The Live! Casino and Hotel Philadelphia has been fined $100,000 for taking nearly $300,000 worth of sports bets over the phone, violating both existing laws and casino policy.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PCGB) approved the fine during a meeting on Wednesday, accepting a proposal by the Office of Enforcement Counsel (OEC) to punish the casino.

Bettor Banned, Employees Fired Over Proxy Bets

During Wednesday’s PCGB meeting, Deputy Enforcement Counsel Dustin Miller laid out the facts of the case, which involved incidents which took place in 2022. On June 18 of that year, officials were informed by a sportsbook employee that a patron called his cell phone asking to make three bets totaling $95,000. The customer claimed he would arrive later that night to pay for the bets.

All three wagers would go on to lose, and the individual who requested the bets never arrived to pay for their losses, despite the employee’s attempts to contact them. 

This triggered an investigation into the bettor’s wagering history. This turned up another 12 instances in which the individual wasn’t at the Live! Casino sportsbook, but was able to place bets over the phone.

That is not exactly the legal procedure for true pay by phone casinos.

In all, multiple staff members at the Live! Casino sportsbook accepted 15 bets on behalf of a bettor who wasn’t present at the casino. Those bets totaled $287,421 over eight days. The three sportsbook employees who took the wagers have been fired, and the PCGB revoked each of their gaming employment licenses. In addition, the bettor was placed on the involuntary exclusion list, effectively banning him from casinos in Pennsylvania.

Casino, FanDuel Say Proxy Bet Training Now a Priority

Tom Diehl, vice president of legal for Stadium Casino RE LLC – the operator of Live! Philadelphia – addressed the gaming board, agreeing to the facts presented by Miller. Diehl also spoke to how the company had responded to the incident.

“In the direct aftermath of our investigation, we lowered the surveillance notification threshold for transactions that take place within our sportsbook to $10,000,” Diehl said. “Because the perpetrators used cell phones in addition to text messages to circumvent our internal procedures, we banned the use of personal mobile devices within the sportsbook area.”

Diehl also noted that Stadium Casino provided more training on proxy wagering to put more emphasis on preventing the practice in the future.

Live! Casino’s sportsbook partner, FanDuel, was also represented at the meeting by counsel Rich Cooper, who is also vice president of regulatory for the company. Cooper stated that FanDuel PA also has a policy against proxy wagering, and noted that there are signs both at every teller window and on house rules posters in the sportsbook that state that proxy wagering is not permitted. 

“Since the time of the incident, we have doubled down,” Cooper said. “There are now quarterly trainings for the staff which include sections on the prohibition of proxy wagering.”

 When asked if proxy wagering had been an issue since June 2022, Live! Casino Executive Vice President and General Manager Craig Clark said that while others have tried, he believes his staff is now on top of the issue.

“We’ve had several attempts where people have tried to do wagering and then another person has come in to obtain those funds. That’s been discovered by the team. We’ve then put that money into safekeeping at the cage. That gives me comfort that the policies and procedures are being administered in the way we intend them to be.”

(Image: Associated Press)