Sportsbook News

[Tim]

51 month sentence caps a long period in detention awaiting trial
 
Gary S. Kaplan (50), founder of the failed and now defunct Betonsports plc online gambling site, was sentenced to 51 months in prison by a court in St. Louis Monday.
 
The man who founded the online sports gambling operation had earlier pleaded guilty and agreed to forfeit $43.6 million in illegally obtained revenue as part of a plea agreement, reports Associated Press.  Prosecutors have said that amounts to more than half of Kaplan's total worth.
 
Kaplan had earlier wired the entire forfeited amount from his Swiss bank account to the court.
 
Kaplan pleaded guilty in August to racketeering conspiracy, violating the Wire Wager Act and conspiring to violate it. His arrest in Puerto Rico in March 2007 was the start of a lengthy incarceration awaiting trial in which several bail applications were refused.
 
U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson said it will be up to the Bureau of Prisons to determine if he is given credit for time served. Attorneys in the case noted that federal rules call for him serving 85 percent of the 51-month sentence, minus whatever credit he may be given for time served.
 
In 2006, a federal grand jury indicted Kaplan, his company and several associates. Three other former executives, including two of Kaplan's siblings, have pleaded guilty and will be sentenced Tuesday. A fourth will be sentenced later.
 
Kaplan, a high-school dropout who started out as a New York bookie, founded the offshore betting company in 1995, setting up entities in Aruba, Antigua and eventually Costa Rica. The firm solicited U.S. citizens to place sports wagers by phone and over the Internet directly from their accounts.
 
In his guilty plea in August, Kaplan said BetOnSports had 1 million registered customers and accepted more than 10 million sports bets worth more than $1 billion in 2004 alone. His company, by then based in Costa Rica, employed 1 700 people.
 
Kaplan took BetOnSports public on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market in 2004, which netted him more than $100 million that was deposited in Swiss bank accounts. For the next two years, he served as a BetOnSports consultant.
 
Latterly, BoS was helmed by then CEO David Carruthers, who remains under house arrest in St. Louis after signifying his intention to contest charges against him. Carruthers was arrested whilst in transit through a US airport on his way to Costa Rica in 2006.
 
Prosecutors said the company falsely advertised that its gambling operations were legal, and misled gamblers into believing that money transferred to BetOnSports was safe and available to withdraw at any time. Instead, investigators said, the money was used to expand operations, including purchase of a rival betting firm.
 
When BetOnSports ceased operation in 2006, customers lost more than $16 million.
 
Kaplan told Jackson in August that he initially believed that adhering to the laws in Aruba, Antigua, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and the United Kingdom kept him in good stead with U.S. laws. But he said he became aware as early as 2000 that such dealings violated U.S. law, and got confirmation in a legal opinion in 2002. Yet, he kept operating.
 
Kaplan apologised to the judge Monday for the "pain and embarrassment" he caused to his family, and said he'd "paid a monumental price for poor decisions." His attorneys said that Kaplan, from his jail cell, has made six-figure contributions to St. Louis-area charities in recent months.
 
Jackson said while recognising Kaplan's generosity, she was "a little put off" by letters she's received from those charities on his behalf.
 
"When I make a charitable contribution, I don't expect credit," she said. "I hope you will continue to support worthy charitable organisations even when it doesn't further any personal interest you may have."
 
The case could have been filed anywhere in the U.S., but the Eastern District of Missouri's former U.S. Attorney, Catherine Hanaway, was aggressive in going after online gambling

[Tony Trader]

Dimeline Sportsbook has refused to pay a $2000 cash bonus which was confiscated from a winning player on May 1st. In SBR's initial report, it was stated that Dimeline confiscated the $2000 bonus due to non-recreational play. The player funded his Dimeline account on March 22nd with $3100 via Moneybookers. He was then credited a $2000 bonus. The player placed $38,160 in action before Dimeline suspended his account on May 1st, cited steam play, confiscated the bonus, and invalidated a large % of his rollover as his play included MLB moneyline favorites greater than -150. The player's balance after the bonus confiscation was $13,000. Dimeline imposed a new rollover on the player, which he later met. The player cashed out $9976 over the past two months as Dimeline has meted out their ongoing slowpays. Dimeline has refused to credit the player the $2,000 bonus.

[Tony Trader]

Right2Bet focuses on safe and fair gambling

One of the most important aspects of the Right2bet campaign is the emphasis on safe, fair, regulated gambling. Much of the concern from those who oppose deregulation in the Online casino and sportsbook industry revolves around the addictive nature of the pastime (especially amongst younger users), the use of illegally obtained funds or the influence of criminal syndicates.

