Australian court orders A$24.24m penalties over prohibited online poker

Australia's Federal Court has imposed A$24.24 million in penalties over prohibited online poker services promoted under the names PPPfish, Shuffle Gaming and Redraw Poker. Brisbane Poker Pty Ltd received the largest order at A$15 million. Rhys Edward Jones was ordered to pay A$9 million and Brenton Lee Buttigieg A$240,000.

The July orders are part of a case that began after an Australian Communications and Media Authority investigation. When an earlier A$5 million penalty against Diverse Link Pty Ltd is added, total penalties across the proceedings reach A$29.24 million. The two totals describe different slices of the same case and should not be merged into a new number.

The services allowed members of the public to play poker against each other using virtual chips that could be bought and sold for real money. The Federal Court found that Jones and Brisbane Poker provided prohibited interactive gambling services in breach of section 15(2A) of the Interactive Gambling Act 2001.

Buttigieg admitted that he aided and abetted the contraventions by promoting the services. The legal outcome therefore separates the provision of the poker product from the conduct that helped promote it, instead of treating every respondent as having played the same role.

The Court restrained Jones from providing a prohibited interactive gambling service for five years. Buttigieg was restrained for the same period from aiding or abetting the provision of such a service. Jones and Brisbane Poker were also ordered to pay the ACMA's costs.

Those restraints matter because a penalty deals with the past conduct while an injunction governs what can happen next. The ACMA can return to court if a binding restraint is breached. The regulator's published summary does not report a prison sentence or a criminal conviction, and Atlas does not describe the outcome as one.

The ACMA commenced proceedings in April 2022. Diverse Link was dealt with by default judgment in March 2023, including the earlier A$5 million penalty. Findings against Jones and Brisbane Poker arrived in November 2025, with the remaining penalties ordered in July 2026.

That sequence explains why enforcement headlines from the same matter carry different totals and dates. An investigation, liability finding and penalty order are separate procedural events. The final headline number only becomes available after the Court decides the consequence for each respondent.

A large order does not establish a customer-loss figure of the same size. The ACMA announcement does not say every player lost funds, publish a count of affected customers or calculate revenue for each service in the short public summary.

The case also does not answer the legal status of every poker format offered in Australia. It concerns online services that the Court found fell within the federal prohibition and used virtual chips with a real-money purchase and sale mechanism. Product design and delivery method remain central to the legal classification.

The Buttigieg order shows that the risk is not limited to the company operating the game. A person who promotes and assists a prohibited service can face separate liability. That has practical consequences for affiliates, communities and other intermediaries asked to direct Australian users to an offshore poker product.

The safe check is not whether a service calls itself poker, social gaming or a club. It is how the service works for an Australian customer, whether money can enter and leave through the chip system and whether the operator appears in the relevant official licensing record. The court findings in this case turned on the real service, not its marketing label.