The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is reviewing the procedures taken by its licensees to prevent gambling by underage players. One Kahnawake casino, 7Sultans.com, was sued by the State of New Jersey last month for, among other things, allowing two 16-year-olds to bet on blackjack and keno games.
The Commission met during the week of June 25 to discuss this issue, its lawyer, Murray Marshall, told RGT Online Wednesday. He said the Commission was “specifically concerned about 7Sultans,” but would raise the issue with all the licensees.
“We will request an outline of the measures each has taken to prevent it (underage gambling),” Marshall said. “A review, I guess you could call it. It could lead to revisions in the regulations.”
The Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake, just outside Montreal, Canada, has a server farm that hosts numerous online casinos and sports books. The Mohawk reserve is the only North American venue to license online gaming sites. The Commission’s Web site lists 14 licensees, but Marshall said the site has not been updated for five or six months.
The issue of underage gambling at 7Sultans was raised with Marshall and the Kahnawake Gaming Commission by Frank Catania, who wrote the Commission’s regulations for online gaming. Catania is a former director of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement. He heads Catania Consulting in Atlantic City.
After Catania’s successor as New Jersey’s top gaming regulator filed the suit against 7Sultans, Royalclubcasino.com and Alohacasino.com on June 18, Catania said he wanted to know “if any of these operators are from Kahnawake and how they let underage gamblers in. . . . They (the Kahanwake Gaming Commission) have the ability to fine them. Let’s show that we’re taking some action too.”
Of the three sites, only 7Sultans is licensed by Kahnawake. Royal Club Casino is apparently licensed by St. Kitts, and Aloha Casino operates from Costa Rica, which has no licensing procedure for online gaming sites.
The New Jersey suit said that the teenagers who, working with investigators, bet at 7Sultans and Royal Club gave false dates of birth. Aloha didn’t ask their age, the suit said. More about Situs Slot Deposit Pulsa Tanpa Potongan
Catania conceded that a determined investigator would always be able to defeat a casino’s efforts at age verification, but he said measures should be taken to block most underage players who try.
“It should be based on, if you have 100 people online, you keep out at least 90 percent of them,” Catania told RGT Online. “No one could be foolproof and say it would stop it 100 percent of the time. You can’t do that in a regular casino. …. They should go further than what these people have done.”
Steps that can be taken, Catania said, include requiring a player to fax a passport or drivers license to the casino and requiring the use of a PIN number that is mailed to the street address that a player gives when registering. Also, he said, a player can be asked several times to provide the same information online. If there are discrepancies, the player should be blocked from the site.
Although he is concerned about underage gambling, Catania called the New Jersey suits a “publicity play by the Attorney General’s office.” He doesn’t see how the state can get legal service on the defendants.
The owners and operators of the sites were identified in the suits as “John and Jane Does,” because the state doesn’t know who they are. Because of that, and because the owners may not be U.S. citizens, the question of legal service is important.
A spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety said that if conventional means of service don’t work, the state may request a judge’s permission for service via email.
Catania called that idea “kind of far-fetched. How do you know it’s there? Who does it go to?” Traditionally, service can be obtained by certified mail, with a return receipt requested.
The three sites that New Jersey sued had all advertised on billboards in or near Atlantic City. That’s a bad idea, Catania said.
“Any online gaming company should not advertise in the U.S.,” he said. “It’s just opening the doors for some things to happen like this, where nothing is ever going to come of it unless they happen to get some type of jurisdiction. But why even chance it? You advertise online, so why put up a billboard?”
