A new British Columbia casino website was forced to shut down shortly after being launched after many gamblers placed bets using other people’s money. According to the BC Lottery Corp. new games were added to the site last week such as roulette, craps, online casino gambling and blackjack. The website PlayNow.com closed it access doors quickly as dozens of virtual gamblers were playing the new games. Investigation is under way as to what caused the mix up of some players being logged on as others.

According to BC Lotteries, the increased amount of people on the website caused accounts to be switched which lead players to place bets with other players’ money. This glitch also caused some users to see personal information about others and their account balances. Close to 130 gamblers were affected by this malfunction and 12 cases are reported of users that viewed private personal information of others.

All players were contacted about the incident and were told what had happened. Staff members have been reviewing players’ winnings and losses from the time of the occurrence and have corrected accounts accordingly. A third-party investigation was called in that reported they found no signs of hacking.

PlayNow.com is the first site in North America that offered legal casino games when they included them with their roster of existing sports betting and lottery purchases last Thursday. British Columbians spend approximately $100 million each year gambling on offshore websites. The casino type games that were available for play on PlayNow.com was to encourage gamblers to spend their money in British Columbia so the government can use the profits for education and health care.