DraftKings, two casinos fined for violations by Iowa regulators

DraftKings and two casinos have been fined by the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission (IRGC) for violations.

IRGC administrator Brian Ohorilko said DraftKings was fined for a late download of new self-ban list information, Radio Iowa reports. He said an audit by the commission determined the list was not uploaded within the required seven days, and that they did note that no one on the ban list signed up or played. He said this was the first violation for the company.

“DraftKings agreed to a stipulated agreement in the amount of five to 20-thousand dollars. The Commission reviewed the facts and set the penalty at $5,000,” according to Ohorilko.

Moreover, the Rhythm City Casino in Davenport was fined for a violation involving surveillance cameras. “There was an instance in November of 2018 — the facility started experiencing some surveillance system issues — there was a complete loss of coverage on January first of 2019. It did include critical areas of the facility,” Ohorilko said.

He said the problem happened again. “There was a second situation in February where there was the intermittent loss of critical areas for approximately four-and-a-half-hours. In that particular situation, the commission and DCI were not notified,” he said. Ohorilko explained it was determined that some updates needed by the casino’s vendor did not happen and that contributed to the problem. Rhythm City was fined $7,500.

Furthermore, Ohorilko said the Diamond Jo Casino in Worth County had a similar issue. “There was an instance in November in 2019 where a series of camera outages occurred as a result of some upgrades that were being performed on the system. The facility was not aware those outages occurred and as such — it never really was reported,” Ohorilko explained.

He said an investigation was conducted on the problems. “It was determined that much like the Rhythm City situation — there was a series of updates that did not occur and that contributed to a loss of surveillance coverage in areas that normally would require dedicated surveillance coverage,” he said. Ohorilko added that the owners of the casino have agreed to an upgrade of the overall system.

“The approximate cost of the upgrade will be about $750,000, and so that was one factor that went into the decision — specifically the fine. Diamond Jo Worth had agreed to a fine of up to 10-thousand dollars and they were fined $7,500,” Ohorilko said. The Racing and Gaming Commission took action on the fines at their recent meeting.