High roller shot dead in Sydney

A Vietnamese man known as a high roller who was facing criminal charges arising from his gambling activities has been shot and killed in Sydney, the city’s Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Peter Tan Hoang, 36, (also known as Peter Minh Nguyen) was shot and killed at Croydon Park in Sydney early on Sunday morning, police say.
Mr Hoang was a Vietnamese refugee, an orphan turned professional gambler and a suspected underworld gambling figure, who was known to frequent Australia's major casinos and also illegal gaming houses.
He was due to stand trial in Melbourne after being arrested in 2012 outside Melbourne's Crown Casino carrying $1.5 million in cash, which police allege was the proceeds of crime. He had pleaded not guilty to one charge of possessing the proceeds of crime, which has a maximum of three years jail.
The SMH reports that at his committal hearing, Jennifer Nguyen, an executive host at Crown's exclusive Mahogany Room, said Mr Hoang was one of the casino's "high-valued customers" and one of its "best patrons" from Sydney. The court also heard Mr Hoang regularly left the casino with large sums of cash, including one occasion where he left with $1 million in cash after a $13 million gambling session. On another occasion he left with $2.3 million in cash.
The report says Mr Hoang was seen leaving a McDonald's outlet shortly before he was shot and quotes a detective close to the case as saying “ he was well known to the police for organized crime-related activities", Mr Hoang's solicitor David Laschko told Fairfax Media that the prosecution had not alleged "any specific evidence" of his client being involved in "any related crime or links to organised crime".

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