Hot Features
Premium
Register to chat with like-minded investors on our interactive forums.
Playtech billionaire, Teddy Sagi, wasn’t dealt the hand he was looking for when he purchased In Touch Games (ITG) from Simon Wilson in 2022 for £53m under the Skywing brand. As Sagi and Wilson go head to head in court, the billionaire alleges fraudulent behaviour in ITG during its March 2021 audit, a requirement imposed by the UK Gambling Commission after multiple breaches of the firm’s gambling license. While ITG passed the audit at the time, a raid instigated by the Commission after the sale showed evidence of possible driver’s license forgery among customers of the company.
There are, of course, many rogue online casinos masked as legitimately operating ones, which is why browsing through websites that promote vetted operators is always recommended. Yet, it’s not enough for a site to be advertising great deals like UK no deposit bonuses. Comprehensive reference sites such as NoDepositBonus.guide do more than this: by offering visitors useful information as well as practical guides that mention what makes an online casino reputable.
Strange Ways to do Business
Teddy Sagi is no stranger to controversy. The Israeli-born gambling entrepreneur behind Playtech, established in 1999, has been in the news a lot recently. In February of last year, his Unikmind Holdings Limited company offered £1.25bn to takeover Kape, the owners of ExpressVPN, of which Unikmind is the major shareholder. While the bid was unsuccessful, Teddy continued to make moves.
He’s not a shy or demure billionaire, buying a Miami mansion for £18m just recently, with the house to be bulldozed for a new home to be built. This was after an Israeli home purchase just last year worth £52m. The deal with Wilson reportedly was proposed in Sagi’s Knightsbridge flat, one of two costing £57m total.
But it’s not Sagi’s love of pricey real estate that was talked about during the business discussions that day in 2022. According to testimony, Sagi put it to Simon that he’d lost £300,000 at the casino the night before and wanted to purchase ITG for £53m. The deal for Skywing to purchase ITG was put with a 10-day expiration period, without any due diligence necessary – an astonishing thing to say, especially for a gambling business acquisition, and especially for a gambling business with a recent history like ITG’s.
The deal went through in June 2022, but it wasn’t long before things started to go south for the company.
What Happened with ITG?
In January 2023, just six months after Skywing purchased ITG, they were slapped with a massive fine for anti-money laundering and responsible gambling-related breaches. The £6.1m fine was for offences dated back to March 2022, before the deal was even on the table – but not before prior fines for the company and a mandated audit.
In 2019, the company was fined £2.2m by the UK Gambling Commission, and again in 2021 a further £3.4M fine. These fines were both concerning social responsibility, money, laundering and marketing, with the latter attached to an official warning by the Commission and a new watchful eye.
To comply with the Commission, an audit was required, conducted by third-party outfit RSM UK, in March 2021. However, ITG passed the audit and appeared to be moving along with smooth sailing, going into 2022, or so Teddy thought.
Fast forward to August 2023, when a whistleblower informed the Gambling Commission of fraud conducted during the 2022 audit. A raid on the ITG offices uncovered evidence that showed driver licenses of ITG customers may have been forged by staff, in an effort to appear compliant. The whistleblower also alleged fraud of payslips, financial documents, and other key items. Following the raid, ITG voluntarily gave up their UK gambling license and Skywind valued the business at next to nothing.
More interestingly, perhaps, the whistleblower said when he went to his boss, Wilson, during the time of fraud, he was threatened physically. Wilson alleges that his estranged wife and the whistleblower were working together and possibly having an affair.
What Will Happen in Court?
Skywind are adamant that their purchase of ITG was based on a fraudulent audit, and thus ITG’s previous owners, Simon and Yu-Lin Wilson, are liable for the business losses. Simon says that Skywind unnecessarily gave up their license, and thus the business’s value and that the deal was made in a heady exchange he was happy to go along with.
It’s a true case of what can happen when businesses are being run dirty behind the scenes, especially in such a highly regulated industry as UK gambling. We’re yet to see whether Teddy recovers any of his losses after the short and car-crash ownership of ITG, but we dare say he’ll be in the market for a new mansion again any day soon.
