SEARCH NEWS:

 

Aloha Casino Finally Pays Off Jackpot Winner

She began her efforts to cash out on April 7. She was supposed to receive two bank wires, one for $21,000 and one for $25,000. After Unified Gaming, which supplies the software that Aloha uses, got involved, the money reached Dafcik's bank accounts last Thursday, May 24.

Steve Adkins, president of the Online Players Association, said this is the largest amount of money he has ever helped a player collect. Dafcik had filed a complaint with the OPA on May 4, and Adkins had written and called Aloha on her behalf.

RGT Online ran a story on Dafcik's situation on May 12 (see Congratulations on Your Jackpot: Now Try to Collect It!), and she believes that the pressure from the OPA and the RGT Online story resulted in her getting paid.

". . . It's only because of people like you and Steve and the OPA providing the service that you do that I did get paid," Dafcik said in an email to RGT Online. "I certainly don't believe for a minute I would have without the pressure you all put on them . . . ."

After other efforts had failed, Adkins encouraged Dafcik to write to "legal" at Unified Gaming. She did, and forwarded copies of all the emails she had exchanged with Aloha.

The next day, she said, someone named Richard called her from Unified Gaming. He talked to her for a long time, she said, and was apologetic and said she would get paid.

Dafcik also received two emails from "legal@unifiedgaming.com." They were signed, "Unified Gaming Software N.V.," but she believes they were written by Richard.

In one email, the writer said, "There are international money transactions involved," adding that, "Sometimes funds get 'lost' for one or more days at one of the many banks involved in the transfer who apparently like to 'sit on it' themselves for a little while."

In the other email, sent Friday after Dafcik had confirmed receipt of the money, the writer went into more detail:

"It is regretful that it took longer than everybody involved expected that it would take before you got the money. When multiple on-line casinos offer a shared progressive, you never know at which casino the jackpot will be won. When the jackpot is won, the pay out system has to start working, which is not only a matter for the casino where the jackpot was won, which in your case was Aloha Casino."

The writer went on to say, "We have no hesitation to vouch for Aloha Casino as an honest business that will honor its financial obligations towards its customers. . . . In the end we trust that our record will speak for itself. No one, and we mean no one, can ever argue that Unified Gaming would be behind any kind of rip off scheme. We keep a close eye on our licensees and have in the past terminated a lease agreement of a licensee which clearly did not honor its financial obligations towards its customers and had no intention of doing so."

The writer also said that Unified Gaming does not always intervene in disputes over payouts: "Only when it is clear and evident that Unified Gaming's licensees are not honoring their financial obligations towards their clients, Unified Gaming has a reason to 'intervene' because, as stated before, we will not accept that our software will be abused to the detriment of the clients of Unified Gaming's licensees.''

RGT Online tried to talk to Richard or someone else in the legal department at Unified Gaming, but there was no response.

Unified Gaming Software N.V. is based in St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles. On its Web site, the company claims 34 Internet casinos and sports books as clients.

According to Network Solutions, the name Aloha Casino is registered to Perplexa S.A., with an address in San Jose, Costa Rica. The administrative contact is Godfrey Volk and the technical contact is Antonio Cheng, both with the same San Jose address as Perplexa.

< Gaming News