Online-gambling giants conquer U.S. with tactics deemed too tough for Britain

In 2018, British regulators sanctioned the UK arm of online gambling giant Flutter (FLTRF.L) after it failed to catch an astonishing anomaly. The head of an animal shelter had been embezzling money from his employer to fund his bets, losing what the charity said was more than half a million dollars over four years. The gambling watchdog forced Flutter to pay about $2.8 million for not protecting customers from obviously uncontrolled gambling and not stopping the use of stolen money.

Flutter’s Chief Executive Peter Jackson publicly apologized for failing to intervene, saying the company had a responsibility to do so “when our customers show signs of problem gambling.”

Over the next few years, another one of Jackson’s customers — this time in America — spiraled even further out of control, gambling millions of dollars of stolen money with Flutter’s U.S. brand FanDuel. Amit Patel, then a mid-level finance manager at the Jacksonville Jaguars football team, deposited $20 million of his employer’s money into his FanDuel account between 2019 and early 2023, and then lost most of those embezzled dollars, according to court documents. Patel and the British animal-shelter chief each pleaded guilty to fraud.