gambling addiction.

The revelation comes less than a year after a male police sergeant, aged in his 20s, was disciplined for gambling on online casino sites.

The sergeant, also unnamed for legal reasons, resigned shortly after.

Okinawa Prefectural Police Chief Hiroyasu Yokoyama told Ryukyu Shimpo: “It is truly regrettable that an employee has been disciplined for gambling on online casino sites after last year’s incident.”

“We sincerely apologize for the loss of public trust these incidents have caused,” said Yokoyama. “We will improve our professional ethics training and work to prevent a recurrence.”

Gambling Addictions Rise

The development comes hot on the heels of a related case in Saitama Prefecture. In January, a police officer in Hanyu admitted to selling rare trading cards taken from an evidence room to fund his addiction to horse race betting.

Investigators say the officer stole nine trading cards from an evidence storage room at the police station between October and November last year.

Detectives did not reveal the nature of the cards, but said they were “mainly rare items.” The officer admitted to successfully selling eight of the cards, raising a total of 742,500 yen (over $4,700).