Got this news recently. Very sad. Anybody knew if there is a way to withdraw anything?
News says that junkets closed.
I leave money here right before pandemics in 2019. I asked people before and they told me that everything work fine and anyone can take money, just need to get here. What was impossible for me. Their whatsap was working 24/7 and they ask me only get to Macau.
My friend told me that junket cashier in Manila closed as well.

I consider this as a good news. Good luck everyone.
Anything we can do? Besides buying shares of SunCity.

For this not overly familiar with Macau, this is some very serious chit and huge news.

VIP Rooms / Junket are a major part of any casino's operations. They are casinos within casinos. an integral with the gambling business. SunCity I think was the largest. These VIP Rooms facilitated the movement of money in and out of the casino for bacc players (mostly) due to Chinese Govt's strict rules and caps on moving money across borders . HUGE amounts gambled in these rooms

Here is more complete story

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/shares-macau-gambling-group-suncity-halted-second-time-3-days-2021-12-01/



I dont understand. Who is this good news for? Are you saying because shares started trading again is the good news?

The more important news here is the Central govt will continue (even morenow) crack down on the VIP Operators. This is bad news for all people that invest in Macau casino stocks or involved in any way with casino business in Macau.

What are Vip Rooms/ Junket? I've played live poker in Macao for about a month in total and didn't hear about them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7G_W_WWBos

A VIP room is just a section of a casino with higher minimums. Sometimes access to this VIP room is restricted, and often there is free food and/or drink.


Junkets are trips organized from (in the case of Macau) probably mainland China but presumably also Korea and other areas as well. Often the trips are free, including hotel, and targeted to high rollers. The junket organizers might get a percentage of the total loss of their players.

never been to Macau but have read alot about junkets...to add to the above posts, junkets act as a casino tour operator if you want to come gamble they will arrange airfare, hotel, women, drugs etc..they are your hosts...the most important thing the junkets do is they allow you to evade capital controls from somewhere like mainland China...you want to gamble 700k HKD, they will provide you with the money in "dead chips" that have the junkets identifying information. One bets the dead chips and is payed in real chips, the casino keeps track of how much a junket is pushing through the system and pays them accordingly.

Now in the above example they junket just loaned you 700k HKD which you can pay back in the mainland (assuming you lost) and you don't have to report the amount to the Chinese govt if you win (normally you have to report more than 10k sent abroad and are limited in the amount you can send abroad)...there also is the issue of organized crime (seems gangsters are well equipped for debt collection in mainland China)...the CCP isn't a fan of this loophole/ other things about junkets, so is cracking down on junkets and pressuring the largest junket shouldn't be too surprising.

This is getting to it.

VIP Rooms/Junkets mean sort of the the same thing in Macau. They are not just organized trips or high limit rooms.

They are separate rooms /areas inside a Macau casino that is fully operated by a company that is separate from the casino that owns/operates hotel.

As mentioned above diff chip floats can be used aside from normal casino chips.

And yes as mentioned above their purpose is to make it easier for people to get money into and out of the casino from mainland. If you carried in the max allowed over the border I I think that would be about 5 or 10 avg bets on the bacc tables
(dont quote me but something that ridiculously small for a coin flip game.

The 2nd way money is brought in (for the mass market) is using the jewelers whose shops are lined up along the casino floor and also
just across the border in Guangzhou.

all above from memory , sorry If some details are wrong or outdated

The junket system in China is very opaque. There is a lot of backroom dealing for these big VIP's who can't get the money to Macau - no doubt the CCP wanted to know who is betting and where and how much, and the lack of transparency eventually came crashing down. I was offered to buy 15% of a junket room in Asia, the contracts are for a few years and you must keep x amount of money at the cage, the casino provides dealers and chips and security and you split profits with them 50/50 and pay a rental fee. I have heard that some of these junkets will crossbook your bets 99x, so you play 1k/hand in the casino but you're actually playing 100k/hand - another way to avoid regulatory scrutiny for someone who is making illegal income. No doubt there's a million different pretexts they could have used to close up suncity, but the real reason is he probably didn't pay off the right people/show the proper respect.

I would contact the casino that housed the junket where you were playing at - there have been some recent Macau rulings lately and they might be jointly liable for the debt.

source: am licensed independent agent for European and Asian casinos

this, this and this. more important than money at first.

Something hard for many western business people to learn to do.

If Gary Loveman and team at Harrahs had understood this when all the concessions were in play in Macau....Harrahs would been Venetian and Sand Macau. Instead they ended up with a worthless golf course. Lovemand should have been terminated as soon as the fumbled that ball, not years later.


