NJ Fines Online Gambling Company After Two Self-Excluded Players Lost Combined $29,000

Last month, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement disciplined a company involved with online gambling after some self-excluded players were allowed to continue playing and accumulated heavy losses.

The state imposed a $36,000 civil penalty against NYX Digital (Scientific Games) under a settlement stemming from a violation of the state’s gambling self-exclusion rules designed to protect the public, according to the DGE’s website. The complaint against NYX Digital was filed in November of last year.

NJ Online Gambling obtained a copy of the complaint from the Garden State. NYX Digital offers online casino gambling under the Resorts Casino Hotel, through the websites ResortsCasino.com and MoheganSunCasino.com.

The complaint stated that on Feb. 14, 2019, a patron reported to Resorts Digital that he had self-excluded via MoheganSun.com on Jan. 26, 2019 but was still able to gamble on ResortsCasino.com.

It was discovered, according to the DGE, that there was an “omission” in a software “release which was deployed on Oct. 10, 2018, which included code to support adding self-excluded individuals to the Division’s self-excluded list by operator/skin.”

Being on that list means you aren’t supposed to be able to gamble on any platform. The software failure resulted in anyone self-excluding on MoheganSunCasino.com not being added to the state’s list.

The state said that nine gamblers were adversely impacted by the software issue. On Feb. 16, 2019, all nine were manually added to the list and NYX Digital “successfully deployed an emergency fix.”

Heavy losses

It was determined that five of the nine that should have been self-excluded from play lost a combined $31,060 “playing on other platforms” between Oct. 10, 2018 and Feb. 16, 2019. Just two of the players accounted for more than $29,000 of the losses.

One player self-excluded on MoheganSun.com on Jan. 27, 2019 and in less than a month subsequently lost $13,762 on other platforms. Another player self-excluded on Dec. 9, 2018 and lost $16,099 thereafter.

New Jersey gambling regulations state that the gamblers can’t recover their losses.

Below is the complaint, obtained from a records request from NJ Online Gambling.