Two men who ran a betting website connected to the Fifa video game have pleaded guilty to offences under the UK’s Gambling Act.<\/p>\n
Craig Douglas, a prominent gamer known as Nepenthez, and his business partner Dylan Rigby ran a website that let video gamers gamble virtual currency.<\/p>\n
Douglas promoted the website to fans of his YouTube channel, which has more than 1.3 million subscribers.<\/p>\n
The two men had previously pleaded not guilty. They are still to be sentenced.<\/p>\n
The men ran a website called FUT Galaxy that let players transfer virtual currency out of the Fifa 17 video game, and use it to bet on real-life football games.<\/p>\n
Winnings could then be transferred back in to the Fifa 17 video game.<\/p>\n
But crucially, the Fifa virtual currency can also be sold on an online black market, giving the virtual coins real world value, like casino chips.<\/p>\n
Similar betting websites connected to other video games also exist, and news site Bloomberg has suggested the market is worth billions of pounds.<\/p>\n
Douglas, 32, from Ferndown, Dorset, 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.<\/p>\n
Rigby, 33, from Colchester, Essex, pleaded guilty to two charges connected to the provision of facilities for gambling, and a third offence linked to advertising illegal gambling.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two men who ran a betting website connected to the Fifa video game have pleaded guilty to offences under the UK’s Gambling Act. Craig Douglas, a prominent gamer known as Nepenthez, and his business partner Dylan Rigby ran a website that let video gamers gamble virtual currency. Douglas promoted the website to fans of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-291756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-ghana-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=291756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}