Authorities in Hong Kong and mainland China have rumbled yet another massive cross-border illegal online gambling operation.

On Monday, China’s official state media agency Xinhua announced the arrests on Sunday of 71 individuals suspected of involvement in a major online gambling ring that involved illegal wagering by mainland gamblers on Hong Kong’s legal gambling industry.

Police in the Chinese province of Guangdong reportedly received a tip in April regarding websites that allowed mainland punters to place bets on international football matches, as well as horseracing put on by the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC).

On Sunday, hundreds of police carried out simultaneous raids on dozens of locations in both jurisdictions, leading to the arrests of 48 individuals in Guangdong and a further 23 suspects in Hong Kong.

South Korean authorities have arrested the former CEO of casino operator Kangwon Land along with several others on allegations of cronyism.

Profile photo credits to [http://www.koreaherald.com]

The Korean Times reported that ex-Kangwon Land CEO Choi Heung-jip was arrested last week on charges of influence peddling in connection with the hiring of certain people at the request of politicians and local bigwigs, including Rep. Yeom Dong-yeol and Rep. Kweon Seong-dong of the conservative Liberty Korea Party.

According to the report, the Chuncheon District Court in Gangwon Province cited the risk of destruction of evidence for ordering Choi’s arrest last week.

Aggrieved shareholders have lodged a class suit against Australia-listed casino operator Crown Resorts Ltd. over the sharp drop in its share price following the arrests of 18 employees in China last year.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that shareholders have accused Crown of keeping them in the dark on the risks of its marketing campaign in China. Law firm Maurice Blackburn (MB), which claims to represent hundreds of individual and institutional shareholders, leads the class suit against the casino operator.

MB’s head of class actions, Andrew Watson, claimed that investors were unaware of the risks that Crown was taking in China until 18 of its staff, including Australian executive Jason O’Connor, were arrested by Chinese authorities on charges of promoting gambling on the mainland in October 2016.

The plaintiffs lamented that they suffered undue losses when Crown’s share price dropped almost 14 percent on October 17, 2016, in the aftermath of the arrests. The worst part was Crown failed to inform them of the event or its likely impact, according to the shareholders.

Philippine-listed game technology provider PhilWeb Corp. will soon start offering its services to at least 16 Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR)-licensed  eGames cafes after securing the nod of the state regulator.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, PhilWeb announced that the PAGCOR will thoroughly inspect and test the electronic games before it will be distributed to the initial eGames cafes.

“We wish to inform the Exchange that PhilWeb received today a letter from Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) allowing it to offer its services as an Electronic Gaming System Provider to the first 16 PAGCOR-licensed gaming sites for electronic games, subject to inspection and testing by PAGCOR,” PhilWeb’s letter, signed by Corporate Information Officer Raymund Aquino, read.

With PAGCOR’s greenlight, PhilWeb is hoping to make a turnaround in 2018 after wading through a tumultuous year as a result of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war against online gambling.

This is a guest contribution by Martin Owens. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

The Internet, once billed as the all-purpose Golden Road to the Future, is now beginning to show its dark side- data leaks and breaches, unauthorized and unsupervised snooping at every level. In the first part we covered what the online gaming operators can do protect themselves and the customers. In Part two, we reviewed the steps that ordinary players and bettors can take to keep themselves safe. This third and final installment deals with what governments must do, and can and cannot do, in the sphere of online gaming.

Role of the Government

The role of I-gaming’s lawmakers and regulators, in the new era of cyber- uncertainty, is perhaps the most difficult of all. For while the scope and potency of the online hazards posed to individuals, businesses and the broader society itself have rapidly grown, the capacity of governments to monitor online gaming activity, regulate it, prevent abuse and punish transgression is essentially the same as it was before the Internet came along at all.

FlowPlay, a builder of virtual worlds, creates a strategic alliance with DragonChain, builder of seamless blockchain integration, to introduce cryptocurrency to the social gaming platform.

Starbucks isn’t a coffee shop.

I see the same people in between the sun rising and the moon taking over. The workers and the lonely. The workers tap away so hard you can watch their fingers melt like glaciers, the lonely have their head stuck in a book or a video game.

The gaming industry is like Clint Eastwood strolling into town digging his spurs into the hide. The sports industry is Lee Van Cleef. The most recent numbers pulled out of the ether from Newzoo show the gaming industry to be worth £149 billion, and the sporting industry a billion more.

Dan Smith has beaten Daniel Negreanu in heads-up action to take the $1.4m first prize in the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic $100k Super High Roller; Sergio Aido, Jason Koon, and Bryn Kenney impress.

Let’s face it, during the Poker Masters; Daniel Negreanu got handed his ass on a plate. It was a humbling experience for the most successful live tournament proponent the world has ever seen. The one-time kid of poker handled it with the grace we expect from the man who carries our torch more often than most.

“I am not as good as these guys,” Negreanu tweeted at the time, “I have a lot to learn.”

The way the elite and the rest prepare for poker is like comparing a Rocky Balboa training camp with Floyd Mayweather. Negreanu is somewhere along the spectrum, and time will tell if he has the ability and grit to catch Rocky’s rooster.

An online social sportsbook is the latest to jump into the proprietary alt-coin pond, although it remains to be seen whether its customers will be the ones who end up taking a bath.

Forbes recently profiled Vancouver-based FansUnite, a social sports betting site that currently allows users to wager with free-play credits. However, the site has larger ambitions of taking real-money wagers starting next year via a proprietary digital currency it’s calling the FansUnite Token (FAN).

The company says it intends to hold a Token Generation Event – aka an initial coin offering – that will allow customers to acquire FAN. The company acknowledges that FAN’s real-world value will be “tied to the speculative value of the FansUnite Token itself on the open market as well as the utility and use of the FansUnite Token on the FansUnite platform.”

Customers in the US and Canada won’t be allowed to participate in the Token Generation Event, and FansUnite’s sportsbook platform will remain inaccessible inside the US. But FansUnite co-founder Duncan McIntyre told Forbes that his site’s “new and compelling value proposition” meant FansUnite was “perfectly situated” to capitalize on the imminent legalization of US sports betting.