Wow. First off Revere if you are reading this please call WSEX at once! You got some things you need to talk about with those people. Shrink asked me to sit in on the talks as we began in on this predicament. For starters let me say I was impressed with the level of commitment from WSEX, Shrink had talked to Steve earlier on this and then he and I both spoke with Haden Ware. Haden is one of the top dogs at WSEX.
Like so many times we see on problems this thing has taken a twist like I would have never dreamed. First off let me say WSEX was not ducking anything. I was pleasantly surprised to hear Haden say we own up 100% to our responsibility on this. They only wanted to talk to the player. You may ask why talk to the player but that is pretty common. Even if they were going to pay this guy every quarter you want to let him know what he did is not to be repeated. We all understand (as the player did) this was not a standard practice and though it was accepted by the software it was a borderline move at best. I am sure a book would tell him in no uncertain terms to never do this again or in some cases paid and shown the door the first time. And while I am on it I asked about why the line did not move as the bets came in, the reason is because of the 3 way lines involved in soccer you got the "draw" to worry about. There is a way to get it done but it is very different from sports most of us are familiar with. In football you get hit on one side you make the correction and both sides are adjusted. In soccer if you get hit on one side you still have both the draw and the other side. How much do you move one or the other? Does the draw get involved more or less than the other side that is beiong hammered, sometimes it gets tricky? This is not really part of the problem and he did not use it as an excuse, just filling you guys in on something I had never thought about.
Once we got done with that we started talking about the player himself, LOL. The player, we will call him Peter for now has some major issues that need to be dealt with. Inconsistencies in his story. First off he lives in Illinois I think it was but has an address listed in California. Haden spoke with a nice Oriental man who lives at his listed address in California and he has no idea of any of this. To top it all off the bets being placed come through a South American Sox cap, not sure if I am spelling that right but what it does is conceals the IP# where you are placing your bets from. I guess an IP anonymizer type of thing. The actual location these soccer bets in question were made at shows they were placed from Uraguay!!! I knew at this point there was trouble, LOL.
Somewhere along the line there is a "Dave" that is affiliated with him too. Peter has never taken a pay-out directly to him though the amount he has won is large. All the money Peter has won gets to him by peer to peer Neteller transfers. Often tmes a scammer will have his money sent from a book to a Neteller account that is set up in someone else's name. It is usually a real person but someone who has no idea what is going on. When it gets there to the dummy account the person simply transfers it on into their real account somewhere else. This guy "Peter" showed up about the time David got his limits cut at WSEX last year. I know this is all confusing but when Neteller looked into it there is some clear affiliation with the two parties. I'll leave it at that. Again because of what they are seeing Neteller has decided to shut his account while they too investigate all this.
The ironic thing is that if right now WSEX said we don't want anything to do with this and decided to pay him every penny they couldn't get him his money. If he bet 40k and the bet won he must have about 80k in his account. Neteller has shut his account and the only address they have for him is California. By law they would be forced to send the money to that nice Oriental man out in Californa. I don't want to go any deeper in this right now and throw around any personal information but it is obvious there is some funny stuff going on here. I thought the hours spent logging in all these bets was weird but it gets stranger and stranger. It is easy to see why the phone number he gave did not work when WSEX attempted to call him the first time.
In closing let me say this is a bad time for this sort of stuff. If you are a legit player and everything matches up you will be fine! If you are playing games and doing stuff that is in the gray area do not play here at WSEX. In Antigua there is all sorts of new regulations coming up these books have got to abide by. Along with the Patriot Act there is some other stuff they have to be in accordance with. They also are being told there are plants being put out that wil be testing sportbooks to see if they are guilty of anything like allowing players to money launder and other things. With this bunch at WSEX whom have always stood up and used their real name it is ironic that we are talking about this today where the player is trying so hard to conceal his identity. The owner as we know has paid a price to represent what they feel is right, I think cases like these get down to the principle with a book like this. And no they are not using that principle excuse as a reason to keep this guys money. In fact they said if this does not work out they would send half the money here and the other half to MW for a contest for the sites before they kept it themselves. That is a pretty strong statement. As books you get tired of this stuff, it isn't about the money it's about doing the right thing. Can't say I blame them, it does get old after a while. I will reserve final judgement on this whole series of events until we hear from Revere but I am very satisfied with everything WSEX has done to date.
