Washington Post Article Probes Online Casinos: 1

A new article was released by the Washington Post on online casinos. The title of the full five page article is, “Players Gamble on Honesty, Security of Internet Betting”. The article was written by Gilbert M. Gaul who was on the Sixty Minutes team that produced the expose of the online casino industry. The piece focuses on the online casino cheating scandal that involved the two websites, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet.com. He illustrates in the article just how the websites had insiders steal over $20 million from players in the span of four years and who was responsible for the cheating scandal. As we now know, the hackers were former Ultimate Bet employees and also a former world poker champion.

The author outlines those two scandals as the biggest in the history of online casinos. He then questions the industry as it seems to lack regulation and punishment for those that don not play by the rules. One of the problems that he sees in the online casino industry is the fact that most websites are run out of foreign countries that have no regulations and do not have to report to anyone. With little to no regulations comes even less enforcement for the over seas online casinos. This means that players all over the globe have little to no security in knowing who is watching their game or even where their money is going. Gaul claims that online casino owners have been known to hide behind multiple names and even get away with dodging complaints about cheating. "The licensing agencies there essentially operate as pay-as-you-go boutiques, generating millions of dollars in fees while showing little interest in policing rogue sites," he said about the rise in revenue from online casinos.