GPWA Interviews Lou Fabiano and Warren Jolly

RobWin

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Thought you guys that may not get a chance to read this over at the GPWA Forum might want to read it here and also since the Casinomeister is mentioned a couple of times too in the interview. Also the
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to the original article. Also the
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to the interview with Warren Jolly.


GPWA interviews Lou Fabiano (Professor)

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We actually completed this interview, along with an interview with Warren Jolly, several days ago. Unfortunately, due to illness and the sheer length of the interviews, I wasn't able to finish transcribing the conversations until today. The goal of these interviews was to provide answers to many of the questions that affiliates were asking. We hope you find them illuminating.

GPWA: When did you form CAP?

I started CAP back in 2000. Either in 1999 or 2000. I'd have to go back and look, but that was about when it started.

GPWA: Why did you start CAP?

At that time, it was kind of the Wild Wild West. When I first started, there were only a handful of us that operated as affiliates, especially in the vertical of gaming. I'd been working on the retail side for a while and that was my primary business for a while and that was my primary business at the time, but then I started in gaming and I quickly found out there were problems with some of the operators not paying and even more so than that, the advertising that was purchased was ineffective or just outright fraud. The traffic you purchased was worthless. At the time, I would do a $5,000 mail campaign and get nothing for it. And theyd say, We'll do another drop for you. Or you would purchase traffic via pay per click like e-pie or the ones that were buying a lot or what have you. There were a number back then that provided an awful lot of fraudulent traffic that did not convert. There was some contact with some of my contemporaries...(But) we needed to have a way to get together to discuss matters and make sure we weren't getting the short end of the stick. And discuss good programs and bad. And if everybody shared experiences together, I thought it would more effective than all of us blindly stumbling along here and losing tens of thousands of dollars. So that's what prompted me to start CAP, to have a place where affiliates could gather and discuss what worked and what didn't and discuss who was behaving like a rogue and who wasn't.

GPWA: How did CAP generate revenue in the beginning? Or was it even supposed to be a revenue-producing operation?

It wasn't a matter of generating revenue in the beginning. Initially again, CAP was formed as a community and it was not set up to be monetized. I had no intention of monetizing when I first set it up. At that time, I made a very high six -figure income per month as an affiliate, so any money I would have generated would have been trivial. So it wasn't a consideration, to be honest.

GPWA: When did you first meet Warren?

This is a funny situation. This actually occurred by referral. I was working with a company by the name of Tradal. They were one of the larger programs of the time. And they were a master affiliate that worked for 888 and Casino on Net as they were known at the time and there was Cassava, the group, and they had asked me if I would set up an affiliate program for them and manage it. And I said, Well, guys, really I'm too busy with my own portals and affairs, but whenever I can help, I will. But I just don't have the time to do it myself. So they said, We have a couple of kids who are fresh into this business, would you mind working with them and helping them get bootstrapped? And I said sure, and that's when I met Warren and Raj Lahoti, and they started House Winning, which is a program they designed that Tradal helped them set up to promote 888 and Casino on Net brands and a number of brands under the Cassava banner they flew, and I think they may have even had a bingo brand they were test marketing. There was no poker involved at the time. Nobody played poker online. But they set up House Winnings and asked me to go ahead and put them on CAP and get them started so that people would know about their affiliate program. And I said, Yeah, sure, what the heck. So I met with Lahoti and Warren at Casino Affiliate Force, which was actually a cruise that you stayed over in the Bahamas and it was set up Herby Olschewski, who originally set up the Affiliate Summits, before Shawn (Collins) and Missy (Ward) took over when Herby ran off with everyone's money. I helped to promote Casino Affiliate Force, by the way, and Herby ran off with $17,000 of my money as well, and also stole Marc Lesnick's money, so that's why we ended up talking me, Marc, and his girlfriend at the time and set up CAC as an alternate way to do conventions. And again, I was not interested in being in the convention business for many years. I said I just don't have the time. I was tied up with portals. That was my primary form of income and so that was my focus.

GPWA: When did you decide to enter into a partnership with Warren?

Well, it's a company more so than a partnership. They approached me. Tradal has a nasty habit. I hate to say it, but at the time, they weren't the most reputable guys in the world. And they ended up having a falling out with Raj and Warren and basically took over the players, and House Winnings was no longer viable. And they didn't have anything to do so Raj contacted me not Warren and said, Can we do sales on CAP? We noticed that you're not doing sales and we need something to do. I said, Well, I've never really thought about monetizing CAP. And he said, Well, you should. It has a good bit of traffic and value. And we can extract some of that value if you want to go ahead and do that. I said, OK. If you want to do that in a sales capacity only on CAP, that's fine. I also had retail affiliate portals including affiliateprograms.com, affiliate programs guide, webmaster programs, and a number of other ones and they were going to monetize all of these different verticals as best they could, so we set up a corporation in Nevada, which was called Affiliate Programs Inc., in 2001 or 2002.

GPWA: So Raj is third partner in all of this?

Yes, he always has been.


GPWA: So when you were going about setting up Affiliate Media, how did you divide up the business responsibilities?

The only thing Warren was responsible for was sales. I was in charge of managing the communities and managing the business. I'm the president of the company. Warren is just the treasurer. Raj was listed as the secretary. Raj chose to take on no duties because he and his brother formed a company called onlineguru.com, and they now held a number of domain names and one of them was dmv.org, and they had an idea to go off and be regional affiliates and set up a place where people could pull their motor vehicle records. So if you want to go pull up motor vehicle records, dmv.org pretty much dominates that as a sales service. That's what he drifted off to. Warren was involved in sales and that was about it, really. We brought in additional sales people and the company grew. As the company grew, we brought on more sales people. The decision was made to open an office to house everybody because it was silly having everybody work remotely. We opened our first offices in Huntington Beach and we quickly outgrew them so we moved to Irvine near the tech center because we wanted to be able to do some of our engineering in house. Originally everything was done out of house . . . in India. The problem
was there were communications issues, there was a time difference between us and the Indians and you would try to get a hold of them and you basically had to call in the middle of the night and it was frustrating to work that way. So we decided the best thing to do was bring in our own engineers and designers and the company grew and grew and grew and right now, at the offices in Irvine, have about 35-40 people.


