Australia convicts Poker Asia Pacific’s Luke Brabin of providing illegal gambling

Australian authorities have claimed their first online poker scalp after a poker site operator was convicted for violating the country’s gambling laws.

On Monday, the Southport Magistrates Court convicted Luke Brabin of violating the Interactive Gambling Act, which permits only online sports betting activity to take place in Australia. Brabin was charged last August with providing an illegal gambling service, the first such prosecution of an online poker operator under the 16-year-old Act.

Brabin was charged for activity at his play.pokerasiapacific.com online poker site between April and August 2016. On August 10, Poker Asia Pacific’s Facebook page issued a statement saying it was suspending its services “until pending legal action regarding the Interactive Gambling Act is resolved.”

That message optimistically stated that the site expected to be offline “for 2-3 months” and its operators were “confident of obtaining a positive result given the current landscape of the online poker market.” However, the site remains offline to this day.