A truly independent gambling regulator is necessary if the Canadian province of British Columbia wants to rein in casino money laundering, according to a blistering new government report.

On Wednesday, BC Attorney General David Eby released Dirty Money, a 250-page report prepared by independent investigator Peter German in response to revelations of rampant money laundering by Chinese VIP gamblers at the province’s privately-managed but government-controlled casinos.

German has harsh words for the province’s former Liberal government, which ceded power last year to the new NDP administration, who learned that the Liberals had been actively hiding the scale of the problem. German said the failure to reduce the mind-boggling scale of casino shenanigans was “not of one entity or person, but of the system.” As German acidly notes, “nobody said no.”

German’s principle recommendation is that the British Columbia Lottery Corporation be stripped of its regulatory duties, to be replaced by a new independent gaming regulator with a degree of independence from the government.

Online gambling operators BetVictor and Global Poker are wearing digital egg on their faces after unnecessarily exposing sensitive data.

On Wednesday, a post appeared on Medium.com detailing a major security cockup in which the Gibraltar-based, UK-licensed BetVictor was found to have left a raft of sensitive info, including administrative logins and passwords, accessible by any visitor who entered the right criteria into the site’s search function.

The blog post’s author Chris Hogben noted that he hadn’t attempted to verify whether the administrative info was current to avoid falling afoul of hacking laws. After sending an email to BetVictor’s admins detailing the apparent security own goal, the site closed off public access to the sensitive data pages.

A different researcher, who was reportedly able to duplicate Hogben’s access to the data in question before BetVictor rejigged its site, told Motherboard that the data included “extensive combinations of usernames and passwords.”

Italy’s new gambling advertising and sponsorship ban could take effect on January 1, 2019 as the country’s new coalition government looks to rein in the sector.

On Wednesday, the coalition submitted the final draft of its so-called Dignity Decree, which fleshes out the government’s previously announced plans for an “absolute ban on [gambling] advertising and sponsorships.”

The Decree’s explanatory report says the ban will apply to “any form of advertising related to games or wagering with winnings of money, however carried out and by any means, including sporting, cultural or artistic events, television or radio broadcasts, daily and periodic press, publications in general, billboards and internet.”

The explanatory report adds that the ban “also applies to sponsorships and all forms of content communication promotional not counted among the usual tabular advertising messages and includes the visual and acoustic citations and the superimpression of the name, brand, symbols, activities or products that promotes gambling or betting.”

Members of North Carolina’s House of Representatives are racing against time to pass a bill that will add more teeth to the state’s current gambling law.

With only a few days before the end of the legislative session, The News Observer reported that North Carolina’s House Finance Committee presented a rewritten version of House Bill 471, which seeks to increase the penalty on illegal possession of gambling machines from misdemeanor to felony charges. The bill also authorizes law enforcement officers to confiscate electronic gaming machines while a felony trial is ongoing.

Under existing North Carolina law, violators are still able to make money from gambling machines since they are only facing misdemeanor charges. House Bill 471 sponsor Rep. Destin Hall believes that the measure “will put some teeth” into the existing law.

Political analysts, however, believe that the measure may not even reach the desk of North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper this year since the state Senate is focused on finishing the legislative session on time. Senate Rules chair Bill Rabon had already announced that the Senate will only prioritize constitutional amendments and local bills before the session ends this week.

British bookmaker William Hill Plc. (Hills) has drawn the ire of anti-gambling campaigners this week over an email that encourages gamblers to punt more before the government officially slashes the fixed-odds betting terminal (FOBT) stake limit.

According to The Times report, anti-gambling campaigners accused Hills of trying to milk FOBT players of their money when the firm ordered its employees to tell punters that they can still wager up to £100 ($131.86) a spin.

Hills reportedly sent the email to its employees after the bookmaker noticed a “softening in its overall gaming machine performance” as a result of the government’s approval to reduce the FOBT maximum stakes limit to £2 ($2.69).

The email came to light after the UK government allegedly succumbed to the pressure of bookmakers to delay the implementation of the FOBT stake reduction in 2020.

Gaming tech firm International Game Technology PLC (IGT) is repurchasing some of its outstanding notes for a sum of €374.5 million ($436.6 million).

On Tuesday, IGT announced that it has completed a tender offer to buy back outstanding senior secured notes due 2020 from its holders. The note tender offer was intended for extending the weighted average maturity company’s debt, according to IGT.

The offer includes the €700-million ($816.16 million) 4.125 percent Senior Secured Notes duein 2020 and represented by the Regulation S global note; and the €500-million ($582.9 million), 4.75 percent senior secured notes due in 2020, which were issued with an initial coupon of 3.5 percent.

