Youtube Celebrity Admits Guilt to FIFA Gambling Offences

Craig Douglas, a Youtube celebrity known as Nepenthez and his business partner Dylan Rigby, have admitted guilt to charges that they ran a website to gamble virtual currency. By promoting his gambling website called FUT Galaxy to the 1.3 million Youtube subscribers of his gaming channel, they were able to bet on real life soccer games. FUT Galaxy was the vehicle for gamblers to transfer virtual currency from the FIFA 17 video game to be bet on real life soccer games.

After winning a match, the virtual currency could be transferred back into the FIFA 17 video game using the same website, but many times it was sold on the black market which gives the virtual coins real money value. The virtual currency market is estimated to be in the billions of pounds.

My thoughts. Not only is this a crime as it is illegal gambling, but Youtube also caters to children. I wonder how many kids have been swiping their parent's credit cards to gamble after following this person's popular Youtube channel. There is no disclaimer on Youtube that this is a front for an illegal gambling website. I think they should investigate and throw the book at him for that also.

Douglas, 32, admitted a charge of being an officer of a firm that provided facilities for gambling without an operating licence, and a further offence relating to the advertising of unlawful gambling.
Rigby, 33, pleaded guilty to two charges connected to the provision of facilities for gambling, and a third offence linked to advertising illegal gambling.

O.k. So the only actual relevant question. Is it illegal to operate a website to gamble game currency?

cageymaru said:

but many times it was sold on the black market which gives the virtual coins real money value. The virtual currency market is estimated to be in the billions of pounds.

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The fact that it can be traded into real currency through some convoluted (as in not through a bank or other simple means) system is totally irrelevant to this. A lot of things can be illegal if you are willing to stretch it enough.

This is the same argument as "you have a gun. Guns can kill people. You are a murderer". I don't know what the UK's laws are about online gambling with game currency, but if they are anything like the US then this is quite a stretch.

As far as kids go and swiping their parents card I would say that it's probably more than you would expect but not as much as you think.

I've been to several Word Camp's across the country. This question has actually come up and apparently one of the speakers had some hard data directly from Android and Apple or and a data broker that sells that information, and it was a very tiny number. Of course tiny across millions of people does equate to a substantial end number, a number that doesn't tell the story on it's own.

PhotoBobBarker said:

O.k. So the only actual relevant question. Is it illegal to operate a website to gamble game currency?



The fact that it can be traded into real currency through some convoluted (as in not through a bank or other simple means) system is totally irrelevant to this. A lot of things can be illegal if you are willing to stretch it enough.

This is the same argument as "you have a gun. Guns can kill people. You are a murderer". I don't know what the UK's laws are about online gambling with game currency, but if they are anything like the US then this is quite a stretch.

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Well think of it as F2P games that have a trading aspect built into them. There are only a few "Golden Goose" players that feed the economy. Most are there because it is free. Those big time players will buy currency for one more roll; for one more chance to win. They will feed the development team with their purchases of in game currency. Then they trade that currency to other players for items that they want and are too unlucky to get or too lazy to farm.

Now let's say that you are a great farmer for a F2P game and have accumulated millions of in game currency. What do you do with it? Sell it on EBAY! Let people poorer than the "Golden Goose" buy digital currency at a discount! That way they can trade too! Meanwhile you are still accumulating more and more.

Just substitute gambling for EBAY and you've got the issue at hand. You have people addicted to gambling buying currency for real money. Losing it gambling on games. They might use it to play virtual slots. They can use it to bet on real life games; anything that you can do in Las Vegas basically. And these Youtubers were the front for the recruitment, trading, and transfer of funds to virtual currency and laundering it to real money.

So yes, everything that they did was highly illegal!

Do ATMs and stores accept FIFA bucks yet? It's amazing that a video game's cryptocurrency can be valued in the billions.

So they made a website that you could bet on real sporting events, but because it wasn't with "real money", they thought they could get away with not getting licensed for gambling? Yeah, they got what was coming their way.

SixFootDuo said:

As far as kids go and swiping their parents card I would say that it's probably more than you would expect but not as much as you think.

I've been to several Word Camp's across the country. This question has actually come up and apparently one of the speakers had some hard data directly from Android and Apple or and a data broker that sells that information, and it was a very tiny number. Of course tiny across millions of people does equate to a substantial end number, a number that doesn't tell the story on it's own.

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Was it last year or the year before when Google got sued for kids using the app store and making purchases? At any rate, I told my nephew about it as he always called and complained about his kids buying cherries or farms; etc with apps. He was allowed to charge back nearly $2,000 in app purchases. He had no idea that a few sprites here and there cost so much! He was thinking a couple hundred dollars.

