Playtech announces licence agreement with Betfair

Playtech (AIM: PTEC), the leading international designer, developer and licensor of software to the online and land-based gaming industry, is pleased to announce that it has established a major new licence agreement with Betfair, the world's leading online betting exchange, to provide a range of its online products and services.

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Playtech and Betfair sign casino and bingo software deal

The contract for Playtech to provide its downloadable casino client will run alongside Betfair?s existing casino licensing deals with Chartwell and CryptoLogic.

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We are contacting you concerning your withdrawal at Cherry Red Casino.

Your account has been investigated and the outcome of these investigations is that your account has been deemed to be fraudulent and your winnings are therefore null and void. You will not be able to withdrawal (sic) your winnings from Cherry Red and your account has been deactivated. We have worked closely with third parties to ascertain which players are genuine and which are fraudulent and yours has come back as being connected to other players in Europe and as having transferred funds between Moneybookers accounts.

Regards,

Cherry Red Fraud Department

We are certain that the information we had received from Moneybookers and third parties constitute to the answers we have given players.

You can send money worldwide to anyone with an email address - even if the recipient does not have a Moneybookers account yet.

When you make payments from one account to another, the transaction will process instantly and will be viewable in your Moneybookers account history.

I have indeed transferred funds between Moneybookers accounts. These transactions have solely been to local friends' accounts. My friends are all legitimate casino and/or poker players.

I find nothing fraudulent in transferring Moneybooker funds. I also know that none of my friends have ever played at a Rushmore group casino, so how my Moneybookers transactions can imply fraud is a mystery to me.

7 Right of access to personal data

(1) Subject to the following provisions of this section and to sections 8 and 9, an individual is entitled -

(a) to be informed by any data controller whether personal data of which that individual is the data subject are being processed by or on behalf of that data controller,

(b) if that is the case, to be given by the data controller a description of -

(i) the personal data of which that individual is the data subject,

(ii) the purposes for which they are being or are to be processed, and

(iii) the recipients or classes of recipients to whom they are or may be disclosed,

(c) to have communicated to him in an intelligible form -

(i) the information constituting any personal data of which that individual is the data subject, and

(ii) any information available to the data controller as to the source of those data

...disclosure of the information or data by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available.

Whether you are innocent or not, your activities make you indistinguishable from people that are cheating the casino and/or violating casino terms. As such, we support Rushmore's decision.

This case is now closed at Casinomeister.

As it happens, in this case some of the evidence is already known to you, ie. the Moneybookers stuff - which you have openly admitted is valid.

As to posting in the forums, I'm afraid that will not be permitted. Based on the evidence in your case I am closing your Casinomeister membership.

Hello,

I understand that Moneybookers will disclose confidential customer information to its casino clients at their request. In one instance, I've seen the emails in which the casino, Cherry Red, states this to a customer (etc etc)...

As such, Moneybookers certainly disclosed some form of confidential customer information to a casino.

Can you please tell the nature of confidential information that Moneybookers will disclose about its customers to its casino clients, and why? Also, why does Moneybookers not inform the relevant customer when his account data is discussed with third parties?

I welcome your comments and clarifications.

Thanks,

Regards,

HPG editor

Dear HPG editor,

Please note that as per our Terms & Conditions we provide information about our customers to third parties ONLY in proven cases of fraudulent activity and only to prevent further abuse of ours or merchant's systems and rules.

In case the merchant contacts our Anti-Fraud Department with an inquiry about the account condition of mutual customers we can only confirm the details already provided and whether the account is in good standing with us or not.

I would like to assure you that your personal details as well as all details for other customers of our company are kept confidential and are not disclosed to third parties according to the regulations of the FSA.

I hope the provided information has been useful, in case there is anything else I can assist you with, please don't hesitate to let me know. It would be my pleasure to help out.

Best regards,

Moneybookers VIP Team

Thank you for replying.

I'd like to give a specific example: If a merchant comes to you and says, "we believe there is a connection between accounts X, Y and Z. Can you please tell us if accounts X, Y and Z have had money transferred between them?", would Moneybookers, in this instance, say "Yes, that is correct", "No, that is not the case" or "This is not information that Moneybookers is at liberty to disclose"?

Thanks,

HPG editor

Dear HPG editor,

In case they just want to confirm a connection between different Moneybookers accounts, we will not disclose any information. The only case we may confirm if there has been activity between different accounts if the merchant comes to us with a specific case, where they have confirmed fraudulent or abusive customer behavior and this case has been evaluated by our Anti-Fraud team, who have established that there has been suspicious transaction activity.

