New Jersey gambling regulators have brought the hammer down on GVC Holdings and its Borgata casino partner for allowing excluded individuals to gamble online.
In a civil action order dated March 9 but only just released, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement imposed an $81k financial penalty on bwin.party entertainment (NJ) and its land-based partner, MGM Resorts’ Borgata Casino Hotel, for permitting individuals who’d self-excluded from the companies’ online gambling sites to (you guessed it) gamble online.
The complaint filed by the DGE indicates that 12 individuals managed to slip past the online safeguards, and they lost a combined $41,759 during their unauthorized play. The DGE has ordered bwin.party and Borgata to forfeit these ill-gotten gains in addition to the $81k fine.
(In case you kids were wondering who the heck bwin.party is, the company was issued a license to operate in New Jersey way back when the state’s regulated online market launched in 2013. The bwin.party name was publicly retired a few years later after the struggling firm was acquired by UK-listed GVC Holdings.)
This is the second major online cockup the DGE has flagged this month. Two weeks ago, the DGE confiscated over $90k after determining that a gambler from California had managed to elude the geolocation detectors way back in 2014 through the use of a virtual private network (VPN).
In a separate ruling this month, the Borgata was ordered to forfeit nearly $68k in winnings collected from 36 individuals who either failed to produce adequate identification upon request, abandoned certain assets or were otherwise prohibited from gambling in the first place. The DGE also clobbered the Borgata in four other rulings of a similar nature, resulting in forfeiture orders totaling an additional $27.7m.
Just so the Borgata didn’t feel too conspicuous, the DGE hit two Caesars Entertainment casinos for nearly $5k in forfeiture orders stemming from their dealings with prohibited persons. And the Hard Rock Atlantic City got tagged with a $1k penalty for allowing underage gaming.
Two other online operators were tagged with scarlet letters in the first half of March: Gaming Innovation Group was fined $2k for allowing customer registrations without social security numbers, while Scientific Games’ SG Digital division was fined $1k for failing to identify self-excluded gamblers.
Now, everybody go put some ice those swollen buttocks and try harder, otherwise you’ll be sent back to the woodshed again next month.
