About 104 people and banks have been ordered to return winnings totalling R13 million after exploiting a flaw in a game run by online betting company Hollywood Sportsbook in December 2023.
The game, Betgames Instant Lucky 7, was flawed in that it didn’t deduct money from players’ Hollywood Sportsbook accounts, into which punters must put money so they can place bets. This was the result of a mistake made by one of Hollywood Sportsbook’s outsourced game developers.
“This, ultimately, meant that the punter could gamble for free and at no risk, for it cost him nothing to acquire his numbers in the draws but he could still win. When the punter won, the winnings were paid into his or her account,” a Pietermaritzburg High Court judge said in a recent ruling.
The game was removed after the company’s monitoring systems flagged unusually high winnings.
In just over a week, more than R13 million was won. One example cited by the judge showed that a player placed about 40 bets and won R443 700, which he transferred to his personal bank account.
The judge noted “the respondents must have noticed the weakness in the impugned game, and they exploited it”.
However, Hollywood Sportsbook’s claim that the players colluded to defraud it was rejected. The judge said the punters are “scattered over the length and breadth of the province of KwaZulu-Natal and, indeed, this country, and are not confined to a specific area, nor has any relationship been established that links them one to the other”.
The online gaming platform contacted the winners requesting repayment, but “almost all the respondents refused to do so and indicated that if the applicant wanted their winnings back, it would have to sue them. The applicant obliged and that is why this matter is before me today,” the judge says.
The respondents largely filed standardised affidavits, differing only in how much they won, their account balances and how long they played the game. In the ruling, the judge took umbrage with this, saying the punters didn’t respond to all of Hollywood Sportsbook’s allegations.
In their standardised affidavits, the respondents also denied acting unlawfully, and argued that the account freezes caused financial harm, including missed debit orders and negative credit records, insisting they should not have to repay their winnings.
As the matter progressed through the courts, several bank accounts were frozen after an interdict was granted to the online company. Banks − including Capitec, FNB, Absa and Standard Bank − were cited as respondents as Hollywood Sportsbook sought repayment.
The judge noted it was unclear why all account activity had been frozen, since the banks would have known whether more money than required to pay back the winnings was in the punters’ accounts.
“It would have been preferable if the hold on each respondent’s bank account was clearly defined to be in respect of the amount allegedly owed by the respondent to the applicant, instead of the prohibiting of all transactions,” the ruling stated.
Despite rejecting Hollywood Sportsbook’s fraud claims and stating that bank accounts should not have been frozen, the court ruled in its favour, ordering the winnings to be returned.
“I accordingly find that the wagers placed by the respondents through the impugned game were not valid wagers. It must follow therefore that the respondents were not entitled to the winnings that they received from the impugned game and that they must be returned to the applicant,” the ruling reads.
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