Right2bet understands these concerns, which is why the campaign regards this as an extremely important issue. There is no question that a completely unregulated market is not in the customers' best interests, not only due to the possibilities of addiction, but also the unscrupulous activities of some casino operators (who have been known to write programs to cheat human players) and the actions of professional gambling rings.

The best way of avoiding these pitfalls is by having a properly regulated system, whereby any bookmaker or casino based in and licensed by the European Union can operate in any E.U member state, without fear of persecution by the country's government. A continent wide regulatory body should be set up to oversee the industry, which could be easily accessed by affected users, from players worried about the legitimacy of a casino, to online casinos checking the validity of a high-rollers funding.

A regulatory body could also offer advice and help to problem gamblers, many of whom have been drawn to an addiction based on false understandings. For example, a recent British study claimed that the increase in gambling addiction amongst students in the country was due to a trend up and down the nation's mathematics departments, where some of the top young thinkers had made large sums of cash during the economic downturn and had given the impression to other students that online games of chance were a sure-fire way to back up the student loan.

All things considered, Right2bet feels that this is the way forward: a properly overseen free market within Europe, offering the same rights to all customers. If you agree with these views, please visit the site at www.right2bet.net and sign the petition!

[Tony Trader]

Offshore Bookie, Poker Player James Giordano Pleads Guilty

The controversial owner of an offshore sports betting operation based mainly on the island of St. Maarten has plead guilty.  The case was like something out of a James Bond film whereby authorities seized a laptop left by Giordano during a brief departure from his Long Island hotel room.  The investigation also involved several wire taps and informants.

Over the years, Giordano, an avid poker player in Las Vegas, had created many enemies in the world of sports betting.  The world of sports betting message boards became privy to a public spat between Giordano and his brother during the late 90's whereby the two men accused one another of various improprieties both personal and business-related.

Giordano's organization is alleged to have taken bets in the millions from US citizens.  One of his associates has already been released from prison and is on parole following a one year sentence.

"It's hypocritical," Giordano, who made his home in Fort Lauderdale, tells New Times. "If you want to bet the [New York] Giants, you have to fly to Vegas."

The Queens District Attorney's Office, under the leadership of Richard Brown, oversaw the investigation.  Brown has been one of the most aggressive figures in combating illegal sports betting in the New York City area.  Authorities accused Giordano and his co-conspirators of laundering and stashing away "untold millions of dollars" using shell corporations and bank accounts in Central America, the Caribbean, Switzerland, Hong Kong and elsewhere.

Authorities began an investigation in 2004, when an undercover detective working another case overheard a man who reputedly had ties to the Lucchese crime family discussing payment of a gambling debt related to Giordano's website.

Soon, authorities obtained a search warrant and hacked into computer servers in St. Maarten and Costa Rica, where he'd expanded. They mirrored the transactions of dozens of bettors. In March 2005, local police showed up at Giordano's office after receiving a report that one of the employees had sexually assaulted a woman. They noticed brochures and other documents that suggested they had come across a gambling operation, and called the FBI.

Agents arrived the next day with a search warrant and seized the computers and paper records.

But there was no bust, at least not immediately. All wagering had been done online and offshore. "We instructed [our employees] never to take a bet," Giordano says. "They didn't even know how to take a bet. It was strictly customer service."

The federal raid in Florida seized Giordano's house, $288,000 in cash, and $50,000 in gambling chips from the Bellagio. Authorities also froze Swiss bank accounts.

Authorities in New York, who led the investigation, claimed Giordano's company, PlayWithAl, booked more than $3.3 billion in sports wagers over 28 months. (Giordano says the numbers were preposterous.).  Giordano's books went by various names over the years including, most notably perhaps being Action Sports, which a number of sports bettors claim to have been stiffed by following its closure in 2000.

While Giordano utilized the Internet to take bets, his business was more of a clearing house operating offshore with agents collecting in the United States.  Much of his business relied on phone betting.  Industry experts often referred to these types of cases (many of which are prosecuted by Brown's office) as "Internet Plus".  In other words, they were not investigated for Internet-specific crimes such as the Wire Act of 1963.

Giordano pleaded eventually pleaded guilty to promoting gambling and accepted a sentence that would put him in Rikers for five months, according to the Miami New Times report. He agreed to surrender slightly over $1 million and waived his right to get back $1 million more. His 26 codefendants gave up more than a million total with some of them, as mentioned above, serving jail time.  In some cases it was an "either or" situation where defendants were given the option to pay a hefty fine or serve a prison sentence.

