Bobby Mamudi, an industry analyst and managing editor of the London-based Gaming Intelligence Group, said the new cheating incident is another blow to the reputation of Kahnawake’s gambling industry. “They definitely do seem to be losing credibility and not doing too much about it,” he said.
The article also includes more empty promises from the KGC:
Murray Marshall, legal counsel to the gaming commission, said that Kahnawake’s regulation is among “the tightest in the world” and said similar frauds have occurred in casino gambling and banking. “We would obviously prefer to prevent all possibilities of this kind of thing happening, but no system is infallible,” he said.
Tightest in the world? What does that even mean? How did the same shit get past them twice? Not only did they fail to identify cheating that amateur internet sleuths could and did identify, but to my knowledge there are no documented incidents of the KGC actually doing anything except for fining Absolute Poker after the fact. Their tight regulation hasn’t managed to catch or prevent any malfeasance.
The article also raises the troubling specter of legal action against the online gaming industry by the Canadian government:
The federal government considers the 400 or so poker and sports-betting sites operating from Kahnawake to be illegal, but, fearing a confrontation, both the federal and provincial governments have been reluctant to intervene. Last March, however, an aide to Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said the government was studying ways of shutting down the gambling, possibly by targeting financial transactions with illegal Internet operators.
Let’s hope that doesn’t come to pass, and that future news outlets that cover this and other internet poker stories handle them with the same thoroughness and even-handedness that the National Press does here.