The operator’s special manager says the Sydney casino allowed customers to withdraw funds they hadn’t won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Australia.- Nicholas Weeks<\/strong> has told the second inquiry into\u00a0the Star Entertainment Group<\/a>‘s suitability to hold a gaming licence in Sydney that the operator falsified welfare checks on players. Weeks was appointed special manager of the casino by the NSW Independent Casino Commission (NICC) in October 2022 when\u00a0the regulator suspended the company\u2019s licence<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Weeks told the inquiry’s first hearing that Liquor and Gaming NSW officers found that Star Sydney failed to complete welfare checks on customers who played on machines for more than three hours.\u00a0He said customer support officers falsified the compliance log<\/strong> to indicate that the check had been completed. It was found that this was a common occurrence in Sydney, which led to an investigation into Star’s Brisbane and Gold Coast locations named “Operation Falskur”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Weeks was worried that the breaches were only discovered by Liquor and Gaming inspectors and not by staff within the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Weeks also spoke of players being able to withdraw a combined AU$3.2m they hadn’t won from a malfunctioning “ticket in, cash out” over a six-week period.\u00a0He also claimed that he believed Star’s chair had wanted to oust him from the company and that the company had gained access to his emails and calendar without his consent.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the next three weeks, several senior and former executives will testify to the hearing. Bell will ultimately decide whether the group is suitable to hold a casino licence in New South Wales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The operator’s special manager says the Sydney casino allowed customers to withdraw funds they hadn’t won.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":17622,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"The Star Entertainment Group faces a second inquiry into its Sydney gaming licence suitability, with special manager Nicholas Weeks testifying about falsified player welfare checks and customers withdrawing AU$3.2m in un-won funds due to a malfunctioning \"ticket in, cash out\" system. These breaches, discovered externally, highlight significant internal control and governance failures, raising concerns about the operator's ongoing regulatory compliance and the potential for licence revocation in New South Wales.","focusai_entities":"Nicholas Weeks, Star Entertainment Group, NSW Independent Casino Commission (NICC), Liquor and Gaming NSW, Bell","focusai_location":"Australia, Sydney, New South Wales, Brisbane, Gold Coast","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (1.0), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (1.0), product_ux (0.7), tech_data (0.8), payments_fraud_aml (0.9), investor_analyst (1.0), supplier_vendor (0.8), journalist_researcher (1.0)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Governance Framework Impact","query":"What specific enhancements to Star Entertainment Group's governance frameworks and internal control systems are being mandated or proposed to prevent recurrence of such systemic compliance failures?"},{"label":"Financial Recourse Strategy","query":"What is the operator's strategy for financial recourse regarding the AU$3.2m in un-won funds withdrawn by customers, and what are the implications for its balance sheet and regulatory penalties?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,156,158],"tags":[23871],"class_list":["post-777014772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-regulation-news","category-slider-home","tag-the-star-entertainment-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777014772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777014772"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777014772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777014779,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777014772\/revisions\/777014779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777014772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777014772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777014772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}