Ontario’s gambling regulator has moved to suspend PointsBet Canada for five days after concluding the operator failed to flag and report suspicious wagers placed on former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter in 2024. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario announced the action on Feb. 12, 2026, calling it the first such suspension in the province’s regulated online gambling market.
The PointsBet Ontario suspension is the second integrity-related enforcement action the AGCO has taken against a major sportsbook this year. In January 2026, the commission fined FanDuel $350,000 for failing to detect suspicious betting on a Czech table tennis match. Two of the largest Ontario online sportsbook operators have now been sanctioned within weeks of each other for the same category of failure.
According to the AGCO’s Notice of Proposed Order, PointsBet offered prop bets on Porter’s performance during games on Jan. 26 and March 20, 2024. When the regulator asked all Ontario operators in early 2024 whether they had taken Porter wagers and detected anything suspicious, PointsBet said it had not. The operator did not correct that answer until October 2025, after the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment showing the Porter scheme was tied to organized crime. Eighteen months later, PointsBet acknowledged it had offered the markets. Reviewing the operator’s own wagering data, the AGCO confirmed the suspicious patterns were visible at the time the bets were placed.
“Safeguarding the integrity of sports and Ontario’s sports betting market” is a top regulatory priority, said Karin Schnarr, the AGCO’s chief executive and registrar. The agency requires Ontario sports betting operators to have systems and staff training in place to detect and report suspicious activity when it occurs, not after a federal indictment makes the problem public.
PointsBet is contesting the suspension. The operator filed for a hearing with the Licence Appeal Tribunal, an independent body that adjudicates AGCO actions, and has said the proposed sanction is “disproportionate.” Scott Vanderwel, chief executive of PointsBet Canada, said the company has a “strong compliance record in Ontario” and remains committed to integrity and player protection. The company has characterized the lapse as an isolated human error rather than a systemic failure.
This is the third Ontario enforcement action against PointsBet since the province opened its regulated iGaming market in April 2022. The AGCO fined the operator in May 2022 for advertising and inducement violations, and again in November 2023 for $150,000 over responsible gambling failures. The Porter-related suspension would be the most severe sanction yet.
Porter received a lifetime ban from the NBA in April 2024 after the league concluded he had manipulated his on-court time to influence prop bet outcomes. He has since pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court in connection with the scheme, which prosecutors say was orchestrated with members of the Gambino crime family. The Ontario Provincial Police’s Investigation and Enforcement Bureau opened its own criminal investigation in 2024, which remains active. No charges have been laid in Canada to date.
The FanDuel fine in January 2026 was the first integrity-related monetary penalty ever issued in Ontario’s regulated market. The case involved suspicious wagering on a low-profile Czech table tennis event. Unusual betting patterns tend to surface more visibly in low-volume sports because the total handle is small. The AGCO has not publicly explained how it became aware of the FanDuel activity or how long the case took to develop.
Ontario’s integrity framework, like that of other regulated Canada gambling sites jurisdictions, depends on licensed operators serving as a first line of defense. Sportsbooks are expected to identify suspicious patterns in their own books and report them to the regulator and to international integrity monitoring services such as the International Betting Integrity Association. Two of the largest books in the market failing at that task within months of each other raises a question the AGCO has not yet answered publicly. How many similar patterns might be sitting undetected on operator servers, particularly in higher-volume markets like the NBA, NHL and CFL where unusual bets are harder to spot against normal flow?
The Licence Appeal Tribunal hearing on PointsBet’s appeal has not been scheduled publicly. If the tribunal upholds the suspension, PointsBet would have to take its Ontario site offline for five days. The operator recently opened pre-registration for Alberta’s regulated market, which launches July 13, 2026. PointsBet is among the 28 operators approved by the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission to participate at launch.
Ontario’s regulated iGaming market processed $98.3 billion in wagers in calendar 2025 and produced $4 billion in gross operator revenue. The province takes 20 percent of that revenue in tax. Whether the integrity infrastructure can keep pace with the volume is now an open question, and the next answer will come from the tribunal.
