Web Portal Questions BoS Commitment to Pay Players

Clamor has arisen this week regarding embroiled operator BetonSports' (BoS) ability to reimburse an estimated 5,000 U.S.-based customers, to whom the company reportedly still owes an unspecified sum.

BetonSports' counsel, Jeffrey Demerath of the St. Louis-based firm Armstrong Teasdale, has indicated that the company would be reimbursing customers who have filed for refunds, though its efforts to do so are reportedly slowed by an Antiguan court order prohibiting it from disbursing assets without that government's consent.

Web portal The Online Wire.com, however, alleges that no repayment process has even begun.

"In the attempt to grant [BoS] directors impunity, Antigua and Barbuda has issued a useless restraining order on the company's marketing unit residing in Antigua," a report posted on the site today reads. "Said order is being used an excuse to buy time. [BoS] directors need to go past July 20, 2007, to be able to unwind the company without incurring into personal liability."

Last summer, Roberto Castiglioni, editor-in-chief of The Online Wire, in conjunction with Christopher Costigan, founder and president of Gambling 911, leveled a similar complaint with the Alternative Investments Market Regulatory News Service against BoS's board of directors for false corporate statements made in an Aug. 11 announcement.

"Customers, vendors and those other than shareholders cannot file claims with the London Stock Exchange," Castiglioni said last August. "Our claim was taken into consideration because of alleged corporate fraud. . . . We need to clearly understand if the company has assets, if there is cash at hand, before we decide whether to pursue a class action suit in the interest of the players."

"The class action will be our burden, our duty, our cost," he added.

While sufficient ground for the suit has not been established, today's report on The Online Wire said that the portal is "prepared to indirectly assist all U.S. customers wishing to lodge their claim with the U.K. courts," providing instructions by which to do so.

Castiglioni said last August that he considered himself an advocate of the U.S. customers, saying moreover that he wished to remove the spotlight from former BoS CEO David Carruthers and return the focus to the so-called jilted account holders.

"Nobody talks about the players," Castigiloni said. "My only concern is that the players get paid, even if it's just the initial deposits."

Click here to view the report.