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Posts Tagged ‘investigate’

Secure Money Inc. Under Investigation

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Though many states in the US are pushing for gambling changes, there are still some that are holding out. Washington for example is a state that is banning online gambling. Though there are millions of tax revenue dollars to be had with a good gambling plan, the state’s legislators don’t believe that is enough to legalize gaming. This is a move that has been long coming. People are wondering whether or not they can wager for a while now. The answer is no and the state is sending a tough message to those who don’t heed it. Secure Money Inc. is a company based out of Las Vegas and it issued about $2.7 million in checks to various customers over an eight-month long period of time. The company now is being prosecuted for the infraction within the state by legislators. The company also allowed seven people within the state to receive these funds under the heading of “payroll checks.” Overall the activities were considered to be illegal and the company is now under scrutiny by investigators cracking down on gambling issues. The government seized over a half-million dollars worth of revenues as a result of the investigation.

This is just another example of the issues that gambling brings with it. Many anti-gambling activists believe that the cost to have gambling in their state is too hefty to support. For example, though gambling may being in $2 million in tax revenue dollars per month, if the number of addictions and criminal activity incidents increases substantially, a good portion of that could have to go to shoring up resources for issues. For example, if the police force has to be strengthened to manage a growth in illegal activities, that could eat up a huge portion of that additional $2 million in revenue. If ten-thousand new gambling addicts enter the market they are going to need additional resource centers to help them with their disease. This too could end up costing the government more money per month than it is bringing in via gambling revenue. Only time will tell what is going to happen with the market, but overall the Washington market is not ready for gambling and is fighting hard to keep it out of the state .

Canadian Lottery Under Scrutiny

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Canada has long been in the midst of gambling changes. A lot of provinces have opted out of gambling altogether, but some are taking their chances. Their legislators see gambling as a benefit and want to capitalize on the games. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation is one organization that is having huge shifts in operations. The company is pushing out its executive positions and trying to move responsibilities to senior vice presidents who can manage the jobs. The goal is to streamline their businesses and come up with ways of making the company more efficient. Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation chairman Paul Godfrey stated that the workers in gaming companies have the biggest salaries. If you do a comparison between executives at gaming companies against executives at other companies, then you are going to see the disparity. New studies are showing that gaming companies are paying out their executives a considerable amount more.

The problem with the Ontario Lottery Corporation though is that it has been under scrutiny for illegal activities in the past. The organization’s old CEO Tim Hudak was moved out of his post after allegations surfaced. He was accused of misappropriating lottery winnings and company coffers. The company has 9 vice presidents and that number is soon to be reduced to just 6 in the coming months. This is a move that should streamline the company’s operations and help to turn things around. Currently the lottery is highly lucrative and very popular with gamblers. It is one of the things that is still growing despite problems. Gamers want to have the chance to win millions of dollars at an affordable price. This is great news for gaming companies and the lottery division. They know that as long as they continue to create lotteries and attractive promotions they are going to continue to reap the benefits of the gambling dollars being brought in. If gambling is such a huge draw, then it should be able to sustain itself and grow in the market. Canada is still experimenting with the changes and is most likely going to continue to do so until the process is simple and working like a charm.

FBI Closes in on Illegal Hacking Activities

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

It is no secret that online gambling companies have to worry about security issues. If you are looking for a new online casino the number one concern you should have is whether or not they use top notch security and encryption. This is the number one thing that can protect not only your bank account, but your identity. When gambling, remember that you are going to be sharing personal information. You are going to have to provide your name, your funding account and your address- more than enough information for any good thief to do some serious damage to your life. Companies are working overtime to overcome the issues of online security. There are still hackers out there who want to find money the easy way and are going to use your account at an online gambling casino to do it.

The government is doing some fast acting though to thwart online gambling problems. In fact the FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, recently announced that they are pushing to catch cyber criminals who are accused of stealing over $70 million for different internet users and businesses. This was a few months ago that they made the announcement and now they are citing successful apprehension of the perpetrators. So far the bureau has caught up with twenty suspected in the crimes and are still looking adamantly for the additional estimated seventeen more criminals. Most of the members of this group have a past of web development, which is part of what made them so attuned to the online world and how to hack into casino websites. Their mode of operations was to create a “Trojan horse” program/virus that was able to link to personal and financial records of various online casinos. This allowed them to get to the user accounts of the same websites and thus steal their pertinent information. Of course there still is an up-side to the issue. Now that online casinos have seen their businesses hacked and their users put into danger, they are spending that much more time and money on shoring up their own security protocols for future gamers.

Poker Stars Under Investigation for Alleged Bot

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

In the world of online gambling there is a consistent focus on fair gaming. Over the years there have been some breaches of this and developers have worked hard to overcome. That is one of the main arguments against legalizing online gaming. Opponents of the move have cited that it allows for a lot of illegal activities to be built into online operator’s websites. There have been cases where people have won a large sum of money only to never receive it, or only receive a small share. In addition, every game has a payout percentage. If you go into a land-based casino you can read the figure on every machine and play the ones with the biggest payout. For example, if a game says it has a payout percentage of 98.7% then that means that over the length of the game’s lifespan it is going to pay out 98.7% of the time. This figure has been a point of interest for many anti-gaming supporters. They believe that casinos easily have the ability to tamper with these numbers and the payouts people get. In the online world, they contend that it is even easier because things can be built into the code.

PokerStars.com is the latest problem website for “poker bots”. A poker bot is just that—a poker bot is an automatic account that operates within a computer as directed from a website. It can tamper with the outcomes and is illegal in the world of online gambling. However, the problem is that these bots are difficult to locate and difficult to prove exist as a result. PokerStars.com had one particularly wise player who watched these accounts and noted suspicious happenings around it. The player then spent a few months gathering further information on the website and its activities to prove that something was indeed illegally going on with the casino. Though the investigation is still under way, this is horrible news for the PokerStars.com website. It is a huge poker website in the market and this type of bad press can seriously hamper its reputation. In response the website is on an all out investigation of the matter.