Australian Court Orders A$29.2m in Penalties Against Illegal Poker Network, Doubles Affiliate Fine

Key Points

• Brisbane Poker Pty Ltd and its sole director Rhys Edward Jones were ordered to pay A$15m and A$9m respectively, after the Federal Court ruled they had repeatedly violated Australia’s Interactive Gambling Act.
• The judge rejected a jointly proposed A$120,000 penalty for affiliate promoter Brenton Lee Buttigieg, doubling it to A$240,000 on the grounds that the original figure would not adequately deter others from similar conduct.
• Adding the 2023 Diverse Link penalty to the current ruling, the total across all related proceedings reaches A$29.2m, placing this among the most consequential enforcement actions ever mounted under Australian interactive gambling law.

The country’s Federal Court of Australia imposed a fine amounting to A$29.2 million on the promoters of an illegal network of poker-playing sites in what could be considered one of the most important legal actions ever taken in the country in relation to gambling.

Brisbane Poker Pty Ltd, which is the holding company of the network, has been ordered to pay a fine of A$15 million while its sole director and shareholder, Rhys Edward Jones, paid another A$9 million penalty. Betting affiliate, Brenton Lee Buttigieg, who promoted the sites using his social media account, has been fined A$240,000.

Court Finds Nearly 30,000 Deposits Flowed Through Illegal Platforms

PPPFish, Shuffle Gaming and Redraw Poker, the three brands at the heart of the case, were trading without any legal right to do so in Australia. Online poker and online casino products are banned outright; licensed operators are restricted to sports betting and horse racing, and nothing beyond that.

Close to 30,000 deposits flowed through the platforms, totalling more than A$7.2m. The operation pulled in profits of around A$4.2m, a figure Justice Rangiah identified as central to why the business pressed on rather than stopped, even as legal exposure mounted.

The business model was not complicated. Players purchased virtual poker chips with real money and competed against each other online. No slots, no house, no roulette wheel, yet every bit of it fell within what the Interactive Gambling Act expressly forbids.

Operators Moved Users Between Brands After ACMA Began Investigating

What the court examined went well beyond the fact that the platforms were illegal. The sharper question was what the operators decided to do once ACMA had already started watching.

Proceedings were brought against the poker services in April 2022 by the Australian Communications and Media Authority before the Federal Court following an investigation. In November 2025, the courts held that Jones and Brisbane Poker violated the laws of Australia by providing interactive gaming services prohibited under the law. Instead of shutting down, the business transferred its clients to other brands without shutting down operations.

As Justice Rangiah put it, the manner in which they conducted themselves is “commercially motivated and deliberate,” and such characterisation lies at the very centre of the reason for the imposed penalties. The imposition of penalties was linked directly to their continued operation after the regulator came knocking.

Jones was also barred from providing online gambling services for five years and ordered to cover ACMA’s legal costs. ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin left no room for misreading the outcome: “This decision sends a clear warning that offering online poker to Australians is illegal and there are serious consequences for those who breach the law.”

Judge Rejects A$120,000 Affiliate Penalty, Orders Double

The ruling’s sharpest edge is directed at Brenton Lee Buttigieg, and the precedent his case sets extends far beyond this particular network.

Buttigieg ran a Facebook page with more than 2,200 members, funnelling them towards the illegal platforms in exchange for A$44,400 in sign-up payments. ACMA and Buttigieg jointly proposed a civil penalty of A$120,000. The judge said no.

Justice Rangiah found the agreed figure fell short of what was needed to discourage similar conduct. Buttigieg had knowingly promoted illegal gambling across several months for his own financial benefit, and A$120,000 simply did not account for that. The court set the penalty at A$240,000.

What makes that outcome notable is not the number itself. The judge refused to accept a figure agreed between the regulator and the defendant, reviewed the conduct on its own terms, and concluded the deterrence threshold had not been met. Any affiliate directing Australian audiences toward offshore gambling products would be unwise to treat that sequence as someone else’s problem.

Offshore poker and casino brands reach Australian users through Facebook groups, Telegram channels, review pages and casual social posts, channels that rarely look like formal advertising. Buttigieg’s case makes plain that the appearance of informality does not reduce the legal exposure one bit.

Cumulative Penalty Total Reaches A$29.2m After 2023 Proceedings

The A$29.2m total did not arrive from a single ruling. A A$5m penalty was imposed on Diverse Link Pty Ltd in March 2023, as part of the same proceedings the ACMA first launched in April 2022. Combined with the current ruling, the cumulative figure sits at A$29.2m, placing this series of enforcement actions among the most consequential ever pursued under Australia’s Interactive Gambling Act.

ACMA has spent years working through its enforcement toolkit, with hundreds of illegal gambling domains blocked under a sustained campaign running since November 2019. Federal Court proceedings sit at the heavier end of that toolkit, with sustained litigation, significant financial penalties and personal bans all on the table.

O’Loughlin signalled that the authority’s reach does not stop at the operator level: “Illegal gambling services put Australians at risk, and the ACMA will continue to take action against those who target these services at Australian consumers.”

Expert Analysis

The Brisbane Poker ruling leaves nothing unclear about where Australian regulators are prepared to go. Penalties at this scale carry genuine financial weight, the personal bans push individuals out of the market entirely, and the Buttigieg outcome establishes that a jointly agreed penalty is not immune from judicial rejection if the court judges the deterrence effect insufficient.

The ruling arrives as the broader regulatory climate in Australia tightens across several fronts, with gambling advertising restrictions scheduled for 2027 and self-exclusion compliance drawing active scrutiny from the ACMA. Any operator or promoter operating in a grey area around Australia-facing gambling products now has a concrete measure of how far enforcement can extend. Whether ACMA pursues future cases is not the question; the Brisbane Poker ruling settles that.