A Maine bookmaker has admitted his involvement in an illegal betting operation that local authorities claim was the largest in state history.

This week, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine announced that Stephen Mardigan had pleaded guilty to charges of running an illegal gambling business, money laundering and filing a false income tax return. Mardigan is potentially looking at a 20-year sentence on the money laundering charge alone.

The 61-year-old Mardigan was arrested in April 2017 but he’d been making book out of his Portland home since 2003, during which time he handled millions of dollars in wagers and laundered at least $4.5m through his used-car business. Mardigan used the proceeds to amass a real estate portfolio of some 30 local properties, from which he derived an annual $1m in rent.

Mardigan used his car business to process payments from gamblers, including another car dealer who lost a total of $2m to Mardigan’s book over a six-year period. Another client in Florida deposited $1.4m through Mardigan’s Avenue Auto businesss over the same span.

Vietnam’s Laguna Lăng Cô has been awarded a casino license, the first such license the Vietnamese government has issued in a decade.

This week, Laguna Lăng proudly announced that its $2b resort project in Thua Thien Hue province had finally received its casino license. It’s the first such license issued in Vietnam since The Grand Ho Tram Strip, currently the nation’s only large-scale integrated resort with gaming, received its go-ahead.

The license was formally presented by Nguyen Van Cao, chairman of the Provincial People’s Committee, to Ho Kwon Ping, chairman of Laguna Lăng’s managing partner Banyan Tree Holdings, at the recent Vietnam-Singapore Business Forum 2018 in Singapore.

The Laguna Lăng resort opened its $285m first phase five years ago but Banyan Tree’s Ho said “many hotel investors and development funds have been awaiting the casino license and the selection of a casino operator before finalizing their investment into our Phase 2.”

US casino operator Hard Rock International (HRI) has been given the green light to proceed with its integrated resort project in Spain’s Catalan region.

On Friday, the official gazette of the Catalonia ministry of economy and finance announced that it had granted formal approval of HRI’s €2b Hard Rock Entertainment World project in the ‘tourist recreational center’ of Vila-seca and Salou in Tarragona province.

The notice gives HRI three years in which to open the resort’s €700m first phase, which will operate under the banner of Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tarragona. The countdown to development will officially commence once HRI submits a €10m deposit and secures the necessary building permits.

The first phase will feature 1,200 slots, 100 gaming tables, two hotels offering 1,100 rooms in total, retail shopping, a 6k-square-meter swimming pool and a 15k-seat theater. The full project is expected to be complete within five years. A public ceremony detailing HRI’s plans is expected within the next few weeks.

Swedish online gambling operator Cherry AB has officially sacked its embattled CEO after the exec was arrested on insider trading charges.

On Friday, Cherry announced that its board of directors had “resolved to terminate the employment of Anders Holmgren as CEO and President of Cherry.” Holmgren has left the company “effective immediately” and has relinquished his assignments as a board member in Cherry’s subsidiaries, including software firm Yggdrasil.

Holmgren was arrested at Cherry’s Stockholm headquarters on Wednesday by members of Sweden’s Economic Crime Authority (EBM) on charges of ‘severe’ illegal insider trading.

Holmgren reportedly purchased SEK12m (US$1.4m) worth of Cherry shares in between a November 2017 profit warning and the company’s April announcement that its Q1 results would be “better than anticipated.” The company’s shares rose 12.3% in the wake of that announcement.

UK-listed gambling firm GVC Holdings PLC had a good run in the first 20 weeks of 2018, until extreme weather rained on its parade.

GVC reported that its total group net gaming revenue (NGR) in January to May 20, 2018, rose by as much as 7 percent, but the company said that the percentage could have been higher and better if not for the adverse weather at the start of the year.

The British online gambling operator pointed out that its betting shops suffered a 5 percent drop in NGR in the first five months of the year as 12 percent or one out of 10 scheduled horse racing fixtures were cancelled due to the weather. Taking the major blow for the company were the Ladbrokes betting shops, according to GVC.

Punters weren’t also confident about placing multiple bets in the first 20 weeks of the year given the strong run of GVC wins in the latter part of 2017, the company said.

Despite the lackluster performance of its international operations, casino operator Genting Malaysia Berhad (Genting BHD) managed to pull off a 15.8 percent net profit growth in the first three months of 2018.

Figures from Genting BHD showed that its net profit rose to MYR342.1 million (US$86 million) compared to MYR323.9 million ($81.4 million) in the prior-year period, with its flagship integrated resort Genting Malaysia leading the revenue rally.

The Malaysian-listed company’s total revenue and profit before tax (PBT) saw some improvements at the start of the year, climbing 8 percent and 15 percent to MYR2.4 billion ($603.26 million) and MYR397.5 million ($99.9 million) respectively. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) grew by 8 percent to MYR607.7 million ($152.75 million).

The group’s Malaysian business did the heavy financial lifting for its gaming segment, growing 19 percent to MYR1.6 billion ($402.18 million).

Philippine-listed game technology provider PhilWeb Corp. planning to recoup its market share in the country after more than one-year hiatus in the gambling scene.

The Manila-based firm is ramping up its marketing campaign, particularly on social media websites, and will introduce new eGames content for players in the next few months to help raise awareness about their brand and products, according to PhilWeb President Dennis Valdes.

Valdes admitted that they have lots of catching up to do after the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) ordered PhilWeb’s closure in 2016. For this year, Valdes said they are targeting to shore up the number of its eGames sites from 41 to 100 for this year.

“If you look at PhilWeb prior to its closure in 2016, we had the players and we had almost the entire market. We were doing some marketing before but there was really no need to do too much marketing. But time has changed,” Valdes told CalvinAyre.com at the sidelines of the launching of Habanero’s Viva Las Vegas platform on the company’s system. “We are trying to get back our market share and the way we can do that is via marketing.”

In this week’s Calling The Clock, Chris Ferguson finally speaks after a seven-year silence, PokerStars pull out of Hong Kong but don’t explain why, and much more. 

As I prepare to give my fingers a rest for two days, I have to say, poker has let me down this week, in so many ways. Let’s start with the most obvious first.

What the fuck is Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson thinking?

After seven years plus of silence, the much-maligned former Full Tilt Poker boss opens up to the poker community and his ‘fans’ in a 41-second video that is truly bizarre.