The Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) Dutch Gaming Authority has announced that it has fined Winning Poker Network (WPN) for operating without the neccessary license.
According to the official statement by the KSA, Winning Poker Network circumvented the law after the company was found offering its services to Dutch players via its Americas Cardroom website, allowing them to make deposits, despite not having the neccessary permit.
As a result of this violation, the KSA fined Winning Poker Network $1.31 million (€1.275 million) for targeting Dutch players and allowing them to play after the KSA previously issued several warnings to WPN which made no effort to comply.
Moreover, the KSA said that due to WPN’s Americas Cardroom website lacking the license, the Dutch Gaming Authority reached out to the owners to warn them that they risk getting a penalty. However, after WPN failed to respond to the warning and cease operations, the KSA decided to impose a hefty fine.
*Interesting fact: Winning Poker Network operates several similar gambling websites such Americas Cardroom and True Poker, none of which are legally allowed to operate in the Netherlands, yet they attract more than 1 million users from the Netherlands each year.
Yet the trouble for WPN doesn’t end there. More specifically, the KSA is also considering imposing further penalties for the period in which Americas Cardroom was live and offered its unlicensed products.
In addition, the WPN supposedly charged inactivity fees that require players to pay in order to log in after being inactive for lengthy periods of time. What is even more concerning is that WPN presented its services as legal by operating with a license from a foreign gambling regulator.
Needless to say, such violations cannot be swept under the rug, as the Kansspelautoriteit made it clear that it won’t ignore someone breaking the law up to such an extent, commenting that the WPN was “pretending to be a reliable party by fencing with a foreign license”.
Michel Groothuizen, Chairman of the Kansspelautoriteit, said that penalties are the most effective way to keep illegal operators out of the market, adding that the Dutch Regulator won’t hesitate to impose further fines for every new violation and hit illegal operators “where it really hurts – in their wallets”.