[This message was edited by Patrick McIrish on August 25, 2003 at 02:47 PM.]
Like so many times we see on problems this thing has taken a twist like I would have never dreamed. First off let me say WSEX was not ducking anything. I was pleasantly surprised to hear Haden say we own up 100% to our responsibility on this. They only wanted to talk to the player. You may ask why talk to the player but that is pretty common. Even if they were going to pay this guy every quarter you want to let him know what he did is not to be repeated. We all understand (as the player did) this was not a standard practice and though it was accepted by the software it was a borderline move at best. I am sure a book would tell him in no uncertain terms to never do this again or in some cases paid and shown the door the first time. And while I am on it I asked about why the line did not move as the bets came in, the reason is because of the 3 way lines involved in soccer you got the "draw" to worry about. There is a way to get it done but it is very different from sports most of us are familiar with. In football you get hit on one side you make the correction and both sides are adjusted. In soccer if you get hit on one side you still have both the draw and the other side. How much do you move one or the other? Does the draw get involved more or less than the other side that is beiong hammered, sometimes it gets tricky? This is not really part of the problem and he did not use it as an excuse, just filling you guys in on something I had never thought about.
Once we got done with that we started talking about the player himself, LOL. The player, we will call him Peter for now has some major issues that need to be dealt with. Inconsistencies in his story. First off he lives in Illinois I think it was but has an address listed in California. Haden spoke with a nice Oriental man who lives at his listed address in California and he has no idea of any of this. To top it all off the bets being placed come through a South American Sox cap, not sure if I am spelling that right but what it does is conceals the IP# where you are placing your bets from. I guess an IP anonymizer type of thing. The actual location these soccer bets in question were made at shows they were placed from Uraguay!!! I knew at this point there was trouble, LOL.
Somewhere along the line there is a "Dave" that is affiliated with him too. Peter has never taken a pay-out directly to him though the amount he has won is large. All the money Peter has won gets to him by peer to peer Neteller transfers. Often tmes a scammer will have his money sent from a book to a Neteller account that is set up in someone else's name. It is usually a real person but someone who has no idea what is going on. When it gets there to the dummy account the person simply transfers it on into their real account somewhere else. This guy "Peter" showed up about the time David got his limits cut at WSEX last year. I know this is all confusing but when Neteller looked into it there is some clear affiliation with the two parties. I'll leave it at that. Again because of what they are seeing Neteller has decided to shut his account while they too investigate all this.
The ironic thing is that if right now WSEX said we don't want anything to do with this and decided to pay him every penny they couldn't get him his money. If he bet 40k and the bet won he must have about 80k in his account. Neteller has shut his account and the only address they have for him is California. By law they would be forced to send the money to that nice Oriental man out in Californa. I don't want to go any deeper in this right now and throw around any personal information but it is obvious there is some funny stuff going on here. I thought the hours spent logging in all these bets was weird but it gets stranger and stranger. It is easy to see why the phone number he gave did not work when WSEX attempted to call him the first time.
In closing let me say this is a bad time for this sort of stuff. If you are a legit player and everything matches up you will be fine! If you are playing games and doing stuff that is in the gray area do not play here at WSEX. In Antigua there is all sorts of new regulations coming up these books have got to abide by. Along with the Patriot Act there is some other stuff they have to be in accordance with. They also are being told there are plants being put out that wil be testing sportbooks to see if they are guilty of anything like allowing players to money launder and other things. With this bunch at WSEX whom have always stood up and used their real name it is ironic that we are talking about this today where the player is trying so hard to conceal his identity. The owner as we know has paid a price to represent what they feel is right, I think cases like these get down to the principle with a book like this. And no they are not using that principle excuse as a reason to keep this guys money. In fact they said if this does not work out they would send half the money here and the other half to MW for a contest for the sites before they kept it themselves. That is a pretty strong statement. As books you get tired of this stuff, it isn't about the money it's about doing the right thing. Can't say I blame them, it does get old after a while. I will reserve final judgement on this whole series of events until we hear from Revere but I am very satisfied with everything WSEX has done to date.
[This message was edited by Patrick McIrish on August 25, 2003 at 02:47 PM.]
