The Forty Plus saga is finally drawing to a close with the players hopefully being paid in an issue that has done little to enhance the reputations of the software provider and operators involved.
But the full story can now be told - with information on the identities that players have had to work so hard for in the absence of any cooperation from Odds On...and red herrings drawn across the trail by some of those involved in Costa Rica.
This Odds On powered online casino came on line last year and was very active on the message boards (including that at WOL) through spokesman Alan Roberts, who went to some pains to assure the players that the management and backers were highly professional, very well funded and in the industry for the long haul.
Then their payouts started slowing down - a classic indicator of a casino in trouble.
That was followed by an unannounced and abrupt closure of Forty Plus, leaving players unpaid. Roberts and the staff vanished without explanation (it later turned out that whilst reassuring the players they were actually paying off the staff and selling the assets)
Toronto-based Odds On and its boss Pierre Gagnon made no public announcement following the closure, and only after some time and persistent complaints did he make a 1 on 1 call to a portalmaster to say that Odds On had no obligation to the players and that he had no control or knowledge of what was going on at the casino, or where its database had gone. This despite his company earning royalties from the operation, which has not been denied.
He did not offer any assistance to stiffed players trying to find the owners. He did not respond to emails asking questions from ourselves.
Meantime English Harbour, as Odds On's sole remaining licensee (there is widespread and unanswered speculation that there are closer than usual ownership relationships) appeared on the WOL message board to distance itself from Forty Plus and astonishingly express confidence in Odds On as a software provider.
The players were thrown upon their own resources, and thankfully message boards are a good way of keeping a story alive and communicating with other players.
Investigations to find the owners commenced and early information revealed the fact that Forty Plus had been registered in Costa Rica by a company called Greenoak Ranch SA. Names like Orlando Guerrero ( a CR lawyer) came up, were investigated and claimed all but the most superficial connections.
Odds On remained silent. The issue was kept alive on the message boards whilst more enquiries continued, and eventually a new name surfaced - Jorge Barahona. This Costa Rican individual was also known as George Finley, and he had previously worked for the notorious Main Street Vegas online casino group owned by Marty Jensen.
Using a Yahoo email, Barahona responded to our questions by claiming that he had only been the CEO at Forty Plus, carrying out the orders of an *investor* whom he could not name. He strung us along with this line, pretending to be sincere in wanting to look after the stiffed players and protect his reputation. He asked us to be patient whilst he tried to negotiate payment of the stiffed players through a holding deposit that had been paid to Neteller. He clearly had details of the Forty Plus players to check any claims.
He turned out to be the worst liar of them all. He was the president of the company and knew exactly what was going on and who was involved. Lawyer Guerrero also enjoyed a more important position in the company than he had us believe.
By now Canadian and Costa Rican journalists were working the story. Odds On remained uncooperative. The breakthrough finally came - Greenoaks was registered as follows:
Cedula (id number) of the company: 3101343444
The firm is located in the Thrifty Building in San Jos at Avenida 13
and Calle 3.
The firm was founded March 30 of 2003.
Jorge Eduardo Barahona Ramrez, president
Roberto Fabricio Calerdn Yong, secretary
Jorge Alberto Guerrero Vargas, treasurer
Monserrat Melissa Dias Araya, fiscal
Gustavo Alvarez Mora, resident agent
A power of attorney without limitation is in the hands of Orlando
Guerrero Vargas, a lawyer from the nearby community of Escaz. The
lawyer would seem to be related, perhaps as a brother, to the treasurer
of the company.
The postscript to this story is the belated public announcements from Odds On last week saying that players would finally be paid through credits to accounts in English Harbour casino. This over two months after the closure and major stress for the unpaid and uninformed players. They gave players a 12 day deadline to get complaints in.
Is this a professional and consumer-sensitive way to shut down an online casino? The answer to that is obvious.
There's a lesson to be learned here by any ethics challenged software providers and operators out there. It is that determined online players will not tolerate being unceremoniously abandoned in the event of a casino closure... and they are prepared to hunt down the responsible parties and hold them to account.