Police in Taiwan’s New Taipei City have uncovered an illegal games arcade featuring claw machines converted into gambling devices. ?

officers discovered the arcade behind a secret door

On Tuesday, Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA) shared its report of a Sunday police raid in the Yonghe District in which officers discovered the arcade behind a secret door.

A search warrant allowed police to arrest the arcade’s operator Wang, 33, an employee named Chan, and five gamblers. According to the CNA, officers confiscated NT$230,000 ($7,146) in illegal gambling money along with the repurposed claw games.

Police suspect Wang modified the claw machines via an integrated circuit board that transformed the devices into dice games. As the CNA reports, a Bluetooth interface enabled gamblers to convert cash into a wagering stake equivalent of NT$700 ($22).

Gamblers could win prizes of between NT$300 ($9) and NT$50,000 ($1,556) depending on a combination of “approximately half a dozen dice” tosses by the claw machine.

Wang and Chang face charges for gambling and “violations of the Social Order Maintenance Act.” With strict limits on gambling in mainland China, illegal offshore gambling rings have often seen Taiwan (despite being officially part of China) as a lucrative, easier-to-access market.