The New Jersey online gambling platform of the GVC Holdings-owned bwin.party has been slapped with a fine of more than $80K for self-exclusion breaches. The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJDGE) charged bwin for allowing players who were deemed ‘self-excluded’ to access their online casino games. These 12 players, who asked to have themselves banned from the online gambling platform since they recognized their own problem gambling behavior, were nonetheless able to play and lost a total of $42,000.
Bwin and its Atlantic City land-based partner, Borgata Hotel Casino, were charged to be in breach of the Casino Control Act which rules that players may not be allowed access to the platform until the self-exclusion period is over.
Bwin.Party has been part of the New Jersey gambling landscape since 2013 and was one of the first operators to join the state’s regulated industry. In 2016, GVC acquired bwin.party.
The Director of New Jersey’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, David Rebuck, made an announcement on March 8th regarding the fine which it imposed on bwin.party.
This is not the first time that the Borgata has been found to be in breach of New Jersey’s strict online gambling laws. Recently, the casino, as well as Caesars Interactive, were ordered by the regulator to pay $90,000 after a Californian resident managed to find a way around their geolocation technology and access New Jersey casinos. This is directly in contrary to New Jersey’s laws which state that only state-based gamblers may play the casino games. The Californian, Vinh Dao, played at the casinos in 2014.
It would be wrong to put all the blame on bwin.party, however, and say that it is the only operator that didn’t stick to the tough regulations spelled out by the New Jersey regulator. The gambling regulator said that other Atlantic City casinos breached some of the laws, mostly related to allowing under-aged gamblers or gamblers without the proper ID onto their properties. Early this month, SG Digital failed to identify a person on its self-exclusion list and was fined $1,000. GiG was fined $2K for not collecting the social security numbers of some of its registering players, while the Hard Rock failed to recognize that an underage patron had walked into its facilities and was slapped with a $1,000 fine.
