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Black Cube landed a series of six-figure payouts related to its role in sparking a regulatory investigation into online gaming group Evolution, according to new court filings that shed light on the inner workings of the controversial intelligence firm.
The fee structure and tactics employed by Black Cube, a secretive operation founded in 2011 by veterans of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, have been thrust into the open by a spat between two of Europe’s largest gambling companies.
Black Cube was hired in 2021 by London-listed Playtech, which sells technology to many of the world’s leading gambling companies. Playtech tasked the intelligence firm with investigating whether its Stockholm-based rival Evolution, which specialises in online casino games, was operating in prohibited markets.
In a deposition transcript contained in court filings submitted by Evolution at New Jersey’s Superior Court on Monday, Black Cube director and co-founder Avi Yanus explained that the firm received an initial £400,000 fee from Playtech to cover three months of research.
Black Cube operatives approached Evolution executives while posing as gambling industry investors or prospective business operators and surreptitiously recorded their conversations, over the course of an investigation that ran from 2021 to 2024.
Evolution’s former US commercial director, Jeff Millar, described in an affidavit how Black Cube operatives secured a meeting with him by claiming to work for a fake firm called Parvus Capital, constructing “a fake website, fake email addresses, and fake identities”.
The bulk of Black Cube’s fees typically come from pre-agreed goals set out in a letter of engagement with a client.
“When I built the business almost 15 years ago, it was extremely important to me that we will work in a very accurate and ordinary way,” Yanus said in the deposition. “The letter of engagement details . . . all the payments, when they should be paid, what are the amounts. Everything is crystal clear.”
In its work for Playtech, led by chief executive Mor Weizer, Black Cube earned its first success fee of £150,000 for bringing evidence of Evolution’s alleged wrongdoing.
Black Cube’s investigation provided the basis for a complaint made by law firm Calcagni & Kanefsky to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement in 2021, alleging that Evolution was operating illegally in some markets and in countries under US sanctions. Evolution said previously that the report contained false claims.
Black Cube earned its next fee when details of the law firm’s complaint were published by Bloomberg News in November 2021.
The story — described by Yanus in his deposition as “a beautiful piece of article in Bloomberg” — earned Black Cube £175,000. Shares in Stockholm-based Evolution tumbled 30 per cent in the week after the article was published.
Black Cube’s work for Playtech was made public last month by Evolution in a revelation that sparked a roughly 25 per cent drop in the FTSE 250 company’s shares.
The intelligence firm — which has offices in Tel Aviv, London, Madrid and Singapore — has attracted attention for its work on behalf of controversial clients.
These include disgraced filmmaker Harvey Weinstein — who hired the firm in 2016 as he sought to counter allegations of sexual assaults he committed — and mining tycoon Beny Steinmetz, who was sentenced to five years in jail for bribery in 2021. The Israeli billionaire is appealing against the conviction.
In 2016, Black Cube operatives in Romania hacked email accounts belonging to associates of anti-corruption prosecutor Laura Codruța Kövesi. A number of its operatives were charged in relation to the operation.
The firm’s website states that “winning isn’t everything — it’s the only thing”.
In 2021, Adrian Leppard, a former police officer who has joined Black Cube’s advisory board, said that under its new ethics rules the firm would not take on cases involving sexual harassment, or from clients who were violent criminals.
Leppard said the firm complied with the law in every country it operates in and no longer uses offensive cyber techniques such as computer hacking.
Black Cube’s largest success fee from Playtech, totalling £350,000, was earned when its findings prompted the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement to open its own investigation into Evolution.
A New Jersey judge said in September that, “viewed through the lens” of the Division of Gaming Enforcement which looked into it, the report based on Black Cube’s dossier was “objectively baseless”. The regulator’s probe was closed in 2024. Black Cube was allocated a £500,000 award conditional on Evolution’s licence being revoked, none of which was paid.
Evolution said in previous filings that Playtech had paid Black Cube a total of more than £1.8mn for its work.
Black Cube did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its fees from Playtech, but the intelligence firm previously told the Financial Times it “proudly submitted its findings in co-ordination with its client”.
“The extensive body of evidence, including countless hours of video and audio recordings, leaves no room for doubt: Evolution knowingly and deliberately allowed its games to operate in sanctioned jurisdictions and black markets,” Black Cube said.
Playtech did not respond to a request for comment. In a previous statement the company said that “the investigation was undertaken lawfully to better understand and verify concerns of significant regulatory and commercial importance”.
“Playtech stands by the decision to commission the report,” it added.
Evolution said that its latest filing “further confirms that the allegations against Evolution are false, and that the so-called evidence, including video evidence, offered by Black Cube is inaccurate, selective and misleading.”
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