GPWA: Warren has publicly stated that you own 40% of Affiliate Media. Is that accurate?

Yeah. That is accurate. I own 40% of Affiliate Media. But I'm still the president. He's still the treasurer. And Raj was not listed on the board, so he's silent. He has no real voting rights on the board.

GPWA: He has no real voting rights on the board?

No, no, that was by his decision and I have documentation where he asked to be removed from the board and removed from the bank accounts and everything else because he felt uncomfortable. This was around (the time) UIGEA (passed), and he felt uncomfortable being listed as a board member so he just wanted to be a silent shareholder and of course he gave up any voting rights at that time because only the board votes.

GPWA: How much does Warren own?

30%. When I envisioned this, I still owned the domains and everything else. This is just a sales operation to service affiliateprograms.com. I never expected them to seize the domains like they did. What he did was he took the domains out of our account and transferred them over to eNom without my authority and basically hijacked and stole our company. I'm not saying Raj did, this was all Jolly. I've got multiple letters from him (Raj) in December and January where he said, I have no faith in Warren Jolly. I don't want to work with the company. I want to surrender my shares and sell out if we can reach an agreement. And again in January, he made overtures that again he had no faith in Jolly and he wanted to sell the company. A lot of people felt that way out west because Warren was very abusive toward the employees and affiliate programs. I would fly out there, because I go out there quarterly, and we would make agreements about how the company was to behave, and the minute I would leave, he would go off on his own tangent. It's important to know that when I met him, he was only 18 years old. He had no previous experience in the business. He had no education as far as a degree. I don't even know if he's graduated high school, to be honest. He basically came in as an 18-year-old kid and as an intern and worked his way into a capacity where he could manage a sales team. But he started abusing that. I always stated that let's be reasonable in the amount we charge programs and I set a cap of 20% (increase) per year with a discount for the number of years you've been with us. In other words, we could raise our rates 20% a year for new clients. A new client coming on board would pay 20% more than clients had the previous year. But if you had already been on board with us, you were supposed to get a 5% discount per year you'd been with us. You'd never get down to where you'd pay nothing, but you would hit a floor around 10%. And we'd agreed to this numerous times in writing and Jolly would just go off on his own tangent and eventually I'd be on the phone with Fortune, Referback, or one of the programs screaming because he had doubled their certification fees.


GPWA: It sounds like you knew that certification fees were a big problem.

I absolutely did. The theory was we had a gentlemen's agreement that he would handle sales and I would handle the events and the community, do what I did on the newsletters, and let him handle sales. He said that I wasn't an aggressive negotiator. And I conceded to that. No I'm probably not the most aggressive negotiator. I tend to like make the situation so that it's fair and equitable for both parties. But that's not Warren's way of doing business.

GPWA: So the question that a lot of people have is that you knew you weren't an in-your-face negotiator, yet you recognized that certification fees were a big issue and the affiliate programs weren't happy about that. Why didn't you speak up about that sooner publicly, or why didn't you make a move earlier to try to rein this is in?

I did. I did as best as I could. But you have to understand that during this process and if you notice, it was an acceleration of this sort of abuses I had suffered congestive heart failure after Barcelona 2 years ago due to the stress of running there and the salt in the pork and a variety of other issues pushed me into congestive heart failure. I spent nearly 6 weeks in the hospital fighting for my life. It took almost a year for me to be fully back up to speed, so to speak. Even now, I'm taking heart medication and I became a type 2 diabetic, which turns up in your later years. So I've been dealing with that. I'm located in Orlando. My team is located in Irvine. I call and interface with them and they beg and say, Please, Lou, get out here. Please come and do something. I'll go out there and get verbal agreements and sometimes even written agreements from Jolly. And the minute I fly back, it goes back to business as usual. It's a very hard thing to manage, but I have other affairs to tend to here. I have a family and children and I have other businesses to deal with and I'm still an affiliate. He took advantage of the fact of illness and other family issues my mother is fighting cancer; she just went into surgery recently. He took advantage of all those factors and exerted his will, so to speak, over what went on in California because I wasn't physically there.

GPWA: Do you regret not having acted sooner?

I wish I would have acted sooner. But I had no idea that he had the intention of taking it as far as he did or stealing the company like he has. He took over $3 million in company funds in between January and February and moved them to banks that I had no access to, and no knowledge of I don't know the account numbers, I don't know anything.

GPWA: Warren claims that he moved them from one company bank account to another company bank account.

Yeah, but I'm president of the company. If I can't access those accounts or view them, or anything else, then it's embezzlement. I was a signatory on the bank accounts that he removed all the funds from. And our corporate bylaws require that a transfer of any funds over $25,000 be authorized by myself, even though day-to-day operations, we write bills, pay employees, we pay bills and all of those sorts of things he was never authorized to do this. Like I said, almost $3 million has been moved. We had accounts in Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo. In Washington Mutual he took $1.24 million dollars on the Friday previous to me coming out publicly and basically cleaned the account out. Warren is now in a negative position. Then he went to Wells Fargo and cleaned out all of that money and that was $1.7 million. I do not know where that money is.

GPWA: So you have no idea where that money has gone?

No. And they refuse to cooperate or tell me or be responsive. He's blocked me on the phone. He's blocked me on Skype. He's blocked my e-mails. He's shut off the telephones. He shut off my wife's phone. He knew that my wife gets all of our doctors appointments via that phone. The guy is just vicious. He silenced me effectively at CAP. He banned me at CAP. A lot of these late-night bannings and all these different things issues with the Casinomeister and everything else were engineered to justify this sort of action. I had nothing to with that.

