We have reports that players from beleaguered and bankrupt sportsbook giant BETonSPORTS are begin contacted again. This time the email comes from Vantis, a forensic accounting firm in England that has been appointed receiver and liquidator of the now defunct sportsbook. We were given an advance copy of this email yesterday and have been working with Vantis since that time to clear up some of the inevitable questions..

The highlights of the letter provide insights into several of the questions that we have been getting from players every day for the last 22 months; “How much are we going to get?” and “When can we expect to get a payout?”

The answers two these two questions are more bad news and not what any of us want to hear. The email states, “we do not anticipate that any distribution to creditors will be any more than a few cents in the dollar.” Vantis also states that, “we do not anticipate reporting to you further until December 2008.”

This is most distressing news and we have already heard from several angry players who have written in to let us know that this is a “Ripoff” and asking, “Where did all of the money go?” We could not agree more! Why are there not enough funds to pay back the company’s previous depositors?

We did contact Vantis, and were informed that BETonSPORTS owes out double what we had been told from the exiting regime when the book was shut down. In addition, it would stand to reason that since less than 20% of the players who were owed money by BETonSPORTS replied and filed claims, that there would be plenty of money to satisfy their outstanding balances. However, it turns out that the company has only several million to settle outstanding claims; they fall over $25 million short of their obligations.

Vantis also mentions in their email that they are still actively seeking funds owed to the sportsbook from ‘substantial debtors based in various jurisdictions around the world’. They continue by letting players know that they ‘may now have to commence legal proceedings in those jurisdictions’. This could force this entire saga to continue for many more months; In fact, until the end of 2008 . . . at best. The last sentence of Vanits’ email reads, “As and when we have anything significant to report to you, we will write further, if not, we do not anticipate reporting to you further until December 2008.” OMG!

We asked the liquidators if they would consider making partial initial payments to players, while they continue to hunt for more player funds around the globe. We received no answer to this request. We also asked if there would be a ‘drop dead date’, where Vantis would stop looking for more money and stop looking for more BETonSPORTs players and untimately, make payouts. Again, no response. Vantis does appear to be working diligently to finalize these proceedings, but the end result will most certianly fall short of everyone’s expectations.

For those without email, Vantis may finally be ready to make contact. They have asked the High Court of Antigua for permission to contact those players by ‘mail & public advertisement’. However, we are not sure that these players will want the information that their online counterparts have received…..

So, this whole mess will be more than two years old in July and still nothing has been resolved. For a company that at one time was worth nearly a quarter of a billion dollars and had over 15 million in player deposits, one has to wonder where all of the money went. David Carruthers is still under house arrest, Gary Kaplan is still sitting in jail and players still have no money. No one has been brought to trial and this situation certainly has no justice. There are still plenty of sportsbooks operating around the world taking bets from US players. All the US government did in this situation was aid BOS in ripping off tens of thousands of people.

I think that both the BOS players and stock holders would agree.

Read the full email from Vantis here.

The champion of online freedoms, Rep. Barney Frank has introduced some legislation that basically makes the UIGEA unenforceable. H.R.5767: ‘To prohibit the Secretary of the Treasury and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from proposing, prescribing, or implementing any regulation under subchapter IV of chapter 53 of title 31, United States Code, and for other purposes,’ is the piece of legistlation introduced last week.

The bill did gain some steam this week as 9 Democrats and 1 more Republican added thier sponsorship to this bill. Apparently, some of these legislators are seeing the light - that the banks have enough problems right now with becoming the the police, judge and jury on Internet gambling.

This ten members of the House of Representatives who signed on as co-sponsors of this legislation are:
Rep. Robert Wexler (DEM-FL-19) (cosponsor)
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (DEM-IL-4) (cosponsor)
Rep. James McGovern (DEM-MA-3) (cosponsor)
Rep. Shelley Berkley (DEM-NV-1) (cosponsor)
Rep. Peter King (REP-NY-3) (cosponsor)
Rep. Gary Ackerman (DEM-NY-5) (cosponsor)
Rep. James Moran (DEM-VA-8) (cosponsor)
Rep. Bob Filner (DEM-CA-51) (cosponsor)
Rep. Michael Honda (DEM-CA-15) (cosponsor)
Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (DEM-MO-1) (cosponsor)

All of the above Representatives have supported one or more pieces of legislation that favor the cause of Internet gambling in the last several months. Take Action Today to support the Repeal of the UIGEA and help stop the implementation of anti-gambling regulations. Let the above Representatives know that you support their initiative.

Support the efforts of Representatives Frank and Paul with their recent legislation HR. 5767 aimed at blocking the UIGEA. If your Representatige is not listed above, contact your Representative and urge them to support this no-nonsense piece of legislation.

Tomorrow a congressional hearing will be held to discuss the UIGEA in an effort to determine if implementation of the 2006 law can be achieved. The hearing will be conducted by the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade, and Technology and will be chaired by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL). The meeting titled “Proposed UIGEA Regulations: Burden without Benefit?” will take place at 10 am on April 2nd in Washington

Rep. Gutierrez is a co-sponsor of both Barney Frank’s (D-MA) Bill to provide for the licensing of Internet gambling facilities (H.R.2046) and a co-sponsor of Shelley Berkley’s (D-NV) Bill, H.R.2140, to provide for a study by the National Academy of Sciences to identify the proper response of the United States to the growth of Internet gambling. He is one the side or Internet Gambling Regulation and will be running tomorrow’s proceedings.

