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A Berlin district court has issued a penalty order of €480,000 against a well-known YouTube personality for streaming illegal gambling, according to the public prosecutor’s office, which requested the penalty.
YouTuber Ron Bielicki gambled on unlicensed websites 51 times and streamed his gambling 37 times, in violation of German law against advertising illegal gambling, according to the prosecutor’s office.
The office was acting on information supplied by Saxony Anhalt’s administrative office, which administered online slots licensing until the end of 2022, according to a press release.
Bielicki was streaming his gambling on Twitch.tv, according to WirtschaftsWoche newspaper, which first named the influencer and said he has appealed the court’s ruling.
The prosecutor’s office did not name the subject of the court order.
The YouTuber ignored requests to stop from the Saxony-Anhalt office, leading to the order by the Tiergarten District Court.
He was a brand ambassador for both a gambling company and a 2022 erotic fair in Berlin, according to the office.
Last October, the Joint Gambling Authority of the Federal States (GGL) asked Amazon-owned Twitch to stop streaming gambling in Germany, as German law prohibits streaming of both licensed and unlicensed gambling.
The GGL hailed the penalty on Wednesday (February 8) as a “success in crackdown on unauthorised gambling advertising”.