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Ontario Regulator Fines Betty Gaming $120,000 for Underage Accounts

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The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has ordered Betty Gaming Ltd. to pay $120,000 in monetary penalties after a defect in the company’s age-verification controls allowed 23 underage individuals to create accounts on its Betty.ca online casino, with nine of them depositing funds and gambling on the site.

The regulator detailed the penalties in a news release dated August 6, 2026. The case originated with the operator itself: in November 2025, Betty Gaming notified the AGCO that it had identified a vulnerability in the age-restriction and player-eligibility controls on Betty.ca. That defect let nine people under the age of 19 open accounts, deposit money and gamble. Another 14 underage individuals created accounts but never deposited.

In Ontario, players generally must be 19 or older to gamble online, with a narrower exception that allows 18-year-olds to buy lottery tickets online. Every one of the 23 accounts fell below that line.

The standards Betty Gaming broke

The AGCO found Betty Gaming breached two provisions of the Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming. The first requires that operators not permit underage individuals to create accounts, log in or gamble online. The second requires that relevant player information be collected at registration and demonstrated to be complete, accurate and validated before a player account is created.

That second obligation is where the enforcement turns. Ontario’s framework does not just ban underage play as an outcome; it makes the operator prove its eligibility checks work at the moment an account is opened. The AGCO’s release put the emphasis on exactly that point: registered operators are responsible for making sure their systems work before those systems go live.

“The legal age requirement is one of the most basic and important safeguards in Ontario’s regulated gaming market,” said Dr. Karin Schnarr, the AGCO’s chief executive officer and registrar, in the release. “Young people must not be able to create accounts, deposit money, or gamble online. Registered operators are responsible for making sure their systems work before those systems go live.”

What happens next

The order is not necessarily final. An operator served with an Order of Monetary Penalty has the right to appeal the registrar’s action to the Licence Appeal Tribunal, an adjudicative body that sits within Tribunals Ontario and is independent of the AGCO. Betty Gaming has 15 days from service of the order to file that appeal.

The penalty in context

The $120,000 order lands at the upper end of the AGCO’s recent published enforcement actions. In March 2025, the regulator served BetMGM Canada with a $110,000 penalty after marketing contractors offered cash to the public in exchange for opening new accounts. Before that, a $100,000 penalty against DraftKings Canada in June 2022 (DKNG ) addressed prohibited advertising inducements. Both of those cases involved marketing conduct; the Betty Gaming order is a player-protection case, centred on who was able to get through the front door of a registered site at all.

Ontario’s regulated market has continued to draw new entrants under this regime — DAZN Bet went live in the province on June 30, 2026 — and the AGCO has layered new obligations onto operators as the market matures, including a centralized self-exclusion program, announced in December 2025 and due to launch in 2026, that will require all licensed sites to screen players against a province-wide registry. The Betty Gaming order applies the same logic to the other end of the player lifecycle: the checks that run before a first deposit is ever made.

The AGCO has not said how much the nine underage players deposited or wagered before the vulnerability was caught, and its release does not indicate whether refunds were issued. What it does state is the operator’s own role in surfacing the problem — Betty Gaming identified the defect and notified the regulator in November 2025, roughly nine months before the penalty order landed.

Elena Markov is an AI-generated analyst at Gaming.net, tracking regulatory developments, licensing decisions, and enforcement actions in major gambling jurisdictions worldwide. Her reporting centers on specific policy changes, fines, auditor findings, and legal interpretations affecting licensed operators.

Elena’s articles parse regulatory documents and enforcement notices from bodies such as the UK Gambling Commission, Malta Gaming Authority, and state regulators, explaining how these moves influence market access, operator obligations, and compliance costs. She foregrounds named regulators, actual rulings, timelines, and documented outcomes.
Articles authored by Elena Markov are AI-generated and reviewed by Gaming.net’s editorial team to ensure accuracy, clarity, and compliance-aware coverage of gambling regulation.