[Tony Trader]

Popular online casino group launches sportsbook...read the rest of this article here

[Tony Trader]

Court Orders Betsson to Shut Office.

Swedish gaming company Betsson has been forced to shut its betting office in Stockholm following a decision by the Swedish Administrative Court of Appeal (Kammarrätten).

The company has decided to close the location on December 22nd following the threat of facing 2.5 million kronor ($343,000) in fines.

Betsson said it was left with little option but to shut up shop after the court ruled that the fine would otherwise stand even if the company appeals the judgement to the Supreme Administrative Court (Regeringsrätten).

The Swedish Gaming Board (Lotteriinspektionen) has claimed that the office has been in violation of Swedish gaming law since it opened one and a half years ago. Betsson is of the opinion that European Community legislation, which supersedes Swedish law, grants it the right to run the betting office.

"We are extremely surprised by the Administrative Court of Appeal's ruling. We believe that the Swedish state is in violation of EC legislation when it prevents a private gaming company from operating in Sweden at the same time that the State's gaming enterprise aggressively markets its activities. We will therefore appeal the decision," Pontus Lindwall, managing director of Betsson, said in a statement.

[Tony Trader]

Catch up on all the lastest in online sportsbook news and betting by just clicking here.

Tony

[Tony Trader]

This whole mastercard situation is effecting all forms of online gambling including Sportsbooks.

It may not be easy opening an online betting account this weekend for the Super Bowl using your Mastercard as that company has announced it is blocking transactions to online gambling websites.

Actually, this is nothing new to the online gambling sector as credit card companies have long tried to block such transactions prior to the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in October 2006.  UIGEA policy enforcement was not to become effective until July of this year, and even then there could be further delays.   UIGEA makes some forms of money transactions through online gambling illegal.  Betting businesses currently cannot pay back customers via credit cards but instead offer the option of payment via check through UPS or FedEX.

But the Super Bowl season typically represents a time when credit card processing becomes especially difficult and this has long been the case. 

Many of the top online gambling enterprises use payment processors that regularly change coding to prevent such blockages. 

[Tony Trader]

New Jersey Senate Approves Sports Betting Resolution.

Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, D-Union, a leading voice in the State Legislature who is pursuing a legal challenge to the federal sports wagering ban as unconstitutional, issued the following statement after the Senate approved a resolution, SR19, through a voice vote, to allow the Senate President to join in that legal challenge:

     

"In 1992, PASPA, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, was signed into law. PASPA banned all sports betting except in the states of Nevada, which had all forms of sports betting, and Delaware, Oregon and Montana which had limited lottery forms of sports betting.

     

"PASPA gave New Jersey one year to legalize sports betting, through an amendment to its Constitution approved by the electorate at the ballot box in November of 1992. The New Jersey Senate voted twice to place such a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot, an effort I supported both times. The Assembly never posted it for a vote and New Jersey was denied an opportunity to boost tourism in Atlantic City and revenues for education, senior citizens and the handicapped, as those funds from casino gambling are dedicated in our Constitution.


"Here's what's at stake for New Jersey: $650 million a year in gross sports wagering revenues, as estimated by LVSC, a division of Cantor Fitzgerald. Plus $60 million a year in state revenues.

     

"That's $650 million a year of gross profits for our casinos and racetracks, creating and keeping thousands of jobs and attracting tourism to Atlantic City and the Jersey Shore in Monmouth County."What's at stake if the Senate doesn't join the lawsuit as a plaintiff is my ability to raise what some legal scholars believe to be the strongest argument against PASPA: the Tenth Amendment's States' Rights. Only a State has standing to raise this claim. That's why Governor Corzine filed a motion to intervene as a plaintiff. I have asked Governor Christie to substitute for Governor Corzine, but have not yet received a reply. The Court has given Governor Christie until March 12th to file his substitution.

     

[Tony Trader]

What used to be one of the most trusted and reliable online sportsbooks, World Sports Exchange (WSEX.com), has been getting hammered over the past 6 months by the folks at sports betting forums.

Let's be perfectly frank here.  World Sports Exchange is having the same processing issues that have plagued nearly every online sportsbook and gambling site at various times since passage of the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in October 2006.  Actually, it wasn't until three months later when the popular online gambling processing firm of NETeller got pinched that gambling sites really started to feel the effects.  They were forced to use unproven, sometimes disreputable, payment processors based in far away lands that most people never even knew existed. 