In such a scenario, they will contact the merchant directly to confirm the details which we have received. I hope this clarifies the matter further, if there is anything else I can do for you, please don't hesitate to let me know.

Best regards,

Moneybookers VIP Team

With Gambling, Personal Freedom Is Always the Best Bet, Says Barney Frank

There is one major reason that leads me to oppose the ban on Internet gambling: It is an activity that adult Americans enjoy and that does no conceivable harm to anybody else.

There are people who believe that it is appropriate to use the law to impose on others personal, religious, or moral tenets, whether or not they deal with behavior that impinges on others. Obviously, society has an obligation to enforce those aspects of morality that protect people from others. Murder, robbery, fraud, and arson, for example, should be harshly prosecuted. But personal behavior that harms no one ought to be within the sphere of personal autonomy.

Some antigambling advocates inaccurately assert that if we do not outlaw gambling, we are encouraging it. The notion that human activity should be divided between those things that are illegal and those things that the government should be considered to be encouraging is a dire threat to liberty. The vast majority of human activities should be neither encouraged nor outlawed by the government but rather be left entirely to the choice of free individuals.

Several other negative arguments exist. The least serious comes from the professional sports leagues, which express their horror that if Internet gambling were allowed, people might actually bet on sports games. The bill I proposed prohibits betting on sports through the Internet, but the notion that the people who run professional sports leagues are shocked by the idea that people might actually bet on their games has to rank as one of the least credible in human history. Indeed, one of the major shortcomings of the current law is precisely that it prohibits human behavior that in fact harms no one. Thus, it winds up doing more to discredit the law than to discourage the activity.

This also applies to one of the worst arguments I ever heard made by one of the best members of Congress with whom I have served. He said on the floor of the House when this bill was first voted on that it was legitimate to ban Internet gambling because it added nothing to the gross domestic product. The notion that individual choices and personal freedom have to be justified on the grounds that they contribute to the gross domestic product is of course a serious threat to individual liberty.

More serious is the argument that online gambling could lead to underage people getting themselves into trouble financially. Fortunately, we do have ways of requiring that activities accessible through the Internet have an enforceable age limit. If we were to prohibit from the Internet anything that people under a certain age should not do and could abuse, the Internet would be a very boring place. If we were to ban every activity that is suitable only for adults because of the possibility that some underage people might access these activities, we would have substantially diminished our freedom as adults.

Moreover, Congress is now reforming credit card practices in measures meant to severely restrict credit cards being sent to college students and further reduce the likelihood of credit card debt for people under 18.

(Even if Internet gambling is not allowed, young people with unrestricted access to credit cards will very often find ways to get themselves into a lot of trouble.)

There is also the argument that adults can become addicts. The principle here is the same as with regard to young people: To ban an activity in which the great majority of adults are able to engage responsibly because a small percentage will abuse it is to diminish freedom. Those who are addicted are the ones most likely to engage in the activity whether or not it is illegal, so the legal prohibition generally prevents more legitimate use of any activity than the abuse of it.

Finally, we were told by the Bush administration that online gambling was a problem because it could lead to drug-money laundering and smuggling for terrorists. There is, of course, virtually no evidence of this. The Bush administration owed its religious conservative base opposition to gambling, and it is, naturally, a problem for some conservatives who profess to be critical of the "nanny state" to justify this extreme example of nannyism. So we got this argument thrust at us about drug smuggling and terrorism. In fact, that same argument could apply to virtually anything done on the Internet because you could use any legitimate activity for such a cover: There have been cases of which I am aware of organized crime opening up bricks-and-mortar cleaning establishments solely for that purpose, and in one case, I remember the annoyance of those who were running the place at the fact that potential customers actually were bringing in dirty clothes and asking that they be cleaned.

We have regulations in the legislation that can be enforced, as well as many others that require that any group taking Internet bets must be a legitimate organization and account for all of its funding in ways that will prevent any sort of drug activity or terrorist conduct.

Finally, there are two blatant contradictions in the position of those conservatives who push to outlaw Internet gambling. First, it is the most glaring example we have of interfering with freedom on the Internet. Second, to those who claim to be unhappy with the intrusiveness of the "nanny state," there is no stronger case than for a nanny government insisting we be "better" people by reducing our freedom.

