Jason Drummond

Drummond was born and raised in Fulham, London. He has a younger brother, Justin, and an older brother, Nigel, with whom he grew up in a single parent household.[1]

Whilst still attending school, Drummond sold mail-order computers and went on to establish IDL Communications Limited, a distributor of mobile phones and fax machines, shortly thereafter.[1]

Drummond spent three years outside of the UK, establishing and running distribution and new media companies in emerging markets such as Russia and Africa and returned to the United Kingdom in 1995.

In 1996 Drummond founded Virtual Internet (VI), an online intellectual property protection and web hosting services company. VI was admitted to the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), a sub-market of the London Stock Exchange, in January 1999. In March 2000 Virtual Internet combined a £27 million fundraising with a move to the official list valuing the company at over £200 million and netting Drummond £6 million.[2][3]

By the age of 30, with Drummond's 69% shareholding in Virtual Internet being valued at £123 million, the Guardian described Drummond in March 2000 as "richer than all of the Spice Girls put together and virtually unknown."[4] In April 2001 however, the Telegraph calculated that Drummond's Virtual Internet shareholding had lost £104 million in value[5] and two months later, in June 2001, Drummond stood down as chief executive of Virtual Internet.[6] In February 2002 it was reported by the Independent that Drummond had agreed to sell his remaining Virtual Internet shareholding to Nasdaq listed Register.com for £6.1 million in cash[7] with The Guardian later reporting that Drummond had become involved in a tax dispute arising from the sale of some of his Virtual Internet shares.[8]

In November 2000, Drummond founded RegistryPro, a joint venture between VI and Register.com which created the domain name .pro. In 2008, VI was acquired by UK2 Group.

In March 2000, Drummond founded Xworks Limited, an e-business incubator, which was admitted to trading on AIM in April 2001 with a market cap of £4.4m at 10p a share. In August 2002, Xworks changed its name to Gaming Corporation to reflect its principal business "casino.co.uk".

Drummond was also the founder of Coms plc (L.COMS), an internet communications company. He founded the business in September 2003 and listed it on AIM in September 2006.

Drummond was a significant shareholder in Active ISP (which was later renamed to Active 24 ASA), a company which listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange In October 2004 with a market cap of NOK 270m. The company was taken over by Mamut ASA and subsequently acquired by Visma in the summer of 2011 and delisted from the Oslo Exchange.[9][10]

In March 2005, Gaming Corporation raised £14m and in May 2005 it acquired Gambling.com for $20m USD. For the year ending September 2006, Gaming Corporation made profits of £2.5m. In October 2006 the US SAFE Port Act made online payments by US customers to online gaming companies illegal, causing a drop in revenues and profits for Gambling.com and a write-down in its value.[11]

Drummond was a co-founder of Betex Technologies in 2005 which became part of Betex Group PLC, whose shares were listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in June 2006.[12] Betex was a technology company focussed on lottery management, with its main operations in China.[13] In April 2007 its shares were suspended from trading on AIM following the arrests of two senior staff in China[14] and in May 2007 three Betex directors resigned after failing to receive assurances from Chinese authorities that they would not face arrest upon entering the country.[15]

In November 2005 Drummond co-founded FairFx [16][17] a peer-to-peer foreign currency exchange business.

In December 2005, Drummond also co-founded Shellworks Ltd, which was admitted to trading on AIM as Nettworx plc having raised £10 million,[18] £8.1 million of which was returned to investors following the company's AIM listing being cancelled in 2009 [19][20] and its subsequent liquidation.[21][22][23]

In October 2006, Gaming Corporation changed its name to Media Corporation. The company sold Casino.co.uk to CryptoLogic for £3.62m in cash in August 2007[24] and acquired the online poker and casino operator Purple Lounge Limited for up to £465,000 in October 2009[25][26] followed by a surge in online poker and casino revenues in 2010.[27]

Drummond was a director of Metacharge Limited between September 2006 and October 2006, an Internet payment service provider that was later sold to PayPoint plc for £8.4m in October 2006.[28]

In April 2011 Media Corporation sold its Gambling.com domain name and website to KAX Media[29] for £1.5 million[30][31] and in February 2012 Drummond stepped down from his role as executive chairman of Media Corporation.[32] In July 2012 Media Corporation placed its online poker and casino business Purple Lounge Limited into liquidation[33] and in August 2013 announced a cessation of substantially all of its business trading.[34]

Drummond founded Gametech UK Limited in November 2013. Gametech UK was licensed and regulated by the UK Gambling Commission and sold mobile gambling products under the brand names 'NENX' and 'ProOptions'.[35] The company went into administration in April 2017, with the appointed administrators Begbies Traynor citing the decision came about as a result of operational difficulties.[36][37] In April 2019, the High Court appointed Begbies Traynor as liquidators to Gametech UK with the liquidators reporting that upon appointment they had instructed their Contentious Insolvency Division to carry out investigations into the company's affairs.[38][39]

In August 2014 FairFX Group plc (which later became Equals Group plc), floated on the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange with Drummond holding a 7% stake and acting as the company's non-executive Chairman.[40] In November 2014 Drummond resigned his position as non-executive Chairman [41] and in 2015 reduced his shareholding in the company.[42][43] In 2017 FairFX had a turnover of £1.1 billion (2017).[44] Also in 2017 FairFX raised £25m and acquired Q Money and its e-money licence.[45]

In December 2015, after Betex had withdrawn from offering its lottery technology in China, Begbies Traynor were appointed as liquidators to Betex Group Plc.[46]

In August 2019, a private prosecution was brought against Drummond and his younger brother by a former shareholder of Media Corp.[47][48] The case was later withdrawn by the prosecution and at a subsequent cost hearing, District Judge Dean found that the claimant had acted improperly by submitting forged evidence.[49]