GPWA: You weren't involved in the banning of Casinomeister?

I was the one that unbanned Casinomeister. When I went to bed, Casinomeister was fine. You have to understand there is a three-hour time difference (between Lou and the California offices). At night, Arjun Arjun Jolly is Warren Jolly's brother does a variety of things and attributes them to me. I get the heat the next day. When I came in in the morning and saw that Casinomeister had been banned, I immediately unbanned him. This has been going on for some time and also occurred over at PAP. Arjun would log in as Jeremy Enke and make wild posts on a variety of different things, log in as myself, make posts, and then what he would do is log back out. He's a moderator, administrator at both...

GPWA: Let's talk about CardSpike because that's a matter of serious importance to affiliates. You said Warren owns CardSpike. Do you stand by that?

Warren actually signed the CardSpike deal without my knowledge. And then he went on to tell me, Oh, we own CardSpike. He signed it under a fictitious name. I don't even know what the name was. Our attorney that we had on site went insane. He said, What do you mean there isn't this person? Now we've got a problem in that Cake Poker won't release Effective Media from this contract that they have. As far as CardSpike goes, Warren is the owner and he was the beneficiary of any monies that would have been generated, but we've never received any money. Along with the affiliates, we weren't paid. We were given a couple of advances from Cake Poker, but they've been the managers and the administrators of this program from Day 1. Warren is innocent in this matter in the sense that he was not in control of affiliate payments. All affiliate payments are performed by Cake Poker. Even though Warren signed as the licensee, the deal was Cake Poker was to manage everything. All we were to do was to act as consultants and manage the affiliate program. And we did that for a time. Greg Powell was the manager for it. But we had a problem. Cake Poker was a great poker platform. They told Warren they'd have the ability to offer casino games as well. And they said it had been tested and everything was 100%. It wasn't. All the data that came over was faulty. And a lot of the back-end data that was being received was faulty, too. Affiliates went in and viewed wild numbers that were not correct. And Cake Poker refused to pay them. Cake said, No, we can't pay these numbers and we'll explain to the affiliates that these numbers are incorrect. But we cannot issue any payments until we get this data sorted out. Unfortunately, they told me verbally on the phone that a lot of affiliates were happy to be paid quarterly. I said, Well, guys, I don't know of any. I'm one that's not. So they said, Just don't worry about it. We're good for the money. We've got a ton of money. Blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah. And we would pass that along to the affiliates in hopes that the situation would get solved as quickly as possible. And there were payments finally issued in December and they were probably two months late in some cases.

GPWA: The ultimate question regarding that is when people were asking who owned it (CardSpike) and who signed the license, there was a visceral sort of denial from you and Warren that you had anything to do with it. Why not just come out and say, yes, so and so signed the licensing agreement. Yes, we had something to do with. Yes, we're sorry we screwed up on the payments. And we're trying to fix it.

We didn't screw up on the payments. We had nothing to do with it. We did say over and over that CardSpike was doing their best to get the payments squared away as soon as the data was fixed. The difference is I'm working with Effective Media and I represent CardSpike, and Warren is the owner of CardSpike. Generally I will not release information on anyone that owns a property that we manage, but because of the gravity of this particular case, I went ahead and let people know who was the owner of CardSpike. But generally, it's something I wouldn't do because I prefer to maintain client confidentiality. And I was privy to the knowledge that CardSpike was not able to pay because Cake Poker was withholding payment because of these data issues, and we did state that numerous times. Here's the issue: everyone has always come out and said we want CAP to come out and admit they own CardSpike. CAP does not own CardSpike. Affiliate Media is a separate company. It's a Nevada corporation that I'm the president of. We operate a number of communities including CAP. We print magazines, we do events.

GPWA: But you do understand where the perceived conflict of interest....

We don't own or operate casinos. We never did. Now the fact is Warren went off and purchased a casino and set up a separate corporation in Cyprus to represent that casino. And then he signed a contract with Effective Media to represent CardSpike. There are three different companies involved here. There's Effective Media, where I have an ownership position in. Warren has a position. I'm the CEO. He's the president of the company. There are other shareholders which I won't announce publicly for their own...


GPWA: No, I understand that. But because the company personnel were linked, because it was, let's just say it was Warren (for example). Because Warren was involved in all 3 operations, you can see where there's a perceived conflict of interest. And that's why people were upset.

Yeah, but you have to understand that from a practical standpoint, affiliates think in single dimensions. They don't think of things in a business sense from the respect that there are a lot of people that sit on boards of a lot of companies. And that doesn't mean all the companies are linked or that they have common interests or do common things. Warren Buffett sits on the board of numerous companies. You wouldn't just say Warren Buffett was involved in making bad donuts because he has a majority stake interest in Dunkin Donuts. You wouldn't say that because he owns insurance and donuts, it's a conflict of interest. He again sits on the board of numerous companies.

GPWA: If he was on the board of Dunkin Donuts and he was on the board of...

He's also on the board of Baskin Robbins! What does that have to do with ice cream?

GPWA: There's a larger point. Let's say you're a senator. Most senators divest (their portfolios) or go into blind holdings because they have no idea what they're going to be writing legislation on.

We're not senators. We're businessmen.

GPWA: But it's the same thing, at least in my mind. And I'm asking you to correct me where I'm wrong. Let's just say you're the CEO of GM and you're also on the board of an automotive supplier, that would be....

GM owns AC Delco. GM also owns GM Finance. GM also does mortgages. GM also has positions in a number of companies.

GPWA: But that's very up front

Ford owns Volvo. Ford had a position in Jaguar. GM owns stock. That's not a conflict of interest here. There are automotive manufacturers that own different products. I understand what your position is and what you're trying to contend, and I understand that again, in a single-dimension world, you're free to have that position, but it's not legally valid. There is no conflict of interest if I own, or Warren owns, a publishing company, which is primarily what Affiliate Media is, and we also own a consultant company and I happen to own a property management company. So again, is that a conflict of interest somehow? I don't believe it is. I own a number of companies. I'm certain Warren does, too. We don't discuss every ownership either one of us has. But we've been successful in business and it only makes sense that we broaden our horizons and do invest in other businesses.