Chinese Business culture is fascinating, but at first hard to grasp for those from the west

google chinese business culture quanxi

=

Wynn is flat out removing their VIP junket gaming areas and converting them into general mass market areas. Pretty seismic shift for that operation.

holy ****. using even seismic us understatement.

I'm super long on WYNN Stock, but given the above, surprised WYNN stock hasnt taken a bigger near term hit. VIP is a pretty important part their business, and its not just like it gets replaced with other offering. If bettors cant get their Yuan into Macau, then gonna be hard for those bettors to bet

*guanxi


while you'll get some neat tidbits and anecdotes, nearly all that stuff you'll find online is via the lens of an amateur who at best correctly translated in his head 85% of all the words he hears when spoken to - I've never seen anything publicly written that I found remotely helpful/accurate and it often includes a bunch of outdated old wives tales or things like obscure table manners like don't stick your chopsticks in the food so they stand up

i don't pretend to be an expert, but those things detailing guanxi and how it works online are written like a vegas poker guide that says check raising is unsportsmanlike and discouraged

if you're not chinese this is something you will never understand nor possibly excel at but that's ok because it's expected since you're not chinese

you can get an advantage by learning how interactions go but that is an advantage over other outsiders as you'd be easier to deal with

i've had countless interactions where afterwards my chinese colleagues criticized how "i royally ffed up" because i didn't understand i was supposed to do or say x, y, z during a meeting - even basic things like you get a closed fist for cooperation emoji and you should reciprocate back with the same one otherwise you're giving the cold shoulder

but most importantly, you largely get a free pass as a foreigner and they aren't factoring in their relationship with you because of your ability to navigate their business culture but rather only dealing with you because for whatever reason a chinese person/company can't provide what you can and if they are dealing with you it's possibly a short term cooperation while they figure a way to cut you out of the loop

ie a Chinese company wants to do tv advertising in Italy, they'll hire an Italian ad agency and the agency is thinking this'll be a long term partnership and the chinese firm tells them it will be as well but meanwhile they are hiring chinese who studied abroad in Italy and having them learn by observing and working with the Italian agency until they feel like they understand enough about the process to suddenly terminate the contract halfway through but they do so not by terminating it but rather taking the old office space approach and ceasing payments and letting it sort itself out naturally - consulted and worked for a number of chinese firms and you wouldn't believe how many times I witnessed something like this happen

but going back to guanxi, nearly every large company has at leat 1 guy and maybe even an entire department whose entire job is take out clients, officials, investors and other vips to go golfing, eat at a michelin star restaurant then off to the brothels - they stories those guys have are amazing - apparently there's this blowjob where the girl hangs over you on a rope attached to the ceiling that's twisted around so she is slowly spinning from above as she sucks you off

that's guanxi, and no, you'll not read about that on some blog telling you about which seat to sit at and how to hold your chopsticks

but yeah, the advice i always give out anyone who does business with china is to always send out a representative to do a meet and greet in person, even if it's some dry and boring interaction done through an interpreter, if they can visualize your face when they see your name in the email or hear your voice over the phone you suddenly go way up in priority - if a shoelace factory supplies 5 american shoe companies and has a labor shortage so can't meet obligations it's the companies who have sent reps in person in the past who will get the priority

ps suncity is a massive developer with skyscrapers all over china, i used to live in one of their complexes

totally agree its something that's hard to wrap your head around as westerner. and a few paragraphs on a blog aint gonna get you there.

haha

I contacted employee of SunCity on LinkedIn and they told me, that we have to hire lawyers and sue SunCity in Macau.
Company still seems to be operational, trades on HongKong exchange and build houses.
Maybe we should create some kind of group for that matter. Macau is still closed for covid, once it is opened, I’ll go there just to sue them.
Pls PM me also.

actually i think the biggest chance of success is to sue the casino where you deposited the money. For example wynn/venetian. There is a case of a successful customer.
https://www.gamblingnews.com/.../mac...nos-may-be.../

Some more news:
https://www.macaubusiness.com/wynn-a...ore-top-court/

We built a group of almost 40 victims. Plus, I know a couple more whales with money here.
Approximately 40 people hold a substantial amount of money in different sizes and situations. The payout might be Big!
If someone solves the case with a class action for a percentage of successful cases, with no fee before results, I think it would be fair, and everyone would gladly agree to a 50% share for someone who could take money out.