Report Dismisses Evolution’s VPN Clarification, Methods of Report Questionable

The saga with Evolution AB continued today after a report in a respected media put under scrutiny the official explanation the Swedish-based supplier of online casino products released yesterday.

Evolution’s VPN Defense under Scrutiny

The media report stated that the VPN-type defense adopted by Evolution is already being breached in the report submitted to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE), as a senior executive at the company confirmed it had the capabilities to “see” whether a player is using a VPN-generated IP address or not.

Further, the senior executive is cited in the report to claim that Evolution would only intervene in case there was a discrepancy in the value between the IP address-based currency of a player and the preferred currency of play, an additional confirmation that if a VPN-generated address is used to circumvent restrictions of play placed on a certain country, Evolution would know.

Evolution has been under heavy flak in the recent days after news broke up that a group of private investigators filed a report to the regulator in New Jersey via Calcagni & Kanefsky LLP law firm, revealing the tactics Evolution implements to offer its games across illegal jurisdictions, including in countries from the US sanctions list.

GamblingNews has read the report and the overall impression is that this is nothing more than a compilation of screenshots, including discrepancies like claiming a player is using a French IP yet the screenshots display texts in Russian, as well as signs the player is using demo play mode, leading to the conclusion that this report will hardly serve as evidence.

Hostile Acquisition?

So, the real question is whether this report was ordered by a competitor as it had been originally claimed by the media which broke the report to the public, or perhaps an investor looking to acquire the gambling technology and content provider on the cheap by bringing its market capitalization value down? GamblingNews was tipped that the entity is “a US-based interest group.” After all, as soon as the news of the report broke out, markets reacted and investors sold Evolution shares en mass, leading to $3 billion of value being erased.

This said GamblingNews is not standing in defense of Evolution as their senior management is probably aware of possible shrotcomings in the aggregation model via which they operate. However, the report does intentionally seek to discredit the company, and often brings points that would be difficult to verify at least from our end. We have not seen the alleged videos of games played through a VPN, but we have seen other inconsistencies in the report, such as screenshots appearing in different languages than the countries they are alleging to be representing.

Based on some quotes included in the report, it could be speculated that Evolution might have actually known about the real origin of the IPs that allegedly accessed its products. The quote in the report (attributed to a senior executive we won’t name here) tries to discredit the company by arguing that it knew about such IPs. This creates an interesting and in our opinion pertinent opportunity to argue either case.

If Evolution has the power to monitor what IPs are accessing its products, it can very easily refute the allegations levied against it. Another possibility is for the relationship between supplier and aggregator to be more complicated to the point where breaches could have happened.