GPWA: If you had a microphone right now, and you had 1,000 affiliates in front of you, what would you say to them right now? What would you want them to know?

Nothing, really. I want them to understand the fact that number 1, CardSpike, I'll publicly apologize. We had no idea that we represented a company that had issues with the software that were present with CardSpike.

GPWA: I want you to broaden this out beyond CardSpike. If you had 1,000 affiliates in a room and a microphone and you wanted to talk to them about what was going on right now, what couple of things would you really want them to know about what's going on right now?

Number 1, I'd want them to look at history. I was the one that started CAP. I started it 8 years ago. I started it as an affiliate to represent affiliates. We've always believed that's what we were there to do. Over the years, we've done our best to service affiliates, to provide them with a great forum, great events that were free, free magazines. MYCAP is one of my new branding initiatives. CAPTV was one of our new initiatives; originally I had hoped to have that as a full network channel. In other words, my whole modus operandi and purpose in life was to represent affiliates in a professional way where the programs would respect us as independent business owners and deal with us as such. I also felt collectively as I did when I started CAP that we could achieve more together than we could as individuals. So that was my vision of CAP. Over the years, if you are at all familiar with CAP, you'll know that Warren Jolly never had a presence on CAP, never posted on CAP, never did much of anything other than handle sales in the background. And that was it. That was his primary role. He never took an interest in the community. He doesn't have any interest in affiliates whatsoever. I need to be returned to power at CAP so that I have the ability to keep CAP headed in the right direction. With Warren Jolly's theft of the company or his attempting to steal the company at the moment it's not going to benefit affiliates and it's certainly not going to benefit programs. Last I checked, it's going to be a bad situation. And CAP has a long and illustrious history that I don't want to sacrifice. I'd like the opportunity to have my voice heard in my own community again. I don't think that's too much to ask. I mean, now Warren talks about bans and then bans me, when he and his brother were the ones actually doing most of the bannings. It's a very awkward situation. I don't know what to say to affiliates to address what's going on internally because it raises other questions of how I allowed this to happen, what have you. It happened because I was located in Florida, he's located in California, and a lot of the things were done without my knowledge. I woke up on a Monday morning expecting everything was cool like usual, and I was getting ready for CAP Spring Break, life was good, and everything else, and I find out all of sudden my money is removed from the bank and all of our money is removed from the bank and I have no idea where it went. And then, when I make a post to let people know what's going on, it's immediately moved and I'm banned from CAP. And then my phones are shut off, my cell phone, my credit cards, my company credit cards it's ridiculous. Even my e-mail that I've had for 8 years that everyone knows how to get a hold of me he hijacks and was no longer sending on my e-mail. There's nobody worse that can be charge of CAP than him (Warren). And I'd really like the opportunity again to go back and push CAP forward again in the right direction, servicing affiliates like we always did. I'd like to work cooperatively with Michael; we discussed this in London at length. That's my ultimate goal here. I'd like everybody' support to make that happen.

GPWA: If you were talking to Warren directly right now, what would you tell him?

I would tell him please return our funds that you've stolen from our company or make them transparent so that I can see them and certify that they exist and didn't go into personal accounts. Also, I need access to the books now. Unfortunately, shame on me, but I depended on shareholder agreements to monitor the income and outflow of the cash flow over the years and I didn't look at individual bank statements. Even though I'm a signatory on all the accounts, I would check them periodically just to spot check them to see how the money was doing in the bank. I didn't check them daily, I didn't even check them weekly. Had I not been tipped off internally that something was going on and that he removed the money they did that over the weekend when I checked Monday morning and found that out, that's when the fireworks went off. But this is something he's been engineering for a while, so I need the ability to review all of the company records and audit everything and see exactly how much money has been siphoned off from our company over the years. If he can steal $3 million in two months, over the course of 8 years can you imagine how much money he's probably taken that I'm not aware of?

GPWA: Are there legal negotiations going on right now?

I've retained counsel and I'm waiting to receive direction on this... So there are criminal and civil actions being pursued vigorously.

Editor's note: Lou said if you need to reach him, the best way to do so is via his skype account.
 
GPWA also interviewed Warren:

We actually completed this interview, along with an interview with Lou Fabiano, several days ago. Unfortunately, due to illness and the sheer length of the interviews, I wasn't able to finish transcribing the conversations until today. The goal of these interviews was to provide answers to many of the questions that affiliates were asking. We hope you find them illuminating.

GPWA: One of the things that came up this morning regarding CardSpike is Lou said you signed a licensing agreement with CardSpike and you were the owner of CardSpike. What's your reaction to that?

It's completely false. My reaction to that is Lou is taking any step possible to damage my name and incriminate me on this whole issue because he doesn't want to accept any responsibility. The fact of the matter is I'm based here in California and Lou is based in Florida where EMG is based, the company we set up together. This was an initiative that Lou has been wanting to pursue for numerous amounts of years. Obviously we know a lot of people in the industry. A lot of people know who we are in the casino space as affiliates and organizers of CAP, and as I said in my statement, and I'm going to stick to that, the truth of the matter is I'm not going to throw Lou under the bus. I could easily say the same thing back in return and say Lou is the owner, but the actual truth is we finally decided to work with a group of investors on launching this and helping them do what it is they wanted to do and because of our expertise in affiliate marketing and SEO and brand management and everything else, we got involved. Now this was a way for Lou to have a business where he can offer consulting and channel his expertise out of his home base in Florida and it wouldn't conflict with what we're doing here on behalf of Affiliate Media CAP and PAP out of California which he really didn't have any control or say over. So it was more of a way to diversify the business, and when you have cooks in the kitchen, if you will, or two chefs in the kitchen, it was easier to have a separate business doing separate things rather than us constantly having differences of opinion on how to run this business here. Lou had always been the community moderator of CAP and running that out of his home in Florida and he'd really been adamant about setting up an office and having something of his own so there wouldn't be this constant back and forth on who makes the final decisions with Affiliate Media, CAP, and PAP. That is the truth. That is the facts. And that can be verified by contacting even Cake Poker directly, who provides the software licensing, and they would be happy to verify that. It's a big, big, major allegation that's completely false and it would be wonderful if Lou could provide some documentation behind that, but it doesn't exist.