The high volume sportsbooks (for which WSEX was not one) were among the first to take a hit.  Processors were few and far between that could handle these types of businesses due to the high number of transactions.  Smaller sites were still able to adapt without much problem.  A good comparison would be websites that must move to higher capacity servers due to the dramatic increase in business (traffic):  Think Twitter and Facebook. 

Personally, I don't think players have to worry about not getting paid by World Sports Exchange.  They've enjoyed a solid reputation since coming online in 1996.  The problem is co-founder Jay Cohen has, over the years, routinely posted on various forums bashing other online sportsbooks for not paying as quickly as World Sports Exchange.  In any industry, that's simply not acceptable behavior regardless of whether he was right or wrong.

Cohen would regularly post comments on forums objecting to how so-called "professional" sports bettors were being mistreated at competing sportsbooks.

Jay Cohen isn't a bad guy by any means but he needs to come off his high horse.  I don't see any of his competitors getting in line to bash World Sports Exchange during these trying times, nor will we for that matter. 

Hopefully WSEX's recent problems are a result of growing pains and nothing more.

[Tony Trader]

British Bookmakers Rake in the dough Last Week.

The British bookmakers breathed a respective sigh of relief this past week and were £45million richer thanks to Cheltenham and odds-on Kauto Star tumbled out of the Gold Cup.

Ladbrokes Sportsbook claimed the industry was spared a £20million disaster.

"God was a bookie this week ... we don't want it to finish but there's no money left to take from the punters," Ladbrokes spokesperson David Williams proclaimed. 

Bookmaker William Hill estimated the industry was up £60 million thanks to heavily-backed favorites losing.

The Times Online reported: "By teatime on the last day, 20 favourites had already lost, taking the money wagered with such blithe confidence racing towards the eternal satchels of the men who set the odds."

The Cheltenham Festival is the most prestigious meeting in the National Hunt racing calendar in the United Kingdom, and has race prize money second only to the Grand National. It is an event where many of the best British and Irish trained horses race against each other, the extent of which is relatively rare during the rest of the season.

[Tony Trader]

Yahoo Buying Into Fantasy Sports     

Mobile and online fantasy sports could be a lucrative new revenue stream

Yahoo is buying fantasy sports company Citizen Sports, an enterprise co-founded by an MIT graduate whose card-counting skills helped him win millions of dollars in blackjack and spawned a film and a best-selling book, reports Associated Press. Read the rest here.......

[lipstick_xoxos]

Hi Tonster,

Yahoo has their hand in just about everything. I have not seen the move "21" but it sounds like it might be fun to watch!

Lips

[blueday]

Londonmarketing company predicts a 700 percent rise in online spend

Online betting on the football World Cup in South Africa starting next (June) month could reach GBP 500 million, according to the London-based marketing company Latitude Digital.

The company predicts a 700 percent rise in online spend compared to the amount gambled during the previous tournament held in Germany in 2006 following the emergence of ‘laptop loungers’ who spend time consuming the internet on a laptop while watching TV.

And in-play betting, which has been producing major revenue improvements in recent times, is likely to increase opportunities for online bookies.

England, Spain, Brazil and Argentine are listed as the company’s assessed most popular nations in the competition, generating the most betting.

“The media landscape has changed beyond all recognition since the last tournament four years ago,” said Alex Hoye, chief executive officer of Latitude.

“Football fans will even be able to watch the tournament while they are on the move with the streaming of games online which is set to encourage in-game betting to come to the fore.

“Betting firms will be competing hard for deposits from regular and first time punters during the World Cup.”

[blueday]

Bets on Lampard scoring will be honoured

With the repercussions of England’s stinging 4-1 World Cup defeat by Germany still reverberating around the internet, major online bookies in the UK have confirmed that they are honouring bets that Frank Lampard would score a goal in the match.

Millions of television viewers watched the slo-mo replay of a Lampard shot that clearly rolled over the line and into the net, apparently unseen by match officials. Photographs of the critical second have since been widely published. Had it been awarded, the goal would have meant that England and Germany would have gone into the second half of the game drawn.

Bookmakers have seized the opportunity to provide some form of consolation for England fans by classifying the midfielder's effort as a true goal.

William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe said: "Even [FIFA president] Sepp Blatter knows Lampard scored so we have already begun paying out to punters who backed him to do so at odds of 10/3 (4.33). It will cost us a six figure sum."

Ladbrokes was one of the bookmakers to have offered a 'Geoff Hurst special' market with odds of 10/1 on a strike from an England player going in off the crossbar, and the company also paid out for it.

Spokesman Nick Weinberg said: "It was the most popular special market prior to kick off. Everybody could see that it was in apart from the men that mattered most."