Borgata visitors take a big detour
Travellers bound for Atlantic City’s Borgata Hotel and Casino have recently found themselves broken down on a dirt track in the middle of nowhere instead of taking in the casino’s delights.
The navigation app Waze has suffered a number of glitches in recent times that have led to the New Jersey Police Department reporting a “tremendous increase” in broken down vehicles in the 12,000 acre wildlife area, the Colliers Mills Wildlife Management Area, which is 90 miles from the casino.
An ad on the Waze app that posted the correct address for the casino resort – 1 Borgata Way, Atlantic City – but pinned it to the middle of Colliers Mills, 90 miles to the north.
“Currently the app is sending motorists into the wildlife area, onto unpaved roads, which eventually lead to their cars becoming disabled,” police wrote.
“Please take extra care when selecting locations listed with the orange ‘Ad’ logo in the corner or places which have multiple names, with the same address; however are considerable distances apart.”
It is unclear exactly how many Borgata-bound travellers were knocked off course by the GPS error.
Police said “most” who ended up in the New Jersey wilderness appeared to be coming from New York and northern New Jersey.
Those travellers aren’t the first to succumb to a GPS misdirection, and they won’t be the last.
In 2018, 67-year-old Belgian woman Sabine Moreau set off to pick up a friend in Brussels, less than 90 miles from her house.
Her navigation system advised her to take a detour.
Two days and 900 miles later, she began to suspect something was amiss when she entered Zagreb, the capital of Croatia.
The detour took her across five international borders.
In 2009, a Swedish couple heading for the golden beaches of the Italian island of Capri arrived 400 miles north in the busy industrial town of Carpi, asking directions to the island’s famous “Blue Grotto”.
It seems they were the victims of a GPS typo.
“It’s hard to understand how they managed it. I mean, Capri is an island,” spokesman for the Carpi regional government Giovanni Medici told Reuters.
Three Japanese tourists also failed to grasp the concept of an island when they took a holiday to Australia.
They headed for North Stradbroke Island in a rental car, using their GPS as a guide.
The navigator failed to mention the island is separated from the mainland by a nine mile body of water.
The tourists plowed on regardless, until they became stranded in six feet of water, forcing them to abandon their trip.
California punter illegally wagered online from thousands of miles away
New Jersey gambling regulators have seized more than $90,000 sitting in an online gambling account after the state uncovered a strange connection between the money and its source.
A gambler 3,000 miles away in California was able to gain access to two online gambling sites in the New Jersey and pocket some substantial winnings.
The only trouble is, accessing online sites from California is against federal regulations.
Californian Vinh Dao managed to bypass geolocation technology and gamble online according to Calvin Ayre.
The activity was traced back to 2014, shortly after online gambling began in New Jersey, and both the Borgata and Caesars Interactions are now going to have to turn over the funds to authorities.
Online gaming had only been offered in New Jersey for three months when the enterprising Mr Dao figured out how to beat the house and bypass geolocation controls.
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are often used to mask someone’s true location, but advanced systems such as the one used in New Jersey were supposed to incorporate secondary means of geo detection.
The state’s Division of Gaming Enforcement has not indicated how much of the $92,613.47 were actual winnings held by Dao, only offering that the amount represented the “completed gaming transactions theoretically owed to Mr Dao by Marina District Development Company, Borgata Casino Hotel, and Caesars Interactive Entertainment, New Jersey.”
The Marina District Development Company was created by MGM Resorts and Boyd Gaming.
