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Withdrawing a bet after a game’s result is known, and recording non-card games such as slot machines, are criminal offences in Singapore from Monday, as the latest tranche of amendments to the Casino Control Act took effect on 21 September 2026.
Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs detailed the changes, which implement the Casino Control (Amendment) Act 2024, passed in parliament two years earlier. The provisions apply to the city-state’s two licensed integrated resorts with casinos, Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa.
The bet-withdrawal change closes a gap police had been working around. Placing a bet after the result is known was already an offence, but withdrawing one was not, and officers had to rely on provisions in other laws to prosecute such cheating cases.
“Previously, it was an offence for patrons to place a bet in a casino after the result is known but not an offence to withdraw a bet after the result is known, and the police have had to use provisions in other laws to deal with such cheating cases,” the ministry said.
Recording is treated the same way. The old offence covered only devices used to record cards dealt during play, and the ministry said police had encountered patrons recording the play patterns of gaming machines to cheat casinos. The amended Act extends the offence to non-card games.
The amendments also touch financial-crime compliance. Casino operators must now share patron information with each other for the purposes of tackling money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing. Licence suitability criteria expand as well, letting the ministry weigh unethical conduct and systemic failures in an operator’s internal controls or corporate governance, and the Gambling Regulatory Authority can take disciplinary action against a licence holder it assesses as affected by breaches of those criteria.
On the harm-prevention side, breaching a Family Visit Limit is now criminalised, in line with breaches of Exclusion Orders and other visit limits. The National Council on Problem Gambling can immediately replace an existing Exclusion Order or Visit Limit with a new one, removing a previous one- to two-month gap in which the individual was not protected by any safeguards. An excluded person is also liable for entering, remaining or gambling in a casino if proven to know, or reasonably know, their excluded status.
No penalties for the new offences have been announced, and whether further tranches of the 2024 Act remain to be brought into force has not been stated.
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