Recent articles in the press and online have reported on the case of a Gala Bingo club employee who attempted to cheat the system and defraud the customers out of thousands of pounds.

Christian Grant was jailed for 9 months for inputting the numbers amanually into an random number generator and calling the numbers on his girlfriend's ticket.   Questions were asked how this could be done and whether this could be replicated in any bingo club. First and foremost, it must be remembered that the person was actually caught out and dealt with swiftly.  Also none of the customers lost out on any winnings or potential winnings as Gala did make the shortfall good immediately and reinstated the jackpot prize. 

Some websites are speculating that the RNG can be switched to a manual mode so the numbers can be drawn manually and chosen at will.  Having experience in the bingo club industry and extremely familiar with bingo, this could only be attempted in certain circumstances, which depend on outdated equipment being present and low club security.  Link games in clubs receive  numbers by a data cable, the numbers originating at the master or calling club but in the early days the clubs received audio only, and callers would input the numbers into the display board one at a time, as they were called, having previously turned a key to allow this function.

It is fair to say that few, if any bingo clubs now have any need of this function and most no longer even have the key to enter the link mode.  Where proper security is in place, you would expect the manager to hold the key and use it only if necessary, stand by the caller during a link game and take it away after the game is completed.  It would be sensible to assume that since this event the security would have been reviewed to prevent this from happening again.

Some online bingo portals are claiming this is evidence that online bingo has more integrity than the land based game and not exposed to security threats. It is completely wrong to tar every operation,whether it is online or land based bingo, with the same brush.  On the contrary, what this sorry incident proves is that even if a caller were to attempt this again it is physically impossible to choose, manually enter and call a series of numbers of choice with the same fluency as a standard honest game is called- it was the erratic manner in which he called that alerted the staff and customers to his crime to begin with.

If a bingo website was unscrupulous and "fixed" the game, choosing a winner or inventing one, how would a participant know without being amongst the bingo players and not in the same room? Remember that most online bingo sites are not regulated in the UK by the UK gambling commission. Whilst  we are in no way suggesting that such a thing has, or ever would occur, perhaps online portals should consider this before taking more cheap shots at an industry that has a record of fairness and compliance second to none.

It is also well worth drawing attention to the fact that online bingo is taxed and regulated in the UK differently to land based bingo.  Why is that you may ask? The answer from the Government is that they do not regard online bingo as bingo, they regard it as 'gaming'.  In addition it is also becoming apparent that the Government, UK Gambling Commission and Gambling help groups are more concerned with internet problem gaming, including bingo, than they are with land based bingo.