Colorado Casinos: Carousel fined $80K for violating state gambling law

Colorado Casinos: Carousel fined $80K for violating state gambling law

The operator of MaximBet, the sports betting agency founded by the business that bears its name, has been fined $80,000 in Colorado for violating the state’s gambling laws.

Specifically, the Division of Gaming handed the penalties to Carousel Group because the company failed to implement geolocation rules between December 1 and December 16, according to SportsHandle, which published a full analysis of the situation.

As a result, the sportsbook was able to collect wagers without the need for geotracking consumers, and the betting platform was no longer in compliance with licensing requirements.

It was not immediately obvious whether wagers from outside the state were permitted, although in theory, there should have been no barrier for persons to place wagers from outside the state of Colorado due to the lack of geolocation technology in place at the time. Following an inquiry, it was suggested that possible out-of-state gambling was taking place.

Carousel Group

 

Geolocation will be unavailable at MaximBet for the next 16 days

The problem was only discovered after a consumer complained that they were unable to place a wager owing to a “location check” failure on the website. MaximBet acted quickly and reported the problem to the Colorado Division of Gaming on December 23, which explains why the fee has been kept to a minimum, despite the fact that it is one of the more severe fines in the state’s still-developing betting market. It was pointed out to the support staff by a client that they had no issue betting in the past because of location errors, implying that the individual in question may have done so outside of Colorado and in a neighboring state. Following a thorough investigation, MaximBet identified the source of the problem and narrowed it down to a technical error that affected only the web version of the website, which was still a severe omission. With the help of MaximBet, we were able to swiftly determine the actual number of bettors who were able to place a wager remotely, or at the very least narrow down the number of bettors who were most likely to have been successful.

A total of 29 customers were able to place their wagers without being tracked down by geolocation, although the company was convinced that close to 25 of the IP addresses were based in the state at the time of their wagering. There were four probable violations of the company’s licensing agreement left to investigate. MaximBet and the Division of Gaming collaborated to determine whether or not such incidents occurred.

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There has been no definitive confirmation of out-of-state gambling yet

Overall, the conclusions were unclear, with both the regulator and the corporation not quite positive whether such out-of-state betting occurred, but also not able to absolutely rule out the idea of such betting occurring at all. Upon receiving a request from the Division of Gaming, independent auditors from Odds On Compliance indicated that they were unsure as to why MaximBet had turned off its geolocation or whether or not the company was aware of the change.

MaximBet was also unable to determine why this critical functionality was disabled, whether it was done by an external or internal party, whether it was the consequence of a malfunction or whether it was the product of deliberate sabotage. Since the accident, MaximBet has been working tirelessly to ensure that regulatory criteria are adhered to. Customers who live outside of the state and who may have attempted to place bets outside of the state have even had their accounts closed by the company.

CEO Daniel Graetzer wrote to the regulator to express his company’s regret for the technical misconfiguration and to express his company’s regret for the misconfiguration. Since the discovery of the problem, the organization has implemented a variety of procedures to ensure that such occurrences do not recur. MaximBet notified the regulator that it took compliance very seriously and was investigating measures to prevent this issue from recurring in the future.

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About Lou De Aguila

Lou Aguila is a news and feature writer for Golden Casino News. For over a decade, Lou has published news and featured articles for some of the most reputable sports betting and online casino sites in the world, including BetNow.UK, VegasOdds, and BWin. Apart from being a hardcore live casino punter, he also covers sports stories in North American leagues from time to time.