All,
The following is just what I have been able to gather from the people I have been in contact with.
I am NOT affiliated with any of the companies, I am NOT an "insider".
I am just a regular player who had money tied up in this mess.
My understanding of what has happened:
Betfold is formed by two main investors and has two other people who are the main day-to-day operators of the site.
In mid-December the investors felt that the operators had been creating bogus accounts and siphoning money out of the company and running up tabs at other businesses of one of the investors.
They called a meeting with the operators but the operators never showed up for the meeting.
A couple hundred thousand Euro was also missing from Betfold's accounts.
The investors went to the Malta police later that day and filed a police report, and the police confirmed that the two had left Malta for the UK.
At this point I think the investors were hoping that the police would be able to track down the two accused in the UK and bring them back to Malta and recover their funds.
There was still some level of support at Betfold and thus emails were still getting replies albeit slowly, and some money was still being paid to players as Betfold's funds allowed.
Emails had said Betfold had a backlog from the holidays and problems with payment processors, but they were working on resolving it ASAP.
I have limited details as to exactly has gone on with the companies involved as they tried to resolve this.
Now as for pursuing a resolution to this situation:
As far as I knew, my money was owed by Betfold; thus I researched who licensed Betfold.
The TOC for Betfold states that they are licensed in Curacao.
However if you look at the Curacao Gaming Authority (
http://www.ciga.an/) and their dispute resolution procedure, they have no staff to handle complaints and seem to have no teeth: they simply forward the complaint to the company and ask them to resolve it.
This seemed like it would show little to no result, so I kept looking.
I found Betfold displayed the KGC logo on their main page.
Thus I opened a complaint with the KGC.
The KGC was extremely responsive and they had just updated their procedures and have a fairly strict timetable for companies to respond to and resolve complaints.
However immediately there was a problem: Betfold was not licensed by the KGC.
They released an advisory to that effect here:
http://www.gamingcommission.ca/news/...Feb25-2010.pdf.
They did however continue to pursue my complaint, and discovered that an affiliated company Involve Poker Ltd. (which is essentially Tain as far as I am aware) is licensed under the KGC.
Thus they began talks with Involve Poker Ltd. in attempts to resolve the situation.
At the same time I had tracked down one of the investors in Malta and had been in contact with his attorney.
Their bottom line seemed to be that they would do anything they could to help bring this to a resolution, short of sinking more money of their own into the company.
This consisted of aggressively pursuing the legal arrest of the two accused operators, as well as lobbying Tain to step in and guarantee player funds.
They were very responsive to my questions and I spoke to the attorney on the phone.
This process continued for several weeks ultimately ending in Tain / Involve Poker Ltd. conceeding that it would cover players funds.
Thus they have been and are still in the process of putting funds into the merchant accounts and handling players debts.
It is my understanding that only Player funds are being covered.
Affiliate funds fall under a different classification than player funds.
And furthermore the KGC does not deal with affiliate issues.
My personal opinions:
We are receiving money mainly due to pressure from the Kahnawake Gaming Commission on Involve Poker Ltd. / Tain.
Their efforts are the only ones I can personally feel very confident actually occured; while both Playtech and the investors at Betfold say that they made efforts as well, the substance of these efforts is unknown to me.
The KGC has been absolutely amazing and I cannot speak highly enough of the efforts of all involved; including the complaints officer and their legal counsel.
We have all been incredibly foolish to enter into a situation with our money where we do not know who is involved or how to contact them.
I am 100% in agreement that this situation should have never been able to exist.
Player funds should be held in trust and guaranteed under player contracts and company license obligations.
All players should be aware of this after both the TUSK and Eurolinx issues.
Players need to know where their money is held, what companies are involved, and have some assurance that their money cannot dissappear.
I believe it is extremely naive to take the stance Playtech or iPoker or whoever should be responsible for the funds.
The reality is that these companies do not hold player funds under the current structure of the iPoker network.
While people could argue all day whether this should or should not be the case, at the end of the day that is the way it is and thus players need to act according to that fact.
In my opinion we are lucky that Involve Poker Ltd. / Tain is licensed by the KGC and is obligated to step up and meet the obligations.
If this were not the case and Betfold simply dissolved, I am afraid we would have all been out our money.
This mistake would rest squarely on the shoulders of players for not understanding how and where their money would be held.
From my reading of the Curacao Gaming Commission their policies would not have been able to recover our money from Betfold.
Ultimately I can understand the conundrum of the investors left at Betfold.
They had invested money into the company which has now allegedly been stolen from them along with player funds.
Should an investor be expected to step up to fill in this problem financially?
The way the company was setup it seems to me that they have no legal obligation to do so.