Here Are The Letters New York's Attorney General Just Sent To DraftKings And FanDuel

Daily fantasy’s day of reckoning is nigh. In addition to two congressional committees (the House Energy and Commerce Committee and House Judiciary Committee) and a federal agency (the FTC) looking into various parts of the industry, news broke tonight that the New York attorney general has opened a probe into the two players that control daily fantasy, DraftKings and FanDuel.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent nearly identical letters to both companies, asserting that reports that their employees may have exploited “their access to nonpublic data” to win money, as well as both companies’ statements on the brewing scandal, “raise legal questions relating to the fairness, transparency, and security of FanDuel and the reliability of representations your company has made to customers.” In the letters, Schneiderman asks for “detailed” responses to nine information requests.

The first information request asks for the names, job titles, and job descriptions of all employees who:

Compile and aggregate athletes’ statistical data;

Determine inputs used to set athletes’ prices for daily fantasy contests;

Code athlete pricing algorithms (note if and where different from 1b.);

Compile and aggregate athletes’ ownership percentages for pending contests;

Compile and aggregate historical ownership percentages for past contests; and

Compile and aggregate daily fantasy players’ data, including but not limited to win/loss records, types of contests entered, number of entries per contest, and money spent and earned

Information requests two and three concern how the companies store their data and whether there are limits to which data certain employees have access to, while information request four asks for all of the companies’ formal policies, procedures, and guidelines.

Information requests five, six, and seven ask about what policies the companies have in place to prevent employees from using work data for non-work purposes, as well as policies prohibiting employees from playing daily fantasy on their own platform or on a competitors’. Importantly, Schneiderman also asks whether these policies extend to friends or relatives of employees, as it would be very easy for a DraftKings employee possessing non-public information, for example, to help their spouse win money on DraftKings.

Finally, information requests eight and nine concern the specific cases of DraftKings employee Ethan Haskell winning $350,000 on FanDuel and FanDuel employee Matthew Boccio allegedly cleaning up at DraftKings.

Schneiderman is moving quick: the letters ask for a response no later than October 15. You can read both letters below.

Photo via AP

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