The Las Vegas Sun reports that a company led by the former CEO of Las Vegas-based ATM operator Global Cash Access Holdings Inc. has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Global Cash.
According to the Sun article, Sightline Payments LLC, which filed the suit, is led by Kirk Sanford, one of the founders and a former CEO of Global Cash. Global Cash has agreed not to associate with Sanford because of his status as an "excluded person" in the settlement of an Arizona investigation of GCA.
But a Global Cash spokesman told the Sun last week that the company would defend itself against the accusations. Sightline claims GCA's acquisitions in 2008 of competitors Certegy Gaming Services Inc. and Cash Systems Inc. boosted GCA's market share in the casino cash access industry from 75 percent to 90 percent — lifting the annual cash total provided by GCA to gamblers nationwide to $21 billion.
Sightline claims GCA has "restrictive agreements" with casinos that are anticompetitive. It requires casinos using GCA's Central Credit LLC gamblers' credit bureau information system to grant GCA exclusive rights to place cash access products in casinos "so as to further enhance its monopoly," Sightline alleges.
The Arizona Department of Gaming last summer threatened to bar Global Cash from doing business in the state because of incidents years ago, when it claimed Global Cash defrauded banks by miscoding cash-advance transactions to underpay bank interchange fees. Between July 1999 and August 2002, according to the Arizona investigation, Global Cash avoided paying banks about $26.6 million by miscoding Visa credit-card cash-advance transactions.