On Twitch, I watch the kiddies in streams donating to their favorite personality. You can tell it is a kid. Grammar is wrong; word choice is elementary in nature, etc. The nicer Twitch streamers will tell them to stop doing it or charge it back immediately. But I'm sure that plenty go through as there are people with 10,000+ subscribers paying $5 a month each. Would you miss $5 out of your bank account? What if your kid donated $25 and you made $100,000+ a year. Would you notice it?

-PK- said:

Do ATMs and stores accept FIFA bucks yet? It's amazing that a video game's cryptocurrency can be valued in the billions.

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Oh man! Many years ago when EVERYONE was playing World of Warcraft, you'd see your buddy login to the game. They wouldn't say a word. They would strip naked and mail all their gear and gold to a level one toon. Sometimes the entire account would be sold for thousands of dollars. Yes, thousands for one account. There are some mounts that ONLY could be gotten by one person on a server during a once in a lifetime event. There are titles that can't be gotten today like the seasonal PVP titles that change every new season. I've seen mounts in the game sold for $1,500. At it's peak WoW had 13 million or more subscribers? Imagine how much virtual trading went on there!

Billions is easy to think about if you think of it that way.

cageymaru said:

Oh man! Many years ago when EVERYONE was playing World of Warcraft, you'd see your buddy login to the game. They wouldn't say a word. They would strip naked and mail all their gear and gold to a level one toon. Sometimes the entire account would be sold for thousands of dollars. Yes, thousands for one account. There are some mounts that ONLY could be gotten by one person on a server during a once in a lifetime event. There are titles that can't be gotten today like the seasonal PVP titles that change every new season. I've seen mounts in the game sold for $1,500. At it's peak WoW had 13 million or more subscribers? Imagine how much virtual trading went on there!

Billions is easy to think about if you think of it that way.

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Hell, I sold my WoW account for $850 back towards the end of Burning Crusade. Fully geared warrior tank with Illidan gear before Sunwell was released + 2 alts at max level, and it sold pretty damn quick.

cageymaru said:

Oh man! Many years ago when EVERYONE was playing World of Warcraft, you'd see your buddy login to the game. They wouldn't say a word. They would strip naked and mail all their gear and gold to a level one toon. Sometimes the entire account would be sold for thousands of dollars. Yes, thousands for one account. There are some mounts that ONLY could be gotten by one person on a server during a once in a lifetime event. There are titles that can't be gotten today like the seasonal PVP titles that change every new season. I've seen mounts in the game sold for $1,500. At it's peak WoW had 13 million or more subscribers? Imagine how much virtual trading went on there!

Billions is easy to think about if you think of it that way.

Click to expand...

That was actually one of the first things I tried to google. I could understand WoW's auction house items and gold being worth billions a few years ago because of the massive player base. Still the idea that you could create an in game currency this year that's worth billions is amazing (without resorting to a pay-to-win gimmick design). I actually traded some WoW gold for Path of Exile currency when it first came out. Now though, WoW sells official currency in the form of tokens that can be traded for gold, redeemed for monthly subscriptions, or account credit for newer games, which is kind of a compromise to meet player demands.

...Youtube also caters to children. I wonder how many kids have been swiping their parent's credit cards to gamble...

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Any parent stupid or irresponsible enough to give a child their credit card info and then not closely monitor the kid's use of it is a moron and deserves what they get. Children don't need credit cards with their parents' credit limit, if you don't want them carrying cash get them a debit card to an account with a small balance.

YouTubers fined over site that let children gamble using coins on Fifa game
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...laxy-fifa-virtual-coins-gambling-rules-breach

The judge addressed the fact that children as young as 12 were visiting the site and gambling. Just some excerpts from the story. The last quote is the most damning one where they promote the site and activities as legal for anyone even if under 18 years old.

Dylan Rigby, 33, and Craig Douglas, 32, pleaded guilty to breaches of the 2005 Gambling Act during a hearing at Birmingham magistrates court. Rigby was ordered to pay fines and costs of £174,000, while Douglas, a professional YouTuber, must pay £91,000.

One 14-year-old boy lost £586 in a day.

Ordering Rigby to pay prosecution costs of £150,000 and Douglas £75,000, McGarva said: “The aggravating features of these offences are they were committed over a relatively long period of about six months. Children were gambling on your site. It’s impossible for me to know how many or the effect on them.

“In my opinion, both of you were aware of the use of the site by children and the attractiveness of it to children. At the very least, you both turned a blind eye to it.”

During the opening of the case, the court was shown a video of Douglas from his YouTube channel saying to the camera: “You don’t have to be 18 for this, because this is a virtual currency.”