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Casino Secrets Leak: What the Curaçao Files Revealed
The Casino Secrets files reportedly identified roughly 800 beneficial owners connected to nearly 650 Curaçao licensed gambling companies. Records linked Blaze’s Curaçao operator to declared fortunes of €800 million and €500 million, while Stake’s licensing file reportedly named a different sole owner than its public...
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Key takeaways
- The Casino Secrets files reportedly identified roughly 800 beneficial owners connected to nearly 650 Curaçao licensed gambling companies.
- Records linked Blaze’s Curaçao operator to declared fortunes of €800 million and €500 million, while Stake’s licensing file reportedly named a different sole owner than its publicly prominent founders.
- Curaçao says it is moving to direct licensing under the LOK reform, which took effect on December 24, 2024; its investigation into unauthorized portal access reported on September 17 had not established the full scope...
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openai.comCreate a landscape editorial hero image for this Studio Global article: What did the “Casino Secrets” leak of Curaçao Gaming Authority files—obtained by cybersecurity researcher Lilith Wittmann and reported by Fo. Article summary: The leak made an unusually opaque offshore-gambling ownership system visible: it exposed licensing, ownership and financial records for roughly 800 beneficial owners tied to nearly 650 Curaçao-licensed companies. It is e. Topic tags: general, general web, user generated. Style: premium digital editorial illustration, source-backed research mood, clean composition, high detail, modern web publication hero. Use reference image context only for broad subject, composition, and topical grounding; do not copy the exact image. Avoid: logos, brand marks, copyrighted characters, real person likenesses, fake screenshots, UI text, readable text, watermarks, charts with fa
The Casino Secrets reporting turned a normally hidden part of the offshore-gambling industry into a matter of public scrutiny. Files reportedly accessed from the Curaçao Gaming Authority’s (CGA) licensing systems contained ownership, licensing, tax and financial records associated with roughly 800 beneficial owners and nearly 650 licensed companies. The central finding is not that every person named did something illegal; it is that records intended for regulatory due diligence exposed ownership arrangements and unresolved questions that were rarely visible publicly. 1
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What the leak reportedly contained
Cybersecurity researcher Lilith Wittmann said she and collaborators had access to CGA systems for nine months. The reporting based on those materials describes licensing applications, ownership information, financial declarations and internal regulatory assessments for hundreds of online-gambling businesses. 1
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That is significant because Curaçao licences have long been used by operators serving customers across borders, while the legal entities and beneficial owners behind individual gambling brands can be difficult to identify.
Blaze: two listed owners and very large declared wealth
The files reportedly identify Nick van Gorsel and Nicholas Bugg as the two owners of Prolific Trade N.V., the Curaçao company behind Blaze.com. Their 2024 declarations to the regulator reportedly listed assets of €800 million and €500 million, respectively. 7
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Those figures are declarations in licensing records, not independently audited valuations presented in the available reporting. Their importance is that they show the scale of wealth asserted in a regulatory application and make it possible to assess the regulator’s scrutiny of its source.
Stake: the licensing-file owner differed from public-facing founders
For Stake, the leaked records reportedly list Serbian national Mladen Vuković as the sole owner of Medium Rare N.V., the Curaçao entity associated with the casino, and show a declared fortune exceeding $1 billion. 7
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The filings attracted attention because Stake is publicly associated with founders Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani, who reportedly did not appear as owners in the cited licensing application. Reporting also said CGA staff had raised questions about the ownership structure before granting the licence. 5
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This does not establish that the listed owner was merely nominal or that any party committed misconduct. It does show why regulators must distinguish between a named legal owner, control of an operating company and the person who ultimately receives its economic benefits.
1xBet: ownership questions, not a settled answer
The available reporting similarly says CGA reviewers questioned the ownership structure of 1xBet while granting a licence. 5 One account of the leaked materials identifies Ukrainian national Igor Hnedash as chief executive and owner of a 1xBet-linked Curaçao company, Caecus N.V., while also noting that the documents did not establish his relationship to 1xBet’s publicly reported founders.
