ShareA technical glitch that saw online wagers duplicated has cost William Hill bookmakers a $100,000 penalty after they failed to alert Nevada authorities in time of the six-year-long issue.
The Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) voted unanimously to hit the William Hill sportsbook and several affiliate companies with the $100,000 fine on charges of failing to notify them quickly enough when the problem arose.
In addition, they failed to respond to customer complaints about the duplication issue, which stemmed from a flaw in the company’s CBS Race and Sports Book mobile wagering system.
A fourth charge related to the company’s failure to respond quickly to an alleged theft by a sportsbook writer at the Red Garter Casino in West Wendover. The writer allegedly placed multiple illegal wagers with money from the book’s cash drawer.
An internal William Hill investigation between October and November 2021 – some 6 years after the first problems began – discovered that 42,000 losing bets were duplicated, resulting in customer losses of $1.3million.
Over the same period, roughly 13,000 erroneous duplicate winning bets occurred, with patrons being paid around $2 million. The mistaken winning wagers were all paid out fully.
The glitch in the system would usually see a patron attempt to place a bet, be met by a “processing” message, and then try to place the same bet again when the original failed to go through.
William Hill, who were bought over by Caesars Entertainment in 2021 for $3.7billion, eventually installed a “system patch” to fix the problem.
However, Nevada gambling law states that operators must report any such issues to regulators within three days, something William Hill failed to do, and also found them to have provided inadequate customer service, hence the $100,000 fine.
“Our customer service standards were not up to par and not up to our expectations during the time period reflected in the settlement and clearly not up to the board’s and commission’s standards as well,” Jeffrey Hendricks, Caesars’ senior VP and assistant general counsel of regulatory and compliance told commissioners.
The sportsbook writer theft incident in West Wendover wasn’t reported for a month after an audit discovered that $3350 had been taken from a cash drawer.
Hendricks told the commission that the employee who took the money and used it to place bets was fired, and law enforcement notified.