GPWA: When it was first reported by the APCW, GPWA, and in the forums that you and Lou had business interests in CardSpike, both of you vehemently denied it. Why, especially since you admitted it this week, did you deny it, and do you regret those denials now?

This is something that we can provide proof on. We're looking at digging it up right now. But basically, Lou had asked when this whole issue arose for support in denying these allegations. And I vehemently said, No, I'm not going to take part in that. I don't want to be creating this mess and taking it out to a bigger degree. We have retained legal counsel, which Michael Corfman is aware of who that is, a lawyer out here in Irvine, and Lou had been in communication with the lawyer; he had asked for my user name and password on CAP. I did not know that he would be making a post that denied allegations. He made a post under my user name, also similarly the post about the Holocaust, anyone that knows how I write in terms of e-mails or posts knows that's not my style. If they take a post or a long diatribe that Lou has written and compare that to the post that was posted under my name as an example with the Holocaust post they would clearly make a distinction that was Lou writing under my user name or basically using my account on CAP.

GPWA: The e-mail that was sent to J. Todd that denied any beneficial interest was that from you?

The e-mail was from me.

GPWA: Why did you issue the denial then if you didn't want to be talking that much about it?

This was under Lou's direction under Lou's advice. The e-mail was from me. I'm not denying that. Some of the posts under my name were made by Lou because the rest of the company, the rest of the organization, the rest of the shareholders, were unwilling to support what he was trying to communicate. As far as sending that e-mail, yes. It was a situation where we had lawyers involved, we had a dispute in terms of how we wanted to come out in public. I apologized in my statement for that denial as well, and when I apologized in my statement, it was referring to my denial via e-mail that was sent to J. Todd.

GPWA: So essentially, you didn't go public with your roles because Lou didn't want to go public with them but you did, and there was internal dissension?


Yes. As you can see from the new tone at CAP and from the statement and everything else, I greatly believe in transparency. Lou does not. Lou's statement is, and you can quote this, his argument to me was always us having to disclose which companies we owned shares in that were public companies; for example, do we have to tell people that we own shares in GM or we own shares in Mircrosoft or Yahoo! or Dell does that information need to be public. That would always be his argument to me. And the truth of the matter is I fell for that. I fell for that just being naive, thinking that was the right thing and Lou's my business partner and someone I trust, someone who's much older than I am and experienced, and that was a mistake. And I deeply regret that.


GPWA: Do you understand why the affiliate community is upset with you regarding the conflict of interest?

Yes. You might even want to speak with one of our employees. There was a meeting that we had here in California when Lou was out here last year between Lou, myself, Lou's wife was there, and one of our employees, John Deng. This was a meeting that we had in the Hyatt Hotel here in Irvine and we had this exact discussion and I said, Lou, if we get into this business and we work with these groups of people, we can make lots of money with them. It seems like a very appealing thing because the experience we have and how long we've been in this space, but it's going to be a conflict of interest. And Lou's response to me was, If you don't do it with me, I'll do it myself and it will still be a conflict anyways, so why would it make a difference?

GPWA: What did you do right with CardSpike, what did you do wrong with CardSpike, and what would you redo about the whole thing?

Well, truthfully, there's nothing that I felt that we did right because it's something that we shouldn't have been involved in and that's something that I apologize for. As far as what we did wrong, not serving the community first and foremost. And because we have a certain responsibility to the industry and to the community, what we did wrong is not being public and not even discussing it first and saying, Hey, would everyone be OK if we consult, or we helped launch these projects what would be their opinion, what would they want? What I regret not doing is if we're going to do this, first and foremost get the approval of the community at large and secondly build something that doesn't exist to fill a void.

GPWA: For the record, what went wrong with CardSpike in terms of the affiliate payments and what took so long to fix it?

Sure. So CardSpike was one of the first Cake products that was basically going to have side games using a casino and unfortunately that was a third-party integration with a completely different group a large group with over 500 employees. And this was kind of the guinea pig, if you will. So the integration was being done it was done incorrectly. There was a third-party tracking software, which was Income Access. We basically had Greg Powell, who was the project manager getting this thing..., we left it in his hands. From Day 1 he was working with Cake on getting this up and running. He did not know, nor did he do research or due diligence, that there was a problem with the track and the reporting between the poker software and the casino software. He didnt inform us, he didn't inform the other parties involved. We didn't really find that out until it came time to issue first affiliate payments. The minute I found out, personally, even that Lou found out, that's when we stepped in and said, Hey, wait a minute, this is not going to be good. We know the importance of getting affiliates paid on time. And we were just given promises that hey, it's going to be fixed in two weeks, it's going to be fixed in three weeks. We should be able to have accuracy. And it was just never done because you had this monolithic organization that just couldn't move and didn't realize the importance of ensuring affiliate payments were correct and accurate.

GPWA: Just for more background, when did you first meet Lou?

Lou and I met first met probably back in 2001-2002 see, the reason again why I was comfortable with the consulting side is that's where I came from before CAP. I was an outsourced affiliate manager, if you will, for 888 at the time. I was actually running an affiliate network, managing the affiliate program for Tradal, which was again a marketing extension of 888, and recruiting affiliates, had a lot of great relationships with affiliates, and the whole introduction to CAP was CAP was our largest master affiliate at the time. And after we sold the business, at that point me and the other partner, Raj Lahoti. he's also a shareholder in Affiliate Media, CAP was really nothing back then. Lou was the founder. It was a forum, but it was an ugly red and white site that didn't have any value. We both stepped in, but shortly thereafter Raj assumed a silent-partner sort of role. I stepped in and built the business in terms of the product, the marketing, the relationships, the shows, the magazine, the revenue behind CAP to what it is today.