Holders were offered €1,050 ($1,224.24) for each €1000 ($1,165.94) principal amount of the 4.125 percent Notes and €1,070 ($1,247.56) for each €1,000 (1,165.94) principal amount of the 4.75 percent Notes.

Nasdaq-listed electric car manufacturer Tesla, Inc. will againlean on Nevada casinos to deliver some profit for the company this year, according to reports.

Several weeks ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased investors that it looked like the company will become profitable again later this year, despite the fact that the vehicle manufacturer had been racking up multi-billion losses.

According to The Los Angeles Times report, part of Tesla’s profit may come from sales of tax credits to Las Vegas casinos such as the MGM Grand. Tesla has been reportedly doing this for about three years now to boost its bottom line, thanks to the incentives given by the state of Nevada to the company.

Previously, Nevada convinced Tesla to put up its lithium-ion battery Gigafactory outside Reno several year in exchange for $1.3 billion incentives—which includes tax exemptions for 10 to 20 years and some $195 million in transferable tax credits.

A legal feud that began a year and a half ago between the founder of Spartan Poker, Rajat Agarwal, and members of the company’s management team could finally be reaching a conclusion. Jay Sayta of Gambling Laws of India reports that Agarwal and the team behind TheSpartanPoker.com are close to reaching an agreement in the case, which threatens to cause the collapse of the entire poker industry in India.

It all started in December 2016 when SpartanPoker.com, led by Amin Rozani, published a notice on its site saying that the Agarwal-led media and strategy website PokerGuru had no control over its activities. The notice read, “Please note that PokerGuru has no control over the day-to-day operations or finances of Spartan Poker. Please exercise caution and PokerGuru has no responsibility for players funds kept on Spartan Poker.”

Rozani later clarified in a separate post that PokerGuru had misused the company’s intellectual property. The next day, Rohit Bhalla, who worked for PokerGuru and was also employed by Rozani’s Quadrific Media Pvt. Ltd company, was removed from Quadrific Media and Spartan Poker was moved to the URL TheSpartanPoker.com.

Agarwal filed a civil suit against Quadrific Media in the Calcutta High Court, as well as the new parent company of TheSpartanPoker.com, Spartan Online Pvt. Ltd. Rozani, in turn, filed a countersuit with the Bombay High Court against Agarwal and his business partners alleging defamation.

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

For every problem, as H.L. Mencken noted, someone proposes a solution: neat, plausible, and wrong. And the syndrome strikes again in the case of South Dakota v Mayfair, just decided by a 5 to 4 margin in the US Supreme Court.

The question before the Court was essentially this: can a state charge state sales tax on a purchase made online from that state to a retailer located elsewhere, who then ships the purchase in? Up until now, the answer was mostly no. In the important 1992 case of Quill v North Dakota,1 the Court ruled that in order for state sales taxes to apply, that seller had to have a presence amounting to a “substantial nexus” with that state. This case was decided before the Internet came on the scene, but nevertheless meant  that thousands of small businesses could now cheaply and efficiently service a mail order market without the bother of keeping t rack of multiple tax codes.

When the Internet came along, the possibilities exploded. The pattern was explained in a 2006 book called “The Long Tail”. 2 If you want to open a business specializing in, let us say, buying and selling collectible stamps for the stamp-collector crowd, the old way of doing things dictated that you open up in or near a big city, a metropolitan population center. Because only a small percent of the population are dyed-in-the-wool stamp collectors that will pay $300 for a penny postage stamp from 1847 with Ben Franklin’s picture on it. So the bigger the population center, the better the chances that the area holds enough customers to keep your operation going. Otherwise, the entry costs- permits, licenses, ground rent, employee salaries, insurance, taxes, transportation- will prevent you from making a profit and drag your business under.

Bill Jordanou, an aggressive Australian poker player whose five-year run on the poker scene netted him over $523,000 in live-tournament winnings, has been busy perfecting another type of bluff. This past Monday, he appeared in Melbourne’s High Court to face charges of being involved in a Ponzi scheme, and admitted his culpability.

Jordanou and co-conspirator Robert Zaia, a former accountant with Scoresby, pled guilty to the fraud which saw them siphon off around $53 million. Just under $20 million of it made its way into Zaia’s family trust.

As the two were living the high life, their victims were losing their shirts. Several Scorseby clients lost their homes due to allegations that staff from Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) were involved in the scam.

Since Jordanou and Zaia have pled guilty, they won’t face trial. As such, the victims will never know if anyone from CBA was complicit in the activity. It has been said that CBA management was alerted to the Ponzi scheme in 2007, but didn’t report anything to the police until four years later.