Retired Macau triad boss back in circulation with cryptocurrency
Sources claim the groundwork for the return of a triad-connected gangster – so notorious he had a prison built just for him – was laid soon after his release from prison
If a league table existed ranking symbols of criminal notoriety, being considered such a threat to society that a new prison was built just for your incarceration would have to come pretty close to the top.
The year was 1999 and the gangster was Wan Kuok-koi, leader of the Macau faction of the 14K triad group. A slew of international headlines and a self-funded biopic titled Casino in which he was played by Hong Kong movie star, Simon Yam Tat-wah ensured that Wan’s underworld nickname “Broken Tooth” and his fearsome reputation would spread far beyond the rough-and-ready environs of the VIP gaming rooms he ruled.
It was a casino landscape barely recognisable to that of today.
A cryptocurrency deal and a triad boss called Broken Tooth – what can possibly go wrong?
Wan – who, legend has it, acquired the nickname after dental caps were required to restore his front teeth following a car crash back in the day as he rose through the ranks of gangland Macau –– was eventually jailed for 15 years (later reduced to 13) in 1999.
On his release in 2012, he cut a very different figure from that of the swaggering, James Cagney-esque character who, along with a group of 14K associates, entered that specially-built prison 13 years earlier. “I don’t want to affect the stability of Macau. There’s absolutely no way I want to do that. I want to be left alone,” he told the South China Morning Post at the time.