UK Gambling Commission deals out voiding order

News on 8 Apr 2011

The UK Gambling Commission announced the conclusion of a multi-agency investigation involving Virgin Media employees and suspicious betting patterns, this week.
Virgin Media employees, who misused their access to Virgin’s data and then placed bets totalling over GBP16 000 on which X Factor contestants would next be eliminated, were put under investigation when Betfair’s Integrity Unit reported suspicious betting patterns.
The Commission has ruled that a voiding order would be applied, the first of its kind under the UK Gambling Act of 2005.  The Commission has also consulted with Ofcom, which has been working with Virgin Media and other relevant stakeholders, to ensure that firm steps are taken to prevent a repeat of such activity.
“Following a multi-agency investigation led by the Gambling Commission, we are satisfied that the bets placed were substantially unfair as the individuals involved had inside information.  We have worked closely with all the bodies involved to ensure that those individuals do not profit from their activity and that appropriate action has been taken to prevent a recurrence of such activity in the future,” said Nick Tofiluk, Director of Regulation, UK Gambling Commission.
A Virgin Media spokesperson commenting on the investigation said: “We can confirm this was an isolated incident where three individuals were found to have misused their legitimate access to internal data to identify the volume of calls being made.  At no point was any individual customer data shared and the outcome of the phone votes was not affected.  However we have since introduced additional monitoring to our systems to ensure this cannot happen again.”

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