GPWA: How did you divide the business responsibilities with Lou? Who was in charge of what?

Lou was basically, if you will, a division president of anything that had to do with the gaming space. That was his responsibility while I oversaw the actual company as the CEO. We've got other businesses as well in terms of the retail space and lead generation and such. I basically built those from the ground up. Lou's focus has really been to manage the community, manage the product, and kind of be the front person, if you will, for CAP.

GPWA: Just so you know, Lou views the arrangement completely differently. Lou's view of it is that he was the president, you were the treasurer. You were in charge of sales. He was in charge of the company.

It's a shame that he thinks that. The truth is, and you're a journalist, you can come out to California, you can talk to all the employees of the company and ask them the question who runs the company, who's built the company, who hired you, who you report you, and you'll get 30 to 35 people who'll tell you it's the opposite of what Lou just said. The concern we have as a company is that Lou is doing whatever it is right now to protect his self-interest. A lot of that is concealing the truth with more lies, which is not the approach I'm willing to take.

GPWA: Along the lines of just trying to clarify information, Lou indicated that you, Raj, and Lou are the owners of Affiliate Media.

That's correct.

GPWA: Lou said that he had a 40% share, you had a 30% share, and that Raj's shares were nonvoting shares.

That's incorrect.

GPWA: Lou said that around the time the UIGEA (passed), Raj was involved in another business and he didn't think it would look good to be close to something that involved online gambling so he moved to a nonvoting share position.

That's incorrect.

GPWA: Along the lines of things that have happened that have annoyed people is the bannings. I know that you've promised a much more open environment and freedom of speech and tolerating different views. But one of the things that Lou is charging is, with Casinomeister for example, Arjun is the guy who banned Casinomeister, that he (Lou) had nothing to do with it and he (Lou) had to "fix the mess" in the morning.

I'm not even going to comment on any of this stuff because it's the same trend of shifting blame and that's not the right way to correct problems and that's not the right way to address the general public and that's not the right way to apologize to the general public and that's not the right way to apologize for actions that have taken place that aren't correct.

GPWA: One of the things that's happened recently, and you noted this in your statement, is that Lou put up a bank statement.

Yep.

GPWA: And he's charged that you're embezzling money. And his number is around $3 million. And he's saying the way the corporate bylaws are set up is that any transfer of funds over $25K requires his OK.

Not correct. Any loans of $25K or anything of that sort require that. The funds were simply moved into one of our various corporate accounts to protect from him withdrawing funds. And actually, I have not commented on this publicly, but Lou had prior to all of this happening, when there was a disagreement, had threatened to take money out of the bank accounts, which is why the remaining shareholders and the vice president of finance made a decision collectively to protect the company's assets. And in fact, after all this happened, from one of our accounts, he did indeed withdraw $36,000 out of the branch, which we're now waiting for further copies of the withdrawal slips which we will if needed publish that show that we're pretty much certain that those funds were not put into another corporate account. So in terms of embezzlement or grand larceny or any of those other types of accusations, it's probably wise for anyone to make sure to have proof that the money is going into personal use or being commingled or anything else before making those accusations. Unfortunately Lou, just like everything else he's done thus far to date, has no proof, has no thought behind it. And from our perspective, it's just a joke.

GPWA: If you were able to talk to Lou directly right now, what would you tell him?

I would tell him for his own sake to stop the public airing of dirty laundry because everyone is quite fed up with it and stop the emotional outcries for pity and support. I think it's gone too far. I've seen on GPWA and Casinomeister that people aren't willing to support that. I would encourage him to issue an apology for everything he's done and work this out with the rest of the company in private so everyone in the industry and shareholders and employees of Affiliate Media and the whole world can move on with their business and respective business.

GPWA: What lessons have you learned from all of this, and how will you be applying these lessons to your business in the future?

I think the lessons I've learned personally is transparency is critical no matter what anyone says. Trust is critical no matter what anyone says. Conflicts (of interest) should be avoided at all times. And really, just have a good understanding of who your partners are, what their intentions are. I would say that summarizes it pretty well.

GPWA: A lot of affiliates feel like what's happened here is a gross violation of their trust. And they're trying to figure out if they should trust you again. Why should people be willing to give you a second chance?

I think on this issue actions speak louder than words. And I'm not looking to answer that question with words. I'm looking to answer with action. Theres going to be some things we'll be announcing in the near future, I'm not going to put a date on it. But the key here is a lot of the things that took away the trust over the past couple of years weren't really things because when you're talking about CAP, you're talking about Lou from the control perspective because that's the way our company has been structured until now a lot of those things were not under my say, under my control, under my focus because I've been focused on other aspects of the business. I have been the person involved in business development, on the technology side, on the marketing side of CAP, but dealing with the affiliates, whether it's violating the trust or building the trust, it's been Lou's responsibility. And there are some things there that we're looking to change. I'll just give you one example: it's our certification. As I said in my post or statement, I've known, and it's no joke to anyone, our certification has been around for a long time, but as time has passed, it has become less and less authoritative and effective, because it didn't evolve with the times. That's one of the things I'm immediately looking to change. Evolve the certification, make it unpaid, change our whole model, and really make it of value and of trust to affiliates, and keep it independent. These are the kind of things that I'm hoping and the organization is hoping and the community is hoping will rebuild that trust.

GPWA: What do you want people to know that hasn't already been addressed?

I would just like everyone to keep an open mind toward the new CAP and what's going to happen. Obviously, be in touch with me or the rest of the team if there's any feedback. We'd love to hear it. We want to keep this dialogue open and remain proactive. And again, I'd just like to apologize on the record for what's happened in the past and ensure that going forward in the future that we address those things in the proper fashion and ensure that everyone's happy in terms of the service and value provide.
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It may not be a popular thought but I am a little disappointed to see this go away at CM. Cap should not just go on under the circumstances.
 
