British lottery and gaming machines innovator International Game Technology (IGT) has announced that officials in Italy have launched an investigation into alleged misconduct by four employees of its Lottomatica subsidiary.

The New York-listed firm used an official Thursday press release to detail that the official examination, which is also looking at two former members of staff and their associates, was initiated amid allegations that the conspirators had attempted to access Lottomatica’s systems so as to illicitly identify and redeem four winning scratchcard tickets.

Sincere sustenance:

IGT stated that it treating these allegations ‘extremely seriously’ and is ‘fully cooperating’ with a team of Italian examiners in hopes of being able to ‘facilitate the investigation’ and ‘fully protect the integrity of its games and the interests of its customers.’ The giant firm moreover declared that it has suspended the four under-suspicion employees ‘as a precautionary measure’ while dedicating ‘considerable resources to support’ the enquiry.

In-house inspection:

London-headquartered IGT proclaimed that it has approximately 12,000 employees at sites around the globe including in the United States, Malta and the United Kingdom and will now furthermore be conducting ‘an internal investigation’ in order to ‘fully evaluate the situation’ and the validity of these allegations.

Continued commitment:

Finally, IGT maintained that it remains dedicated to ‘meeting its obligations’ with regards to customers and regulators and is to maintain its long-standing focus of ensuring all of its business is conducted while observing ‘the highest levels of integrity.’

Read a statement from IGT…

“The company is continuing to engage authorities with full transparency to assist in their ongoing investigation into this alleged misconduct. We have also taken prompt measures to thoroughly review our internal systems and processes designed to prevent criminal and fraudulent activities and further our state-of-the-art protections.”