Telematics system and method for monitoring and coordinating management of distributed gaming machines

An anti-tampering system for use with a virtual gaming machine network, the system comprising:

• a plurality of distributed gaming machines residing in respective physical locations and associated with respective unique identifiers, each gaming machine including one or more sensors configured to generate output signals corresponding to one or more of an input power, current position and/or current orientation of the respective gaming machine, a cellular modem, and a resident controller configured to conditionally generate an event based message in real time responsive to an event identified at least in part based on the output signals from the one or more sensors;
• and
• a remote processor associated with data storage and configured to:
• independently interface with each resident controller via the respective cellular modem to define a secure wireless network comprising the plurality of distributed gaming machines,
• store in data storage for each of the plurality of distributed gaming machines an operating state and the respective unique identifier;
• and
• in response to receiving an event based message comprising an identifier, to identify the respective gaming machine by retrieving the associated unique identifier from the data storage, and conditionally generate an alert or response message based at least in part on a comparison of the event based message and the stored operating state for the respective gaming machine.