It all about the money...

Can CAP still make money?

If CAP can make money, it will not go away.

I see CAP is still recruiting new affiliates for most all the programs or at least all their affiliate tracking is still in place.

I see they are still selling the CAP certification seal and MANY casino programs continue to "Proudly" carry the CAP seal.:eek:

Don't look to me like they are going anywhere...

Looks to me like Warren, Lou, the GPWA and all the CAP seal holders are all still trying to squeeze that CAP cash cow for all it's worth.
 
It all about the money...

Can CAP still make money?

If CAP can make money, it will not go away.

I see CAP is still recruiting new affiliates for most all the programs or at least all their affiliate tracking is still in place.

I see they are still selling the CAP certification seal and MANY casino programs continue to "Proudly" carry the CAP seal.:eek:

Don't look to me like they are going anywhere...

Looks to me like Warren, Lou, the GPWA and all the CAP seal holders are all still trying to squeeze that CAP cash cow for all it's worth.

I have said from day 1 that they are gonna all be 1 big happy family again that it is all a ploy we shall see all tho this script was not written as well as the 1st few was written


Cindy
 
CAP can only seal non regulation. Some vendors dont want regulation, some affiliates dont want regulation. ALL PLAYERS NEED IT!
 
This is the part I really like...:rolleyes:

GPWA: How did you divide the business responsibilities with Lou? Who was in charge of what?

Lou was basically, if you will, a division president of anything that had to do with the gaming space. That was his responsibility while I oversaw the actual company as the CEO. We've got other businesses as well in terms of the retail space and lead generation and such. I basically built those from the ground up. Lou's focus has really been to manage the community, manage the product, and kind of be the front person, if you will, for CAP.

GPWA: Just so you know, Lou views the arrangement completely differently. Lou's view of it is that he was the president, you were the treasurer. You were in charge of sales. He was in charge of the company.

It's a shame that he thinks that. The truth is, and you're a journalist, you can come out to California, you can talk to all the employees of the company and ask them the question who runs the company, who's built the company, who hired you, who you report you, and you'll get 30 to 35 people who'll tell you it's the opposite of what Lou just said.

What's absolutely amazing to me is the fact that neither one of these guys seems to know who is actually in charge of the company. I mean you have to name the officers of the corporation when you implement the actual "Articles of Incorporation".
 
The situation at the moment appears to qualify for the term "fluid" LOL, but Lots0 makes some very good points about the apparently uninterrupted business that CAP is still enjoying with the Affiliate Programs, who continue to display the CAP "seal".

This despite the formation of this new 60-program outfit Gambling Affiliate Programs...which appears to have gone to ground having made but one announcement, and doesn't seem to be geared toward a collegiate relationship with the actual affiliates anyway.

And it is clear that many of the affiliates in the trenches are less than enthusiastic about GAP.

There are obviously a number of scenarios that could develop here, but the real truth will undoubtedly surface in the law courts (assuming it gets that far without these people coming to a settlement).

There was a time when I really thought CAP et al were doomed, but considering recent developments and the focus that Lots0's post brings to this situation, I'm not so sure now....without the programs CAP would be severely constrained in a financial sense, but if business with those programs continues unabated, there's a possibility for survival and even renewed prosperity, whether it's Warren or Lou in the driving seat!

What do the affiliates make of all this?
 
The situation at the moment appears to qualify for the term "fluid" LOL, but Lots0 makes some very good points about the apparently uninterrupted business that CAP is still enjoying with the Affiliate Programs, who continue to display the CAP "seal".

This despite the formation of this new 60-program outfit Gambling Affiliate Programs...which appears to have gone to ground having made but one announcement, and doesn't seem to be geared toward a collegiate relationship with the actual affiliates anyway.

And it is clear that many of the affiliates in the trenches are less than enthusiastic about GAP.

There are obviously a number of scenarios that could develop here, but the real truth will undoubtedly surface in the law courts (assuming it gets that far without these people coming to a settlement).

There was a time when I really thought CAP et al were doomed, but considering recent developments and the focus that Lots0's post brings to this situation, I'm not so sure now....

Doomed nah they have their interveiws pretty much down pat except who was the President an how many shares Warren owned
I agree its all about the Money an has been all along

They had to do damage control from what all occured in London an what better way then to have a fallout with your partner an this 1 say that an that 1 say this an they play mad for about 2 weeks an lookie here a post again not by them but by some 1 else hmmmm

if ya remember those that saw the bank records even tho there was withdraws shown all it listed was a bunch of #s not like a normal bank statement would list them I still say that was a bogus statement no I have nothing to back that up
but so far what I have said all along has been coming together soon they will be 1 happy family again

that is why it is buisness as usual at Cap or so they think

Cindy
 
What do the affiliates make of all this?
Personally... It makes me a little ill.
At first I was hoping they would implode, but now I see they have just increased their efforts.

What can you say... You can't get rid of every scumbag in the world.

Sometimes, just like in real life, the scumbags, like poop, rise to the surface.

For example, Donald Trump has his own friggen TV show now... :sob:
 
As an affiliate I believe CAP is a lame duck, which will die as and when certifications are up for renewal.

As for GAP, I am on the fence regarding it at this moment in time. I have many reservations about it and want to hear more before I make a decision as to whether I can support it or not.

Currently I am posting on GPWA, Meister, ABF, GuardDog and Rowmare's forum where time permits and also my own hangout with the tumbleweeds :D on Online Casino Reviewer.

From all these forums I can get a good picture as to what is happening in the affiliate world.
 
It is interesting how they blamed Cake Poker for all of these CardSpike problems. What I don't get is how if they were run by Cake Poker and Cake Poker handled their money for affiliates and players it seems why were they using the Jazette (Sportsbook.com and friends) support, affiliate software and processor?

