HANOI, April 3 (Xinhua) -- A Vietnamese Canadian man and 12 Vietnamese people who involved in soccer betting with foreign firms have been prosecuted on charge of gambling and gambling organization, according to local newspaper Pioneer on Tuesday.

    After coming to Vietnam in October 2004, the Canadian man named Ngo Tien Dung made soccer bets with a gambling company from China's Hong Kong via the Internet, and then acted as an intermediary between Vietnamese bettors and foreign bookmakers in Asia.

    Dung and his underlings and customers made total soccer bets of nearly 10.4 million U.S. dollars between December 2005 and February 2006. He and his underlings made profits of nearly 200,000 dollars from gambling organization.

    Like other kinds of gambling, except for casinos designated for foreigners and overseas Vietnamese, soccer betting is now illegal in Vietnam. Dozens of local bettors and bookmakers have been detained during major national and international soccer tournaments.

    While serving an imprisonment sentence for the charge of fraud and asset appropriation in Vietnam's northern Thai Nguyen province in late 1980s, Dung killed an inmate. After that, the man, born in1959, escaped from prison.

    In Canada, Dung changed his named to Lai Thanh Huu. Since 2003,he has come to Vietnam 35 times as an overseas businessman.