Canadian Accused in Paddy Power Breach Issues Statement
A Canadian citizen accused of compromising some 650,000 accounts at Paddy Power has come forward to issue his side of the story.
The individual, Jason Ferguson, is a long time sports handicapper who revealed himself to the CalvinAyre.com website on Thursday.
Ferguson claims the client information was obtained via a third party, which has long been a common practice in the online gambling industry.
To set the record straight Paddy Power and Leisure Gaming Group launched a civil suit against me in May and then in July, they executed a search and seizure order as they were under the assumption I had in my possession a copy of a paddy power database that was hacked and stolen in 2010.
I cooperated with the authorities and Paddy Power litigation. I provided all help they needed to clear my name as the perpetrator of their breach.
In 2013 December, I had purchased a lot of data, containing approximately 40 files. I was going to do a casino affiliate campaign and I thought the targeted gamblers data would be a good option at the time. In that lot of data I had purchased was a copy of approximately 650K Paddy Power customers but I was unsure if the file had been doctored or not to make it appear like they were active gamblers.
In this industry almost 90% of companies, if not more, procure targeted leads to market their brands and products.
Paddy Power, Ireland’s largest bookmaker, only disclosed the four-year-old breach last week. The Irish government expressed outrage for the delay. Company officials insist that no credit card information was compromised.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
