DraftKings denies systems breach, urges caution after fraudulent activity reports

Online sports betting operators encouraged customers on Monday to take steps to protect their accounts after multiple companies saw fraudulent activities in recent weeks. One of them was DraftKings, which saw a “small number” of accounts be accessed by unauthorized users, leading to approximately $300,000 in customer funds being withdrawn. 

The company believes the attack was caused by login information being stolen from third-party sites. The incident led to its shares sinking nearly 11% following a media report alerting of these hacks. 

The fraudulent accesses took place late Sunday night, just hours before the first U.S. World Cup soccer match, an event anticipated to draw significant gambling interest. 

As reported by Yahoo Finance, Paul Liberman, DraftKings co-founder and president of global technology & product, said in a statement that the company has seen “no evidence” that its systems were breached to obtain the information. 

“We have identified less than $300,000 of customer funds that were affected, and we intend to make whole any customer that was impacted,” he assured, and “strongly encouraged” customers to use unique passwords and avoid sharing them with other individuals and third-party sites. 

FanDuel reported increased activity from unauthorized authors attempting to gain access to accounts as well. However, customers have not been impacted, a company spokesperson said Monday afternoon, as reported by ESPN.

These accesses at DraftKings came just weeks after multiple professional poker players reported having unauthorized betting accounts being set up in their names with BetMGM and used to withdraw money from personal checking accounts. 

Californian poker pro Todd Witteles stated someone set up a sports betting account with his name in late October in West Virginia, depositing $10,000 out of his checking account to the sports betting account, and withdrew $7,500 to a Venmo debit card on the same day. 

Witteles estimates upward of 50 poker players experienced a similar issue at BetMGM that occurred in late October and early November. BetMGM said it is actively investigating the situation. 

In a statement to ESPN on Friday, a BetMGM spokesperson said: “The security of our patrons’ accounts is of the utmost importance to us. We encourage any impacted patrons to contact our customer service department directly.”