We contacted the Press Secretary for Rep. Gutierrez, to find out what the agenda will be and who will be on the list of presenters, but our inquries went unanswered.

If you would like to view the proceedings at 10AM on April 2 - go to http://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/financialsvcs_dem/hr040208.shtml and click to view the hearing. To go directly to the broadcast of the proceeding click here.

The final score of a game is just that – a final score. But after the NCAA updated an incorrect score in the Texas A&M/UCLA game, that apparently is no longer true.

On Saturday, the referees made the right call, but the scorekeeper missed it. The game between ULCA and Texas A&M ended ‘officially’ at 53-49, UCLA winning by four. But the last score, a dunk by Russell Westbrook did not count. The referees had waved it off, but the official scorekeeper called the dunk good. The final score did not matter as to the outcome of the game, but for second half bettors, a huge mistake had been made.

Let’s be perfectly clear: The NCAA does not care about any ‘line’ or about betting on their games. The NCAA simply made the change after a full day of complaints from all sides to correct the record books and they were certainly not in any hurry to do so. It took until Sunday night for the change to be made. This is the crux of bookmakers’ decisions on how the play was handled.

The game line for the second half opened at UCLA -6.5 and quickly moved to -7. UCLA’s Russell Westbrook celebrated a game-ending dunk which brought the score to 53-49 and made the -7 line a push for Bruin bettors. However, a day later, officials correctly updated the score of the UCLA victory over Texas A&M to 51-49. This meant that UCLA only won the second half by 5. But in most offshore post-up books, the score was never updated and the plays not re-graded.

Bettors on both sides were bantering back and forth and by Monday our phone lines and email box were full of Texas A&M bettors who felt bilked. We made some contact with offshore operators to get their take and what they did with the play. We were told that the game would stand as originally reported. After all, a game score is final. It is what it is…..

Most books graded the game as originally reported 53-49 and stuck to that decision. They referred to rules stating, for betting purposes, “the winner of an event will be determined on the date of the event’s conclusion. Sportsbooks do not recognize suspended games, protests, scoring amendments, result reversals or overturned decisions.” However, this was a decision made on a book by book basis offshore. There was no meeting to discuss this and render a decision, each operator did what he felt was right. And you cannot fault them for that as in this situation; somebody was going to be unhappy. We do have to give kudos to two operators, BetJamaica and Olympic. They graded the game at 51-49, and these two outfits also gave the push to UCLA second half bettors! We had also heard that perhaps grading it ‘no action’ should have been the way to go. But, not 24 hours later.

The problem with a post-up shop is that since the change was made so late, many post-up bettors had already wagered out of their accounts - before the game score was changed. If UCLA bettors lost on Sunday and the game was re-graded as a loss, their accounts could have gone negative. More than one bookmaker told us that they would have re-graded the game had the score change occurred that night – not the next day.

We heard from guys who figured that the book they played at made the decision on whether or not to re-grade the game based on their handle, stating the obvious, that if their book was heavy on A&M, they graded it with the original score, a loser from Aggie bettors. This did not factor into any of the books that we spoke to as most of them had a decision on. The score at the end of the game was official and scores are final when the gun goes off, the fat lady sings and the arena empties. A post-up shop would have an awfully hard time readjusting hundreds of playes, potentially chasing down players for money, with a score change an entire day later. And there would still be unhappy customers!

A credit shop however, could regrade the game. Accounts when playing on credit are generally not paid out on or collected from until Monday. And Nevada sportsbooks . . . from what we understand . . . throughout the state they handled the decision differently and inconsistently as well.

In all, players were looking for this to get graded both ways. And bookmakers are not in the business of losing BOTH sides of a play. Nor should they be. The game is what it is at the final gun. Yes, mistakes were made, but mistakes are made by officials in every sport. Should we take away a free throw when we look at the tape the next day and no foul was committed? Did the NCAA review the last seconds in the end of this years’ Villanova/Georgetown matchup when a questionable call with :01 left put the Hoyas on the line, giving them the win, in a tie game? How many NFL replays have we watched and STILL felt the officials got it wrong?

Though many bettors on all sides of this decision are upset, the final score of a game is final. If you look at horse racing, a horse that wins, and is later found out to have consumed a ‘milkshake’ does not have its bets reversed. The posted results are just that - final results.

The most ironic thing in all of this is that the final dunk did not change the outcome of the game for millions of fans. Thus, March Madness pool players and bettors who only had this as a win or loss in a weekend of 48 games certainly didn’t care. The NCAA, outside of a little embarrassment, is probably pleased that there is a betting controversy over their sport; though we do have to believe that some of the pressure to correct the score came from Vegas. And finally - UCLA players, coaches and fans are advancing in the tourney and the Aggies are all sitting at home. I doubt either care about the score update.

So, those of you who play at a book that stood with the original score and had Texas A&M -5, can chalk this up to another bad beat. I am surprised that I wasn’t all over them….

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