On this issue, there is a very clear case for the citizen's right to be left alone.

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Online Gambling Leads to Crime and Hurts Young, So Why Encourage It? Asks Spencer Bachus

In the history of our country, the federal government has never authorized or sanctioned gambling of any kind. Now, offshore casino interests are leading an unprecedented effort to legalize Internet gambling.

Internet gambling's characteristics are unique: Online players can gamble 24 hours a day, seven days a week from home; children may play without sufficient age verification; and betting with a credit card can undercut a player's perception of the value of cash, leading to addiction, bankruptcy, and crime. Young people are particularly at risk because a computer in the bedroom or dorm room of a young person is a temptation that many may fall prey to.

For more than a decade, Congress has sought to deter, not promote, Internet gambling. It has always been illegal, but until recently no one could enforce the law because the casinos were offshore, far away from the jurisdiction of law enforcement.

The bipartisan passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006 has helped end this shell game. The federal government was given new tools to enforce old rules prohibiting online gambling contained in statutes like the Wire Act of 1961. The 2006 law was designed to make it impossible to use a bank instrument like a credit card or money transfer or check to settle an illegal online wager.

Even though opponents have delayed and tried to block implementation, UIGEA is already working. According to an Annenberg Public Policy Center survey, after enactment of the law, weekly use of the Internet for gambling among college-age youth fell from 5.8 percent to 1.5 percent from 2006 to 2007. A November 2008 follow-up by the center stated, "The strong drop in weekly use of Internet sites following [its] passage appears to remain in place."

Unfortunately, this came too late for Greg Hogan's family in Hudson, Ohio. He described to our Financial Services Committee how his son, the president of his class at Lehigh University, became a gambling addict. Realizing the problem, Hogan installed protective software on his son's computer to prevent him from gambling online. But offshore casinos can find ways to bypass these filters, and the young man accumulated such massive gambling debts that he robbed a bank to try to pay them off. He was sent to prison.

Concerned about the integrity of their games, professional and college sports organizations urged passage of the antigambling law. Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, and the NCAA have sent numerous letters to Congress supporting the law, most recently on May 14, 2009. University presidents have shared concerns about the integrity of the athletic competitions on their fields and about students betting in their dorm rooms.

Our country has a long tradition of allowing the states to regulate gambling and not permitting the federal government to override decisions made by the states and their citizens. In this particular case, the federal government would be overturning laws in 50 states that regulate gambling. The state attorneys general say they need the antigambling law. Without it, they have no effective way to combat illegal Internet gambling occurring in their jurisdictions.

Recognizing the importance of the law, Attorney General Eric Holder promised to vigorously enforce it when asked about it during his Senate confirmation hearing. Aside from the Department of Justice, the State Department has testified, "The Internet gambling operations are, in essence, the functional equivalent of wholly unregulated offshore banks with the bettor accounts serving as bank accounts for account holders who are, in the virtual world, virtually anonymous. For these reasons, Internet gambling operations are vulnerable to be used not only for money laundering but also for criminal activities ranging from terrorist financing to tax evasion."

Supporters of legalization argue that prohibition has sent Internet gambling underground and left the vulnerable unprotected. But it was the 2006 law that finally safeguarded families from predatory intrusion into their homes. The alternatives - age verification and geographic location software - are simply ineffective and easy to elude.

Before 2006, offshore Internet casinos were proliferating, raking in more than $6 billion illegally from Americans every year. One can understand why they are spending millions of dollars on lobbyists to try to get back in the game. But if Congress repeals this widely supported law, online casinos will become ubiquitous. One company has even developed gambling software for iPhones that will be on the market the day online gambling is legalized by the federal government.

It took places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City years to develop effective gambling regulations, and they have had decades of experience enforcing them. Yet this new legislation would direct the Treasury Department to set up a new regulatory regime to oversee shadowy foreign gaming enterprises in a mere matter of months.

Even if one concedes that legalization and regulation could possibly prevent underage gambling, compulsive play, cheating by casinos as documented by 60 Minutes and the Washington Post, and money laundering or drug trafficking by criminals on U.S.-sanctioned gambling sites, the pre-2006 problem of predatory, illegal offshore casino bets would return. One country's rules would be woefully insufficient. Ultimately, the results of legalization would be expanding, sanctioning, and inevitably losing control of an industry that offers few advantages to the economy or tax base but incredible pain to families across the country.

It's a gamble that simply is not worth taking.

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