Imagine being able to win in an online casino game where you are never able to lose. Recently, some South African gamers at Hollywoodbets experienced exactly this while playing the Instant Lucky 7 game.
Soon after, several of players discovered that the game was malfunctioning and that they could wager and win without having to take money out of their accounts. Before anyone at Hollywoodbets realized what was happening, the players were able to take their winnings and deposit them into their bank accounts.
A spoilsport judge decided this week that the players had to return the money, which came to about $750K in total, because the bets were invalid after the operator filed a lawsuit. In actuality, they weren't even "bets" because there was no stake.
FanDuel Makes Money
Players who simply couldn't stop losing, as opposed to those who couldn't lose at all. According to court filings, Amit Patel was "the biggest loser ever on FanDuel." Even worse, the $22 million he lost was not his personal money; rather, it belonged to his former company, the Jacksonville Jaguars of the NFL. Patel was given a 6½-year term for fraud at a federal prison in March 2024.
According to reports this week, FanDuel agreed to compensate the Jags $5 million because it wants to maintain a positive relationship with the NFL, which is its "official betting partner."
"The team will receive [the settlement] in the form of 250,000 $20 bonus bets, which expire in 30 days," one wag stated on Twitter.
Taxes and Fraud
Speaking of fraud, Lottomart, an online casino, was fined £360K ($485K) by UK regulators last week for not taking precautions against scams. The UK Gambling Commission claims that because the site's security measures were so weak, one user managed to avoid detection by simply changing the order of their first and last names.
In other fraud-related news, the US Department of Justice is attempting to confiscate almost $5 million worth of Bitcoin, claiming that the money was obtained through SIM-swapping assaults. This occurs when fraudsters deceive a mobile operator into allowing them to send and receive messages by moving a user's phone number to a different SIM card. The DOJ claims that after stealing money from victims' cryptocurrency wallets, scammers laundered it through cryptocurrency casino accounts, including those linked to Stake.com.
The case demonstrates how criminals can use unregulated cryptocurrency casinos for illicit activities. This week, the Internal Revenue Service echoed this point by reminding Americans that they must pay taxes on their winnings, regardless of whether they came from regulated gambling sites or not.
It simply goes to show that someone always manages to take away your wins, whether it's the IRS, a South African judge, or a SIM swapping scammer.