If Cake Poker ran their affiliate program wouldn't you expect them to use Cake Poker's affiliate software like Red Star does or use the same payment processing software like Red Star does? CardSpike used the same backend the Jazette's use. When you make an account on CardSpike it takes you to a Jazette web based form to create the account too. Also CardSpike offers casino games that Cake Poker and Red Star don't have. I don't have the absolute highest respect for Cake Poker on a matter completely unrelated to this (I think their cashout policies are absurd) but as U.S. friendly poker rooms go they are top notch and I don't think they deserve this finger pointing. Don't let what these rogues say make you form an opinion about Cake Poker. I don't think it is deserved here and to point the finger at Cake Poker here is BS.

No other skin has all of these problems. Why did CardSpike? I don't think it has anything to do with the network.
 
It is interesting how they blamed Cake Poker for all of these CardSpike problems. What I don't get is how if they were run by Cake Poker and Cake Poker handled their money for affiliates and players it seems why were they using the Jazette (Sportsbook.com and friends) support, affiliate software and processor?

If Cake Poker ran their affiliate program wouldn't you expect them to use Cake Poker's affiliate software like Red Star does or use the same payment processing software like Red Star does? CardSpike used the same backend the Jazette's use. When you make an account on CardSpike it takes you to a Jazette web based form to create the account too. Also CardSpike offers casino games that Cake Poker and Red Star don't have. I don't have the absolute highest respect for Cake Poker on a matter completely unrelated to this (I think their cashout policies are absurd) but as U.S. friendly poker rooms go they are top notch and I don't think they deserve this finger pointing. Don't let what these rogues say make you form an opinion about Cake Poker. I don't think it is deserved here and to point the finger at Cake Poker here is BS.

No other skin has all of these problems. Why did CardSpike? I don't think it has anything to do with the network.

Notice that the only 1 that is mentioning Cake poker is Warren the 1 that alledgedly (sp) withdrew 3 Million it was 2 Million a month ago now 3 Mil. an as stated the withdrawels was just to a bunch of #s an wasnt this money supposed to pay people

all bull if ya ask me I give them a month an all will be good again with them an then by that time all the affilates will have walked away cept the blind 1's


Cindy
 
It is interesting how they blamed Cake Poker for all of these CardSpike problems. What I don't get is how if they were run by Cake Poker and Cake Poker handled their money for affiliates and players it seems why were they using the Jazette (Sportsbook.com and friends) support, affiliate software and processor?

I don't know much about this subject, but wasn't it said that card spike was the first cake room to use some integrated software to provide casino games and another to do the aff reporting and none of it seemed to work together properly?

Ready to stand corrected, this is just something that stuck in my head..
 
I don't know much about this subject, but wasn't it said that card spike was the first cake room to use some integrated software to provide casino games and another to do the aff reporting and none of it seemed to work together properly?

Ready to stand corrected, this is just something that stuck in my head..

I have not heard this but it could certainly be true. Betus, PlayersOnly and Sportsbook.com all have had casino games integrated for a while in their Cake Poker Network software. There is a button on the top of the lobby and in the tables for casino games. It is possible I guess that CardSpike could be managed by Cake Poker but it seems extremely odd that Cake Poker would outsource all of their support and processing to a sub license skin network. Maybe that is the only way Cake Poker could license the casino games? Who knows. Cake hasn't said anything about it and doesn't seem to want to be involved at all.
 
Hey Warren

How about you pay us all our outstanding Absolute Slots commission with all that lovely loot you're sitting on?
 
More "bullshit" from these two PROVEN LIARS.

Each one claims the other was guilty of "misdeeds".

"millions of dollars" hidden in some unknown account... :eek:

And now the "CAP CASH COW" is on empty... :thumbsup:


Warren got the cash... Lou got... :xxx

No "honor among thieves" anymore?? :rolleyes:

BOTH of these two morally bankrupt scumbags are an embarrassment to the online gaming industry... and ANYONE that still choses to continue to associate themselves with either of them... or justifies the actions of either one... is a TOTAL IDIOT... IMO.​
 
Hey Warren

How about you pay us all our outstanding Absolute Slots commission with all that lovely loot you're sitting on?

So the Absolute affies are getting delayed payments now too? There's a player here also who has been waiting eleven days now for a 750 Euro withdrawal from Absolute. Of course, according to them...it's a "problem with Neteller/their processor". Or hey, maybe a dingo ate their money. :thumbsup:
 
Only the recent CakePoker issue is new. Many considered CAP a dodgy outfit long before this. Do we have to go through another "He said, she said" predictable issue? The merrygoround has been going on long enough.

I will bet my last dollar that these people will be well situated if we ever get this industry regulated. Will regulation prove to be a poisoned chalice?

(when I refer to CAP, I am talking about the people behind it, not the community members).
 
Ok people, let's tone it down a bit and keep the discussion on track. Please don't derail this thread with unnecessary comments or observations.
 
Ok people, let's tone it down a bit and keep the discussion on track. Please don't derail this thread with unnecessary comments or observations.

Ouch!! I felt that, lol. Was that the right hand or the left doing the spanking? :D
 
What's done is done. IMO neither interview has helped their cause. Indeed the mention of Tradal and their involvement with them has made the situation much worse.

I am afraid there is now no going back as far as CAP being a viable mouthpiece for affiliates is concerned. Unless of course Affiliate Media sell it.

Question is, who would want to buy it even at a knocked down price?
 
What I don't understand is why these two individuals insist on this continuous airing of their laundry. I don't think anyone wants to hear it anymore.

CAP is but a memory at the moment - unfortunate but true. I just wish they would put their money where their mouths are - hire a couple of lawyers, and take care of this somewhere else besides cyberland.
 
I agree, and I have this feeling that neither party is being completely candid in this unpleasant affair...perhaps that will all come out in the courts, if it ever gets that far.

But that's speculation....
 

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