Rise in Brazilian gambling addiction

Pokies self-exclusion failure

The Guardian this week brought us a troubling report on the Australian state of Victoria’s self-exclusion programme.

The article tells the story of Bree Hughes, a Victoria resident who signed up to the state’s pubs and clubs gaming machine self-exclusion programme eight years ago.

For the first few months after signing up to the programme, Hughes entered no venues with gaming machines or ‘pokies’ whatsoever, saying “I was worried about what might happen if I tried to enter, so I didn’t even attempt it.”

A few months ago, however, Hughes experienced a relapse in her problem gambling and instead of facing any barriers to entry when trying to go into venues to play on machines, found she could “easily” walk in and gamble freely.

“Over time I entered every venue within a three-hour walking radius of where I live,” she said, adding that she could easily enter more than 170 of the 175 venues she should have been excluded from.

Hughes has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars gambling over the years, and was sentence to 10 months in prison in 2020 due to the fraud she committed to fund her habit.

When it comes to land-based self-exclusion, however, “It’s up to the venue staff to actually ask you to leave, to recognise you,” she said.

“And if you can’t provide ID to prove you’re not on the list, they’re meant to still ask you to leave, and police can actually be called. But I have been able to say to them; ‘My name isn’t Bree,’ or ‘I forgot my ID’ and they have just blatantly accepted that.”

This lack of oversight led to her falling into a “full-blown relapse,” she said.

And the story is hardly unique to Hughes. Local state regulator the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission has received 33 complaints this year alone from self-excluded customers who had been able to gamble in hotels or clubs.

The regulator said it is still investigating the majority of the complaints.

However, it also told Guardian Australia that no disciplinary action has ever been taken against any non-casino venue for letting excluded customers continue to gamble.

This reality leads vulnerable people like Hughes to suggest the self-exclusion programme is nothing more than “an absolute joke,” intended to keep up appearances of responsibility while failing to actually fulfil its purpose.

While Hughes’ story is far from the only one of her kind, many will hope that bringing such situations to light will help to increase the effectiveness of the programme from here on out.

Rise in Brazilian gambling addiction

Elsewhere, the Financial Times brought us another story of problem gambling in the southern hemisphere, this time in Brazil.

There, the rapid proliferation of online gambling is threatening to take its toll on the wider economy, according to several experts.

The article tells the story of Cláudio who, when struck by cancer in his early thirties, found solace in online gambling, a pastime becoming increasingly popular among the Brazilian population.

As he racked up losses totaling around $35,000, his bills began to go unpaid and the electricity to his home was cut off.

Cláudio also began taking out loans from banks without telling his wife, something which made him “very ashamed”.

The FT suggests that the gulf left between the legalisation of sports betting in 2018, and the introduction of a regulated market – set to launch in 2025 – has left many people like Cláudio vulnerable to financial harm due to gambling.

This has led to “an epidemic of addiction, with potentially damaging consequences for Latin America’s largest economy, bankers and doctors have warned.”

An increase in gambling nationally now threatens to dent consumer spending according to analysts and retailers, especially among lower-income groups.

Brazil’s banking association has also sounded the alarm about the indebtedness caused by online gambling, suggesting the spread could begin to hit loan repayments and fuel defaults.

Meanwhile, treatment referrals for compulsive gambling at the Clínicas public hospital in S?o Paulo have tripled in just a year, according to psychiatrist Hermano Tavares, a situation for which “the health system is not prepared.”

On the other side, the Brazilian Institution of Responsible Gaming suggested that gambling had not led to an overall increase in indebtedness, while gambling accounted for just 0.5% of household spending.

With Brazil in the final months of its unregulated market however, the data likely remains difficult to analyse.

The picture will undoubtedly become clearer in the years to come.

Gambling ring bust

Finally, The Korea Herald brought us a curious story as police busted a “$2.8bn gambling ring that used deepfake video to lure gamblers”.

According to the article, South Korean police have now “dismantled a massive online gambling ring,” after apprehending 50 suspects accused of running the operation since 2019.

Those apprehended also reportedly used deepfake video technology to “recruit new members to their programme”, by broadcasting gambling content on YouTube while using the tech to change their faces and voices to those of celebrities.

The police said out of the 50 suspects, 13 have been arrested including the website operator, a man in his 40s. The remaining 37 have been forwarded to prosecutors.

According to the authorities, the 50 suspects allegedly operated gambling sites hosted on overseas servers in countries including the Philippines and Thailand, between October 2019 and March this year.

They used deepfake technology to obscure their identities and help stimulate interest among potential customers, according to the police.

In order to conceal the flow of funds, users converted cash into an online currency, of which the suspects are thought to have kept up to 30%, resulting in unfair profits of ?300bn (€203.5m).

The website’s main manager is thought to have bought an apartment, a sports car and a luxury watch with criminal proceeds, according to the article.

While this website may now have been taken down, the increasingly sophisticated technology available online means it’s perhaps likely another will be ready to take its place.

Users may be put off using it, however, as an additional 107 of the website’s customers are currently being booked on gambling charges. Many of those customers were underage, according to officials.

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