In early 2022, a powerful tech company offered to help the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation’s sports wagering unit.
The division, which launched in 2021 to investigate fraud in the state’s new online betting market, was struggling to track and monitor gamblers as the industry grew rapidly in Iowa. Unlike the monitoring by DCI’s gambling and horseracing investigators, based at casinos and Prairie Meadows racetrack, the agents on the sports betting unit didn’t have tools to see who was placing wagers from anywhere in the state.
Then, in March 2022, the unit received an offer from GeoComply, a Canadian company that contracts with sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings to track the locations of their users.
