Vegas Inc – People call him the “sheriff of online gambling,” but Rip Gerber says he’s more like border patrol.
As CEO of Locaid, a San Francisco technology company, Gerber makes sure gamblers are where they say they are. Locaid verifies the location of online gamblers for Ultimate Poker, William Hill and the newest entrant into Nevada’s online poker industry, the World Series of Poker.
On what Locaid does …
We are the world’s largest location company. We created what’s known as “location as a service.” We provide location information to all industries, from financial services to health care to hospitality and gaming.
What the regulators are saying about mobile and Internet gaming is, “I’m OK with it as long as you can verify that that person placing the bet on that device is in my state.” What we do is locate those devices.
On how his company locates devices …
We can locate more than 5 billion devices anywhere on the planet through multiple location sources.
It could be through the cell towers you see dotting the countryside or through wireless carriers, such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. It could be off the device, through an IP location from your Internet connection or from a third-party database. We bring all those location sources together.
On his nickname, the “sheriff of online gaming” …
I’m not the cop. I provide information to the sheriff’s office, which might be 888 Holdings or Verify or GTech or Bally, who provide the platforms. I’m more like border patrol.
An online gaming company will come to us to see if a player is in the state of Nevada.
Basically, we draw a line around the state and ping the device they are wagering on. If the dot is red (outside the border), the transaction doesn’t go through. If it’s green (inside the border), it’s OK. That information is provided to the sheriff’s office.
Caesars Entertainment, for example, takes our information into their system to ascertain if that wager can go through. They also use a lot of other information for authentication, such as age verification and identity verification. We focus solely on location.