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That distinction matters. The leak raises questions about whether the licence files captured the complete ownership picture, but the supplied evidence does not support a definitive, independently verified account of 1xBet’s ultimate ownership or a claim of wrongdoing by any individual.
Why the licensing decisions drew concern
The reporting says internal files showed instances where regulator staff had concerns about ownership structures or the source of applicants’ wealth, yet licences were granted. It also reported that the regulator had detailed awareness of jurisdictions where some licensees were operating illegally. 1
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A gambling licence is most credible when the regulator can establish three things:
- who ultimately owns and controls the operator;
- whether declared wealth and funding have a credible, lawful source; and
- whether the operator complies with the laws of the markets it serves.
When those checks are incomplete or their findings are not resolved, opaque corporate structures can obscure who bears responsibility. That is a regulatory-risk finding, not proof that an operator is laundering money or controlled by organized crime.
What is known about the September 17 CGA breach
The CGA acknowledged unauthorized access to its online gaming portal on September 17. It said the access had been contained, but that its investigation had not yet determined the incident’s full scope, what information had been accessed or the potential consequences. 19
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The regulator therefore has not publicly confirmed every claim made about the materials or the full extent of data compromise. The leak reporting and the CGA’s breach notice should be read separately: one concerns the reported contents and interpretation of files, while the other confirms an intrusion and an ongoing assessment.
Curaçao’s reform changes the licensing model—but not the historical questions
Curaçao’s National Ordinance on Games of Chance, known as LOK, took effect on December 24, 2024. It replaced the former master-licence and sublicensing model with direct licensing by the CGA, which now licenses and supervises relevant operators and suppliers. 30
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The older framework allowed a limited set of master-licence holders to issue sublicences to many operators. Direct licensing is designed to make the regulator, rather than private intermediaries, accountable for vetting each licence holder. 29
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That is a meaningful structural change. But it does not, on its own, answer the leak’s historical questions: whether ownership disclosures were complete, whether source-of-wealth doubts were properly resolved or whether legacy operators were sufficiently assessed during the transition.
Why opaque ownership creates financial-crime risk
Curaçao’s licensing system has faced international scrutiny in part because some licensees have appeared on foreign blocking or blacklist systems. A 2023 Vixio report said 1xBet had nearly 1,800 blacklisted websites, illustrating how a Curaçao-linked licence may not equate to permission to operate in every country. 13
Opaque ownership, cross-border online operations and weak verification can make it harder for authorities to identify who controls a company, trace funds or enforce accountability. Those conditions can increase exposure to fraud and money-laundering risks—areas the CGA itself says fall within its AML/CFT supervisory remit. 40
Still, risk factors are not findings of guilt. The responsible conclusion from Casino Secrets is narrower and more important: regulators need verifiable beneficial-ownership records, credible source-of-wealth checks and clear enforcement when operators serve markets without authorization. The reported documents put pressure on Curaçao’s reformed system to show that its new direct-licensing model can deliver those safeguards in practice.
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The Casino Secrets files reportedly identified roughly 800 beneficial owners connected to nearly 650 Curaçao licensed gambling companies.
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The Casino Secrets files reportedly identified roughly 800 beneficial owners connected to nearly 650 Curaçao licensed gambling companies. Records linked Blaze’s Curaçao operator to declared fortunes of €800 million and €500 million, while Stake’s licensing file reportedly named a different sole owner than its publicly prominent founders.
What should I do next in practice?
Curaçao says it is moving to direct licensing under the LOK reform, which took effect on December 24, 2024; its investigation into unauthorized portal access reported on September 17 had not established the full scope...
Sources
lilithwittmann.de#casinosecrets — Lilith Wittmann
casino.orgHacker Behind Massive Curaçao Leak Could Expose Who Really Owns Hundreds of Offshore Online Casinos
northeasttimes.comGerman Researcher Says Nine-Month Breach Exposed Hidden Owners Of Offshore Casino Sites
ua.newsA female hacker exposed the hidden owners of the Curaçao gambling business